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How The Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, And The Quantum Revival (2011)

by David Kaiser(Favorite Author)

3.43 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0393076369 (ISBN13: 9780393076363)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: Once again, an opportunity to explain how psychedelics actually influenced decision-making and experimental creativity dashed on the rocks of the feel-good aesthetics of Esalen Institute and est. Interesting in many respects, since it deals (a small bit) with the eminence grise of all this, Ira Einhorn (aka, "The Unicorn'), the self-styled and self-promoting feel-good Philadelphia "hippie guru-leader" who murdered his girlfriend, but other than that, reading about some of these people just begs the question: yes, you took acid, but please tell me the particulars of how it helped you create this solution to this theorem, (etc)! We need more accurate and precise reporting than we do another telling of history from a generalized perception. Even if this is a "specialty topic"... more- freaks who dug physics and how they changed the modern world to think on Their Terms. For every three-paragraph summation of someone's "mystical experience" I have the feeling that each one could perhaps make up their own book, all on its own. Disappointing overall, but informative, should you wish to go there.
review 2: David Kaiser has done a remarkable service by bringing an objective eye to an era that is stilled mired in controversy. Scholars and people in general take pains to distance themselves from anything tainted with associations with drugs or, God forbid, sex, no matter the genuine significance of the music, science or other discipline sincerely investigated. Yes, at times these folks were partying and on occasion were, yes, naked. Let's get over it! This lifestyle is in fact compatible with serious work and accomplishment. When grappling with the bizarre implications of quantum reality an attitude of welcoming all questions and hypotheses for consideration proved important. The fact, as amply researched by Kaiser is that physics departments around the world had discouraged any grappling with the philosophical ramification of quantum theory at all. It was all shut up and calculate. Physics had lost its connection to the musing inquiries of its 20th century founders such as Einstein and Bohr. The so called hippies of the 1960's and '70's reanimated discussion of what all these calculations meant. Einstein was interested in pulling back the curtain a little bit on God and the structure of the universe. So were the hippies.Kaiser restores some credit to the members of a group of physicist seekers who gathered in Berkeley (thereby becoming branded as "hippies"). Beyond that Kaiser is able to render in plain English the paths of investigation and results they achieved, the questions they raised, no small achievement. As he accomplishes this he is able to recognize and credit other innovations of the 1970's "hippie" culture that are now accepted as pretty mainstream such as: yoga, organic foods, the "be all you can be" movement and more. Kaiser makes a good case for the importance of thinkers, in this case physicists to be able (funding needed!) to meet just to kick around ideas that fascinate them. The genesis of the group discussed in this book, the Fundamental Fysiks Group, lay in there being no other format in which they could discuss the ideas that drove them passionately. Now leading companies like Google reserve time for their employees to follow their passions, recognizing that this may well be lucrative. Kaiser draws an important parallel between Eintein's Olympia Academy, a loose group of coffee drinking physics enthusiasts and the Fundamental Fysiks Group. In each case their outsider status freed them to go outside the programmed work of making better bombs, better guidance systems, practical work and float ideas, sometimes wildly impractical and terribly interesting.Kaiser also realizes the value of a rejected idea. In the process of refuting it, new ideas crystallize that may never have done so without the initial idea put forth. People like Jack Sarfatti and Nick Herbert, two heroes of this book, in their fearlessness in putting out ideas, helped shape many of the practical uses of quantum physics such as emerging quantum computers and existing quantum encryption. Some hidebound physicists still distance themselves from this vanguard group, ostensibly out of fear. This book addresses this wrong and credits the members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group with their findings and their relevant questions. They let their freak flags fly, long may they wave! less

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