On the second page of the first volume of Richard Feynman’s famous Lectures on Physics (Lecture 1, Section 2), we find the paragraph:
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you want to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.
That sentence exposes another type of sentence: a sort-of prison sentence Feynman was serving—as most of us are—confining us to our cells within modernity. In the Epilogue to my energy textbook, I raised this point and suggested an alternative along the lines of “Treat nature at least as well as we treat ourselves.” It’s sort of a golden rule that extends beyond the usual boundaries of human supremacy. Today I would go further.
As for Feynman, let’s take a look at how one of the broadest thinkers in physics can still be held captive in a narrow rut.
On Feynman
I never knew Richard Feynman personally. He died five years before I reached Caltech. But I can tell you that anecdotes of interactions still rattled about now and again. One that stands out is from my graduate co-advisor (with Tom Soifer), Gerry Neugebauer (hard-G; now also deceased, sadly), who pioneered infrared astronomy as a cracker-jack instrument builder and damned-fine scientist. I have nothing but admiration for Gerry, and learned tons from him about all aspects of being a careful scientist, a clearer writer, and a genuine person. He was also a renegade against stuffy authority.
When Feynman taught the undergraduate physics series—from which the published lecture series derived—a team of assistant professors lived up to their title and assisted in the execution of the course. Gerry reports that Feynman was undeniably luminous, and that interactions with him consistently delivered a great deal of insight. But he could also be a bit of a condescending jerk. Gerry was a lowly knuckle-dragging instrument-builder. When Gerry was doggedly trying to grasp some deep principle, Feynman would sigh: “Let’s see. How can I put this such that someone such as yourself might begin to understand?” This is directed to a professor of physics at Caltech, remember. Of course being a mature and well-adjusted adult, Gerry absorbed the treatment without grudge or animosity: it was about the job at hand, not personal grievance.
But we give Feynman some license, because what he produced was like gold. He had a knack for penetrating the essence of a phenomenon and breaking free of old traps that had stymied understanding. He was not bashful about admitting the limits to his (or especially our) knowledge, which is an admirable trait in someone as insightful as himself. He was a fascinating blend of hubris and humility.
Feynman was remarkably broad in his interests and manner of thinking. He always seemed to operate a level or two “above” others, which allowed new connections to be made. He was about as close as it gets to a guru on the mountaintop who could comment meaningfully on just about anything (relating to physics).
An aside, while on the subject of Feynman and his Lectures… Many aspiring theorists hold Feynman as a role model, and I even knew one grad student who seemed desperate to emulate his famous antics. I was more of a Bob Leighton guy. Who the hell is Leighton? Check the cover of the Feynman Lectures: Feynman, Leighton, and Sands. I (once) strove to be in the Leighton (and Neugebauer) mold. But I never worked very hard at emulation or studying others’ routes to success. I just let whatever path unfold before me—which it will always do.
Limits to Breadth
As broad a thinker as Feynman was, nothing in his body of work suggests operation outside the penitentiary of modernity. Indeed, his suggested sentence for transmittal to the future in the event of civilizational failure unambiguously indicates that his values and loyalties rested on modernity and modern science. His apparent goal was to jog humans “back on track” in case some misstep put us off the divine path. My stance was similar when I began this blog in 2011. I did not deem the “track” to be a disastrous and temporary departure from a much older and ecologically-proven way of being.
But we can’t really fault Feynman. Like most people, he was entrained in the exhilarating current of modernity, riding the top of a wave at impressive speed. He had a clear path to make big strides and found copious reward in doing so. Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it—right?
Feynman (born 1918, died 1988) witnessed loads of exciting—and terrifying—developments in his lifetime. The pace of change was so great as to push concern over hypothetical consequences well off the margins. When the upsides get all the attention; when developments come at a fast-and furious rate so that it seems pointless to muse about the future; when the costs have not yet become apparent; and when continuing the frenetic pace seems like the surest way to utopia, then of course the sensible reaction is to buckle down and contribute to the thrill ride.
I would say most present-day humans—and especially older generations—still inhabit this thought cage. Since no one 200 years ago could possibly have predicted the technological developments in store, we must humbly accept similar ignorance about the fantastic future—the thinking goes. It’s sloppy; presumptuous. Is the proposal that this will always be true? Is it an unlimited prospect? Will the equivalent of the fossil fuel windfall keep arising every few generations without end and without consequence?
Inside brains—where imaginations may not be limber enough to conceive/admit reversals of “fortune”—the answers to these questions can be a resounding “Yes!” But that means nothing to the actual universe in which we flow. A close cousin to the gambler’s fallacy is the fallacy that a streak is fated to continue because it hasn’t broken recently. The ubiquitous ecological ignorance of modern culture sure helps support this fantasy! It’s so much easier to fall victim to this expression of faith if lacking crucial context. The logic seems solid enough in isolation. Who needs messy context?
Sentencing
When I wrote the Epilogue to my textbook in 2021, I was partway along my journey of falling out of love with modernity. I was beginning to recognize the ugliness of human supremacy, and beginning to acquire greater awareness on matters of ecology and anthropology. My suggestion that we “Treat nature at least as well as we treat ourselves” was a foray into a new sense of wholeness and togetherness: that we share a bound experience with the Community of Life on this planet. However, the wording still carries echoes of a dualist dichotomy separating ourselves from “nature.” I would not today suggest the same sentence—although I still think it represents an important break from the “atoms” transmission.
What would I offer today? I suppose it may have been better if I had started drafting this post with something concrete in mind. Alas, I’m not that “together.” Instead, I’ll try to knock something up on the fly. Perhaps a phrase we already know and use hits close to the mark: “You can’t fool Mother Nature.” Others, inspired by Daniel Quinn, might be “Learn, all over again, to live in the hands of the gods” or “Humans were made for this world: not the reverse.”
I guess the most effort I have put into this direction was in writing the fictional story The Big Question (which has subsequently been published in the Winter 2026 issue of New Maps). While reasonably compact, it doesn’t tuck into a single sentence:
Humans would fare the best, maximize happiness, satisfaction, and longevity of their species by recognizing their forgotten ecological context and moving toward fully-integrated reciprocal, respectful relationships with the Community of Life and the more-than-human, biodiverse world of Evolved Life. Messing about with intensive agriculture, high technology, metals, and artificial intelligence is a devastating path that leads to a sixth mass extinction—including, of course, the termination of humans themselves. Humans are social beings who are happiest in medium-sized autonomous groups working together toward a common goal, wrapped in unconditional support and in pursuit of tasks that have direct [immediate] meaning to their livelihoods.
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Do unto Nature as you would do unto yourself.
Ah, yes, the irresistible force meets the immovable object: Scientists (that is, humans who pursue knowledge through use of the scientific method) are Humans! (What a pity, Basil…)
Beautifully stated…I couldn’t agree more
"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so"?
Try to be kind while enjoying the ride.
Growth followed by collapse is what nature does.
https://un-denial.com/2026/05/10/by-hideaway-scaling-laws-in-nature-and-human-civilization/
"It’s a challenge to summarize in a few words Hideaway’s Complexity Accelerated Collapse of a Thermodynamically Unsustainable System (CACTUS) theory, but here’s my latest attempt:
1) modernity depends on many non-renewable resources
2) new resources must continuously be extracted from the earth’s crust to replace those burned or lost to decay, and because 100% recycling is not economical nor technically feasible for most resources
3) reserve quality declines as non-renewable resources are extracted because they are finite, and because we consume the best first
4) therefore, the energy, materials, and technology complexity used for resource extraction must increase to compensate for falling reserve quality to maintain a given extraction rate
5) increasing civilization scale accelerates the development of higher extraction technology complexity
6) increasing civilization scale increases the efficiency of resource use
7) increasing civilization scale requires growth in non-renewable resource extraction
8) therefore, increasing civilization scale BOTH enables and requires non-renewable resource flows to increase
9) therefore, many complex interdependent self-reinforcing positive feedback loops collaborate to grow civilization quickly
10) eventually, a physics limit is reached that prevents one or more non-renewable resource flows from increasing, which triggers a cascade of interdependent self-reinforcing negative feedback loops to collapse civilization’s scale and complexity
11) therefore, modernity will be a short-lived rapidly growing and rapidly collapsing phenomenon anywhere that it emerges in the universe
12) we have hit several limits to resource extraction growth and increasingly violent world affairs reflect stresses in a system preparing to collapse
13) therefore, we are privileged to be alive to witness a rare peak of what is possible in the universe"
My sense is that nothing here is wrong, per se, but many other pathways—perhaps most unanticipated—may bring modernity down before modernity runs out of copper or the like. Ecology/biodiversity makes no explicit appearance here, for instance. Cultural phenomena like the global fertility bust or disillusionment or attrition of institutions could dominate. Or endocrine disruption. Or inability for sea creatures to synthesize shells. Illustrated here is one path of guaranteed failure (and that's significant: worth appreciating), but that path itself is not guaranteed if another source of failure sweeps in first.
Good points. There are many forces collaborating to end growth.
The important CACTUS points for me are:
1) Growth is not optional for modernity as many believe, for example as Dr. Meadows et al implied in Limits to Growth.
2) Growth is not only driven by our "choice" of a debt backed fractional reserve monetary system as many believe. Growth is primarily driven by the depletion of non-renewable resource reserves.
3) CACTUS predicts that regardless of what causes growth to end, the resulting collapse will be very fast, which is contrary to what many (most?) scholars of overshoot believe.
Yes, tmurphy, modernity is already "down," because it is against natural law: reciprocity, compassion, mutuality, synergy, and even evolution! Its persistence in our human culture is obsolete, supported only by escalating destruction and denial/defensiveness. We're deeply conditioned, though, to our fear of scarcity, so we react by competing for "control" — which is as ephemeral as "scarcity" itself ….
So whatever might trigger the collapse of "the world as we've believed we know it" could be any, or any combination, of many. What's true is that we breathe oxygen and the plants love our exhale, so running out of copper isn't really a problem.
Modernity isn't contrary to natural laws. If that were so, it wouldn't exist.
Rob, I would suggest that "to witness a rare peak of what is possible in the universe" is a privilege, indeed, and the closer we look, the sooner we discover that the "rare peak" is happening Now, and changing ….
Diversity is the primary good.
'Nature has all the answers'. [H.T. Odum] 'List[en] to Nature'…. [William Cullen Bryant] 'To think is to listen. Listen'. [Tairona]
All around the world, 8-9B people are trying to make tomorrow a bit better for them than today was. And history tells us that Homo Sapiens are willing to do a lot of grim things to accomplish this.
I find most interesting the things that Homo Sapiens have overlooked. No more bees? Rent bees comes up as a new business! But there will not be a Rent coral reef business!
Even a capitalist country like USA eventually rolled back DDT a little bit. So while we're insensitive to ecological disasters, it's not 0. But very likely too low to matter.
Maybe the economic system does regulate the number of Homo Sapiens. Birth rates in Japan are low now. Apparently a combination of social norms and sheer costs of having children has reached a tipping point. But is it enough?
But what about the need for growth? And is it a strict need? Couldn't money printing make it go a while longer? https://www.greenhousethinktank.org/static/2014/why_capitalist_economies_need_to_grow_-_for_green_house_Oct2014.pdf
Is it possible that we're in for a shocker? Will the economic system collapse? (It seems like the weakest link.) If so when?
Will a mystery illness sweep the world in 2031 and kill 50% of us?
While I'm 100% onboard with the end of modernity, I think if the time horizon for that is >100 years out, most people will move on to other thoughts quickly.
I did overlap with Feynman at Caltech. He was teaching the physics of computation, exploring neural networks with John Hopfield and Carver Mead, and speculating on Quantum Computing. I took his course on these subjects.
I don't think you give him enough credit when you assign to him this motive:
"…unambiguously indicates that his values and loyalties rested on modernity and modern science. His apparent goal was to jog humans “back on track” in case some misstep put us off the divine path."
I think he valued ideas – scientific ones and the thought process to perfect ideas. It is possible to separate this ideal from the baggage you have attached to it here.
Very nice that you had direct experience. I would be absolutely delighted to learn that he considered ecology to supersede quantum computing, or that modernity was by construction a temporary unsustainable anomaly, or that agriculture and written language may have crossed the threshold to the point of being unfortunate blunders. Is there any evidence that he even wrestled with such ideas? I might not have known him personally, but I've known plenty in a similar mold (probably know a dozen Nobel laureates personally—not that that's an authoritative measure of brilliance/breadth), and few-to-none venture into the modernity-questioning space, unsurprisingly.
Why this pathological drive to separate us humans from our life sustaining planet? It makes no sense. Is it because Earth is equated with Mother and little boys think that growing up means separating from mommy? It must be noted that for the most part, the authoritative voices boldly claiming humanity's future will somehow not include earth are overwhelmingly male.
You may be onto something. To me, it's a giant oversight of colossal ignorance (brains are good at that): humans are deeply integrated into Earth and the rest of the Community of Life. Separation is a silly idea: no precedent, and no support for the idea.
It is a disease, a behavioural disorder.
The Africans call it Yurugu. The Indigenous peoples of the Americas call it Wetiko & Wendigo. The ancient Greeks called it pleonexia.
It has been recognised for a long time. The Enlightenment fuelled it and propelled it across the planet.
I feel like this piece about Feynman reflects our crisis of role models in a period without precedent. For a motivated university student or science enthusiast, Feynman feels like a "cool guy" – famous, evidently smart, and quirky in ways that present culture tends to encourage and exemplify. And he is those things within the context of modernity. But outside of this narrow context, there is the whole troubled human world and its exploitation, incompetence, and cruelty, and even outside of that (still selfish) circle, there is ecological reality, still unappreciated by species that is effectively waging total war against it. In this context (which feels more real to me, given that it contains more perspectives), Feynman seems like a total buffoon. Not that I have 'anything against' Feynman – his values were just subsumed by the system.
But what values can we stand for, what figures, present and historical, can we look up to? The oral traditions, poems, and creation myths of the world are probably more grounded then anything most people today can offer. That said, I do think there are some 'autochthonous' writers who took beautiful, life-affirming approaches this answer of how to live in modernity and in what comes after. Two amazing books come to mind. 'The Dream of the Earth' by Thomas Berry, and 'The Sunflower Forest' by William Jordan. There are certainly others which never reach writing or the english language, which I wish I knew about. No matter the storm ahead, the human species is going to need something deep and moving to guide it.
My one sentence would be from Black Elk:
"He who is prepared [to die] is he who knows that he is nothing compared to Wakan-Tanka, who is everything; then he knows that world which is real."
Excellent points. In fact, our fetishization of the individual—a focus on heroes—is part of the problem in modernity. Ecological reality (and Black Elk) place little value on the individual. Maybe this is part of why I find inspiration in how whole species live, or whole cultures who have figured out how to live in ecologically-sustainable ways in some particular place. The individuals flowing through these "structures" are like droplets in a standing-wave (cloud or water wave).
It can however all be summarised by one name:
BF Skinner
Reading him will cure your dualism (mind,inspire,gods) = Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Also give us an intermediate way forward = Walden Two.
Let's just make sure that our life ends at a higher elevation than wherever it began. That way, no matter the human arguments (or our own) about the value of our life, we will have provided a contribution to higher order, such that entropy will have some work to do, taking us back down to the level where we were born.
Hmm — and maybe better: To have our body composted at that higher elevation, and fed to an orchard whose falling leaves might head downstream, but whose fruits/nuts will feed generations of several species, perhaps some to move yet higher on the landscape ….
Tom
Sometimes in your posts you appear to paint this picture of a post-modernity life being "better" for humans , :
"Humans would fare the best, maximize happiness, satisfaction, and longevity of their species … "
Sorry, but not sure if I agree with you there.
I do think you are correct in that modernity is a fireworks show and will eventually end.
I do think you are correct in that when modernity ends … it will be GREAT for other non-human species.
I do think you are correct about a lot of things, ("the human reich", etc)…
But … I also think modernity is great for humans.
You can find man instances before fossil fuels, electricity, modern medicine … when things were not so great for humans.
For example … see : "The Black Death" … where 50 million people died from the plague. That doesn't sound fun.
As you've stated at other times in your blog … if we want to know what works long term, we should simply look to the deep ecological past to see what has worked and what hasn't. And one thing that you can find in that past, … is that humans supposedly have had population bottlenecks throughout our history … dropping to below 100,000 individuals.
Anyways… the point of all this is that … I am just one meat brain limited homo sapien myself … so who the heck knows what the deep future has in store … but if I had to guess … it would be :
* modernity eventually fails
* without modernity (food supply chains, thermal comfort, modern medicine, etc) … humans will endure a lot of suffering (compared to a human living in modernity)… and our species will be cast into the web of life amongst countless other species … where we may or may not make it long term … but judging by ecological history … that seems doubtful.
This is all just my wild guess … but would appreciate any take you have on this
I propose ignoring all the post-agricultural suffering imposed by hierarchical human arrangements: so "before fossil fuels," Black Death, etc. are not capturing the band-level human existence that persisted for millions of years prior to the very recent anomaly.
If the only way for a species be considered "not miserable" is lack of population pressure, then A) hello exponential catastrophe (thus ultimate misery at enormous scale), and B) life is misery. I don't buy it. Hunter-gatherers are no more miserable than chickadees or newts. Ignore the Hobbesian ignorance/propaganda on this count and look to actual people who will do almost anything to defend their beloved way of living in the face of modernity's maw.
Post modernity would certainly be more meaningful for most I'd expect. Modernity prioritises comfort, over meaning. It also relies heavily on a huge number of people being very poor, with no opportunity to pursue their own path outside of modernity, as it is all consuming.
Regenerate topsoil.
Shout out for New Maps! I've been subscribed for years now, I didn't know you were a reader, let alone a contributor. It's a strange synchronicity. I came to your work by accident, prior to you appearing on Nate Hagen's podcast, which I was also a follower of. Probably the algorithm or something!
"You are the universe, idiot, stop punching yourself!"
It's funny, because Youtube is riddled with eerie Feynman avatars conveying a very TomMurphian message (for instance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRuUK6hv9BI).