The Meaning of It All by Richard P. Feynman Read Free Book Online Page B

no, we would have all the freedoms. We would love the freedoms, but we would have nationalized industries and so on. We believe in the socialistic ideas.” I was surprised because I don’t understand the problem that way. I don’t think of the problem as between socialism and capitalism but rather between suppression of ideas and free ideas. If it is that free ideas and socialism are better than communism,it will work its way through. And it will be better for everybody. And if capitalism is better than socialism, it will work its way through. We have got 52 percent . . . well . . .
    The fact that Russia is not free is clear to everyone, and the consequences in the sciences are quite obvious. One of the best examples is Lysenko, who has a theory of genetics, which is that acquired characteristics can be passed on to the offspring. This is probably true. The great majority, however, of genetic influences are undoubtedly of a different kind, and they are carried by the germ plasm. There are undoubtedly a few examples, a few small examples already known, in which some kind of a characteristic is carried to the next generation by direct, what we like to call cytoplasmic ; inheritance. But the main point is that the major part of genetic behavior is in a different manner than Lysenko thinks. So he has spoiled Russia. The great Mendel, who discovered the laws of genetics, and the beginnings of the science, is dead. Only in the Western countries can it be continued, because they are not free in Russia to analyze these things. They have to discuss and argue against us all the time. And the result is interesting. Not only in this case has it stopped the science of biology, which, by the way, is the most active, most exciting, and most rapidly developing science today in the West. In Russia it is doing nothing. At the same time you would think that from an economic standpoint such a thing isimpossible. But nevertheless by having the incorrect theories of inheritance and genetics, the biology of the agriculture of Russia is behind. They don’t develop the hybrid corn right. They don’t know how to develop better brands of potatoes. They used to know. They had the greatest potato tuber collections and so on in Russia before Lysenko than anywhere in the world. But today they have nothing of this kind. They only argue with the West.
    In physics there was a time when there was trouble. In recent times there has been a great freedom for the physicist. Not a hundred percent freedom; there are different schools of thought which argue with each other. They were all in a meeting in Poland. And the Polish Intourist, the analogue of Intourist in Poland, which is call Polorbis, arranged a trip. And of course, there was only a limited number of rooms, and they made the mistake of putting Russians in the same room. They came down and they screamed, “For seventeen years I have never talked to that man, and I will not be in the same room with him.”
    There are two schools of physics. And there are the good guys and the bad guys, and it’s perfectly obvious, and it’s very interesting. And there are great physicists in Russia, but physics is developing much more rapidly in the West, and although it looked for a while like something good would happen there, it hasn’t.
    Now this doesn’t mean that technology is not developingor that they are in some way backward that way, but I’m trying to show that in a country of this kind the development of ideas is doomed.
    You have read about the recent phenomenon in modern art. When I was in Poland there was modern art hung in little corners in back streets. And there was the beginning of modern art in Russia. I don’t know what the value of modern art is. I mean either way. But Mr. Khrushchev visited such a place, and Mr. Khrushchev decided that it looked as if this painting were painted by the tail of a jackass. My comment is, he should know.
    To make the thing