The Many Faces of Coincidence

Many debates around synchronicity and coincidence revolve around meaning and statistical probability, which can lead to a rather sterile exchange. This creative book breaks new ground by taking a much wider view of the field and attempting to evolve a comprehensive model for the various ways in which they can be understood and explained. The five chapters explore synchronicity, chance, cosmic coincidences, quantum physics and even the Tao as an example of what Jung called unus mundus - the world as a psychophysical unity. The first chapter identifies some influences and predecessors, including Schopenhauer, Leibniz, the Sinologist and translator of the I Ching Richard Wilhelm, JB Rhine and Wolfgang Pauli, who collaborated with Jung on synchronicity and who preferred the term 'meaning – correspondence'. Jung wrote the introduction to Wilhelm's I Ching and also to his edition of the alchemical text The Secret of the Golden Flower.

The second chapter looks astounding events that are nevertheless due to chance and can be explained in terms of probability. What is at issue is causality, which is one of the reasons why Jung defined synchronicity as acausal connecting principle. These and other considerations lead to Browne's suggestions of four coincidence categories: random chance explanations, conventional causal explanations, paranormal causal explanations and synchronicity explanations. He then widens his view to consider cosmic coincidences, using the anthropic principle and the fine structure constant as examples. He discusses the work of Sir Roger Penrose relating to the precision required at the Big Bang for a state of low entropy compatible with the second law of thermodynamics. Then moving on to quantum physics and entanglement, he includes Dean Radin's work on entanglement in parapsychology while at the same time discussing the power of scientism leading to rejection of experimental results incompatible with this worldview. It was refreshing to read such an open discussion exploring the implications of the unus mundus and the participatory nature of reality. This leads into the final chapter on the Tao as an instantiation of this, bringing in not only Jung but also David Bohm and Heidegger with his Chinese collaborator Paul Hsaio Shih-yi - underlying the whole discussion is the journey towards the union of opposites through the middle path, something which the author arguably achieves in his treatment of this delicate topic.