一門吸引了一整代人的物理課，提醒我們教師也需要支持

 一門吸引了一整代人的物理課，提醒我們教師也需要支持

Lecture notes. Nature 504, 8 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/504008a

這是一本出版已超過五十年的物理教科書，全書長達一千五百頁，書中的內容甚至曾被其作者本人視為「失敗之作」。

然而，在許多線上評論中，它卻被形容為「令人著迷」、「由一位非凡人物所寫的非凡之書」。有一位評論者甚至這樣寫道：

「事情是這樣的：如果你只是想按部就班地學物理，那就去買本普通的教科書；但如果你想真正品味物理——像品嚐美味的巧克力慕斯、欣賞交響樂團或觀賞莎士比亞戲劇那樣——那麼，你該來這裡。」

這本書就是《費曼物理學講義》（The Feynman Lectures on Physics）。

或許最不可思議的是，這部經典幾乎在誕生之初就被扼殺了。

1960年代初，加州理工學院（Caltech）物理系希望重新設計物理教學課程，系內委員會主席羅伯特·萊頓（Robert Leighton）並不認為理查·費曼是合適人選。

他最初的反應是：「這不是個好主意。費曼從沒教過大學部的課，他不會知道該怎麼跟大一新生說話，也不知道他們能學到什麼。」

（差不多同一時期，唱片公司 Decca Records 的一位主管也說過：「披頭四樂團在娛樂圈沒有未來。」）

萊頓最後被說服了，但從1961至1963年間費曼親自授課的一系列講座，到後來成為影響半個世紀的經典教科書，這個轉變並不順利。

負責協助組織講座、並共同署名的馬修·桑茲（Matthew Sands）在 2005 年回憶說，出版社寄來的初稿「簡直是一場災難」（M. Sands, Physics Today, 58, 49–55, 2005 年 4 月號）。

那位編輯出於好意，把費曼原本隨性、生動的口語風格改寫成傳統教科書的正式語氣——例如，把費曼的口語「你（you）」全改成了「人們（one）」，結果十分生硬。

（桑茲還回憶，當初有人建議三人共同署名時，費曼的第一句反應是：「為什麼要放你們的名字？你們只是在做速記員的工作罷了！」）

正如 Rob Phillips 在本期第 30 頁〈回顧〉（In Retrospect）文章中所指出的，《費曼物理學講義》之所以歷久不衰，是因為它早於時代，

而且「他對初等物理的導論懷抱更高的志向——對自然的熱愛，以及透過實驗與推理去理解自然的渴望。」

在費曼手中，物理不再只是對世界的描述，而是一種思考世界的方式；因此，一整代學生為之著迷。

人們常把這些講座及其後的書籍歸功於費曼的天才與即興創意，

但事實上，這些課程經過細緻的準備與反覆練習，也獲得了充足的經費支持。

（這些講座是加州理工學院物理系教學改革計畫的一部分，該計畫獲得了福特基金會約一百萬美元的資助。）

當今各大學面臨經費縮減、教師被迫壓縮課表、擴充教學量的情況下，這是一個值得記取的教訓：

那些能夠啟發學生、改變教學的人，確實需要被支持。

——會教的人固然珍貴，但他們也需要支援。

A physics course that hooked a generation reminds us that teachers need support.

It’s a 50-year-old physics textbook that runs to 1,500 pages and whose contents were declared a failure by its famous author. It is also, according to various online reviews “spellbinding” and “an extraordinary book written by an extraordinary man”. One goes as far as to say: “Here’s the deal. If ya wanna do this whole physics thing vanilla-style, go buy and read a nice physics textbook. If you want to taste physics — really take it in, like a delicious chocolate mousse or a symphony orchestra or Shakespeare done by British folk, this is where you have to be.”

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about The Feynman Lectures on Physics, the book in question, is that it was nearly strangled at birth. Robert Leighton, chair of a committee tasked with spicing up the physics teaching at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in the early 1960s, did not think that Richard Feynman was the right man for the job. “That’s not a good idea,” was his original response. “Feynman has never taught an undergraduate course. He wouldn’t know how to speak to freshmen, or what they could learn.” (At around the same time, incidentally, an official at Decca Records decided that “The Beatles have no future in show business”.)

Leighton was won round, but the transition from a limited series of lectures — delivered only once by Feynman, between 1961 and 1963 — to a textbook that still inspires devotion five decades on was equally hesitant. As Matthew Sands, who helped to organize the lectures and is a co-author on the book, recalled in 2005, the first draft received from the publishers was a “disaster” (M. Sands Phys. Today 58, 49–55; April 2005). A well-meaning editor had rewritten Feynman’s informal style into more traditional textbook-speak; notably, the physicist’s conversational ‘you’ had been inelegantly changed to ‘one’. (Sands also recalled Feynman’s first reaction to the idea that he would share authorship credit with Sands and Leighton: “Why should your names be there? You were only doing the work of a stenographer!”)

As Rob Phillips explores in an In Retrospect article on page 30 of this issue, The Feynman Lectures has endured because it was ahead of its time, and because “his introduction to elementary physics seems to have higher aspirations — the love of nature and a grasp of it through experimentation and reasoning”. In Feynman’s hands, physics turned from a description of the world to a way of thinking about it, and a generation was hooked.

The popularity of the lectures and the enduring appeal of the books that grew from them are often attributed to the individual and spontaneous genius of Feynman. But they were painstakingly prepared and practised, and had generous financial backing. (The lectures were part of broader changes to the teaching at Caltech’s physics department funded with some US$1 million from the Ford Foundation.)

This is a lesson that university officials would do well to remember as funding is cut and pressure placed on faculty members to cram more into their timetables. Those who can, teach, but they need support.