We have some notion of a tendency of events to
cluster around a moment in time in our own culture, as evidenced by folk
sayings like, "Good things (or accidents) happen in threes," etc. This
only exists as a superstitious kind of popular awareness. Nevertheless,
it has long been evident that there is a tendency for several scientists
at the same time to make the same discovery completely independently.
And, in histories of science, one can observe that there is a tendency
for certain ideas and inventions to crop up in different places at the
same time. Or, on a more mundane level, one has been known to wonder why
the most needed library book is always the one already checked out?
Although
a synchronistic point of view would seem to fly in the face of
"scientific method," designed to support the value of statistical truth
and predict cause and effect, the principle was strongly validated by
the micro-physicist, Werner Heisenberg's discovery in 1937. In the proof
of his Uncertainty Principle, which still stands, Heisenberg
demonstrated that, in the realm of sub-atomic particles, everything has
an influence on everything else, including the perceiver's influence on
what is perceived. This is another way of saying that everything that
happens in a given situation at a given time is related to and
participates with everything else. So, as far as we know now, there is
no such thing as "scientific objectivity," statistical probabilities
notwithstanding. As Jung put it:
"Every
process is partially or totally interfered with by chance, so much so
that under natural circumstances a course of events absolutely
conforming to specific laws is almost an exception."
In
his fascinating book, New Directions in the I-Ching, mathematician
Larry Schoenholtz points out that there are several scientific theories
that seem to validate the synchronicity theory:
"Since
I have mentioned the connection of synchronicity with the better-known
theories of mainstream physics, I shall mention other parallels as well.
The phenomenon of radioactive decay has been particularly baffling from
the causal viewpoint. The spontaneous disintegration of certain atoms
through radioactive emission is an event for which modern physics cannot
provide an answer"
But
it is quite in keeping with a synchronistic view of things. No less a
figure than the physicist Sir James Jeans says of this mystery,
"Radioactive
break-up appeared to be an effect without a cause, and suggested that
the ultimate laws of nature were not even causal."
If
we add to the radioactivity puzzle such related puzzles as are found in
the quantum theory, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and most of the
tenets cited in Einstein's general theory of relativity, an impressive
case can be made for incorporating the synchronicity principle into
mainstream physics.
When the
unified field theory is worked out to the bone - the evidence here, too,
is mounting steadily - and the entire clockworks of the cosmos can be
brought under a set of unifying equations, this will be the final touch
for bringing the synchronicity principle into full popularity among
scientists.
The application of
synchronicity is based on the strategy that looking for the meaning in
coincidental events is more pragmatic than striving to predict things
according to notions of causality, surmised from statistical records.
Perhaps ancient oriental scientists, who lacked our record keeping
technology, found it easier to realize this and devised the Book of
Changes to put their observations to work. By using the magic of
numerical chance within the context of an ingenious system of archetypal
readings, they claimed they were able to follow the convoluted patterns
of how things tend to go together. Maybe now, using a personal
computer, we can take advantage of their prescience in a way that honors
the best of both worlds. (
Tarot.com)
