Synchronicity

Synchronicity (in german: "Synchronizität") is a concept, first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. During his career, Jung furnished several different definitions of it.Bernard D. Beitman (2009) "Coincidence Studies: A Freudian Perspective..." Jung defined synchronicity as an "acausal connecting (togetherness) principle," "meaningful coincidence", and "acausal parallelism." He introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture.Casement, Ann, "Who Owns Jung?", Karnac Books, 2007. ISBN 1855754037 . Cf. page 25.
== History ==
In 1952 Jung published a paper "Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge" (Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle) Since included in his Collected Works volume 8. in a volume which also contained a related study by the physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, who was sometimes critical of Jung's ideas.Metanexus Institute Charlene P. E. Burns (2011) Wolfgang Pauli, Carl Jung, and the Acausal Connecting Principle: A Case Study in Transdisciplinarity Jung's belief was that, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning. Events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of causality, which does not generally contradict the Axiom of Causality but in specific cases can lead to prematurely giving up causal explanation.
Jung used the concept in arguing for the existence of the paranormal. A believer in the paranormal, Arthur Koestler wrote extensively on synchronicity in his 1972 book The Roots of Coincidence.Koestler, Arthur (1973). The Roots of Coincidence. Vintage. ISBN 0394719344. 
Mainstream science explains synchronicity as mere coincidences or spurious correlations which can be described by laws of statistics – for instance, by the law of truly large numbers. However, professor Bernard D. Beitman (who is not a mathematician) accused the law of truly large numbers of not being well established but based on "plausibility, not mathematical proof"Beitman, Bernard D., (15 Apr 2018), Intrigued by the Low Probability of Synchronicities? Coincidence theorists and statisticians dispute the meaning of rare events. at PsychologyToday
==Description==
Jung coined the word "synchronicity" to describe "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." In his book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung wrote:
In the introduction to his book, Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, Roderick Main wrote:
In his book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung wrote:
Synchronicity was a principle which, Jung felt, had explanatory power for his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious.Jung defined the collective unconscious as akin to instincts in Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. It described a governing dynamic which underlies the whole of human experience and history — social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. The emergence of the synchronistic paradigm was a significant move away from Cartesian dualism towards an underlying philosophy of double-aspect theory. Some argue this shift was essential to bringing theoretical coherence to Jung's earlier work.Brown, R.S. (2014). Evolving Attitudes. International Journal of Jungian Studies, 6.3, 243–253.In Synchronicity in the final two pages of the Conclusion, Jung stated that not all coincidences are meaningful and further explained the creative causes of this phenomenon.
Even at Jung's presentation of his work on synchronicity in 1951 at an Eranos lecture, his ideas on synchronicity were evolving. On Feb. 25, 1953, in a letter to Carl Seelig, the Swiss author and journalist who wrote a biography of Albert Einstein, Jung wrote, "Professor Einstein was my guest on several occasions at dinner. . . These were very early days when Einstein was developing his first theory of relativity [and] It was he who first started me on thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic conditionality. More than 30 years later the stimulus led to my relation with the physicist professor W. Pauli and to my thesis of psychic synchronicity." 
Following discussions with both Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, Jung believed there were parallels between synchronicity and aspects of relativity theory and quantum mechanics. 
Jung believed life was not a series of random events but rather an expression of a deeper order, which he and Pauli referred to as Unus mundus. This deeper order led to the insights that a person was both embedded in a universal wholeness and that the realisation of this was more than just an intellectual exercise, but also had elements of a spiritual awakening. From the religious perspective, synchronicity shares similar characteristics of an "intervention of grace". Jung also believed that in a person's life, synchronicity served a role similar to that of dreams, with the purpose of shifting a person's egocentric conscious thinking to greater wholeness.
==Forms==
The occurrence of a "meaningful coincidence in time" can take three forms:
 
==Examples==
In his book Synchronicity Jung tells the following story as an example of a synchronistic event:
 
The French writer Deschamps claims in his memoirs that, in 1805, he was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Fontgibu. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him that the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Fontgibu. Many years later, in 1832, Deschamps was at a dinner and once again ordered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Fontgibu was missing to make the setting complete – and in the same instant, the now-senile de Fontgibu entered the room, having got the wrong address.Emile Deschamps, Oeuvres completes : Tomes I–VI, Reimpr. de l'ed. de Paris 1872–74
Jung wrote, after describing some examples, "When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them – for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes."C. G. Jung Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, p. 91
In his book Thirty Years That Shook Physics – The Story of Quantum Theory (1966), George Gamow writes about Wolfgang Pauli, who was apparently considered a person particularly associated with synchronicity events. Gamow whimsically refers to the "Pauli effect", a mysterious phenomenon which is not understood on a purely materialistic basis, and probably never will be. The following anecdote is told:
==Relationship with causality==
Causality, when defined expansively (as for instance in the "mystic psychology" book The Kybalion, or in the platonic Kant-style Axiom of Causality), states that "nothing can happen without being caused." Such an understanding of causality may be incompatible with synchronicity. Other definitions of causality (for example, the Hume#Causation neo-Humean definition) are concerned only with the relation of cause to effect. As such, they are compatible with synchronicity. There are also opinions which hold that, where there is no external observable cause, the cause can be internal.Psychologies of Mind: The Collected Papers of John Maze, edited by Rachael Henry
It is also pointed out that, since Jung took into consideration only the narrow definition of causality – only the efficient cause – his notion of "acausality" is also narrow and so is not applicable to [Fhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes#Final_cause final] and formal causes as understood in Aristotelian or Thomist systems.James Arraj (1996) The Mystery of Matter: Nonlocality, Morphic Resonance, Synchronicity and the Philosophy of Nature of St. Thomas Aquinas, ch. 8. Synchronicity and Formal Causality ' The final causality is inherentVictor Mansfield, (1995), Synchronicity, Science and Soul-Making: Understanding Jungian Synchronicity Through Physics, Buddhism, and Philosophy in synchronicity (because it leads to individuation) or synchronicity can be a kind of replacement for final causality; however, such finalism or teleology is considered to be outside the domain of modern science.
==Explanations==
===Probability theory===
Mainstream mathematics argues that statistics and probability theory (exemplified in, e.g., Littlewood's law or the Law of truly large numbers) suffice to explain any purported synchronistic events as mere coincidences.John Navin, interview with David Hand, (2014), Why Coincidences, Miracles And Rare Events Happen Every Day , Forbes.comDavid Lane & Andrea Diem Lane, 2010, DESULTORY DECUSSATION Where Littlewood’s Law of Miracles meets Jung’s Synchronicity , www.integralworld.net The law of truly large numbers, for instance, states that in large enough populations, any strange event is arbitrarily likely to happen by mere chance. However, some proponents of synchronicity question whether it is even sensible in principle to try to evaluate synchronicity statistically. Jung himself and von Franz argued that statistics work precisely by ignoring what is unique about the individual case, whereas synchronicity tries to investigate that uniqueness. 
Among some psychologists, Jung's works, such as "The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche", were received as problematic. Fritz Levi, in his 1952 review in "Neue Schweizer Rundschau" (New Swiss Observations), critiqued the theory of synchronicity as vague in determinability of synchronistic events, saying that Jung never specifically explained his rejection of "magic causality" to which such an acausal principle as synchronicity would be related. He also questioned the theory's usefulness.
===Psychology===
In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms own author preconceptions, and avoids information and interpretations that contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference, or is a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study, or dis-confirmation of an alternative hypothesis. Confirmation bias is of interest in the teaching of critical thinking, as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only to evidence that challenges a preconceived idea, but not to evidence that supports it.Tim van Gelder, "Heads I win, tails you lose": A Foray Into the Psychology of Philosophy
Likewise, in psychology and sociology, the term apophenia is used for the mistaken detection of a pattern or meaning in random or meaningless data.Brugger, Peter. "From Haunted Brain to Haunted Science: A Cognitive Neuroscience View of Paranormal and Pseudoscientific Thought", Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by J. Houran and R. Lange (North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2001). Skeptics, such as Robert Todd Carroll of the Skeptic's Dictionary, argue that the perception of synchronicity is better explained as apophenia. Primates use pattern detection in their form of intelligence,Pattern recognition of behavioral events in the nonhuman primate and this can lead to erroneous identification of non-existent patterns. A famous example of this is the fact that human face recognition is so robust, and based on such a basic archetype (essentially two dots and a line contained in a circle), that human beings are very prone to identify faces in random data all through their environment, like the "man in the moon", or faces in wood grain, an example of the visual form of apophenia known as pareidolia.
Charles Tart sees danger in synchronistic thinking: 'This danger is the temptation to mental laziness. [...] it would be very tempting to say, "Well, it's synchronistic, it's forever beyond my understanding," and so (prematurely) give up trying to find a causal explanation.'Charles Tart, Causality and Synchronicity – Steps Toward Clarification , (1981), Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, vol. 75, pp. 121–141.
===Mathematics===
Jung and his followers (e.g., Marie-Louise von Franz) share in common the belief that numbers are the archetypes of order, and the major participants in synchronicity creation. This hypothesis has implications that are relevant to some of the “chaotic” phenomena in nonlinear dynamics. Dynamical systems theory has provided a new context from which to speculate about synchronicity because it gives predictions about the transitions between emergent states of order and nonlocality.Hogenson, G. B. (2005). The self, the symbolic and synchronicity: Virtual realities and the emergence of the psyche. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 50, 271–284. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-8774.2005.00531.x This view, however, is not part of mainstream mathematical thought.
===Quantum Physics===
According to a certain view, synchronicity serves as a way of making sense of or describing some aspects of quantum mechanics. It argues that quantum experiments demonstrate that, at least in the microworld of subatomic particles, there is an instantaneous connection between particles no matter how far away they are from one another. Known as quantum non-locality or entanglement, the proponents of this view argue that this points to a unified field that precedes physical reality. As with archetypal reasoning, the proponents argue that two events can correspond to each other (e.g. particle with particle, or person with person) in a meaningful way. 
F. David Peat saw parallels between Synchronicity and David Bohm's theory of implicate order. According to Bohm's theory, there are three major realms of existence: the explicate (unfolded) order, the implicate (enfolded) order, and a source or ground beyond both. The flowing movement of the whole can thus be understood as a process of continuous enfolding and unfolding of order or structure. From moment to moment there is a rhythmic pulse between implicate and explicate realities. Therefore, synchronicity would literally take place as the bridge between implicate and explicate orders, whose complementary nature define the undivided totality.
===Religion===
Many people believe that the Universe, angels or God cause synchronicity. Among the general public, divine intervention is the most widely accepted explanation for these meaningful coincidences.
==Publications==
* Also included in his Collected Works volume 8.
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*Wilson, Robert Anton (1988) Coincidance: A Head Test
== See also in Wikipedia in english ==
* Black box theory
* Correlation =/= Causation
* Emergence
* Arthur Koestler’s "The Paranormal" classification of coincidences
* Look-elsewere effect
* Multiple discovery
* "Post hoc ergo propter hoc"
* Propinquity
* Semiotics
* Superluminal communication
* Synchromysticism
==References==
==Bibliography==
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* Roth, Remo, F., Return of the World Soul, Wolfgang Pauli, C.G. Jung and the Challenge of Psychophysical Reality [unus mundus]. Pari Publishing, 2011
==External links==
* Igor V. Limar (2011). "Carl G. Jung’s Synchronicity and Quantum Entanglement: Schrödinger’s Cat ‘Wanders’ Between Chromosomes". NeuroQuantology Journal, 09 (2). pp. 313–321.
*Carl Jung and Synchronicity
== Source ==
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it:Sincronicità
 
Category:Mind–body problem
Category:Open problems
Category:Paranormal
Category:Philosophical problems
Category:Philosophy of mind
Category:Philosophy of physics
Category:Spirituality