I wanted to write this article, separately, as I didn’t want to break the flow of Physics arguments in the article, where this point came up.
This point was originally raised by Feynman; as far as I know. If David Mermin comes, he will stick his cotton buds, and wipe this out, and claim he said it, there is no lack of such incredible people. All he does say in that article, linked here, is so typical of plagiarists that you wouldn’t believe how murkily he dismisses Feynman as the original fellow who might have said so, “he is a great mind calculator, so nobody would ask him to shut up and calculate”.
How about nobody would think “Madonna” is a slut. A beautiful lady in the corner, well nobody would be harsh to her, such harshness would only be toward me, only I would be one to whom such a treatment can be mated, and that would be David Mermin’s famous and infamous proof and evidence of Mathew Effect of which he is apparently a victim.
If, anything, even I knew of “shut up and calculate” in my grad days, as a phrase ascribed to Feynman, in my privacy of studies, in other words never discussed with anyone, but knew of it, and grew in associating this behavioral treatment towards myself, going as far idiosyncratically, even to compare the thickness of my own hair, with Feynman’s, I can’t be Feynman, or can I be? Can “shut up and calculate” be used on any grad student or similarly placed researcher? Yes, it can be and thats the whole message, not the interpretation by the name of the city of Copenhagen.
