Consider the idea of synchronicity: a term coined in 1930 by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung as an “acausal connecting principle.” Though he'd attribute the idea to dinner discussions with Einstein about relativity, along with personal analyses of dreams, coincidences, and cultural archetypes, the notion took flight after discussions with (Linus) Pauli about novel aspects of quantum physics that distinguished it from classical mechanistic determinism. In retrospect, Jung's insights about the need for a new acausal principle in science were brilliant and prescient. Nonetheless his low threshold for accepting anecdotal evidence about “meaningful coincidences” without applying statistical analysis to rule out spurious correlations was a serious failing in his work. Jung trusted his intuitive sense of when things were connected. But in light of the mind's capacity to fabricate false linkages at times, pure intuition on its own is not genuine science.
”We don't allow faster than light neutrinos in here,” said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.
Like Carl Jung (apparently), I was fascinated by the basic concepts of quantum mechanics the first time they were introduced to me and, like Jung, I have dabbled in misinterpreting what the theory has to say about how I, and all of human consciousness, fit into this illusory world. Who doesn't see themselves as the focal-point of a me-centric cosmos, solipsistically parsing coincidence as personalised messages from the universe itself? (Surely, not just me?) Although I haven't read any of Jung's works (despite being intrigued by his concepts of universal archetypes, the shadow, and the collective unconscious whenever I come across them), I have also long been fascinated by (what I understand of) Jung's theory of synchronicity – in the sense that I don't really believe in it as an immutable force of nature, but can't shake the feeling that it operates in my own life. To be sure: I'm a dabbler, a magpie of ideas, and as Synchronicity appeared to relate scientifically to some of my more esoteric interests, I suspected it would be right in my wheelhouse. And it was. But it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. Starting at the very dawn of recorded scientific theory, author Paul Halpern traces the history of thought on cause and effect; and in particular, how that concept relates to light and the evolution of thought as to whether its speed has a definite, and unbreakable, upper limit. I loved everything about this historical journey – and especially loved learning how, throughout the ages, rational scientists have been unwilling to give up their more irrational beliefs in the face of indisputably contradictory evidence – and even when the narrative arrives at relativity, collapsing wave functions, and quantum entanglement, Halpern's writing is clear and explanatory enough to have not gone over my head. Ending with modern quantum theory (and seemingly acausal connections that have nothing to do with the universe sending me messages), Synchronicity is a fascinating read, beginning to end; not what I expected from the publisher's blurb but right up my alley nonetheless. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
The advent of quantum mechanics was jolting for those traditionalists who used physics to divide the world into two parts: things that, at least in principle, might objectively be measured, on the one hand, and intangible phenomena, on the other. The latter category included things such as consciousness, the sense of free will (even if it turned out to be illusory), ethics, aesthetics, and other abstractions that seemed hard to quantify but were universally accepted to be real, along with all manner of purported supernatural and spiritual entities, from divine beings to ghosts, that attracted some scientifically minded individuals, but certainly not all. Certainly, thanks to movements such as psychic determinism, it had become fashionable in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries for some thinkers to argue that eventually everything will find objective, mechanistic explanation.It's common knowledge that in our earliest days, there was no distinction made between the natural and the supernatural; it was perfectly logical to believe that the sun was being driven across the sky every day in a golden chariot. And when later thinkers began trying to separate the mundane from the divine, they still allowed their observations of what is to be coloured by their preconceptions of what ought to be; a prejudice that seems to dog us to this day. The Pythagoreans believed that numbers and geometry were the fundamental building blocks of the universe; leading to a study of numerology and a search for the “harmony of the spheres”. Plato also embraced an idealised view of the cosmos, and rather than seeking to make conclusions about reality based on observation, he endeavored to intuit its underlying perfection; what he called “forms”. And while Aristotle did embrace a type of observation-based scientific method, he described the solar system as geocentric with the sun, moon, and planets revolving around the Earth in circular orbits (although this doesn't perfectly jibe with their observed paths) because this was aesthetically pleasing to him; an unsupported idea that then persisted through the Middle Ages and the invention of the telescope. Johannes Kepler (who supplemented his income with writing horoscopes, as did many astronomers throughout history) used Tycho Brahe's breakthrough astronomical observations to create a heliocentric model of the universe, but was distracted by his quest to fit the five Platonic solids within the orbits of the five (known) planets. When Albert Einstein's theories of relativity opened the door to quantum entanglement (acausal, faster than light, events that can apparently even reverse the arrow of time), he refused to accept the logic of the math, dismissing it as “spooky action at a distance” that offended his own sensibilities. In more recent times, physicists have been intrigued by the Sommerfeld fine structure constant (the “sacred” inverse of 137, or very nearly that number) that some believed proved...something significant. Even today: “Although experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and elsewhere have yet to provide a hint of evidence for supersymmetry, many theorists remain optimistic, largely because of the concept's mathematical elegance.” I loved all of these stories as a connecting narrative of how scientific thought has developed over the millennia, but the most fascinating story that Halpern tells is about the strange collaboration between Carl Jung and Linus Pauli.
Pauli would cling in his later years to the visions of nature he held dear. Hardheaded when it came to judging others' theories, he remained emotionally committed to the idea that symmetry guides the universe. In a kind of cosmic seesaw all things must balance: spin up accompanied spin down, positive charge goes hand in hand with negative charge, synchronicity offers a counterpart to causality, back-in-time mimics forward-in-time, and mirror reflection echoes the original. In the traditions of Pythagoras, Plato, and Kepler, such was the symmetric world he cherished – a flawless, precious crystal.I would love to read a book that just focuses on the relationship between Jung and Pauli – each of these seminal thinkers taking just enough from each other's theories to misinform their own ideas. That the misanthropic Pauli benefited from Jungian psychotherapy is a good thing – and I don't think it's too weird that Pauli often dreamed the solutions to the problems that deviled him in his waking hours; don't we all? – but the fact that he was the cause of the “Pauli effect” (apparently, sensitive lab equipment would break down every time Pauli even entered a university's science building) would naturally lead the great physicist to look for a justification for synchronicity at the quantum level. And Jung understood just enough of modern physics at the “colloquial level” to believe he had found the missing link between mind and matter – opening the door to some of today's most scientific sounding pseudoscience.
The cosmos is simply not a friendly place for know-it-alls; rather, like a James Joyce novel, it invites partial understanding.I don't know if I've done Synchronicity justice in this review – these are simply the parts that seemed most shiny and collectible to my magpie mind – but I'll reiterate that I found this to be a totally fascinating, well-written, and educational read.
Mallory sat down beside me when I first started to write this review, and I must have had my eyebrows knit in concentrated thought because she asked, "What's that face for?"
I tried to explain that I felt like I had a tough line to toe with this review - that what most interested me in the book wasn't necessarily the raw science, but I didn't want to give the impression that I didn't understand (or accept) the science. When I then told her that the book is (more or less) about synchronicity and how Carl Jung learned just enough about quantum mechanics to give this pseudoscientific theory a veneer of settled science, and also about how Linus Pauli's ideas became contaminated by his dabbling with Jung's woo-woo, she was a bit offended.
"You know, Mom," she said, "a lot of what I've learned from Wicca is about harnessing the power of synchronicity. About sending energy out into the universe and receiving it back in meaningful ways. You know, like karma and connecting with nature's hidden powers."
I told her that as this book was written by a physicist, it comes from the viewpoint that synchronicity isn't a verifiable phenomenon, but also agreed that I can't help but recognise the power of coincidence when I see it in my own life.
Not long after, I interrupted my writing to do a yoga session with Mal - something we've been trying to do together as much as possible while still in isolation - and the theme of the day's practise was "synchronise".
Now, that's not the same word as "synchronicity", and maybe all it does is prove how desperate the human brain is to make meaning out of random events, but when that word flashed on the screen and Mallory looked at me with raised eyebrows, all I could do was shrug and nod. Coincidence happens; and when it does, we feel the meaningfulness - and that's not easy to talk the brain out of. (And in that vein, I really appreciated the narrative thread in this book of all those great thinkers who were unable to talk their own brains out of the ideas that simply felt right to them.)
