REVIEWS
“Kaiser and McCray offer up a kaleidoscope of talking dolphins, manual-toting midwives, plastic surfboards, hip physicists, self-taught cheesemakers, and unlikely gurus whose connections to technical knowledge were not only uncanny, but also essential. Groovy Science reveals that the heart of the American counterculture was scientific as well as psychedelic. It is an important book and a great read.”
— Angela N. H. Creager, Princeton University
“What was a Cold War scientist? If you think of Dr. Strangelove whooping his way to Armageddon, think again. In this sparkling compendium, some of that time’s most creative minds ditch their lab coats and clipboards for sex, psychedelics, and the search for utopia. To watch them is to see the boundaries between science and culture dissolve, and a new, more hopeful vision of the Cold War era appear.”
— Fred Turner, Stanford University
"In their edited volume Groovy Science, Kaiser and McCray show that in the 'long 1970s', the young, in creating a counterculture, didn't so much reject science as recreate it. Each essay is a case history on how the hippies repurposed science and made it cool. For the academic historian, Groovy Science establishes the “deep mark on American culture” made by the countercultural innovators. For the non-historian, the book reads as if it were infected by the hippies' democratic intent: no jargon, few convoluted sentences, clear arguments and a sense of delight."
— Nature
"Long-haired surfers catching waves on handcrafted shortboards at Laguna Beach. Women practicing home births as a form of “spiritual midwifery” on the famous Tennessee commune, The Farm. Psychologist Timothy Leary, “the most dangerous man in America,” imploring us to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” These are quintessential images of American counterculture. But Groovy Science will make the reader see them in a surprising new way: as significant scenes of encounter between counterculture and science. By yoking together the words 'groovy' and 'science,' editors Kaiser and McCray refute three durable notions about science in the 1970s: that the counterculture was antiscience, that science was languishing in a rather moribund phase during this period, and that mainstream researchers lived and worked apart from the counterculture that seemed to spurn them. Instead, the 12 essays that make up Groovy Science demonstrate that people and groups strongly ensconced in the counterculture also embraced science, albeit in untraditional and creative ways."
— Science
"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. 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."
— MIT News
"This compendium of individual scholarly articles is a trove of information, and the references are useful and exhaustive....[An] always enthralling archaeological travel guide to an epoch that, although only 40 years old, already feels like an alien continent."
— New Scientist
“The hippy counterculture of 1970s America was profoundly anti-science. Not so, or at least not always, argue the contributors to this sparkling volume. Proponents of groovy science included Abraham Maslow, the Esalen Institute, John C. Lilly, Timothy Leary, the Whole Earth Catalog, the University of California, Santa Barbara physics department, artisanal cheese makers and, surprisingly, Hugh Hefner. Tune in and turn on.”
— Times Higher Education
"In the late 1960s and 1970s, the mind-expanding modus operandi of the counterculture spread into the realm of science, and shit got wonderfully weird. Neurophysiologist John Lilly tried to talk with dolphins. Physicist Peter Phillips launched a parapsychology lab at Washington University. Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill became an evangelist for space colonies.Groovy Science is a new book of essays about this heady time!"
— Boing Boing
"This collection of essays addressing the relationship between science and technology and the 1960s counterculture provides readers with a series of serious academic analyses that defy the widely held conception that the counterculture movement was, by definition, 'antiscience' and 'antitechnology.' The authors of these essays, most of whom are historians of science or technology, provide insightful information on topics ranging from the 'counterculture curriculum' of the University of California Santa Barbara physics department, to the rise of midwifery as a feasible choice for women rejecting the sterile and unfriendly confines of hospital maternity wards, to the technologies of the artisan goat cheese industry. Although diverse in their respective subjects, essayists commonly argue that many in the American counterculture movement rejected the traditional military-industrial complex control of science and technology, but not necessarily science and technology as a whole. Rather, biologists, psychologists, ecologists, scientists, and technologists of all stripes widely adapted 1970s mores to their respective fields to create a new kind of science—'groovy science.' Highly recommended."
— Choice
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Adult Swim: How John C. Lilly Got Groovy (And Took the Dolphin with Him), 1958-1968 - D. Graham Burnett
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0001
[John C. Lilly;interspecies communication;military patronage;dolphin research]
The notable neurophysiologist John C. Lilly moved from work on macaques to dolphins in the late 1950s, eventually elaborating a research program that placed Tursiops truncatus (the bottlenose dolphin) at the center of an increasingly visionary effort to transcend the boundaries of the human. His stated objective: “communication” with an alien intelligence. Along the way he succeeded in selling dolphins to NASA (and others) as an intimate animal alterity, creatures capable of showing us ourselves from elsewhere. This chapter traces the rise and fall of Lilly’s scientific enterprise, in an effort to make sense of his own trajectory (from “right stuff” avionics bio-engineer to Esalen guru), but also to use his story to illuminate the imbrication of Cold War science and the counter cultural imaginary. Lilly’s dolphins became avatars of the Age of Aquarius. (pages 13 - 50)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Blowing Foam and Blowing Minds: Better Surfing Through Chemistry - Peter Neushul, Peter Westwick
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0002
[surfing;shortboard revolution;psychedelic drugs;industrial design;manufacturing]
In the late 1960s and early 1970s surfers launched what became known as the shortboard revolution. Surfboard shapers, inspired in part by psychedelic drugs, introduced radically new surfboard designs and performance standards. The revolution also shifted the prevailing mass-production model in the surfboard industry to a backyard-craftsman ideal, similar to the small-is-beautiful ethos then infiltrating other technological fields. Instead of surfboards knocked out by the thousands in standard models from factories, shapers now worked alone with a surfer to develop a custom design tailored to the individual’s style. This craftsman ideal, however, was underpinned by the industrial-scale, highly toxic process chemistry used to make polyurethane foam, polyester resin, and fiberglass, the main ingredients in surfboards. Modern industrial science and technology thus pervaded surfing, one of the most romantic domains of the counterculture. (pages 51 - 69)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Santa Barbara Physicists in the Vietnam Era - Cyrus C. M. Mody
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0003
[entrepreneurship;relevance;parapsychology;pedagogical;experimentation]
This chapter follows a small group of physicists in Santa Barbara as they responded to – but also propelled – many of the changes in American science of the groovy era: civilianization of military-funded research, declining undergraduate and graduate enrollments, budgetary shortfalls, demands for scientists to conduct more socially “relevant” research related to the environment, poverty, racism, and biomedicine. Physicists in Santa Barbara responded with a variety of institutional experiments: new start-up companies, new partnerships with industry and civil society organizations, new degree programs, new research programs to develop environmental, disability, and parapsychology technologies. Some of these experiments panned out, others not. Among those that proved enduring where those that came to exemplify the entrepreneurial university of the 1980s: professor-founded start-up companies licensing patents on faculty research held by the university. (pages 70 - 106)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Between the Counterculture and the Corporation: Abraham Maslow and Humanistic Psychology in the 1960s - Nadine Weidman
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0004
[Abraham Maslow;humanistic psychology;self-actualization;peak experience;Esalen;Michael Murphy;Fritz Perls]
In the 1960s, the psychologist Abraham Maslow became the public face of humanistic psychology, an interpretation of human nature that he spent decades developing and that stressed the fulfillment of each individual’s inborn potential. This chapter analyzes the counterculture’s uptake of Maslow’s ideas. To judge by Esalen’s ready adoption of his psychological approach, the chapter argues, first, that a certain kind of explicitly unconventional science held enormous appeal for members of the counterculture. Second, the chapter explores the apparent ease with which Maslow traveled between hippie retreat and corporate boardroom, a movement indicative of a broad exchange of people, practices, and ideas between the counterculture and the establishment, as the precepts of humanistic psychology pervaded both. Third, the chapter analyzes the reciprocal influence between this major psychological theorist and his countercultural followers. Though he was often dismayed by the hippies’ attitudes and antics, Maslow shaped his notions of psychological growth and of the ideal society in response to his experiences in countercultural contexts. The leaders of Esalen, meanwhile, appropriated his ideas without slavishly following them, adapting his theories of self-actualization and peak experience in new ways to meet their own needs. (pages 109 - 141)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
A Quest for Permanence: The Ecological Visioneering of John Todd and the New Alchemy Institute - Henry Trim
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0005
[New Alchemy Institute;visioneering;John Todd;ecology;spaceship earth;appropriate technology;aquaponics]
This chapter examines the visioneering of John Todd and the New Alchemy Institute. In the 1970s this group of counterculture scientists and back to the land advocates founded their own scientific institute on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Merging scientific research with a compelling vision of a sustainable “space ship earth,” the Institute straddled the supposed boundary between NASA research and countercultural rebellion. Guided by their charismatic leader, Dr John Todd, the New Alchemists deftly drew financial and political support from the Canadian government and prestigious institutions while working closely with Stewart Brand and the appropriate technologists associated with the Whole Earth Catalog. The group used this support to build its iconic Arks and to pioneer green architecture and aquaponics on Cape Cod and Prince Edward Island. The work of Todd and his New Alchemists highlights the intimate relationship between advanced techno-science, countercultural visions of social transformation, and activist state which made the dizzying experimentation of the long 1970s possible. (pages 142 - 171)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
The Little Manual that Started a Revolution: How Hippie Midwifery Became Mainstream - Wendy Kline
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0006
[midwifery;obstetrics;counterculture;childbirth]
In 1970, the number of hospital births in the U.S. reached an all-time high of 99.4 percent. But by 1977, the percentage of out-of-hospital births more than doubled, with approximately 50,000 babies born outside of the hospital. This demographic shift raised concern among members of the medical community. Dr. Warren Pearse, the Executive Director of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, publicly noted in 1977 the “rising tide of demand for home delivery,” describing it as an “anti-intellectual--anti-science revolt.” Yet the Farm midwives, who played a major role in popularizing alternatives to home birth, defy this categorization. Their engagement with rural midwifery manuals and local doctors demonstrate the extent to which they collaborated with, and even influenced, organized medicine. (pages 172 - 204)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
The Unseasonable Grooviness of Immanuel Velikovsky - Michael D. Gordin
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0007
[pseudoscience;Immanuel Velikovsky;Carl Sagan;catastrophism]
The debate over the cosmic catastrophism of Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979), expressed most fully in his wildly best-selling Worlds in Collision, was one of the most visible, most protracted, and most surprising of the clashes between members of the scientific “establishment” and a self-proclaimed counterculture that sought an alternative science that would fuse ancient history with astronomy. Especially striking is the fact that the book that sparked this enthusiasm of the late 1960s to late 1970s was published in 1950 at a very different cultural and historical moment, drawing its roots from interwar psychoanalysis and Zionism, and that its author was already well into his seventies by the time youthful partisans gathered around his ideas of a catastrophic near-collision between Venus and Earth. This essay explores the course of the conflict, with particular emphasis on alternative publishing venues to promote catastrophism, educational experimentation on college campuses, the reaction of members of the scientific elite (most prominently Carl Sagan), and finally the involution and collapse of Velikovsky’s countercultural moment in the years leading up to his death. (pages 207 - 237)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Timothy Leary’s Transhumanist SMI2LE - W. Patrick McCray
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0008
[Timothy Leary;Gerard O'Neill;space colonies;transhumanism;Stewart Brand;life extension;cryonics;L5 Society;singularity]
Following his release from prison in 1976, counterculture guru Timothy Leary began to espouse a new plan for experimentation if not human enhancement. SMI2LE was Leary’s moniker for “space migration, intelligence increase, and life extension.” For the next several years, Leary promoted an evolving recipe for self-directed human mutation in public appearances, books, and even comics. This essay explores Leary’s ideas and connects them to other ’70s-era examples of science and technology that lingered at the fringes of respectability. It also shows how Leary’s techno-trip served as a stepping stone to the more activist-oriented transhumanist movement of the 1990s which embraced – as did Leary – a combination of radical technologies including cryonics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. (pages 238 - 269)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Science of the Sexy Beast: Biological Masculinities and the Playboy Lifestyle - Erika Lorraine Milam
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0009
[animal behaviour;biological determinism;human nature;Desmond Morris;popular science]
When Hugh Hefner decided to financially back a filmic adaptation of Desmond Morris’s bestselling romp through human nature—The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal (1967)—he built on a well-rehearsed trope in the pages of Playboy magazine. Articles, interviews, and expert panels all implied that the Playboy lifestyle wasn’t just fun, it also fit with the latest biological research. Although Playboy’s embrace of men as sexual hunters ostensibly began as a rebellious challenge to staid sexual morality, against the backdrop of changing American politics in the 1970s, the magazine increasingly came to be seen as advancing a regressive vision of passive feminine sexuality. Playboy was neither an underground counter-cultural production nor a popular science magazine, but through its wide circulation it provides a valuable space for exploring how these threads actively interwove through middle-class society in the era of groovy science. (pages 270 - 302)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Alloyed: Countercultural bricoleurs and the Design Science Revival - Andrew Kirk
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0010
[alloy;design science;bricoleurs;ecological design;environmentalism;appropriate technology;eco-pragmatism;DIY;material culture;tool freaks]
In the 1960s and 70s an ad hoc collection of countercultural designers united to celebrate the partnership of made and born, science and craft, nature and culture working toward an early version of the sustainability ethic. They chronicled their achievements and fostered their networks through a series of influential publications including, Shelter, The Whole Earth Catalog, Sunspots, and the California Water Atlas. These efforts represent a creative cohort’s important effort to use their academic scientific training and technical expertise outside the confines of the university or corporations. This ecologically inclined group of countercultural bricoleurs worked to revive an earlier tradition of design science and eco-pragmatism to help expand environmental culture beyond politics, aid green design enthusiasms, and foster “natural capitalism.” (pages 305 - 336)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
How the Industrial Scientist Got His Groove: Entrepreneurial Journalism and the Fashioning of Technoscientific Innovators - Matthew Wisnioski
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0011
[innovation;innovators;innovation group;industrial science;science journalism;scientific personae;identity;change manager]
Where did the ideal of the “hip” technoscientific innovator originate? What social, cultural, and organizational transformations made it possible? What does the study of its emergence reveal about contemporary knowledge work? This chapter uses the history of the short-lived journal Innovation (1969 to 1972) and its social network the “Innovation Group” to highlight how new modes of entrepreneurial journalism helped shape images of innovative careers and contributed to the knowledge practices of innovation management. Through print, executive workshops, and electronic media, members of the Innovation Group posited a new professional identity—the change manager—who was at turns a scientist, an engineer, a humanitarian, and a shrewd businessman. (pages 337 - 365)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
When Chèvre Was Weird: Hippie Taste, Technoscience, and the Revival of American Artisanal Food-Making - Heather Paxson
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0012
[cheesemaking;artisanal food production;back to the land;movement;counterculture]
The millennial “renaissance” in American artisanal cheesemaking has its roots in the countercultural ethos and back-to-the-land enskillment of rural hippies. This chapter examines how, beginning in the 1970s, artisan foodmakers worked to reconcile the authoritative language and practical reassurance of technoscience with the free-spirited artistic license of the countercultural ethos that got many of them into cheesemaking in the first place. Growing interest today in making and eating artisanal cheese is indebted to convergences between the idealism of back-to-the-land amateurs seeking a viable means of making a living and the technoscientific affordances of the industrial food system they imagined they were leaving behind. (pages 366 - 390)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Afterword: David Farber and Beth Bailey, “The Counterculture’s Looking Glass” - David Farber, Beth Bailey
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226373072.003.0013
[counterculture;hippies;alternative technology;LSD;1960s;1970s]
The Sixties-era counterculture had its share of stoned, indolent hippies but it also had a productive wing that included a range of tech-savvy, scientifically minded visionaries. These countercultural tech activists did some of their best work well into the 1970s as they sought to make science and technology a human-scaled, hands-on enterprise that reached for the sublime possibilities of both transcendence and connection. (pages 391 - 396)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
