Editor of Newsweek and boy genius Jon Meacham is fond of using quotes of famous people as a substitute for original discourse. One of his favorites, that he manages to work into most conversations, is “There is nothing new under the sun.” The quote is ironic because it come from Ecclesiastes (that’s the Bible, for my unschooled or unsaved brethren), and is at least 2500 years old itself. I guess history has been repeating (or rhyming) for some time now.

In contrast, President Obama, Buffalo visitor, is fond of the word “unprecedented.” Every crisis this country faces seems to be unprecedented, to the point the word has lost meaning. Having an unprecedented crisis is convenient, because it provides political cover to do something new, rash, or unpopular. But that doesn’t make the crisis itself actually all that novel.

I tend to fall in the Nothing New Camp – to imply that your own personal experience, or the era in which one lives, is truly unprecedented seems the height of hubris and self absorption to me. It is easy though, to fall in the Unprecedented Camp; note my last column, where I noted the unprecedented merging of ignorance and choice. But occasionaly one has an obvious reminder that our current problems are as old as time.

My latest reminder came in the form of a slim book I just finished, The Meaning of it All by Richard Feynman. A consolidated transcript of lectures given at the University of Washington in 1963, this book is more a rambling of Feynman’s varied thoughts than a coherent idea from beginning to end. But what a variety of thoughts they are! And if I stood up and read the book verbatim at the upcoming TED event in Buffalo, I would be praised for my cutting edge thinking and timeliness.

Richard Feynman – physicist, Nobel winner, philosopher, and flamboyant bongo player - was to the ’60’s and ’70’s what Carl Sagan was to the ’80’s and Stephen Hawking is to today: the approachable scientist. Feynman did not study the cosmos directly, however, which added to his already mysterious reputation. Feynman was a particle physicist, and inventor of Feynman Diagrams, which describe and predict particle decomposition and transformation at the subatomic level. As most regular people are not conversant in muons and bosons, his research was immaterial to his appeal: provocative charisma and intellect.

Feynman’s greatest contributions lie in the inspiration for science in the masses, the sparking of interest and debate, a fascination in what Feynman described as the process of  “finding things out.” One can not read Feynman without re-attaining that sense of childlike wonder in the universe; the fact that it exists at all, and the joy in figuring out how it all works.

In The Meaning of it All, however, Feynman takes his scientific acumen and applies it to history, politics, religion and the role of a citizen scientist in the world. He takes on the difference between science and technology (applicable already in 1963), the relative value of the Russian and US systems of government, the importance of Doubt to democracy, how proper scientific skepticism can (but not has have to) breed atheism, and host of other such topics as his brain ruminates on issues of the day. His conclusions are straightforward and to the point; for instance, on advertising:

The conclusion from all the researchers is that all the people in the world are as dopey as can be, and the only way to tell them anything is to perpetually insult their intelligence. This conclusion may be correct.

The source of many arguments on this site often come from this basic premise.

More than any specific topic, though, the truth that rings through this series of lectures is the fresh insight it provides, 47 years later. In the first several pages Feynman bemoans the insulated state of today’s universities, the lack of general insight of the world in the supposed intelligentsia, the threat technology potentially poses to the world, the spectacular duality of world poverty and luxury, and the challenge of transporting helpful new technology to the Third World.

There is nothing new under the sun. If you want an insight into our world in 2010, read Feynman’s lectures from 1963.