Richard Feynman's notebook method in a modern age with Obsidian and Zeta Alpha
Marco van Hurne
I build AI companies | Data Science Strategy | Data Governance | Certified AI Compliance Officer | The Future Group | Beyond the Cloud | Author of the Machine Learning Book of Knowledge
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) was a scientific legend. He was a brilliant physicist whose curiosity and brilliance transformed the field of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, that I studied during my years as a chemistry student. I found him to be a master communicator
Before we start!
If you like this topic and you want to support me:
Feynman’s brilliant approach to science and learning sets him apart from his peers. He was a master of analogy, using simple stories and examples to explain complex scientific concepts to anyone who would listen, regardless of their background or prior knowledge. He became my example on how to explain complex concepts to non technical audiences.
He encouraged his students to ask questions, to think for themselves, and to challenge their own assumptions
“Study hard what interests you the most in the most irreverent and original manner possible.”
“Notebook of things that I don’t know about”
Richard Feynman had a notebook in which he recorded the things that he didn’t know about as a way to stay engaged and learn. He believed that the act of writing down complex concepts in one’s own words was an effective way to identify gaps in understanding
After his second year of graduate school at Princeton, Richard Feynman faced his oral examinations. Feynman was not yet the famous physicist he would soon become (as his biographer James Gleick put it, “His Feynman aura…was still strictly local”), so he took his preparation seriously.
Feynman drove up to MIT, a campus familiar from his undergraduate years, and a place “where he could be alone.” It’s what he did next that I find interesting.
As Gleick explains:
“[He] opened a fresh notebook. On the title page he wrote: NOTEBOOK OF THINGS I DON’T KNOW ABOUT. For the first but not last time he reorganized his knowledge. He worked for weeks at disassembling each branch of physics, oiling the parts, and putting them back together, looking all the while for the raw edges and inconsistencies. He tried to find the essential kernels of each subject.”
I might not have worked with any future Feynmans during my time at TUD, but I certainly had the privilege to see at least two or three future stars in the world of science. And one thing they all seemed to share with Feyman was his hunger to understand what he didn’t know.
If someone published something good, they wanted to understand it. If this good thing used some technique or concept, they didn’t know, they’d drop off the radar until they learned it. If you published an interesting result, they’d soon learn every detail and be able to replicate it easier than you could manage.
For Feynman, his notebook was a tool for him to continually challenge himself, stay curious, and maintain a lifelong love of learning
His biographer James Gleick wrote in his book “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman”:
“In preparing for his oral qualifying examination, a rite of passage for every graduate student, he chose not to study the outlines of known physics. Instead, he went up to MIT, where he could be alone, and opened a fresh notebook.”
Now what does the Feynman’s Notebook Method entail?
It involves writing down explanations of the subject in your own words as if you are teaching it to a fellow student. The goal is to identify gaps between what you know and what you don't and to solidify the material through active recall and critical thinking.
This method is popular among students and life-long-learners who want to deepen their understanding of a subject.
This notebook method is helpful in the following ways:
“You keep on learning and learning, and pretty soon you learn something no one has learned before.”
The method is one thing. Translating it into practise is yet another. Let me explain how I have translated the Feynman method to today's technology, because personally, I have not been using paper notebooks since the arrival of the Remarkable. The remarkable is a pretty nifty e-ink tablet that has taken note taking to the next level.
Yet, the thing is that it is hard to keep track of all the notes you are making, the organization of your notes is clumsy and limited only to creating folders, and there are no methods for knowledge discovery as well (I'll get back to knowledge discovery later on).
Obsidian
As a content creator and knowledge worker, I’m always on the hunt for tools that can help me organize my thoughts and ideas. Obsidian has proven to be that tool for me. It is a unique and dynamic platform for personal knowledge management
Recommended by LinkedIn
Subscribe to the TechTonic Shifts newsletter
Choosing Obsidian over other knowledge management tools was a decision influenced by several key factors. Well, first, Obsidian is free for personal use, making it an accessible tool for anyone who is looking to improve the way you manage your own knowledge.
Another brilliant thing of Obsidian is that its a text-based system. All notes in Obsidian are stored as plain text files. That means flexibility and compatibility with other tools and platforms! This text-based approach means that your notes are not locked into a proprietary format, and that they are future-proof. And that is vital in a digital age where technologies rapidly come, go and evolve.
Obsidian stores files locally on your device. This means quick access to your notes, even when offline. And this way it also provides an added layer of privacy and security. Local storage also means that you keep full ownership and control over your documents, and that's a significant advantage when considering the long-term preservation and accessibility of your knowledge.
The picture below shows a knowledge graph in Obsidian (using a plugin).
Zeta Alpha - the conversational knowledge assistant
Zeta Alpha (I like their cool name), is an AI based enterprise neural search engine and insights platform. It is working with companies like BASF, ETH Zurich, NASA, Berkeley, and Randstad.
It's a kind of co-pilot for knowledge workers powered by natural language processing and a proprietary large language model. It is working with companies like BASF, ETH Zurich, NASA, Berkeley, and Randstad.
Basically, what Zeta Alpha offers you, is a chatGPT like search on your own set of documents or the notes that you are taking with it. Just type in what you are looking for (they call it the "chat mode"), and the neural network will search for the document that most likely matches with your original search intent. Yes, your read it right: the search "intent". This is the main difference between traditional "keyword search" and neural search. The first method matches the exact words (or nearly exact by using fuzzy logic), whereas the latter takes into account the entire sentence, and it's meaning, and also learned from previous search requests. This way it understands way better what you want and it can even suggest you documents that it thinks might be of interest to you!
By focusing on information retrieval and knowledge management, Zeta Alpha has a slightly different angle than Obsidian, which is more geared towards the knowledge creation itself, but the two would make a match in heaven.
Not that it is impossible to take notes in Zeta Alpha though. What sets Zeta Alpha apart from Obsidian is its ability to bring your notes to life through the power of GPT. When you are jotting down ideas and scribbling notes, suddenly it hits you – you need to revisit that brilliant insight from last month.
With tje tool, you simply type in what you're looking for, hit that "chat mode" button, and voila! The network goes to work, scouring your documents or notes to find the perfect match for your query. It's like having a conversation with your own personal knowledge assistant.
But here's where it gets really exciting. Zeta Alpha isn't just about finding stuff; it's about making your knowledge work for you. With its neural search capabilities, it encodes your queries and documents into high-dimensional semantic vector spaces, enabling lightning-fast retrieval based on similarity rather than exact matches. This means you can ask nuanced questions, dig for hidden gems, and extract insights on-the-fly.
Another brilliant feature of Zeta Alpha is that it lets you as the user tag the documents that you have found, or even annotate them. This way, the neural network is trained by the preferences of the user and so it becomes an ever sharper tool. The tags are organized on the dashboard and act as nuclei that attracts documents that fit within the categories of the tags. This way the platform inspires the user to reading content that is added to the network that will be of interest. It's like the old "alerts" mechanism, but on steroids (I hate this marketalk metaphore).
Not only does the platform search on your own set of documentation, you can also ask it to search online article databases (they come standard with the product), and the interwebs. This way, more relevant knowledge just gravitates your way !
Before Zeta Alpha, I had nearly given up on being able to find documents, previous postings, articles, powerpoints on my vast array of storage because it just didn’t work. In general people spend 2 ½ hours per day searching for stuff and being very frustrated by that. The coolness factor of Zeta Alpha is that it decreases that search time dramatically by offering ChatGPT x Google Deep Mind-like functionality inside my home, or a company through a combination of productivity tools and discovery tools that come together to create cognitive co-pilots.
But one of the most brilliant features is their Knowledge Graph (I am even writing it in capitals!).
This feature is truly the crown jewel of the platform. It's a dynamic visual representation of interconnected concepts and relationships within your own knowledge universe.
The Knowledge Graph module in Zeta Alpha helps you to navigate your information a lot more intuitively and it also unlocks new insights and discoveries by revealing hidden connections and patterns between your documents, notes and the stuff from others.
It's like having a roadmap to the collective wisdom of your organization or field of expertise, guiding you to the most relevant information with precision and clarity.
With this Knowledge Graph you can explore like never before.
Coming week, I'll be writing a second and more in-depth article on Zeta Alpha. I have had the privilige of interviewing their CEO, Jakub Zavrel. A visionary guy, who has dedicated his entire life to Data Science.
The best thing that could happen to me, is that Zeta Alpha would make a plugin available for Obsidian, and allow me to import all my notes and documents into Zeta Alpha for information retrieval, content suggestions, and inspiration. Maybe I can persuade him to make this a priority? Jakub?
Well, that's a wrap for today. Tomorrow, I'll have a fresh episode of TechTonic Shifts for you. If you enjoy my writing and want to support my work, feel free to buy me a coffee ♨️
Think a friend would enjoy this too? Share the newsletter and let them join the conversation. LinkedIn appreciates your likes by making my articles available to more readers.
Signing off - Marco
Other articles you might like