I think that it was in the 1970s that Heisenberg's Uncertainly Principle, until then a very important, but nonetheless obscure attempt to explain part of the subatomic physical world, became a metaphor for our lives. It was a captivating and even convincing argument: what was true on a subatomic level rippled out into our super-molecular lives. It didn't take long for physicists to start explaining to philosophers that subatomic particles were governed by different rules than those of our more familiar physical universe, but it's proven too convincing an argument to abandon, and it persists in our consciousness, perhaps as a glimmer of hope or longing, well beyond the time that it was actually tenable. The interaction between physics and the way laypersons perceive their world undoubtedly didn't start with quantum physics, and certainly didn't end with eastern mysticism. In the 1990s the Sokol affair caused a great furor in post-modernist circles, this probably wasn't the last time we'll see this happen.