Groovy science, man!
When science met the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s, unusual things happened. The medical researcher John Lilly studied whether dolphins could learn human language. Would-be astronomer Immanuel Velikovsky made widely read claims that a comet had caused biblical disasters. But other projects have had lasting legacies: Artisanal food makers founded organic farms, designers built communes with sustainable housing, and materials scientists even revolutionized surfboard manufacturing. All this and more is featured in “Groovy Science,” a new book from the University of Chicago Press featuring essays from 17 scholars about science’s countercultural turn. The volume was co-edited by David Kaiser, head of MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, whose own 2011 book, “How the Hippies Saved Physics,” detailed the counterculture’s influence on once-marginal physics questions such as entanglement. (The other co-editor, W. Patrick McCray, is an historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara.) MIT News donned a...