creative breakthroughs

[David Morris]

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/03/in-mid-60s-lsd-research-stud.html#more-174725

A wonderful long-read at The Heretic by Tim Doody, on 1966 LSD studies
that took place as the US government's position on acid research
shifted from "sure, go ahead, scientists" to "nope, this is now
banned." The series of tests described in the article took place at
the International Foundation for Advanced Study (IFAS) in Menlo Park,
CA. Scientists from Stanford, Hewlett-Packard, and elsewhere
participated. The volunteers each brought "three highly technical
problems from their respective fields that they’d been unable to solve
for at least several months." They took "a relatively low dose of
acid," 100 micrograms, to enhance their creativity.

Snip:

Over the course of the preceding year, IFAS researchers had dosed a
total of 22 other men for the creativity study, including a
theoretical mathematician, an electronics engineer, a furniture
designer, and a commercial artist. By including only those whose jobs
involved the hard sciences (the lack of a single female participant
says much about mid-century career options for women), they sought to
examine the effects of LSD on both visionary and analytical thinking.
Such a group offered an additional bonus: Anything they produced
during the study would be subsequently scrutinized by departmental
chairs, zoning boards, review panels, corporate clients, and the like,
thus providing a real-world, unbiased yardstick for their results.

In surveys administered shortly after their LSD-enhanced creativity
sessions, the study volunteers, some of the best and brightest in
their fields, sounded like tripped-out neopagans at a backwoods
gathering. Their minds, they said, had blossomed and contracted with
the universe. They’d beheld irregular but clean geometrical patterns
glistening into infinity, felt a rightness before solutions
manifested, and even shapeshifted into relevant formulas, concepts,
and raw materials.

[The volunteers] remained firm: LSD absolutely had helped them solve
their complex, seemingly intractable problems. But here’s the
clincher. After their 5HT2A neural receptors simmered down, they
remained firm: LSD absolutely had helped them solve their complex,
seemingly intractable problems. And the establishment agreed. The 26
men unleashed a slew of widely embraced innovations shortly after
their LSD experiences, including a mathematical theorem for NOR gate
circuits, a conceptual model of a photon, a linear electron
accelerator beam-steering device, a new design for the vibratory
microtome, a technical improvement of the magnetic tape recorder,
blueprints for a private residency and an arts-and-crafts shopping
plaza, and a space probe experiment designed to measure solar
properties. Fadiman and his colleagues published these jaw-dropping
results and closed shop.