I just received a copy of MIT professor David Kaiser's new book, "How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival" and it looks fantastic. No, this isn't the director's notes for 'What the Bleep Do We Know?" but rather a researched history of the intersection between the 1970s psychedelic culture the San Francisco Bay Area and a group of open-minded, brilliant, and broke, scientists studying the "impossible." The group, dubbed the Fundamental Fysiks Group, included folks like Jack Sarfatti, Nick Herbert, Saul-Paul Sirag, and Fred Alan Wolf, seen in the photo above. This "invisible college" looked to quantum theory for clues about human consciousness, pondered the Big Questions about space and time, and even considered possible scientific explanations for reports of high weirdness like ESP. Of course, some of their efforts were later sucked into the New Age and the rest is bleeping history. But according to Kaiser's history, they also made profoundly serious contributions to science. Kaiser, a cosmologist and head of MIT's Program in Science, Technology, And Society, wrote a guest post over at NPR describing his book:
Some members of the group sought cash from unlikely sources to pursue their quest, ranging from the Central Intelligence Agency to self-made entrepreneurs in the California "human potential" movement. And they set up shop in that hotbed of New Age enthusiasm, the Esalen Institute in beautiful Big Sur, California. They circulated preprints in an extensive, underground network, and broke into the popular-book market with bestsellers like Capra's Tao of Physics and Gary Zukav's Dancing Wu Li Masters.
Along the way, they produced some fascinating work that, stripped of its original packaging, has entered the mainstream today. Some highlights include:
– Fundamental Fysiks Group members dominated worldwide publications on Bell's theorem and quantum entanglement, recognizing their groundbreaking importance years before most physicists began to pay attention to the topic.
– Every single demonstration that quantum entanglement could be compatible with Einstein's relativity came either directly from members of the Fundamental Fysiks Group or as direct responses to their calculations and thought experiments.
– In the process of refuting a particularly clever thought experiment by group member Nick Herbert, three separate groups of physicists – Wojciech Zurek and Bill Wootters; Dennis Dieks; and GianCarlo Ghirardi and Tullio Weber – discovered the "no-cloning theorem," a fundamental feature of quantum theory that no one had ever recognized before. The no-cloning theorem stipulates that it is impossible to make exact copies or clones of an unknown quantum state. In short order, the no-cloning theorem became the linchpin of the first protocol for quantum encryption.
"How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival" by David Kaiser (Amazon)
"How the Hippies Saved Physics: Curious Contributions To Quantum Theory" (NPR)
