Volume 52, Number 16 · October 20, 2005
Wise Man
By Freeman Dyson
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman
edited and with an introduction by Michelle Feynman, with a foreword by Timothy Ferris
Basic Books, 486 pp., $26.00
Great scientists come in two varieties, which Isaiah Berlin, quoting the seventh-century-BC poet Archilochus, called foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes know many tricks, hedgehogs only one. Foxes are interested in everything, and move easily from one problem to another. Hedgehogs are interested only in a few problems which they consider fundamental, and stick with the same problems for years or decades. Most of the great discoveries are made by hedgehogs, most of the little discoveries by foxes. Science needs both hedgehogs and foxes for its healthy growth, hedgehogs to dig deep into the nature of things, foxes to explore the complicated details of our marvelous universe. Albert Einstein was a hedgehog; Richard Feynman was a fox.
Review, 4388 words
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