Dr. David Kaiser of MIT is author on an interesting book, How the Hippies Saved Physics. Dr. Kaiser's book recounts the heady days of the early 1970s that saw a glut of PhD physicists and a shrinking pool of traditional employment opportunities in the military industrial complex. This led a gregarious group of physicists to congregate at the Stanford Research Institute at Berkeley, California. The result was a counter culture infused melding of modern physics and eastern philosophy. One of the more well-known products of the movement, for example, was the text, The Tao of Physics.
The culture at Berkeley could be interpreted as one of the sparks to set off a number of the Human Potential gurus in the late 1970s and 1980s. Some of the Berkeley influence appears in RSE philosophy, but in a dilute and contorted form.
This video from MIT Museum Forum Network features Dr. Kaiser delivering a nice review of the formation of the movement: http://forum-network.org/lecture/how-hi ... ed-physics
Video re: Quantum Physics and the Human Potential Movement
Re: Video re: Quantum Physics and the Human Potential Moveme
fascinating lecture. I learned something I did not know about the esalen connection and est helping to support physics proper by investing in the "mystic" or Hippy end of the discipline's spectrum.
a parallel comes to mind:
the porn industry was highly responsible for initially stimulating the spread and tech of the public Internet
a parallel comes to mind:
the porn industry was highly responsible for initially stimulating the spread and tech of the public Internet