How the Hippies Saved Physics (Kaiser, D.; 2011) [Book Review]

Abstract

Provides a review of the book "How the Hippies Saved Physics," by David Kaiser )Norton, 2011, 372 pages). The book is about how circa mid 1970s a bunch of young physicists, all of them male with one important exception, and without job prospects, banded together to ask themselves some questions about the fundamental concepts in quantum mechanics. Kaiser introduces us to around 20 characters who were either Fundamental Fysik's Group (FFG) members or fellow travelers in the contemporary West Coast Consciousness Theory Group or the Physics/Consciousness Research Group. Some humorless newspaper reviewers have chided Kaiser over his book's title, since he never proves that the "hippies saved physics," but he is too good a scientist and historian to make this claim seriously, a fact he states early where he compares his title to the slightly facetious notion that the Irish saved civilization. His "saving physics" is a nostalgic reminder of the jokiness and "put on" of the hippie era. These reviewers miss Kaiser's important historical points: that the reputed hostility of the counterculture to technology and science, as promoted by some 1960s era social historians, is wrong, and that this same culture benefited not only physics but the advancement of technology.