The Times They are A-Changin': From New Math to Groovy Science

Science and mathematics are inextricably woven into historical contexts that both enrich and complicate our understanding of science and those who practice it. The two books reviewed here similarly approach this complexity from differing perspectives: David Kaiser and Patrick McCray's edited volume includes essays that examine the culture of science in what they call the "long 1970s," while Christopher Phillips' monograph explores the earlier emergence of the new math in a sort of "long 1960s." Many (though notably not all) of Groovy Science's essays focus on fringe actors; Phillips' characters generally are well situated in the mainstream. Yet both center their overall arguments on the changes countercultural or grassroots influences wrought on mainstream science and mathematics. Both, too, aim to right misconceptions as well as explore the relationship between power, patronage, politics, and practice in American science. Both books successfully explore themes of change over time, working to both expand historians' understanding of late twentieth century science as well as filling existing gaps in the literature. Comparing the relative effectiveness of these texts is difficult, as Kaiser and McCray's polished volume uses wide-ranging examples through its multiple essays and Phillips's monograph provides a more focused example from which the reader can draw larger conclusions. Yet despite quite different approaches, examining both books alongside one another illustrates their shared influence on the field.

Kaiser and McCray constructed their volume to challenge the assumption American youth shied away from science during the counterculture, instead arguing the long 1970s witnessed the growth of a culture that approached science and technology in fundamentally new ways, rejecting Cold War mainstream science but not adopting anti-science sentiments. This "groovy science"—defined by the editors as bounded by the popularity of Simon and Garfunkel's late 1960s song popularly known as "Feelin' Groovy" and the ultimate disuse of the term by the 1980s—illustrates how the mission of the counterculture movement was not antithetical to science and technology. The essays in this volume seek to explore how people sought "to reconcile science, technology, and hipness," bringing a much needed consideration of science and technology soundly into the historiography of the 1970s United States (p. 6). Kaiser and McCray are wise to remind the reader of the limitations in assuming a monolithic counterculture, stressing the importance of individual lived experiences in the creation of a cultural milieu; in this, the choice to approach the topic through an edited volume of specific examples is powerful, with the essays collectively working to demonstrate the naiveté of the old narrative of the decline of science in the 1970s—or one that falsely pits the counterculture as an adversary to science and technology—and instead paints groovy science as representing "improvisations, mutations, and hybridizations of what had only lately seemed to be the norm" (p. 7).

Groovy Science is divided into four thematic sections, titled as Conversion, Seeking, Personae, and Legacies. The essays included in each section not only speak to these headings, but also at times directly address one another, a practice which demonstrates the editors' care in choice of authors and the refreshing coherence of the project as a whole. The book's first essays are grouped under "Conversion," with all contributing authors demonstrating the ways that countercultural figures repurposed traditional Cold War science. D. Graham Burnett's essay on the neurophysiologist, military psychologist, and "Pied Piper of whale hugging and cosmonaut of heightened consciousness," John C. Lilly, provides a salaciously counterculture portrait of the conversion of mainstream Cold War military-scientific work on sensory deprivation into a decidedly non-mainstream research program on drugs, sexuality, and interspecies communication centered at a Caribbean laboratory (p. 14). Peter Neushul and Peter Westwick's examination of the shortboard surfing revolution links countercultural ideals with cutting-edge technology...