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Comment by DirectorKrennic | Hacker News Reader

What sets physics apart from the other physical sciences that there are no "X Lectures on Chemistry" or "Y Lectures on Biology"? Surely if there was a will, there would be a way. Genuine question. Feynman's work may not be the be-all, end-all of physics, but it covers every base. Would it be possible to do that for other fields?

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Fundamental physics has an extremely neat set of concepts and ideas at its core,, forming a kind of funnel, whereas chemistry and biology would be more like a plate.

Also the Feynman lectures are really a tour of basic undergraduate physics rather than literally all of physics so potentially it could be that no one bothered to make one. Physicists seem to enjoy the Shakespearean side of pedagogy a bit more than chemists.

I'm not sure if I understand what you're trying to convey with the following: "X Lectures on Chemistry" or "Y Lectures on Biology"? Chemistry and Biology are higher level abstractions of physics, Sure you can communicate the physical properties that are happening, but the abstractions we create help us to communicate the relevant physical properties we are trying to understand/ manipulate.

Also, I love Feynman's work, It's what made me see the beauty in physics, but to say that it covers every base is completely wrong and an injustice to his findings and the broad nature of the field.. Are you trying to say that he was great at communicating abstract concepts?

When I was in a condensed matter PhD program at Cornell they ran an excellent weekly Colloquium series which I always looked forward to even if the topic was astrophysics or particle physics.

I went looking and didn't find anything in Math, Chemistry or Computer Science that came close to the quality of the talks and the feeling that the large department was a community of interest.

I think it's because what constitutes core physics is more standardised and less variables across universities. In addition, the core syllabus of physics tends to have concepts that build on the previous very nicely and ultimately combine. In constrast, I think other subjects tend to specialise more quickly than physics.

It's worth pointing out that experts love Feynman's lectures. They're elegant and subtle, and are great for refreshing why and how you think about physics.

Pedagogically, Feynman's lectures were a failure. They aren't well structured to teach novices physics. Outstanding students might learn from them, but those same students would also learn from a ratty textbook.

I'm a physicist with a PhD, so I love Feynman's lectures. I also care about pedagogy and my students' development, so my copy of the lectures sits next to my copy of Jackson and Sakurai, on a high shelf that first-years can't reach!

I would recommend Eric Lander's introduction to biology course at MITx as the perfect counter-example. It is about as good as Feynman's lectures, whether one chooses to refer to it as "Lander's lectures".

For biology at least, my professors often said that by the time a textbook was published, it was 5 years out of date.

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