David Kaiser’s How the Hippies Saved Physics is a reminder of the unexpected influence a bunch of freewheeling 1970s physicists had on fundamental theories
IT’S certainly a provocative title, but for the life of me I could not recall an era to which How the Hippies Saved Physicsmight have applied. Things made more sense, though, on reading David Kaiser’s mention of two other books, both of which had left a big impression on me: Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics and Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters.
In this pair of bestsellers, published 30-odd years ago, Capra…
