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Comment by Graffur | Hacker News Reader

Wow. I read the initial blog post (well I read the start, and skimmed the rest) and I thought it was interesting but I am just not motivated to dive into something so complex. I learned nothing.

Then I watched Richard Feynman's explanation and feel like I learned something! And was motivated about it!

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Feynman's explanation is obviously great, but it and the blog have different goals. There is really no sense in which fire is best explained by Planck's Law. Obviously the goal of the blog post is to explore how physics is nested, with complex phenomena the result of simpler laws which are the result of even simpler laws. I mean, the part that's about chemistry specifically, which most would call the part that's about fire, is only the first 1/5 or so. It is easier to learn and feel motivated to learn less physics rather than more, and Feynman's gift was imparting the most essential information with the least physics possible, a sort of distillation of physicist-intuition for the layman.

>>I watched Richard Feynman's explanation and feel like I learned something!

I don't know the link to the video on YouTube, but there was one interview where they were discussing why Math appears hard to so many people. Basically people look at solving Math problem like an elaborate heuristic needed to be memorised to solve the problem.

He proceeds to explain that's for people who don't understand what they are doing.

To understand anything at all, is to start with basic assumptions/axioms and logical rules of manipulating them and moving forward from there.

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