Quantum Hippies

<style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face { panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic- mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic- mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-bidi- mso-fareast- mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ansi- mso-bidi-} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --></style><span>The 1960s counterculture was certainly anti-technocratic and distrustful of technology, but was it also anti-science? David Kaiser thinks not, and in <em>How the Hippies Saved Physics</em> (W.W. Norton), the MIT physics professor explores a little known convergence whose ramifications have been widely felt.</span><span><br /><br />If the Fundamental Fysiks Group sounds like a psychedelic band that disappeared after a few gigs backing the Quicksilver Messenger Service, the comparison isn't entirely inept. FFG was a loose association of youthful, bearded physics students who gathered in Berkeley. They were bored with the prosaic physics of their professors and wanted to return to the heady speculations of the European masters of the interwar eraEinstein, Bohr and Heisenbergwhose leaps into the relative and the quantum called into question the nature of reality. The legacy of these philosopher scientists, who were more artists than mechanics, had been eroded by the academic drones of the postwar period, timid minds in the presence of infinity.</span><span><br /><br />Their imagination freed by psychedelia, Eastern mysticism and the spirit of rebellion, FFG and similar groups of grad students began to reclaim the metaphysics of physics. They were inspired by the then obscure Irish physicist John S. Bell, whose theory of “quantum entanglement” proposed that objects once in touch maintained a link across time and space. Quantum encryption for secure communication resulted from the FFG's spirited advocacy of Bell's theorem.</span><span><br /><br />The counterculture-triggered return of physics to the Big Questions advanced slowly against the resistance of tenured scientists who confused symbols for the experience they represented and tried to shut the doors of perception against the vastness of the cosmos.</span>