Synchronicity: The Epic Quest to Understand the Quantum Nature of Cause and Effect

Thoroughly enjoyed this.

Synchronicity is a non-fiction hard science book, by Professor Paul Halpern.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic., Arthur C. Clarke

Reality is non local, Bells theorem correlate.

When I picked Synchronicity, I thought I was going to read a treaty leaning toward proving the actual existence of this phenomenon. I am a firm believer in synchronicity, having experienced too much of it in my life to ignore it. Im even under the feeling that Im constantly riding a synchronicity wave.

I was mistaken. This book wasnt what I expected at all. However, it turned out to be the best book on the history and principles of physics Ive ever read during my 45 years on our Earth.

Synchronicity is, at its core, a densely packed book presenting the history of physics (but also of other related fields such as biology and astronomy) through the history of well known, and less known figures of import to the advances of science. The author presents them, articulate their discoveries, their relationships, and even gives us a window in their personal lives and history.

Paul Halpern covers everything, from the antique philosophers (our first scientists), to the wonders of current advances in quantum mechanics, with classical mechanics and relativity (of course) in between.

He does it in a precise way, going over advanced notions of each theory, but in such a manner that the book is accessible to anyone. And, this is no small feat.

Carl Jung is the first to have coined the term synchronicity. The search for meaningful patterns in coincidences. Its no secret that Jung had a fondness for the supernatural, which ultimately led to his break with Freud. Both psychologists had met Einstein, but they didnt agree on its teachings applied to their field.

In this book, the advent of quantum mechanics is clearly presented as an inflexion point. Albert Einstein, at first rebutted by those inferrings of Spooky action at a distance slowly changed his mind and participated in some great advances to quantum science.

The balancing act between pure empiricism and mathematical abstraction [proves] tricky. Some renegade scientists turn away from realism as they make encounters with the pliable nature of reality. The firewall that science had carefully constructed in the late nineteenth century between the tangible and the mystical [] no longer seemed so solid, and, for some, the supernatural might no be so super after all.

Thats also when philosophy circles back and makes a crashing return into the field of science. And, everything got turned upside down. For some years, and still today, experimentalist have taken delight in observing events not explainable by currents theorists, such as entangled macro objects, or the reversal of the arrow of time.

It is interesting, then, to realize that some of the quantum physics principles, such as the duality nature of light (both a particle and a wave), were observed centuries or millennia before the term quantum had even been uttered. Never underestimate antique philosophers.

David Hume, a 18th century philosopher, wrote Pure belief in causal connections stems from our impressions. Was he already questioning the nature, or even the very existence of objective reality ?

To return to the experiment I alluded to above, backward causality seems to imply a non-linearity of time, or even question the existence of time itself other than someone we, as observers, would need to experience causality. If there is no time, if reality is non local and, as such, objective reality doesnt exist… Those are questions we better not ponder too much.

As for synchronicity, its the glue guiding the story of the book. Jung began to ponder the notion of non local influences long before we truly observed them in experimental settings. But, How to separate the real from the illusory, true patterns from meaningless coincidences ?

Is synchronicity the natural tendency of our mind to find connections where there are none, or are there really patterns in which would then not really be coincidences anymore ?

The author doesnt give us an answer in his conclusion, but he gives us all we need to form our own opinion. Including, cherry on the cake, an extensive bibliography that can make for weeks of fascinating reading.

* Paul Halpern, PhD, is a professor of physics at the University of Sciences of Philadelphia, and author of numerous popular science books. He also appeared on The Simpsons.

** All parts quoted in this review come from the actual book, except for the two initial ones.

Thanks to Perseus Books, Basic Books, and Netgalley for the ARC provided in exchange for this unbiased review.

This book has many clear insights into physics. It also has a chapter on the Pauli-Jung dialogue. I enjoyed this book immensely.

Clear writing!

The title of this book is Synchronicity. Carl Jung popularized this term to point to events that were not causally related yet occurred at roughly the same time. He cited a patient in therapy who had a dream about a scarab, and as the patient described the dream, a scarab beetle knocked on the window of Jung’s office and he opened the window and let it in and handed it to the patient, and this led according to Jung to a breakthrough in her therapy. Jung collaborated with Wolfgang Pauli from 1932-1958, and Pauli shared over 1300 dreams with Jung. Pauli had a peculiar synchronicity: he was an outstanding theoretical physicist, so many experimental physics wanted to show him experiments confirming some aspect of theory, but when Pauli went near a lab the experiment failed again and again. The reason for this is that there is indeed a causal linkage between these events, due to the information that is embedded in the compartments of quantized space and in fundamental particles such as the electron and proton and neutron to continually scan and respond to changes in the world around them, and the scan occurs in a compactified dimension that is accessible only to a small number of select physics labs at an instantaneous velocity far faster than the speed of light, linking all actions in the universe to obey Lagrange’s principle of least action and follow the path that achieves this. This is true synchronicity. The remainder of the book is a wonderful exposition, but has nothing to do with synchronicity. Quantum entanglement is dealt with but is only a partial manifestation of true synchronicity.

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member