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> But all this begs the question. Why should we believe Gauss's law? This particular incident had nothing to do with the validity of Gauss's law, which is noth
by b215826 5y ago
> But all this begs the question. Why should we believe Gauss's law?
This particular incident had nothing to do with the validity of Gauss's law, which is nothing but a restatement of Coulomb's law in electrostatics, and something that has been extensively verified in experiments. Feynman's presentation of Gauss's law is crystal clear. The issue in question was an application of Gauss's law. Feynman likely goofed up (like most of us do) because he didn't think twice and went by his intuition. And he was absolutely right to criticize the student -- saying that something is written in famous book X written by famous author Y is completely irrelevant in science if you cannot make a good argument for why it is right. This is different from many social "sciences" where people often make such claims.
- foldr 5y agoThis isn't a really a fair reading of the student's letter. It's clear that she was puzzled by the apparent (and in fact actual) contradiction between the erroneous paragraph and the rest of the book. She just asked Feynman for an explanation of what the paragraph meant. It does seem reasonable to give Feynman the benefit of the doubt and assume that there might possibly be a non-erroneous interpretation of the paragraph in question. I think Feynman was getting on a favorite hobby horse about not trusting authority and reading the letter a little uncharitably.