Over the course of several months, I read Stripe Press' re-release of Richard Hamming's book The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn, largely with a friend, GK, and we simply navigated the text, as best we could, absorbing the wisdom, ideas and historical recounting therein.

By the time I finished the foreword by Bret Victor, however, I had already made a personal decision:

I want to answer Richard Hamming's call to do great work.

Of course, he intended this course for people who probably had much more preparation to generate such an answer than I, having originally delivered it as a lecture to students at the Naval Postgraduate School in 1964 but that's no reason to hold my "tongue", as we'll see, courage is key to greatness, as well as confidence.

Early in his book, Hamming states plainly:

...I am preaching that, with apparently only one life to live on this earth, you ought to try to make significant contributions to humanity...that the life of trying to achieve excellence in some area is itself a worthy goal for your life.

The question is, what counts as significant?

Throughout the book, we get several examples of what Richard Hamming considered great work, along with key aspects of it, and those who do it. Achieving greatness in general, however, is a difficult thing to define in a way that can be explained accurately, however there seem to be some patterns- a grab bag of examples, if you will, including but not limited to the following:

Creating something that contributes to humanity significantly.

Creating something that can be consumed by the mind.

Pushing yourself towards, and beyond your limits and biases.

Developing ways for humanity to do more with less.

Anything you want it to be.

Striving for excellence in a field of your choosing.

Allowing us to deal with variety without excessive standardization.

Throughout the book, we get walked through many, often first-hand accounts from Hamming's time working at Bell Labs, with people who've done things that are considered great, and achieved greatness, that give us an example of the kinds of things he's thinking about, as well as examples in history:

Coding Theory, particularly Huffman Encoding,

Konrad Zuse's [Z4 computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z4_(computer).

Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibnitz and Calculus.

His own Error Correcting Codes and Hamming Distance.

W.G Pfann's work on Zone melting.

What does great work require?

Style.

Chiefly, while it may come off as surprising, Hamming routinely prioritizes thinking with style- perhaps not at all the point one would expect from a course on Science and Engineering based on lectures given at a Naval Academy, but that is exactly the point driven home in this text- at many times, it is mentioned under other names, such as creativity, originality, novelty, but firstly, and most repetitively, is style.

In fact, on the very last page of the book (Stripe edition), he says:

I repeat: the content of these chapters is style of thinking.

This echoes one of the first sentences on the first page of the book:

Style of thinking is the center of the course.

To open and end the book with such symmetric statements drives home the importance of style in Hamming's world.

There's no attempt to concretely define style, but actually, an open admittance of its undefinability. It is immediately likened to the relationship between a master artisan and their protégé, and the intimate nature of that learning, that can not be transferred via explanation, only repeated exposure to and experience with the craft:

...I can only approach the topic through particular examples, which I hope are well within your grasp...

Thinking deeply about what the future will hold.

Again, referencing the concept of (thinking) style within this forward thinking tenet, Hamming advises you to Adapt your style to this, stating that:

You must adapt your style to fit the future, since merely copying the past will not be enough if you aspire to future greatness.

Alongside this is the fact that the future will likely be markedly different from the past, in enough ways that not only will mere copying lead to little advancement, but it in fact may be detrimental. Hamming mentions how he was close to the research that lead to the Tukey-Cooley algorithm (Fast Fourier Transform), but missed out on it because he made assumptions about how things worked based on his past experiences with the idea, and missed the opportunity to apply newly invented mathematics, or incorporate new technologies, into his efforts.

...when you know something cannot be done, also remember the essential reason why, so later, when the circumstances have changed, you will not say, "It can't be done." When you decide something is not possible, don't say at a later date it is still impossible without reviewing all the details...of why it couldn't be done.

There are three questions put forth, that I think encapsulate the forward thinking process of planning for and finding opportunities to do great work:

1.) What is possible?

2.) What is likely to happen?

3.) What is desirable to happen?

Additionally, I find that there is, prior to this list of questions, a list of sub-questions/prompts for clarifying the answer to the first. Hamming points out the contradiction between the seemingly unavoidable nature of events in history, and the seemingly unending possibility of the future, laying out for possible responses for handling this contradiction.

You can simply ignore it.

You can admit (accept) it.

You can decide the past was actually less determined than it seems.

You can decide the future is less open-ended than it seems.

Personally, I prefer the third option.

Master the fundamentals, and forge your own style from them.

A well known cliche, but nonetheless sage-like in its truth- master the fundamentals. It lies in accordance with Hamming's eye for the future, and acknowledgement of the rate of growth of knowledge throughout the life of a scientist, because without a solid foundation, one will not be able to orient oneself within the changing landscape of technical and scientific knowledge, even though the changes may be very intimately linked to your particular field of study.

In terms of how to recognize the fundamentals of a given field, Hamming gives one anecdotal, and one technical piece of advice:

One test is they have lasted a long time. Another test is from the fundamentals all the rest of the field can be derived by using the standard methods..."

This idea is re-stated later in the book:

...another example of why you need to know the fundamentals very well; the fancy parts then follow easily and you can do things that they never told you about.

The fundamentals, while not fancy, operate very much like the proverbial map, with the territory containing the nooks and crannies that house the "things they never told you about". With the growing landscape of knowledge increasing in size and dimensionality the way it is, mastery of the fundamentals provides landmarks and direction for learners and researchers.

Learning how to learn new things

"In a real sense I am engaged in meta-education; the topic of the course is education itself, and hence our discussions must rise above it."

One of the most common refrains throughout the text is that knowledge is doubling roughly every 17 years, and learned knowledge is becoming obsolete rather quickly as well, having a half-life of roughly 15 years. In order to do great work, one must be aware of the trends of society, and technology, so as to be able to know where one can do great work, stating that in fact, the book is aimed at the future of the reader., while simultaneously, the half-life of knowledge is roughly 15 years.

Many times throughout the book, this is shown to be true via examples of his work on technologies and ideas that lead to the obsolescence of prior technologies and devices he had used, and perhaps even was instrumental in creating.

Because of this, he argues that it is imperative that you take upon yourself the responsibility of keeping up with the advancements of your field of study, if you are to remain relevant, and to continue producing novel work therein.

Also this is one of the key areas that will make mastering the fundamentals valuable, because while layers of abstractions, or their expressions are given to change, the fundamentals upon which they are built are much less so.

Confidence & Courage.

"While playing chess Shannon would often advance his queen boldly into the fray and say, 'I ain't scared of nothing'...The courage to continue is essential, since great research often has long periods with no success and many discouragements."

Throughout his writing, Hamming points out that when striving for greatness, to make any great innovation, there will be obstacles, hurdles, and even contention towards your work to deal with.

Confidence & Courage are indispensable in handling these.

In the chapter on experts, he recalls the story of being chastised by his bosses at Bell Labs, over the use of computers for mathematical analysis. The correct method of analysis, for them, was the tried and true method of pen and paper, working out the calculations by hands. Despite the consistent, often covert or subliminal attacks on his method of carrying out analytical tasks, he continued on, not buckling to the reputation or power of authority, and focused on experimenting more with the relationship between man and machine.

Furthermore, it is in fact this confidence that may be one of the very foundations of any great, innovative, or controversial (with regards to some current Dogma), work:

"Without self-confidence you are not likely to create great, new things."

In most fields, there's some set of established facts, and the probability that you can add a fact to this set, that agrees with all of the rest of them, is very unlikely. Furthermore, your superiors and peers are not exactly likely to be in your corner, if your successes require them to change the way they think or go about their work.

A very well known example of this is the confidence Niels Bohr had in his contributions to Quantum Theory, which was no small feat considering that he was being challenged directly, consistently and passionately by none other than Albert Einstein, over the course of roughly 8 years. Not only was he being challenged, by Einstein, but the site of some of the most impassioned of these challenges, were the Solvay conferences of 1927, and 1930- effectively the world stage for all of the leading Physicists of the day.

With hindsight, and the confidence in Quantum Theory generated by multiple experiments yielding data that agrees with theoretical predictions, it is obvious that eventually, the new theory would have triumphed. However, it still is worth it to ponder, how much might this theory have suffered, and stagnated, had Niels Bohr, and Born, and Heisenberg, and many stars of the day, hadn't had the courage to push on, against the criticisms of the man Eugene Wigner (who helped lay the symmetrical mathematical foundations of Quantum Theory) spoke about as having an even more penetrating understanding than Von Neumann?

Confidence & Courage are indispensable.

What great work excites me and what does my answer look like so far?

My personal work is largely becoming more thoroughly educated, embarking first and foremost on a study of Mathematics and Physics, as well as Philosophy, Logic, and History, some of which I am chronicling in my long-term project, my lournal.

In addition to this, I'm currently taking a course in Quantum Computing, by way of QubitByQubit, and it's so far, been very thorough and accessible, as well as exciting.

However, I do not do this work alone, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, I've formed a number of connections to people that have been collaboratively fruitful, by way of the Interintellect, a community of kind and thoughtful people focused on having deep and meaningful conversations, in an effort to revitalize public intellectualism.

Particularly, Sagar Devkate and I, have started a small community of people looking to learn Physics and Mathematics:

We've done two events so far, and I'm currently starting a series on Quantum Computing, as well as starting a Substack, to share our writings and those of willing community members, on the thoughts and experiences we have on this extensive cognitive journey.

Additionally, we're considering (as in would very much like to), a book club, where us and some wonderful companions will join us in a reading of A Cultural History of Physics, so if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, reach out to one of us and let us know!

Other than that, I'll leave you with this:

Finally, I must address the topic of whether the effort required for excellence is worth it. I believe it is- the chief gain is in the effort to change yourself, in the struggle with yourself...Yes it is nice to end up where you wanted to be, but the person you are when you get there is far more important. - Richard Hamming