Kaiser - How the hippies saved physics science, counterculture, and the quantum revival

SCIENCE, COUNTERCULTURE, AND THE QUANTUM REVIVAL

W. W. Norton & Company

NEW YORK LONDON

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint material: to Zane Kesey and the estate of Dr. Timothy Leary for permission to reprint the epigraph on p. vii, which originally appeared in Timothy Leary, Preface, Spit in the Ocean 3 (Fall, 1977): 811; to Jack Sarfatti and Taylor & Francis, Ltd., for permission to reprint the epigraph to chapter 4, which originally appeared in Jack Sarfatti, Implications of meta-physics for psychoenergetic systems, Psychoenergetic Systems 1 (1974): 38; and to the Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC, for permission to reprint quotations from the Richard P. Feynman papers.

Copyright 2011 by David Kaiser

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First published as a Norton paperback 2012

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Manufacturing by RR Donnelley, Harrisonburg

Book design by Mark Melnik

Production manager: Devon Zahn

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kaiser, David

How the hippies saved physics: science, counterculture, and the quantum revival / David Kaiser.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-393-07636-3 (hardcover)

1. PhysicistsCaliforniaBerkeleyBiography.
2. Quantum theory. 3. Counterculture.

I. Fundamental Fysiks Group (Berkeley, Calif.) II. Title.

QC15.K26 2011

530.092'279467dc22

2010053415

ISBN 978-0-393-34231-4 pbk.

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

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More Praise for

Kaiser uncovers a ragtag band of scientists.... Science has never been more unpredictableor more entertaining!

Bryce Christensen,
Booklist , starred review

Kaiser is a master storyteller, a very good physicist, and a fine historian. The book is dazzlingly researched.... Kaisers narration of the physics he presents is accurate and accessible.

Silvan Schweber,
Physics Today

Entertaining.... A curious and largely forgotten episode in the history of physics.

Marcus Chown, New Scientist

Interspersing entertaining anecdotes with explanations of concepts in quantum physics, Kaisers book can be read on many levels. At its most challenging, it is an intellectual history of quantum mechanics. But it is also a yarn about an eccentric group of physicists who refused to be defeated by their marginalization within their own discipline. And, as social history, it offers a window onto one of the most colourful periods of twentieth-century U.S. history.

Hugh Gusterson, Nature

Readers will enjoy this entertaining chronicle of colorful young scientists whose sweeping curiosity turned up no hard evidence for psychic phenomena but led to new ways of looking into the equally bizarre quantum world.

Kirkus Reviews , starred review

Kaisers style is engaging, which makes this history of the time when physics left the short-sleeved white shirts, skinny ties and plastic pocket protectors behind one of the best science books of the year.

Kel Munger, Sacramento News & Review

Exhaustively and carefully researched. [Kaiser] has uncovered a wealth of revealing detail about the various physicists involved, making for a very lively tale.... Fascinating.

Peter Woit, American Science

A remarkably accessible sub-atomic joyride to distant realms of knowledge where the deepest secrets of physics reside.

Chris Bergeron, Metro West Daily News

An entertaining historical peek into the nature of the creative process.

Aaron W. Hughey, Bowling Green Daily News

[A] wonderful book about the expansion of awareness and the broadening of disciplinary scope.

Cyrus C. M. Mody,
Social Studies of Science

There is much to be commended in this likeable history of an idio-syncratic recent period in science.

Doug Johnstone,
Independent (UK)

This entertaining, worthwhile read is as much about the nature of society at the dawn of the New Age as it is about quantum physics.

C. G. Wood, Choice

Here is a book that is immensely fun to read, gives insight into deep and increasingly consequential questions of physics, and transports the reader back into the heart of North Beach zaniness in the long 1960s. Put down your calculators and pick up this book!

Peter Galison, author of Einsteins Clocks, Poincars Maps

A tremendously fun and eye-opening tale.

Ken Alder, author of
The Measure of All Things

David Kaisers masterly ability to explain the most subtle and counterintuitive quantum effects, together with his ability to spin a ripping good yarn, make him the perfect guide to this far-off and far-out era of scientific wackiness.

Seth Lloyd, author of
Programming the Universe

An unconventional view of some unconventional people engaged early in the fundamentals of quantum theory. Great fun to read.

Anton Zeilinger, author of Dance of the Photons

A mind-bending trip to the far horizons of science.

Fred Turner,
author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture

David Kaiser shows us the wonder, mystery, and joy of the scientific pursuit that helped define, and inspire, a particular moment within the counterculture.

Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of
Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion

To the memory of my father, Richard A. Kaiser.
He was no hippie.

There must be thousands of young persons whose nervous systems were expanded and opened-up in the 1960s and who have now reached positions of competence in the sciences. We expect the new wave of turned-on young mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers are more able to use their energized nervous systems as tools to provide new correlations between psychology and science.

Timothy Leary, 1977