How the Hippies Saved Physics is a book all about underemployed and overstimulated physicists in the 1960′s and 70′s who merged their intresest in altered states of consciousness, Bell’s theorem and visionary physics. In doing so they paved the way for modern quantum mechanics and information science.
In this short lecture video, MIT Professor David Kaiser describes the field of physic’s bumpy transition from New Age to cutting edge.
In recent years, the field of quantum information science has catapulted to the cutting edge of physics. Long before the big budgets and dedicated teams, however, the field smoldered on the scientific sidelines within the hazy, bong-filled excesses of the 1970s New Age movement. Many of the ideas that now occupy the core of quantum information science once found their home amid an anything-goes counterculture frenzy, a mishmash of spoon-bending psychics, Eastern mysticism, LSD trips, CIA spooks chasing mind-reading dreams, and comparable “Age of Aquarius” enthusiasts.
