Richard Feynman's Scientific Method

Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who creatively worked to make developments involving quantum electrodynamics, the superfluidity of liquid helium, and the decay of particles. He famously articulated the scientific method and applied it to his own groundbreaking discoveries. The first step is observation, and using that observation to develop a question. When Feynman and other physicists were studying particle movement in the 1930s and 1940s, they ran into the problem that the result of interactions between electrons and photons was infinite answers, which wasn't physically possible. He then went into experimentation in order to produce his Feynman diagrams, breaking down the the interaction between particles step-by-step. These diagrams allowed him to make mathematical predictions of how the particles could interact. The accuracy of his discovery earned him the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In The Creative Spark chapter "Scientific Architecture," Fuentes discusses the approach to the scientific method and how it is a creative process. Typically the scientific method begins with an observation about the world, and creativity is sparked when the curious observer proposes an explanation, experimental method, or guess that seeks to explain the wonder. Fuentes writes that "the goal of science is to develop the best questions and improve our understandings, not to know all the answers" (249.) The process is very important, as experiments work to continually disprove theories rather than define a certain one as law or fact. The more experiments that are considered "failures," the closer one gets to finding a more probable explanation. Feynman encapsulated Fuentes' idea on eliminating possibilities to discover a more accurate explanation by taking the answer from infinite answers to a very accurate predictive method.

Similarly, Feynman stated that "if it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong," highlighting his use of the scientific method to test against reality and what is known. Pushing the limits of "known knowledge" in order to discover new techniques is how creativity is applied to science. Lots of his experiments were rooted in skepticism, encouraging other scientists to doubt what is considered known. Feynman used the scientific method that Fuentes described in his observation of electrons and photons and his experiments in particle interaction. His creativity is evident in his creation of the Feynman diagrams, his mapping of particle movement, a method to describe these interactions that was before unused by other physicists.