ABSTRACT
I WAS AN UNDERGRADUATE in the early 1960s when I first encountered Zarathustra and Friedrich Nietzsche’s radical individualism. Apolitical and still uninvolved in the protest movement, I had just decided to abandon the study of physical science. My interest in science and commitment to a career in engineering had been formed in the wake of Sputnik with the encouragement of my father, an inventor. Throughout high school I assumed that I would become a scientist or an engineer (although I wrote poetry and had many other interests too). So far as I can remember, no other type of career crossed my mind. But after one year of college science in the atmosphere of a large university, I realized that I was bored and alienated.
