by David Kaiser
There has never been one “best” way to teach quantum mechanics. In particular, the enrollment-driven pragmatism, so stark in American physics departments after the Second World War, was anything but a “dumbing down.” The second and third editions of Leonard Schiff’s acclaimed textbook, for example, contained homework problems aimed at entry-level graduate students that would have stumped leading physicists only a decade or two earlier. Yet that tremendous accumulation of calculating skill came with some unnoticed trade-offs. For every additional calculation of baroque complexity that physics students learned to tackle during the 1950s and 1960s, they spent correspondingly less time puzzling through what those fancy equations meant—what they implied about our understanding of the quantum world.36 Different ideals—about quantum theory, about what it meant to be a physicist—flourished while enrollments bulged, and after they went bust.
Figure 8.2. Richard Feynman teaching his informal “Physics X” course at Caltech in 1976. (Source: Photograph by Floyd Clark, courtesy of the Archives, California Institute of Technology. Used with permission of the Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC.)
9
Zen and the Art of Textbook Publishing
Some books become totems, icons of an age. Stumbling upon them in an attic or used-book store, their crackling spines and musty air can trigger a rush of memories and associations—not just of where we were but who we were when we first encountered them. For hundreds of thousands of readers across the world, Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics continues to fulfill that role. First published in 1975, Capra’s curious little book became a breakout publishing sensation. The book’s unexpected commercial success inspired a wave of copycat books, reviving a dormant genre in popular-science writing about the mysteries of quantum theory. Its main argument—that modern physics had recaptured, even recapitulated, the age-old wisdom of the Eastern mystics—wasn’t exactly new; several creators of quantum theory had made similar pronouncements back in the 1920s and 1930s. But unlike the long-since-forgotten analogies proffered by Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, and their colleagues, Capra’s paperback achieved mass appeal. For a generation of countercultural seekers, the book promised a union of Western science and New Age enthusiasms.
Capra’s Tao of Physics reveals some of the larger ways in which hard-nosed science became enmeshed with countercultural delights during the long 1970s, blurring boundaries that might otherwise have seemed distinct. The conditions of the book’s composition and the variety of uses to which it was put clarify broader patterns in the entanglement of academic physics with its publics after the war—and how, for a brief moment at least, physics became groovy.1
To make sense of Capra’s book and the roles it came to play, we must look back to 1945, not just to 1968 or 1975. The booming enrollments in physics classrooms during the 1950s and 1960s had hastened changes in the ways physicists broached subjects like quantum mechanics. Yet the fantastic growth in student numbers proved unsustainable, and the sudden reversal of classroom conditions—after the crash of the early 1970s—opened space again for the return of a speculative or interpretive idiom. The material that helped to fill that pedagogical void was often inflected by the growing New Age and counterculture movements, just then gathering steam across North American university campuses. Some of the iconic books from the era began to operate in multiple registers: both popular books for the masses and textbooks for science students. Capra’s Tao of Physics—the most emblematic and successful of these efforts—exemplifies the hybrid nature of the new books and the diverse roles they came to play.2
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The book, like its author, traveled a long route to American classrooms. Austrian-born Capra completed his PhD in theoretical particle physics at the University of Vienna in 1966 and moved on to a postdoctoral fellowship in Paris. There the student uprisings and general strikes of May 1968 left a deep impression on him. He also met a senior physicist from the University of California at Santa Cruz who was spending some sabbatical time in Paris. The professor invited Capra to Santa Cruz for a follow-up postdoctoral fellowship, which Capra gladly accepted. He arrived in Santa Cruz in September 1968.3
Capra broadened his horizons on many fronts in California. As he later wrote, he led “a somewhat schizophrenic life” in Santa Cruz: hardworking quantum physicist by day, tuned-in hippie by night. He continued his political education, already stoked by the Paris of 1968: he went to lectures and rallies by the Black Panthers; he protested against the war in Vietnam. He took in “the rock festivals, the psychedelics, the new sexual freedom, the communal living” that had become de rigueur among the Santa Cruz counterculture set. He also began exploring Eastern spiritual traditions—an interest originally sparked by his filmmaker brother—by reading essays and attending lectures by Alan Watts, a local expert on Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism.4
In the midst of these explorations, Capra had a powerful experience on the beach at Santa Cruz during the summer of 1969. Watching the ocean waves roll in and out, he fell into a kind of trance. As he later described it, the physical processes all around him took on a new immediacy: the vibrations of atoms and molecules in the sand, rocks, and water; the showers of high-energy cosmic rays striking the atmosphere from outer space; all these were more than the formulas and graphs he had studied in the classroom. He felt them in a new, visceral way. They were, he gleaned, the Dance of Shiva from Hindu mythology. Inspired by his experience on the beach, he soon noticed similar parallels between cutting-edge quantum theory and central tenets of Eastern thought: the emphasis upon wholeness or interconnectedness, for example, or upon dynamic interactions rather than static entities.5
In December 1970, his visa about to expire, Capra returned to Europe. With no new job lined up, he began to check with some of his contacts to see if he might find some steady position. He wandered into the theoretical physics division at London’s Imperial College, whose leader he had met in California. The physicist had no fellowships to offer—finances had become as difficult for British physicists as for their American colleagues by that time—but with the financial downturn there were at least some empty desks around. And so Capra set up shop at Imperial: no position, no income, but a tiny corner of office space he could call his own.6
His financial situation quickly grew dim. He took on private tutoring jobs; he did some freelance work writing abstracts of recent physics articles for the Physikalische Berichte. When he could spare the time, he delved more deeply into his readings of Eastern texts, inspired as much by Alan Watts’s teachings as by his own mystical experience on the beach. And he hatched a plan to put some of his hard-won physics knowledge to use: he would write a textbook on his beloved subject of quantum physics. If he could write the book quickly enough, he reasoned—and if he could get a major textbook publisher interested in the project—he might pull out of his financial tailspin. Not only that, the textbook might make him a more attractive candidate for a teaching position down the road.7
By November 1972 he had drawn up an outline for the book and begun drafting chapters. He reached out to another contact for advice: MIT’s Victor Weisskopf, whom he had met at a recent summer school in Italy. Weisskopf, like Capra a native of Vienna, was by that time a grand old man of the profession. He had recently completed a term as director general of CERN, the multinational high-energy physics laboratory in Geneva. By the time Capra sought Weisskopf’s advice, the elder physicist was well into a sideline career as a successful popular-science writer. He had also published a highly influential textbook on nuclear physics—a book that held the honor, Weisskopf was always happy to recount, of having been most frequently stolen from the MIT libraries. Weisskopf had suggested the idea to Capra of writing a textbook when they met at the summer school. Capra sent his chapter outline to Weisskopf, hoping for some further encouragement. He also hoped that his senior colleague would use his contacts to help line up a publisher and secure an advance payment in anticipation of future royalties.8
Back and fort
h their letters flew: Weisskopf commenting on Capra’s proposal and soon on individual chapter drafts; Capra thanking him for his comments but pressing again and again for more tangible forms of support. “As you know, the problem of financial support has become vital for me,” Capra responded in January 1973, “and I wonder whether I could approach a publisher for a contract” at that stage of the project. If so, which publisher would Weisskopf recommend, and would Weisskopf mind contacting the press directly to recommend the book? “I am sorry to bother you with these problems, but I have indeed very little time to work on the book at the moment, because I am not supported by anybody and have to make my living with much less creative work.” Weisskopf’s responses—asking for more drafts and sending along further comments—sidestepped the issues Capra found most pressing. Capra reiterated his urgent need to line up a publisher and get some financial support.9
A few weeks (and chapter drafts) later, Weisskopf addressed Capra’s main concern. “I like your style and find many things well expressed,” he began. “I would again like to encourage you to go ahead and finish the manuscript.” But, Weisskopf advised, Capra should wait before approaching a publisher until he had a complete manuscript in hand. He should also understand that few publishers offered advances for textbooks any more. “I understand your need for financial support but I suppose you are aware of the fact that a book like this is not going to bring in much money because of the nature of the subject. The best that one can hope is something like $1 thousand the first year and less thereafter.” Writing a textbook, Weisskopf counseled, might be a noble endeavor, but it was a lousy get-rich-quick scheme.10
Just at that moment, Capra received an invitation to visit Berkeley and give some talks to physicist Geoffrey Chew’s group. (Capra had sent some early essays comparing Chew’s core notion of particle physics—a self-consistent particle “bootstrap”—to central doctrines of Buddhist thought. Chew had passed these essays on to two graduate students, who in turn encouraged Chew to invite Capra to visit.) While back in California, Capra also checked in with his former postdoctoral adviser at Santa Cruz. They talked about Capra’s parallel projects: continuing his exploration of Eastern spiritual traditions and pushing forward on his textbook. The Santa Cruz physicist—“a rather hard-headed and pragmatic physicist” in Capra’s estimation, hardly one drawn to the woolly countercultural currents swirling around him—encouraged Capra to combine his interests and change gears with his book project. Rather than write a physics textbook, why not refocus the book to explore the parallels between physics and Eastern thought that had so intrigued Capra since his transcendental experience on the beach? Coming on the heels of Weisskopf’s realistic cautions about how well a textbook might sell, Capra took his former adviser’s advice. Upon his return to London, Capra began composing new chapters on Eastern traditions—one each on Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Zen—and interleaving them with the textbook chapters he had already written.11
Capra found the new plan inspiring and set about trying to interest publishers in the project. A dozen rejections later, a small London-based publishing house agreed to take a gamble on it, even offering Capra the long-sought, if modest, advance payment that allowed him to finish writing it up. Completed manuscript in hand, Capra next managed to interest a tiny American publisher to bring out an edition in the United States: Shambhala Press, then just five years old, which had been founded in Berkeley to publish books on Eastern mysticism and spirituality. The Tao of Physics thus appeared simultaneously in Britain and the United States in 1975.12
A few months later, Capra presented Weisskopf with a copy of the book, when they were both attending a conference in California. Weisskopf read most of it on his plane flight back to Massachusetts, and, as he reported back, he “liked it very much.” “It is very hard for me to judge whether you have succeeded in your task,” Weisskopf continued, “since it addresses itself to a very specific kind of public than you find here in the East.” (Translation: we have no hippies at MIT.) “I do believe, however, that it is a good book and that there will be many people who will have a better idea of physics after they have read it.” Weisskopf shared his concern that some readers might be “scared off by the ‘Tao’ side of the deliberation” but conceded that “you can’t make it right for everybody.” He closed on a brighter note: “I wish you all luck and wonder how the sales will go.”13
They went well. The first edition from Shambhala—20,000 copies—sold out in just over a year. Bantam brought out a pocket-sized edition in 1977 as part of its “New Age” series, with an initial printing of 150,000 copies. By 1983, half a million copies were in print, with additional editions prepared in a host of foreign languages. Twenty-five years later the book had achieved true blockbuster status: forty-three editions, including twenty-three translations—everything from German, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian to Farsi, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean—with millions of copies sold worldwide.14
Many factors seem to have combined to launch the book into the sales stratosphere. For one thing, Capra enjoyed a firm command of the physics; he had been well trained. The fact that the physics-heavy portions of his book had begun as drafts for a textbook—and that those sections had benefited from careful readings by a towering physicist like Viki Weisskopf—surely helped Capra clarify just how he wanted to present difficult concepts such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and quantum nonlocality. Moreover, his incursions into Eastern thought, while sometimes belittled by specialists in religious studies, nonetheless sprang from a genuine earnestness.15 Capra had become a seeker, reading everything he could get his hands on. By the time he finished the book, he had spent years experimenting with alternate modes of encountering the world, always pushing to absorb the insights of the ancient mystical traditions. And then there was his impeccable timing. With the New Age rage in full force by the mid-1970s, conditions were ripe for a book like The Tao of Physics. Capra’s book capitalized on a diffuse, widely shared craving to find some meaning in the universe that might transcend the mundane affairs of the here and now. The market for Capra’s book had been teeming like a huge pot of water just on the verge of boiling. The Tao of Physics became a catalyst, triggering an enormous reaction.
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When Capra set out to promote the book, he seemed straight out of central casting. “Tall and slim with curly brown hair skirting the nape of his neck,” cooed one Washington Post reporter. “Capra, with California tan, shoulder bag, and a Yin Yang button pinned to his casual jacket, seems more a purveyor of some new self-awareness scheme than a physicist.” It soon became clear, however, that Capra was more than just a pretty face. He was on a mission not just to explore the foundations of modern physics but to alter the very fabric of Western civilization: “a cultural revolution in the true sense of the word,” as he put it in the book’s epilogue. As he saw it, modern physics had undergone a tremendous sea change in its understanding of reality, and yet most physicists—let alone the broader public—had failed to appreciate the consequences. The “mechanistic, fragmented world view” of classical physics had been toppled by quantum mechanics and relativity, but Western society still carried on as if Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger had never lifted a pencil. “The world view implied by modern physics is inconsistent with our present society, which does not reflect the harmonious interrelatedness we observe in nature,” he explained. A proper understanding of what modern physics had achieved—especially its “philosophical, cultural, and spiritual implications”—could help restore the balance before it was too late.16
Figure 9.1. Fritjof Capra discussing The Tao of Physics in November 1977. (Source: Photograph by Roger Ressmeyer, courtesy of Getty Images.)
Capra’s main argument throughout The Tao of Physics was that modern physicists had rediscovered the teachings of the age-old sutras of Buddhism, Vedas of Hinduism, and I Ching of ancient Chinese thought. “The further we penetrate into
the submicroscopic world, the more we shall realize how the modern physicist, like the Eastern mystic, has come to see the world as a system of inseparable, interacting, and ever-moving components with man being an integral part of this system.” Capra marched through a series of these parallels. First and foremost was what he saw as the “organicism” or holism implied by quantum interconnectedness: ultimately the quantum world is not divisible into separate parts but is woven into one seamless whole.17 Capra also saw deep parallels between the koans, or riddles, of Buddhist thought, the constant interplay of opposites in Taoism, and the paradoxes of quantum theory. Niels Bohr’s complementarity called on physicists to transcend what appeared to be opposites: neither wave nor particle but both. Although “this notion of complementarity has become an essential part of the way physicists think about nature,” Capra explained, the physicists had come late to the party: “in fact, the notion of complementarity proved to be extremely useful 2,500 years ago,” when the Chinese sages promoted the dialectic of yin and yang to the center of their cosmos. Little wonder, Capra concluded, that Bohr adopted the yin-yang symbol for his family coat of arms. Einstein’s relativity, meanwhile, with its interconversion of matter and energy via E = mc2, echoed the Eastern emphasis upon dynamism and flow: the universe caught in a never-ending dance rather than being a collection of static objects. The merging of space and time into a unified spacetime likewise brought the physicists’ cosmic picture into line with long-standing Eastern intuitions.18
The Tao of Physics succeeded in that rare category, the crossover hit. It held broad appeal for hundreds of thousands of readers who were not physicists, or academics of any sort. Looking back, a few years after its original publication, one reviewer marveled that Capra’s book had sold “amazingly well, not only to the usual Shambhala devotees of Eastern religion but also to engineers, Caltech grad students and people of the general population who, a few years later, would be reading Carl Sagan.” Reviewers routinely touted Capra’s clear expository style. In fact, the book received a significant amount of serious, scholarly attention. Academic journals specializing in philosophy, history, and sociology carried reviews. The journal Theoria to Theory published a lengthy review section on the book, with detailed comments from three specialists in philosophy and religious studies. Sociologists and philosophers of science likewise devoted substantial articles to the book, picking through the claimed parallels and subjecting each to sustained critique.19