Switching once more from macro- to microcosmos, we are confronted with the famous 'Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox'. It has been the subject of controversy ever since Einstein formulated it in 1933, and has recently been given a more precise expression by J. S. Bell, a theoretical physicist at CERN. 'Bell's Theorem' states that when two particles have interacted and then flown off in opposite directions, interference with one particle will instantly affect the other particle, regardless of the distance between them. The correctness of Bell's experimental results is not in dispute, but its interpretation poses a major problem because it seems to imply a sort of 'telepathy' between the particles in question. This is how David Bohm, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, has summed up the situation (his italics):
It is generally acknowledged that the quantum theory has many
strikingly novel features . . . However, there has been too little
emphasis on what is, in our view, the most fundamentally different
new feature of all, i.e. the intimate interconnection of different
systems that are not in spatial contact. This has been especially
clearly revealed through the . . . well-known experiments of Einstein,
Podolsky and Rosen . . .
Recently interest in this question has been stimulated by
the work of Bell, who obtained precise mathematical criteria,
distinguishing the experimental consequences of this feature of
'quantum interconnectedness of distant systems' . . . Thus, one is
led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the
classical idea of analysability of the world into separately and
independently existent parts . . . [21]
I must mention one more apparently non-causal law of nature: the so-called Pauli Exclusion Principle. Wolfgang Pauli, whom I have quoted before, got the Nobel Prize in 1945 for having discovered it. It says (very roughly speaking) that any one of the 'planetary orbits' inside an atom can only be occupied by one electron at a time. If it were not so, chaos would result and the atom would collapse -- but why is it so? The answer -- or rather, absence of an answer -- is vividly indicated in this passage quoted from Margenau (compressed):
Most of the organizing actions that occur in nature are brought about
by the Pauli Principle, which is simply a principle of symmetry,
a formal mathematical characteristic of the equations which in
the end regulate phenomena in nature. Almost miraculously it calls
into being the forces which bind atoms into molecules and molecules
into crystals. The impenetrability of matter, its very stability,
can be directly traced to the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Now, this
principle has no dynamic aspect to it at all. It acts like a force
though it is not a force. We cannot speak of it as doing anything
by mechanical action. No, it is a very general and elusive thing; a
mathematical symmetry imposed upon the basic equations of nature. [22]
These quotations (which could be multiplied indefinitely) do not represent solo voices, but rather a chorus of eminent physicists, aware of the revolutionary implications of quantum theory and of the new cosmology -- which are bound to transform man's image of the universe even more radically than the Copernican revolution had done. But, as already said, the general public is slow in becoming aware of this change. The dogmas and taboos of nineteenth-century materialist science relating to space, time, matter and energy, contained within a rigid framework of causality and determinism, still dominate the habits of thought of the educated public which prides itself on its rational outlook, and feels compelled to deny the existence of ESP-type phenomena which seemingly contradict the 'Laws of Nature'. In fact our physicists have been engaged, over the last fifty years, in ruthlessly discarding previously sacrosanct 'Laws of Nature' and replacing them with obscure mental constructs which cannot be represented in three-dimensional space, and whose quasi-mystical implications are hidden in technical jargon and mathematical formalism. If Galileo were resurrected, he would certainly accuse Heisenberg, Pauli et al. of 'dabbling in occult fancies'.
Curiously enough, during the same period parapsychology took on a more 'hard-nosed' appearance by relying more and more on statistical methods, rigorous controls, mechanical gadgets and electronic computers. Thus the climate in the two camps seemed to be changing in opposite directions: Rhine's successors are sometimes accused of drab pedantry, while Einstein's successors have been accused of flirting with ghosts in the guise of particles which have no mass, no weight, nor any precise location in space. These convergent trends are certainly significant, but that does not mean that physics will provide explanations for the phenomena of parapsychology in the near or even in the distant future. What both have in common is an attitude defying commonsense and defying 'Laws of Nature' previously considered as inviolable. Both are provocative and iconoclastic. And, to say it once more, the baffling paradoxa of physics make the baffling phenomena of parapsychology appear a little less preposterous. If distant regions of the universe can be brought into contact through wormholes in superspace, is telepathy still unthinkable? The analogies can be treacherous -- but it is encouraging to know that if the parapsychologist is out on a limb, the physicist is out on a tightrope.
8
There exists a type of phenomenon, even more mysterious than telepathy or precognition, which has puzzled man since the dawn of mythology: the seemingly accidental meeting of two unrelated causal chains in a coincidental event which appears both highly improbable and highly significant. Any theory which attempts to take such phenomena seriously must necessarily involve an even more radical break with our traditional categories of reasoning than the pronunciamentos of Einstein, Heisenberg or Feynman. It is certainly no coincidence that it was Wolfgang Pauli, discoverer of the Exclusion Principle, who collaborated with C. G. Jung on the latter's famous essay: 'Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle'. Jung coined the term 'synchronicity' for 'the simultaneous occurrence of two or more meaningfully but not causally connected events' [23]; and he claimed that the acausal factor behind such events is to be regarded as 'equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation'. [24]
'I have often come up against the phenomena in question,' Jung wrote, '. . . and could convince myself how much these inner experiences meant to my patients. In most cases they were things which people do not talk about for fear of exposing themselves to thoughtless ridicule. I was amazed to see how many people have had experiences of this kind and how carefully the secret was guarded.' [25]
Apparently the Swiss are more secretive by nature than the British, for, ever since I wrote The Roots of Coincidence I have been inundated with coincidences in readers' letters. The most revealing among these were written by people who started by solemnly affirming that to attribute significance to coincidences is sheer nonsense, yet could not resist the urge to tell their own favourite believe-it-or-not story. Could it be that inside every hard-nosed sceptic there is a soft-nosed mystic crying to be let out?
Readers who share an interest in the collecting of coincidences will find a fair selection in The Challenge of Chance. While working through this vast amount of material, some distinct patterns began to emerge, although they often overlapped, while in other cases it seemed doubtful whether some event with astronomical odds against chance should be interpreted as a manifestation of 'classical' ESP or in terms of acausal 'synchronicity'. Thus in the library type of cases, you search for an elusive reference, open a fat volume at random, and there it is. In the deus ex machina type of episodes there is a seemingly providential interposition just in the nick of time to solve a problem, or avert a disaster, or fulfil a premonition. It is interesting to note that this intercession occurs indiscriminately on tragic or trivial occasions. A sub-category in this group is the seemingly miraculous recovery of lost proper
ty, usually of sentimental, not monetary value. In the poltergeist cases emotional tensions (usually in unstable adolescents) coincide with gross physical happenings -- again regardless whether the effect is dramatic or grotesque. Among the most frequent 'convergent' or 'confluential' events (as one may call this type of coincidence) are unlikely encounters, although many of these might seem to be induced by ESP. Worst of all from a rational point of view are the clusterings of names, numbers, addresses and dates. Lastly, there is a wealth of well-authenticated cases of premonitions or warnings of impending disasters -- but here it is particularly difficult to make a distinction between ESP and synchronicity, or 'confluential events'.
Even more frustrating is the attempt to draw a line between significant coincidences, which seem to be contrived by some unknown agency beyond physical causation, and trivial coincidences due to chance alone. For any such attempt must invoke the laws of probability, which are full of pitfalls -- as we shall presently see.
9
Jung's essay on 'synchronicity', published in 1952*, was partly based on Paul Kammerer's book Das Gesetz der Serie**, published in 1919. Kammerer was the brilliant Viennese experimental biologist of Lamarckian persuasion who was accused of faking his results, and committed suicide in 1926, at the age of forty-five.*** He was throughout his life fascinated by coincidences and, from the age of twenty to forty, kept a log-book of them -- as Jung also did.
* Published in one volume together with Pauli's essay Der Einfluss
Archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung Naturwissenschaftlicher
Theorien bei Kepler' (Jung-Pauli, Naturerklärung und
Psyche, 1952).
** There is no English translation.
*** See The Case of the Midwife Toad.
Kammerer defined his concept of 'seriality' as the concurrence in space or recurrence in time of meaningfully but not causally connected events. His book contains exactly one hundred selected samples, classified with the meticulousness of a biologist devoted to taxonomy. He regarded single coincidences as merely the tips of the iceberg which happened to catch the eye among the ubiquitous manifestations of 'seriality'. He thus reversed the sceptic's argument that we tend to see significances everywhere because out of the multitude of random events we only remember those few which are significant. At the end of the first, classificatory part of his book, Kammerer concluded:
So far we have been concerned with the factual manifestations of
recurrent series, without attempting an explanation. We have found
that the recurrence of identical or similar data in contiguous
areas of space or time is a simple empirical fact which has to be
accepted and which cannot be explained by coincidence -- or rather,
which makes coincidence rule to such an extent that the concept of
coincidence itself is negated. [26]
In the second, theoretical part of his book, Kammerer develops his theory that coexistent with physical causality there is an acausal principle active in the universe which tends towards unity-in-variety. In some respects it is comparable to that other mysterious force, universal gravity; but whereas gravity acts indiscriminately on all matter, this hypothetical factor acts selectively to make like and like converge in space and time -- it correlates by affinity or some sort of selective resonance, like tuning forks vibrating on the same wave-length. By what means this acausal agency interferes with the causal order of things we cannot know since it operates outside the known laws of physics. In space it produces confluential events related by affinities of form and function; in time, similarly related series:
We thus arrive at the image of a world-mosaic or cosmic kaleidoscope,
which, in spite of constant shufflings and rearrangements, also takes
care of bringing like and like together . . . [27]
One need not be a professional gambler to feel attracted by Kammerer's Law of Seriality. Most languages have a phrase or proverb for it -- 'Das Gesetz der Serie' is a cliché in German, the equivalent of 'It never rains but it pours'. Some people seem to become coincidence-prone as others become accident-prone. At the end of his book Kammerer expresses his belief that seriality is
... ubiquitous and continuous in life, nature and cosmos. It is the
umbilical cord that connects thought, feeling, science and art with the
womb of the universe that gave birth to them. [28]
The main difference between Kammerer's seriality and Jung's synchronicity is that the former emphasizes serial happenings in time (though he also includes simultaneous coincidental events), whereas the latter's emphasis is on simultaneous events (but also includes precognitive dreams which may have occurred several days before the event). Kanimerer based his theory partly on the analogy with gravity, partly on the periodic cycles in biology and cosmology. Some of his excursions into physics contain naive errors; other passages show tantalizing flashes of intuition -- so much so that Einstein commented favourably on the book; he called it 'original and by no means absurd'. [29] Jung, on the other hand, used Pauli quasi as a tutor in theoretical physics, but in the end made little use of it; his explanations of the 'acausal factor' were utterly obscure, invoking the collective unconscious and its archetypes. This was sadly disappointing but it helped to turn synchronicity into a cult-word.
The part played by Pauli in these developments is of special interest. Pauli shared Kammerer's and Jung's belief in non-causal, non-physical factors operating in the universe -- was not his own Exclusion Principle 'acting like a force though it is not a force'? He probably had a more profound insight than most of his colleagues into the limitations of science. Besides, like Jung, he was haunted all his life by poltergeist-like phenomena. [30] When he was fifty and a Nobel laureate, he wrote a penetrating study on science and mysticism, as exemplified in the works of Johannes Kepler. [31] It was first printed as a monograph by the Jung Institute in Zurich. Towards the end of the essay Pauli wrote (his italics):
Today we have the natural sciences, but no longer a philosophy of
science. Since the discovery of the elementary quantum, physics
was obliged to renounce its proud claim to be able to understand
in principle the whole of the world. But this predicament
may contain the seed of further developments which will correct
the previous one-sided orientation and will move towards a unitary
world-view in which science is only a part in the whole. [32]
This kind of philosophical doubt about 'the meaning behind it all' is not unusual among scientists when they reach the age of fifty: one might almost call it the rule. But Pauli went further than trying to devise physicalistic theories to explain ESP or synchronicity. He felt that this was hopeless, and that it was more honest to accept that these phenomena were the visible traces of invisible acausal factors -- like the bubble-chamber tracks of invisible particles. Pauli's revolutionary proposal was to extend the concept of non-causal events from the micro-world (where its legitimacy was recognized) to the macro-world (where it was not). He may have hoped that by joining forces with Jung, they might be able to work out an acausal theory which made some sense of paranormal phenomena. The result, as already said, was disappointing. The upshot of Jung's essay on synchronicity was a curious diagram on which, Jung says, he and Pauli 'finally agreed'. This is the diagram: [33]
Indestructible energy
^
Constant connection | Inconstant connection
through effect | through contingency,
(causality) <--------> similarity, or 'meaning'
| (synchronicity)
|
v
Space-Time continuum
Jung offers no explanation as to how the scheme is meant to work, and his comments on it are so obscure that I must leave it to the interested reader to look them up in the original. One cannot help being reminded of the biblical mountain whose labours gave birth to a mouse. But it w
as quite a symbolic mouse nevertheless. It was for the first time that the hypothesis of acausal factors at large in the universe was given the joint stamp of respectability by a psychologist and a physicist, both of international renown.
10
The belief in connections beyond physical causality did not, of course, originate with Kammerer or Jung. Its immediate ancestry can be traced back to Schopenhauer, who had considerable influence over both Freud and Jung. Schopenhauer taught that physical causality was only one of the principles ruling the world; the other was a metaphysical entity, a kind of universal consciousness, compared to which individual consciousness is 'as a dream compared to reality'. He wrote:
Coincidence is the simultaneous occurrence of causally unconnected
events . . . If we visualize each causal chain progressing in time
as a meridian on the globe, then we may represent simultaneous
events by the parallel circles of latitude. . . . All the events in
a man's life could accordingly stand in two fundamentally different
connections. [34]
This idea of unity-in-diversity can be followed all the way back to the Pythagorean 'Harmony of the Spheres',* and the Hippocratics' 'sympathy of all things': 'there is one common flow, one common breathing, all things are in sympathy'. The doctrine that everything in the universe hangs together, partly by mechanical causes, but mainly by hidden affinities (which also account for apparent coincidences), provided not only the foundation for sympathetic magic, astrology and alchemy; it also runs as a leit-motif through the teachings of Taoism and Buddhism, the neo-Platonists, and the philosophers of the early Renaissance. It was neatly summed up by (among many others) Pico della Mirandola, A.D. 1550:
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