Feynman as an Artist

You may go to the webpage
http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=380 for a more extensive collection of Feynman's paintings. We thank Elena Georgieva for bringing this valuable page to our attention.

From all those paintings, we can clearly see Feynman was a talented artist, but we should be able to say more than that.

The Physics Today pictures were chosen by Michelle Feynman, Feynman's daughter, and their captions are quotations from Feynman's writings. From those figures and captions, we can gather easily that Feynman was a physicist and was addressing the issue of "resonance" in transmitting abstract concept. Each individual has different emotions. Feynman puts his own emotions to his pictures. He believes those with the same set of emotions can appreciate his paintings.

Among the nine items shown in the Physics Today, six of them are paintings of woman. I do not know how to draw pictures, but I have many photos accumulated over the years. I went through them in order to find some photos giving me the same kind of feeling as I could get from Feynman's pictures.

I found many photos including those I took when I was in Rio de Janeiro. It is not difficult to see that Feynman was inspired by what he saw in Brazil, trees on the mountains and scenes on the Cocabacana beach. But my collection is not limited to those from Brazil. When I was attending a conference in Kharkov (Ukraine), I noticed this street scene which gave me the same kind of feeling as those from Feynman's paintings.

It then is not difficult to establish the resonance between this photo with the statue of Venus, and therefore the resonance between Feynman's paintings and the beauty of Venus.

Feynman was learning art from his artist friends. Thus, he was influenced by established professionalism in art. There women play important roles, and their images are derived from the ultimate lady named Venus. If Feynman's ladies give an impression of Venus, it is only natural.

Based on what we know about him, we can safely assume that Feynman was insisting on his own creativity in what he was drawing. Creativity should be accompanied by continuity, since otherwise it cannot survive in history. Click here for more stories.

Don't Forget. Feynman was a Physicist. He was a creative physicist. Here also Feynman's creativity was always accompanied by continuity. His Feynman diagrams respect all known principles of relativity and quantum mechanics.

• In his Parton Picture, Feynman appears to have pulled out this idea from the blue sky. He formulates the abstract concept of partons from high-energy experimental data. But, is his concept consistent with the existing laws of quantum mechanics and relativity?
  1. Bjorken and Paschos. Many people had difficulties in comprehending what Feynman was saying. Indeed, these two gentlemen started decoding what Feynman was saying in his short PRL article. For some period, this Phys. Rev. was the most-frequently quoted paper in the physics literature. I am happy to show you my photo with them taken in 1999.
  2. Consistency with Einstein. I have written many papers on this subject mostly in collaboration with Marylin Noz. Here are my photos with her taken in 1975 and in 2003.
• Chew-Frautchi Plot. See also how the Regge poles appeared to Feynman.

According to Feynman,
The artists of the Renaissance said man's main concern should be for men, and yet there are other things of interest in the world.Even the artists appreciate sunsets, and the ocean waves, and the march of the stars across the heavens. There is then some reason to talk of other things sometimes. As we look into these things we get an aesthetic pleasure from them directly on observation. There is also a rhythms and a pattern between the phenomena of nature which is not apparent to the eye, but only to the eye of analysis; and it is these rhythms and patterns which we call Physical Laws.

I picked up a transparency containing this paragraph from a waste basket. If you know the exact reference, please let me know at yskim@ysfine.com.

According to Feynman, abstract ideas are generated from our observation of visible and audible objects in this world. Let us concentrate on visual effects in this website. We can talk about audible effects later. Physicists like music.

First, let us see how abstract concepts can be formulated from visible objects. Thanks to internet technologies, we can collect many photographs into one webpage, and you can see them all. From these photos, it may be possible to derive abstract concepts.

• Good is an abstract concept. Ancient Chinese wanted to express this concept by combination of two pictures. One is their character for woman, and the other is for her son. They combined these two characters to express the abstract concept of Good.
  Chinese are not the only ones with this kind of feeling from the combination of a lady with her son. Indeed, a picture of this combination plays a very important role in the Western religion called Christianity. Let us see some photos of mother and son.
  1. Arianna Dagnino is an established Italian journalist in Milan. I met her in 1987 at a restaurant called "Swiss Chalet" located near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. She was studying at Harvard. In 2000, she sent me a photo of herself with her son. She felt good, and I also felt good.
  2. My wife with her Son (1994). I have one wife and one son, and I have many photos of her with her son. Can you tell where this photo was taken? She worked hard for her son's education starting from here. They should look OK even to you.
  3. Grandmother is added to a mother- son combination. They look better. There are no Chinese characters describing this photo. What is the abstract concept coming from this? This photo was taken in Krakow (Poland) in 2002.

• Campus. This word is very important to us. Do you know what it means? University? Collection of buildings? Libraries and computers? Place to meet students? It was John Witherspoon who produced this word. Witherspoon was the sixth president of the College of New Jersey (now called Princeton University), but was effectively the founding president and served for 25 years. He was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Before him, the college consisted of one building called Nassau Hall, but many new buildings were added during his presidency. After seeing those buildings springing up, he came with the word "Campus." Princeton University is known to have a beautiful campus. Thanks to internet technology, you can make a virtual tour of the campus. You can then formulate your own concept of Campus.
  1. Concept of Affluence. Right after the Civil War, the College of New Jersey had another influential president. His name was James McCosh. He felt his college needed money and decided to admit boys from rich families. In so doing, he transformed the campus into an affluent society. If you like to have a visible description of American affluence, you may visit the yearly alumni event of Princeton University called "P-rade."
     Isabella McCosh was the first lady of the College during James McCosh's presidency. Her father was a very wealthy and influential medical doctor. She thought everybody on campus should be healthy and invested much of her family fortune to improve the environment of the College. These days, Princeton's infirmary is called "Isabella McCosh Health Center." I spent three nights there when I was exhausted while completing my PhD thesis in 1961.
  2. Woodrow Wilson became the president of Princeton University in 1902. This cover page of the alumni magazine tells us he is still talked about. He thought his university should be a place for graduate study and research. He wanted to add a graduate school buildings right next to the main campus, but he rebuffed by the board of trustees controlled by alumni. His plan would interfere with the social clubs, called eating clubs these days, located at Wilson's proposed site. He thus had to build his Graduate College about 1.5 kilometers away from the campus. He was so bitter that he decided to look for another job.

     Wilson became the governor of New Jersey and then the president of the United States in 1913. He led isolationist Americans to the war in Europe. After the war, he formulated the idea of the League of Nations, but his idea was voted down in the U.S. Congress, as he was defeated by Princeton's Alumni ten years before. In today's campus scale, 1.5 kilo is a trivial distance. His League of Nations continues these days as the United Nations. Wilson was a man with foresights. It could be a very lonely experience to have foresights.

  Yes, we are very fortunate to have internet webages to formulate abstract concepts from the pictures. What is then the campus? Campus is campus. It is an abstract concept with its own meaning.

• These days, we are constantly worrying about global warming effects. Equally worrisome, in my opinion, is the evaporation of beautiful minds. Yes, it is easy to draw pictures of beautifucl women, and it is even easier to photograph them these days. But is it possible to photograph beautiful minds? I am different from Feynman and other traditional artists. I am not drawing, but using photos. Unlike those traditionalists, I use more than one woman in one picture. Let us then see whether we can photograph "Beautiful Minds."
  1. Protvino (1999). I was talking with Russian secretaries while attending a conference at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Protvino (Russia). The Institute's photographer was able to see their brautiful minds, and took this photo.
  2. Airline Ladies are trained to show their beautiful minds to passengers. However, they can be trained so only if they have their own beautiful minds to begin with. As you know, it is not possible to teach physics to students totally without scientific minds.
  3. Americans in Stockholm. While I was having a dinner at a small table in a Stockholm restaurant called Martentrotzig (Sweden, June 2005), these three ladies came in and sat down at a big table next to mine. I asked where they came from, they said very proudly "United States." They thought I came from China or Japan. When I asked where in the United States, they said "Washington, DC." I then asked which area in Washington, they became somewhat annoyed, and asked me why I am asking so many questions. I told them I also came from the same area. They did not believe me, but they asked some questions about the area. I answered them all. I said I am a professor at the University of Maryland. They said they are office workers at the headquarters of one of medical associations and came to Stockholm to provide secretarial services for the association members attending a conference. We talked about many things like a brother and sisters.
  4. Two Sweet Girls. While in Kharkov (July 2000), I invited these two girls to a photo with my colleague. They were just walking by. In November of 2001, they came to me while I was attending the Akhiezer memorial conference held in Kharkov. It was a total surprise to me. They asked me whether I brought their photos. I apologized to them and promised to put the pictures on my website, and I invited them to join me in the conference banquet. However, the conference organizers rejected my idea. Their reasoning was that these girls are too young. We were thoroughly disappointed. I could partially heal their wounds by posting these photos.
  5. Two Medical Doctors from Dnipropetrovsk staying at the President Hotel Kievsky in Kiev (2006). They appeared to have beautiful minds. I asked them whether I could photograph them. They invited me to sit down with them, and I had a photo with them. There are many medical doctors in my family. In order to be a successful doctor, he/she must have a beautiful mind and must always be ready to help others.

• Time variable is very important to us. First of all, we know we are constantly getting old. Yet, we cannot photograph this variable. These days, we photograph indirectly using motion pictures. Is this enough?
  1. Galileo was the first one to include the time variable for moving objects in a two-dimensional map. Newton came up with the abstract concept of acceleration.
  2. Time variable in Einstein's World. To most of use, it is a hyperbola. Do you know it can also be an ellipse?
  3. Optical Instrument. Like you, I like instruments. The physics of still camera is very simple, but its technology is a different matter. This webpage contains cameras from 1959 till now (more than 50 years of time interval). From the many photos, you will note that my personality is about the same as yours: vanity, competitiveness, cost consciousness, technology above all.

• Rest of the Universe. In his book on statistical mechanics, Feynman says

  When we solve a quantum-mechanical problem, what we really do is divide the universe into two parts - the system in which we are interested and the rest of the universe. We then usually act as if the system in which we are interested comprised the entire universe. To motivate the use of density matrices, let us see what happens when we include the part of the universe outside the system.

  

• Here again, Feynman was trying to define an invisible world in terms of what we observe in the real world. The best way to decode Feynman's rest of the universe is to use two coupled harmonic oscillators. One of the oscillators is in the world where we make observations, while the other belongs to the rest of the universe we are not able to observe. You may click here for a paper published in the American Journal of Physics for a detailed quantitative analysis.

• Time separation variable. We can use the concept of Feynman's rest of the universe to study the variable not measured in the present form of quantum mechanics. The Bohr radius occupies a very important place in quantum mechanics. When the hydrogen atom is watched by an observer on a bicycle, the time-separation variable between the proton and electron becomes important, according to Einstein. But this variable is not mentioned in quantum mechanics. This variable belongs to the rest of the universe.

  We can approach this problem using Feynman's concpet of the rest of the universe and mathematical techniques of coupled harmonic osicllators. You may look at this paper.

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