Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1exp 11/4/83; site hlexa.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!houxm!ihnp4!hlexa!hsf From: hsf@hlexa.UUCP Newsgroups: net.books,net.philosophy Subject: Time and Immortality (part 9) Message-ID: <617@hlexa.UUCP> Date: Mon, 21-Nov-83 18:09:45 EST Article-I.D.: hlexa.617 Posted: Mon Nov 21 18:09:45 1983 Date-Received: Wed, 23-Nov-83 03:42:59 EST Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Short Hills, NJ Lines: 83 (c) Copyright 1983 by Henry Friedman (Copying for personal use by users of net is authorized.) What a Coincidence -- Coincidences of one type or another are frequent occurrences for most of us, and we take little notice of them. But occa- sionally, we experience a coincidence that seems so striking and improbable that we feel it must have some meaning. "Meaningful coincidences" are of many different varieties and range from somber signs or premonitions of tragic events that later come true to, possibly, a series of unexpected happy reunions with long-lost friends. But such coincidences satisfy two criteria: first, that the separate events do not appear to have a common cause, and second, that the proba- bility of the events occurring together by chance appears remote. You may be wondering at this point what coincidences have to do with immortality. But if you'll bear with me, I'll soon explain why such phenomena are, indeed, relevant. C. G. Jung, the pioneering psychologist of the unconscious mind, studied the thinking of philosophers throughout the ages on the subject of meaningful coincidences. In an essay in 1951 and a book in 1952 ("Synchronicity, an Acausal Con- necting Principle") Jung stated his own hypothesis that such phenomena are a fundamental principle of the universe. He placed "synchronicity," his term for meaningful coin- cidences, on an equal footing with such fundamental laws of nature as spacetime, causality, and the conservation laws. In calling a series of events in a coincidence acausal, Jung, of course, did not mean that the individual events were themselves without normal causes. It is the improbable clustering of the events that is significant. Jung also realized that many coincidences that appear statistically significant prove, upon closer scrutiny, to be within normal chance. For example, if I had a rather obscure hobby -- say, collecting memorabilia about electric streetcars -- I would think it quite a coincidence if three different per- sons, who didn't know of my hobby, mentioned electric streetcars to me in a single day. However, if I then discovered that they had all seen a TV-magazine feature on old streetcars, the experience would no longer seem "mean- ingful." Still, coincidences that appear highly improbable do occur frequently, even if they are often too subjective to be rigidly evaluated by statistical methods. This fact led Jung to conclude that some universal principle must be at work. In addition to the ordinary types of improbable coin- cidences, Jung included psychic experiences, such as telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance, as examples of synchronistic events. The scientific concept of cause and effect is based upon an orderly arrangement of events in time. Jung reasoned that if an event in the future somehow gives rise to an event in the present (the psychic experi- ence), the phenomenon must be considered acausal, since it violates the orderly progression of time. Recalling the discussion of four-dimensional spacetime in the preceding chapters, one would not be surprised to learn that Jung's contacts with Einstein deeply influenced Jung in developing his concept of synchronicity. Jung was also influenced by later developments in quantum physics, which demonstrated that some processes in nature, especially at the subatomic level, are more closely related to probability than to causality. In later attempts to explain synchroni- city to an uncomprehending (or incredulous) public, Jung also wrote that he was influenced by the emerging concept that even causal events must be considered to have a sta- tistical basis. Of course, probability only allows that the highly improb- able is *possible*; synchronicity, in effect, states that the highly improbable is often to be *expected*. (Chapter to be continued in part 10.) Note: The next installment will be delayed until early December because of the holiday and a business trip.