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How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival
by
The surprising story of eccentric young scientists who stood up to convention-and changed the face of modern physics.
Today, quantum information theory is among the most exciting scientific frontiers, attracting billions of dollars in funding and thousands of talented researchers. But as MIT physicist and historian David Kaiser reveals, this cutting-edge field has a surpris ...more
Today, quantum information theory is among the most exciting scientific frontiers, attracting billions of dollars in funding and thousands of talented researchers. But as MIT physicist and historian David Kaiser reveals, this cutting-edge field has a surpris ...more
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Hardcover, 400 pages
Published
June 27th 2011
by W. W. Norton Company
(first published June 1st 2011)
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Start your review of How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival
David Kaiser has done a remarkable service by bringing an objective eye to an era that is still mired in controversy. Scholars and people in general take pains to distance themselves from anything tainted by association 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
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It's got hippies. It's got physics. But 'Saved' is nowhere in sight. It should truthfully be entitled, "How Hippie Physicists Tried Everything They Could Think Of To Prove Paranormal Phenomena Exists And Failed Utterly, But Did Prove One Quantum Phenomena From Their Decades Of Failure, With a Side Story About A Deranged Hippie Murderer"
Ps. Oddly, I 'got' the title before reading the book, because I recall "How the Irish Saved Civilization" came out just after I'd written my Honors thesis on a si ...more
Ps. Oddly, I 'got' the title before reading the book, because I recall "How the Irish Saved Civilization" came out just after I'd written my Honors thesis on a si ...more
"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." JBS Haldane's words never ring so true as when the quantum world is discussed. At this subatomic level, all our intuitions about space, time, causality, even what a thing is, go out the window. In their place we have equations, and by dint of difficult calculation we can make predictions about how this miniscule world works. But there's no use trying to understand it, to form a mental picture, to ask what it
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"How the Hippies Saved Physics" took me back to my undergraduate days, by first two courses in Quantum Mechanics. Like the protagonists of Kaiser's book, I wanted to understand quantum mechanics. But the profs had their line that always closed off any inquiry ---"Shut up and calculate!" The maths works, the theory works --- why are you wasting your time in trying to figure out the Schrodinger wave function, wave particle duality, which slit an electron passes through in Young's double-slit exper
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This book starts out overstated from the title itself, and proceeds to inflate the importance of a particular social movement in the history of modern physics. Kaiser is aware of this, at least, but it doesn't stop him from vastly over-reaching. Add to that the tedium and endless repetition of information (how many times does he think characters need to be introduced?) and what would be an insightful magazine article becomes a poor book. It was also a shame to see the almost unquestioning accept
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Am I convinced hippies saved physics? Not a chance.
I was surprised by the efforts some put into paranormal research. It seems like bunk to me, but others don't believe so. It all stems from the bizarre ability to transport information in ways that aren't easily explained. Fascinating. Bizarre. Is there an answer?
Quantum mechanics is counter intuitive. Here's a thoughtful analogy. Take twins. Put one in a restaurant in Europe and the other in one in Canada. Twin A is offered a choice of fish or s ...more
I was surprised by the efforts some put into paranormal research. It seems like bunk to me, but others don't believe so. It all stems from the bizarre ability to transport information in ways that aren't easily explained. Fascinating. Bizarre. Is there an answer?
Quantum mechanics is counter intuitive. Here's a thoughtful analogy. Take twins. Put one in a restaurant in Europe and the other in one in Canada. Twin A is offered a choice of fish or s ...more
Impossible to resist. Must read. Are you kidding me? So the relationship between physics and hippies doesn't just consist of deranged new age cults abusing ideas from quantum physics? So hot tubs, nudity, and shroom parties were genuinely part of the scientific process for actual physicists? And these tripping explorers were the folks who helped physics move beyond the orthodox silence concerning quantum weirdness? And, wait, the guy who wrote this thing teaches at MIT?!
I don't care if it's bull ...more
I don't care if it's bull ...more
In looking for something that was an overdrive audiobook that was available to be listened to on my phone while doing tasks, I came across this.
It is clear I need to look at the finer definitions of entanglement , spooky action at a distance , bell's theorem , nonlocality, hidden variables .
This is more a fun history of science book that a physics book. I thought it was interesting and balanced story about the 70s and 80s world of physics. ...more
It is clear I need to look at the finer definitions of entanglement , spooky action at a distance , bell's theorem , nonlocality, hidden variables .
This is more a fun history of science book that a physics book. I thought it was interesting and balanced story about the 70s and 80s world of physics. ...more
One of the greatest values of this book is the richness of the bibliography. I will be reading from that list for years to come.
The hippies in question were doing a lot of interesting experimentation, and expanding on ideas that cold war physics had left behind in favor of developing weapons. They may not have "saved" physics, per se, but they did bring the romance back to it.
It was interesting to learn that a number of the Essalen group went on to be involved in IONS. The research being done th ...more
The hippies in question were doing a lot of interesting experimentation, and expanding on ideas that cold war physics had left behind in favor of developing weapons. They may not have "saved" physics, per se, but they did bring the romance back to it.
It was interesting to learn that a number of the Essalen group went on to be involved in IONS. The research being done th ...more
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
...more
It upsets me to rate this book so low since I've had the pleasure of attending multiple lectures by Prof. Kaiser, who is extremely engaging and entertaining in person. His writings on how the pedagogy of physics changed as the result of war was some of the most memorable and mind blowing concepts I had to read for class.
However, this book was plain boring. The first few chapters introducing history was great, similar to his insightful lectures. But as soon as he starts on the Fundamental Fysics ...more
However, this book was plain boring. The first few chapters introducing history was great, similar to his insightful lectures. But as soon as he starts on the Fundamental Fysics ...more
I gave up and returned this book to the library without finishing it. I did skip through and could see no evidence that this group "saved" physics. The author spent way too much ink on est and Uri Geller. Maybe the book is better if you plow through it without skipping around, but I doubt it.
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A fascinating foray into the history of quantum mechanics, with the focus on the 1970s in the US, especially around San Francisco and Berkeley, where a countercultural and informal Fundamental Fysiks Group (FFG) revived the interest in the quantum theory, considered disreputable by the Cold War military-industrial applied physics consensus. In some ways mimicking the Olympus Group of the original physicists (Einstein, Bohr, etc), at least in their openness to new ideas, if not in the scale of th
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Aug 02, 2019
Jodi
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
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2019-audiobooks
There was a lot of interesting information in this book but it was also very dull despite being well read. There was an assumption that the listener knew at least the basics about physics and I am not sure that I did. This book is focused specifically on quantum physics. For most of us, we've heard the term, we know about Schrodinger's cat even if we really don't understand it, and there are a few names that are practically household names. There is a lot of sexy - anyone who thinks physicists a
...more
Well, the hippies didn't save physics, though Kaiser's pretty much aware of that. What they did was put a spotlight on the idea of quantum entanglement at a time when the academic and governmental politics of physics had shifted the attention away from philosophy (which was of deep interest to the quantum pioneers like Heisenberg and Bohr and quantum skeptic Einsten) toward engineering-friendly calculation. And that probably would have reemerged from another vector anyway.
Having said that, it's ...more
Having said that, it's ...more
In a word, ug.
Honestly, I was disappointed with the lack of physics. Aside from a solid explanation of the two slit experiment and Bell’s Theorem (which is used to assert quantum nonlocality), and the refutation of cloning quantum states there is very little here. This is not a book about physics, but a book about how the nature of philosophical questions about physics was preserved by the Fundamental Fysics Group (FFG), a group of disaffected from the mainstream physicists who tried their damne ...more
Honestly, I was disappointed with the lack of physics. Aside from a solid explanation of the two slit experiment and Bell’s Theorem (which is used to assert quantum nonlocality), and the refutation of cloning quantum states there is very little here. This is not a book about physics, but a book about how the nature of philosophical questions about physics was preserved by the Fundamental Fysics Group (FFG), a group of disaffected from the mainstream physicists who tried their damne ...more
Catchy title. Moderately interesting information . Audiobook was dull performance.
It goes on about baloney like equating the "paranormal" (esp and mentally bending forks) with quantum mechanics' entanglement of distant particles. It's got some gnarly delving into quantum mechanics. What it doen't have is much about hippies saving physics. intermittently absorbing but not a coherent whole.
...more
How the Hippies Saved Physics is a fantastically kooky and zany history of the fringes of physics research in the 1960s and 1970s. The premise is certainly intriguing. Kaiser argues that the Second World War and the Cold War had relegated physics in America to number crunching and practical applications of theory (mainly in the defense industry) and that all previous notions of fundamental questions all but dried up. The timing couldn't have been less fortunate, as the war followed close on the
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If someone had told me fifteen years ago that I would one day read a whole book on physics FOR FUN, I would have laughed. No way. Nuh-uh. Never. Nope.
You see, I have never been into science.
I believe in it, I’m grateful to it, but I’m not particularly interested in it.
Science, to me, always felt rigid: you must set up an experiment this way, you must have a precise outcome, you must use this formula.
There is no space for unbridled imagination in science. Or so I thought.
Because quantum mecha ...more
You see, I have never been into science.
I believe in it, I’m grateful to it, but I’m not particularly interested in it.
Science, to me, always felt rigid: you must set up an experiment this way, you must have a precise outcome, you must use this formula.
There is no space for unbridled imagination in science. Or so I thought.
Because quantum mecha ...more
I have to be honest here, the approach taken by the author is not one I was totally comfortable with. He expresses regret that physics moved from requiring students to write philosophical essays about the interpretation of quantum theory to concentrating on the physics and maths. I have to say this doesn't strike me as a problem. Similarly he is very enthusiastic, working very hard to find something good scientifically coming out of the counter culture. Again I don't think this should be an end
...more
A good friend of mine, knowing how much I like trivia and history, bought me this book at a Boston book signing event. He had asked David Kaiser to write 'enjoy the antics, best p.s. finish your PhD!'. At the time I was writing my PhD thesis in physics and though I appreciated the gift and David Kaiser's signature, I didn't like the exaggerated title. I have been a bit averse of popular science books lately. Maybe, I thought, I had outgrown such books. Years later I had a chance to slowly read t
...more
I finished this book in 2 days which for me is fast, this not being a novel, and containing some technical terms although not too many to be scary.
In the first chapters, I found myself thinking, "no matter how well put together this book might turn out to be, does the subject matter really merit a book's worth of research?" The actual influence of the Fundamental Fysiks Group seemed dubious by the initial descriptions. One the book delved into simple explanations on the work of Einstein, Podols ...more
In the first chapters, I found myself thinking, "no matter how well put together this book might turn out to be, does the subject matter really merit a book's worth of research?" The actual influence of the Fundamental Fysiks Group seemed dubious by the initial descriptions. One the book delved into simple explanations on the work of Einstein, Podols ...more
How The Hippies Saved Physics, Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser
David Kaiser is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This book is a history of science book. It is also a popular science book. The book describes how quantum physics which many considered to be fringe science became accepted science. It is a very strange, eccentric, and interesting story.
The book focuses on a group called the Fundamental Fysiks Group which held sessions at the Univers ...more
David Kaiser is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This book is a history of science book. It is also a popular science book. The book describes how quantum physics which many considered to be fringe science became accepted science. It is a very strange, eccentric, and interesting story.
The book focuses on a group called the Fundamental Fysiks Group which held sessions at the Univers ...more
I enjoyed this book for a couple of what I imagine to be fairly idiosyncratic reasons: (1) the description of the post-Cold War shifts in the politics and economics of science research and education and the implications for the direction of the field of physics in general and the careers of individual scientists, and (2) the description of the evolution of scholarly communication in the face of advances in communication technology and biases of mainstream disciplinary organs regarding certain ty
...more
Kaiser takes a line similar to that of his New Age protagonists: he's trying to sell you something. Here it's the idea that a quirky assemblage of Berkeley grad students, the Fundamental Fysiks Group, precipitated the Quantum Information Age by stepping outside the Cold War Funding Machine and taking seriously the interpretation of the equation-laden quantum theory, specifically, Bell's no-go theorem for local hidden variable theories. It is, in principle, a tricky argument to make: what is evi
...more
Kaiser interwove a fascinating tapestry of the colorful cultural history of the '60s (and beyond) with the developments of the field of physics. This was certainly more history than science, although the author does his best to explain the conundrums of quantum physics to the non-scientist. It was eye-opening how many people, places, ideas and "things" were interconnected in this era - certainly a quantum experience of my own! Based on the glimpse into the lives of the people Kaiser gives us, I
...more
In the early decades of the 20th century, physicists like Heisenberg, Bohr and Einstein saw their discipline as one that was about big, philosophical questions. Following WWII, the Cold War ushered in a time when most physicists worked for the military complex, and were expected to "shut up and compute" as they made high tech gadgets.
With budget cuts in the 1970's, many physicists found themselves without positions and dissatisfied with what physics had become. This interesting and charming boo ...more
With budget cuts in the 1970's, many physicists found themselves without positions and dissatisfied with what physics had become. This interesting and charming boo ...more
The history angle of this account is plenty interesting: counter-culture hippie physicists bucking the staid world of old, boring scientists to plunge into the philosophically weird aspects of quantum entanglement, thus leading, eventually, to quantum computing, cryptography, and so on.
But the thesis, that these folks 'saved' physics, is kind of a stretch. Yes, they dug deeply into quantum weirdness when no one else would, but they did so while trying desperately to link it with all sorts of par ...more
But the thesis, that these folks 'saved' physics, is kind of a stretch. Yes, they dug deeply into quantum weirdness when no one else would, but they did so while trying desperately to link it with all sorts of par ...more
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David Kaiser is an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the Department of Physics. He and his family live in Natick, Massachusetts.
David Kaiser is an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the Department of Physics. He and his family live in Natick, Massachusetts.
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“the earliest battles flared between himself and fellow physicist Leonard Susskind over whether quantum mechanics implied that information could leak out of black holes.”
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“But, as Uri Geller seemed to demonstrate, certain talented individuals might possess “volitional control” such that they could impose some order on the usually random quantum motions. Some”
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