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Feynman's curiosity has led him to unexpected places: close to the ground where he used his nose to learn how bloodhounds follow a trail, into topless restaurants where he indulged his interest in sketching anatomy, and inside sensory-deprivation tanks to experience hallucinations. His attention wavers and his patience wanes at forms of political and social studies that assume the trappings of science without the rigor. He insists on intellectual integrity, "a kind of leaning over backwards," to discover possibilities that may not be congenial to the investigator's conclusions.
When Feynman asserts that we live in an unscientific age, he means there is a scarcity of rational thought about the technological forces that have shaped the modern world. He was there at the creation. His enlisted-man's version of brain-storming days at Los Alamos seizes the spirit of the place with typical zest and informality: "What (Hans) Bethe needed was someone to talk to, to push his ideas against. Well, he comes in to this little squirt in an office and starts to argue, explaining his idea. I say, 'No, no, you're crazy. It'll go like this.' And he says, 'Just a moment,' and explains how he's not crazy, I'm crazy. And we keep on going like this. You see, when I hear about physics, I just think about physics, and I don't know who I'm talking to, so I say dopey things . . . But it turned out that's exactly what he needed."
Feynman witnessed the first atomic test blast through the windshield of a truck parked 20 miles from ground zero. He claims to be perhaps the only person not wearing dark glasses to look directly at the explosion, "this white light changing into yellow and then into orange." A chain reaction is not a bad analogy for Feynman's life. From a critical mass of gray matter it goes off in all directions, producing both heat and light.