Targ's research was impressive enough that the National Institutes of Health gave her $1.5 million to carry out two more distant-prayer studies, one on AIDS and another on glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive and almost inevitably fatal brain tumor. For example, thinking about a friend and that friend calls you People who believe in anomalous experience are less likely to assess coincidences appropriately What leads people to turn coincidences into a causal… "I estimated that coincidence had a probability of 10^11.". The sections of this book on synchronicity are utterly fascinating. But understanding the world as it really is—fundamentally random—can liberate and … The same changes do not occur before neutral or calming photos appear. But we’re also not perfect at doing this and thus we don’t always consider all of the elements at play. This country dreams a half billion hours each night (250 million people dreaming two hours a night). . Coincidence is the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection. Synchronicity or "meaningful coincidence" is a concept first introduced by the famous psychologist Carl Jung whose near-death experience (NDE) is profiled on this website. That’s confirmation bias at its best! Furthermore, there are countless other numbers in science and countless other historical buildings. The idea that coincidence is discoverable would chime with Jung’s assertion that his psychology is empirical. It is not uncommon to come across unusual coincidences and infer that they carry a meaning deeper than mere randomness. Synchronicity is a concept, first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl Jung, which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. But I have a unique view of the world," he says. The well-known father of Analytical Psychology, Carl Jung, had much to say about the importance of meaningful coincidences in attaining a fully-developed and happy "Self", and the author of this book does a great job of explaining this in a straightforward way. Download PDF. This is a result of what we call the ‘law of near enough’. The phenomenon fascinates believers and skeptics alike. The psychoanalyst, first follower of Freud, and founder of his own school of thought dedicated much of his work to these phenomena. Improbable occurrences are to be expected, say statisticians, especially considering there are 5 billion people on the planet. They happen because we have done something to make them happen. Magical thinking, or superstitious thinking, is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects. "I was filled with emotion remembering our meeting so long ago and thinking what a profound impact she'd had on my life," recalls Comings. ya vas liu bliu As a result, people have always associated these chance occurrences with a higher power, making us wonder if they are coincidence or fate. I picked it up and opened to a footnote about Elisabeth and a famous remote viewing experiment she'd done." "Yet even children under 5 can be given just a few relevant examples of dog and learn to use it," marvels Tenenbaum. "Every word is in a sense an infinite object. The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena, Two months later, Targ, who was 40, began fertility treatments: she and her fiance, physicist Mark Comings, wanted a family. In 1705 English astronomer Edmund Halley was looking through old records of comets when he noticed a coincidence: The bright comets of 1531, 1607 and 1682 had almost the same orbits and appeared approximately every 75 years. Out of curiosity, the tie-less man answered the phone on his way past and lo and behold: he got the message. On the other hand, skeptics (e.g. Some of those dreams are bound to coincide with real events. Tenenbaum found that after seeing an object (such as a Dalmatian) with the name "blick" only once, adults were able to infer that the word either referred to all Dalmatians or all dogs. It was a collection of Daniel Webster's speeches, and the first one was a eulogy for Adams and Jefferson." Learn how your comment data is processed. Of late, though, the phenomenon of coincidence has begun to yield new scientific insights. Booktopia has The Positive Psychology of Synchronicity, Enhance Your Mental Health with the Power of Coincidence by Christopher Mackey. For those with a highly empirical bent, a coincidence is happenstance, a simultaneous collision of two events that has no special significance and obeys the laws of probability. "It is a particularly gnarly disease from which people rarely recover," says her father, "and that's why she wanted to study it.". To the mystically inclined, however, coincidence is a synchronicity, the purposeful occurrence of two seemingly unrelated events. psychologists studying coincidences—is that the occurrence of coincidences, as psychologically experienced, is induced by noisy, chance occurrences out in the world which are then misconstrued via irrational cognitive biases into unfounded, possibly even paranormal beliefs in the mind. Good recalls his own remarkable coincidence: He was at a conference listening to a speaker who described a mathematical proof, and later that day opened a mathematics textbook at random in the library. Dreams have been described as dress rehearsals for real life, opportunities to gratify wishes, and a form of nocturnal therapy. "What are the odds of that? Are they events different from others because they have low or lower possibilities of occurence? So in fact coincidences aren’t strange at all, it would be much stranger if coincidences never happened. These machines generate numbers based on electronic noise like the static you hear between radio stations. Were these merely strange coincidences—or are comets portents of divine intent? Psychology of Coincidences. A short summary of this paper. 3. One of the most amusing examples of apophenia in action, was when Apple received complaints that the shuffle feature on their iPods wasn’t really ‘random’. And yet our brain still loves them because that’s the way our psychology works. The psychology of coincidences, a review. Other times we don’t see the connections and the same thing happens. While we can all agree coincidences have fascinated scholars and lay people alike, what they mean divides us into one of two camps: skeptics or believers. ... One name in psychology stands out among the rest: Carl Jung. So we have psychology to explain how and why we notice coincidences, and why we want to make meaning from them, and we have probability to explain why they seem to … What has been said about coincidence and fate? Opinion Psychology. It's a porthole into one of the most interesting philosophical questions we can ask: Are the events of our lives ultimately objective or subjective? For instance, in laboratory studies he's found that people seem to know when they're going to view upsetting photos. There are two basic views of the psychological experience and occurrence of coincidences that are fundamentally at odds with each other: The believer view, prevalent among members of the general public, is that coincidences are in fact evidence for various paranormal beliefs, held in the mind, and are induced by mysterious/hidden/paranormal causes, operating out in the world. "We need more people to think about this." To study this, a volunteer collaboration of 75 researchers around the world joined in the Global Consciousness Project, headed up by Radin and psychologist Roger Nelson of Princeton University. Targ and colleagues at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco published a double-blind study in the "The data seem to show that observation can change things, that maybe thoughts affect the world," says Shoup. Taking this further, the likelihood of that sequence occurring at random would increase more and more the more numbers you looked at. $18.00. "He hadn't seen it. When you have huge numbers involved, it becomes far more likely that there will be some noteworthy relationships and occurrences. I'd brought it back in a box of books after my grandfather's funeral and never noticed it before. The prayed-for group had significantly fewer opportunistic illnesses than the control group, and Targ instantly became the poster child for a fledgling new field exploring prayer and healing. "We're awash in a torrent of names, numbers, dates, addresses, acronyms, telephone calls, e-mails, calendars, birth dates," says John Paulos. This paper. Coincidences have always sparked curiosity and fascination. To absolutely guarantee that two people in the same room share a birthday, you need 367 people. If they were shown three Dalmatians as three examples of "blick," they were much more likely to infer that "blick" referred only to Dalmatians. Even "prophetic" dreams can be explained by probability, says Paulos. Even more remarkable is that between the ages of 1 and 5, children are learning at least five new words a day. most psychologists) tend to dismiss the psychological experience of coincidences as just yet one more demonstration of how irrational people can be. I turned around and at that moment a person was pushing a cart of books by me, and on the cart was a cardboard sign with a hand pointing down that read, 'This one is for you.' Thus far we have discussed the rationalist conceptualisation of. most psychologists) tend to dismiss the psychological experience of coincidences as just yet one more demonstration of how irrational people can be. Sometimes our brain thinks something is a coincidence simply because of a bias in our thinking. There are 365 days a year, and 366 in a leap year. ", What does this have to do with coincidence—besides that the data itself might be a mere coincidence? Mental imagery, subjective validation, coincidence, hidden causes, and fraud all contributeto the folklore in this field. "A profound introduction to deep concepts of mind, meaning and the challenges of creating a life well lived for everyone." When Rushnell began writing the book, he was pondering the famous fact that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two men who shaped the "Our neural circuitry is set up to notice these anomalies and use them to drive new learning. In general perception of coincidence, for lack of … This book explores how meaningful coincidence operates in our daily lives, in our intimate relationships, and … Coincidences are also rooted, according to psychologists, in "hidden causes"-- something causes the coincidental event to occur, but because this is not apparent to us, the event seems causeless and therefore random, making it seem all the more mysterious and meaningful. READ PAPER. Radin, who studies everything from precognition to remote viewing, tests coincidence on a global scale specifically, whether events with a worldwide impact focus consciousness and influence the functioning of machines. We mentioned earlier how it was perfectly possible for the Fibonacci sequence to appear at random. But because of something called ‘confirmation bias’, I only took notice of the times that it did turn off. Your email address will not be published. The argument is not likely to be resolved anytime soon. "The stories are mind-blowing, even to the parapsychologists who study these things for a living.". When I was younger I became determined that I was able to make lampposts turn off when I walked underneath them. Another thing you can do to nurture coincidence is to keep a diary or journal of coincidences in your life. But this is less amazing when you consider that the pyramid is quite large and that actually that number is picking a very precise point on the pyramid – only the first four digits are the same by pure chance. Or it may lead to belief in fatalism, which is a doctrine that events will happen in the exact manner of a predetermined plan. He also finds comfort in Targ's enduring legacy. asks SQuire Rushnell [sic] again and again in his best-selling book, When God Winks, This article is more than 9 years old. Keep up to date by sign up for our newsletter and stay informed. Targ instantly recognized the syllables as the Russian words for "I love you." Sometimes we see connections where there are none and falsely attribute something to coincidence. This article is … "Coincidences drive so many of the inferences our minds make," says Tenenbaum. "Elisabeth is our hero," wrote Mitchell Krucoff, a Duke University Medical Center cardiologist who has pioneered complementary therapies in patients with heart disease. "Over the course of the rest of the day," the opposite happened. The Synchronicity Key: The Hidden Intelligence Guiding the Universe and You David Wilcock. "On the one hand they seem to be the source of our greatest irrationalities—seeing causal connections when science tells us they aren't there. The word is derived from the Latin co- ("in", "with", "together") and incidere ("to fall on"). Five times in the past, I had walked underneath a lamppost, only for it to magically turn off just as I passed underneath it. This then means that it’s very easy to accidentally call the number of a payphone right near the building that you were actually trying to call. The index of coincidence can be used to analyze whether two events are related. Coming to Terms With Coincidence The brain abhors randomness; it seeks patterns and craves control. 37 Full PDFs related to this paper. For instance, if we notice rocks in the formation of a face on the surface of Mars, we will see this as a pattern even though it’s just a collection of rocks (and it doesn’t help that the human brain is also designed to look for human faces). More damning was the fact that the hundreds of thousands of other lampposts I walked under didn’t turn off. Our brains are wired in a certain way that sometimes makes them easy to fool. First, we will argue that the experience of coincidence is related to the over-generalization of predictive models, which in turn are based on fundamental cognitive biases that may actually confer an adaptive advantage. What Depth Psychology Is. In A.D. 66 a comet was seen across the sky in Jerusalem just as the Jewish people were revolting against the Romans. He continues to be an avid reader of the latest studies and books on the subject, as well as self-development literature. The reason? Are they easily explained, or so improbable they must signify something? THE ROOTS OF COINCIDENCE - Arthur Koestler. One person who is thinking deeply about this is Mark Comings. This is partly why predictions of the future by people such as Nostradamus seem so accurate. Indeed, coincidences help prod science along. To the mystically inclined, however, coincidence is a synchronicity, the purposeful occurrence of two seemingly unrelated events. Or in many cases, due to the complete opposite. The first part of the book is highly recommended. On the other hand, skeptics (e.g. And these things happen “caused” by our effort, learning process and our search. Reply . The argument is not likely to be resolved anytime soon. In confirmation bias or ‘selection bias’ we take notice of things that support our hypothesis because they are note-worthy and memorable and we ignore all the evidence contrary to the hypothesis. It is influenced by Carl Jung's concept of synchronicity and the seriality of Paul Kammerer. Just like the S-M-A-R-T-E-R goals, they guide the person to understand his core values before embarking upon setting goals for success. The Roots of Coincidence is a 1972 book by Arthur Koestler.It is an introduction to theories of parapsychology, including extrasensory perception and psychokinesis.Koestler postulates links between modern physics, their interaction with time and paranormal phenomena. coincidences: hidden cause; psychology, including memory and perception; multiplicity of endpoints, including the counting of "close" or nearly alike events as if they were identical; and the law of truly large numbers, which says that when enormous numbers of events and people and their interactions cumulate over time, almost any outrageous event is bound to occur. THE ROOTS OF COINCIDENCE - Arthur Koestler. A coincidence is a remarkable conjunction of two or more incidents without an obvious causal connection between them. While we can all agree coincidences have fascinated scholars and lay people alike, what they mean divides us into one of two camps: skeptics or believers. One hundred fifty patients with glioblastomas are enrolled in the study she devised before succumbing to the cancer. I'm willing to dance with the mystery without requiring the whole answer ahead of time," says Radin. Many of us believe we … Halley concluded they were one comet and predicted it would reappear in 1758. Coincidences have much to do with recall and recognition, said Beitman. You’d probably be somewhat amazed, but bear in mind that the likelihood of that happening is exactly the same as the likelihood of any other random sequence of numbers occurring. The above is also an example of the ‘law of truly large numbers’. We use cookies to give you the best online experience in accordance with our Privacy Policy. However, if you specify an exact birth date (July 4, 1976), you need 613 people to reach a 50 percent probability. Modern Observational Studies in Psychology Related to Studying Coincidences, which says, “The brain processes and recalls information in ways that we barely understand. Your email address will not be published. The upshot: improbable events are quite likely to occur but specific, predicted improbable events are far less likely. Josh Tenenbaum says we're actually very good at inferring probabilities—as long as the data are presented in a way that reflects real-world thinking. Which is kind of great when you think about it: we’re hardwired to see magic in the mundane. Just because we have assigned significance to that particular sequence, doesn’t mean that it’s any less likely to occur. Indeed, added mathematician John Allen Paulos, “the most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences.” Ecological approaches to psychology suggest succinct accounts ofeasily-used artifacts. The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe This has to do with false positives, or our tendency to believe a hypothesis is true when it's not -- in the case of coincidences, we believe in a link between two things when in fact there is none. Users complained because they kept hearing the same song repeated in a sequence – which of course is random. Apple actually had to redesign their shuffle feature with an algorithm in order to make it feel more random, while in actuality it was no longer random at all…. "I have a sense of real and dynamic interaction between [me and Elisabeth]. He was the one who postulated the interesting concept of synchronicity. The Positive Psychology of Synchronicity Enhance Your Mental Health with the Power of Coincidence Chris Mackey For all those interested in mental wellness as well as mental-health practitioners, this book makes the strongest case yet made that synchronicity and other forms of intuitive insights promote wellbeing and help us transform mental-health issues into personal growth. A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. But do we fall into that trap too often? I couldn't understand it. A new theory aims to make sense of it all. Or are they different because they seem like supernatural callings of our spiritual mentors? Another example is the Great Pyramid in Giza. "They are a true paradox," says MIT cognitive scientist Josh Tenenbaum. We are, in a sense, mathematically naive. Connections between psychology, spirituality, and quantum physics will be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered how all these uncanny "coincidences" take place. "The information-rich environment of modern life itself is a source of many coincidences." In fact, we are so prone to seeing connections where they don’t exist, that there’s even a term for it: ‘apophenia’. … In The Positive Psychology of Synchronicity (2nd Edition just released), psychologist Chris Mackey points to the often substantial benefits of weird and wonderful coincidences on … He pulled a reference book off his shelf, but it had no useful information. This is something that we do particularly well, because it has great survival value. These ‘flaws’ in our logic are called ‘cognitive biases’ and they can often … "Believing in the significance of oddities is self-aggrandizing," he adds. The word coincidence attracts two … But what we’re forgetting is that physics isn’t taking those previous throws into account and thus we are actually just as likely to throw heads as we are tails – it’s always fifty, fifty.
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