- For the album by The Police see Synchronicity.
Definition
Synchronicity is a term that was used by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung to describe the alignment of universal forces with one's own life experience. Jung believed that some (if not all) coincidences were not mere chance, but instead a literal "co-inciding", or alignment of forces in the universe to create an event or circumstance. The process of becoming intuitively aware and acting in harmony with these forces is what Jung labelled "individuation." Jung said that an individuated person would actually shape events around them through the communication of their consciousness with the collective unconscious.
While the above is a very high-level summary, it should be noted that Jung defined the collective unconscious as akin to instincts in Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. In Synchronicty he also stated that not all coincidences are meaningful and further explained the creative causes (see Further Reading).
Jung spoke of synchronicity as being an "acausal connecting principle", in other words a pattern of connection that works outside of or in addition to causality.
Jung's most well-known example of synchronicity involves plum pudding. He tells a tale of a certain Monsieur Deschamps who is treated to some plum pudding by his neighbor Monsieur de Fortgibu. Ten years later, he encounters plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant, and wants to order some, but the waiter tells him the last dish has already been served to another customer, who turns out to be M. de Fortgibu. Many years later, M. Deschamps is at a gathering, and is once again offered plum pudding. He recalls the earlier incident and tells his friends that only M. de Fortgibu is missing to make the setting complete, and in the same instant the now senile M. de Fortgibu enters the room by mistake.
Criticism
Since the theory of synchronicity is not testable according to the classical scientific method, it is not widely regarded as scientific at all, but rather as pseudoscientific or an example of magical thinking.
Probability theory can attempt to explain events such as the plum pudding incident in our normal world, without any interference by any universal alignment forces. However, the correct variables required for actually computing the probability cannot be found. This is not to say that synchronicity is not a good model for describing a certain kind of human experience - but it is a reason for refusal of the idea that synchronicity should be considered a "hard fact", i.e. an actually existing principle of our universe.
Supporters of the theory claim that since the scientific method is applicable only to those phenomena that are reproducible, independent of observer and quantifiable, the argument that synchronicity is not scientifically 'provable' should be considered a red herring, as, by definition, synchronistic events are not independent of the observer, since the observer's unique history is precisely what gives the synchronistic event meaning for the observer.
A synchronistic event appears like just another meaningless 'random' event to anyone else without the unique prior history which correlates to the event. This reasoning claims that the principle of synchronicity raises the question of the subjectivity of significance and meaning
in the sequence of natural events.
Correlation
Although not scientifically provable in the classical sense, a scientific basis for the phenomenon of synchronicity may be found in the principle of correlation, in so far as a more precise scientific term for Jung's expression 'acausal connecting principle' is 'correlation'.
It is a well-known scientific principle that 'correlation does not imply causation'. Yet, correlation may in fact be a physical property shared by events without there being a classical cause-effect relationship, as shown in quantum physics, where widely separated events can be correlated without being linked by a direct physical cause-effect (see nonlocality, EPR paradox).
Related Topics
The feeling of making a connection where there is none has been described as apophenia.
Aspects of the subjective experience of schizophrenia
have much in common with the subjective experience of synchronicity, in
the sense that ordinary events are seen as having a direct
personal relevance to the schizophrenic, but are seen as
'normal' by non-schizophrenics. Many psychoses are similar to schizophrenia but can last for a very short time, such as in rare instances from nicotine withdrawal (as an example) causing the same effect even with a non-schizophrenic.
Those who have experienced a near-death experience
or kundalini awakening report an
increase in synchronistic events happening to them.
The fulfillment of prayer can be seen as a type of synchronicity, but not in the sense described by Jung.
Synchronicity has been proposed as a corollary phenomenon
of the many-worlds
or parallel universes theory of quantum physics,
in that the subject is somehow 'navigating' to those particular
alternate worlds that are correlated to their past history, among the myriad possible other worlds that are not as correlated to their
past history. Although this idea has made it into the popular press, it is considered pseudoscience.
Further reading
- Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal: Key Readings by Carl Jung, ISBN 0415155088
- Science, Synchronicity and Soul-Making by the physicist Victor Mansfield
- Synchronicity, The Bridge Between Matter and Mind by F. David Peat
- I Ching Bollingen edition by Richard Wilhelm, Note especially the foreword by Carl Jung. (The I Ching is a type of oracle, or 'synchronicity computer', used for divination.)
- The Roots of Coincidence by Arthur Koestler
- The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl Jung, ISBN 0691018332 (Defintion of Collective Unconscious)
- Synchronicity -- An Acausal Connecting Principle by Carl Jung (Final 2 pages of Conclusion section, referenced above)
See also
External links
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