Skeptical Inquiries
Synchronicity has been a byword in our civilization to “explain” seemingly unrelated events which seem to coincide with each other with alarming regularity. When I first read Synchronicity in the 1970's I was as impressed as most other people with what Carl Jung seemed to have discovered. In the intervening years I have had a massive amount of education and experience in many different areas of science and engineering. I spent years employed in engineering where my primary job function was to improve products and manufacturing processes. Such projects as how to make chemicals react more predictably and how to ensure that a finished product was as free from defects as possible. How to reduce manufacturing costs and how to improve the efficiency of the workplace. I was also tasked with designing large manufacturing facilities, machines and equipment. In the effort to accomplish these tasks the design of experiments was essential to success. I performed hundreds, if not thousands of experiments that determined how a widget would be better made with fewer defects, cheaper and more efficiently. In a more ergonomic workplace with better machines and equipment. Much of this was accomplished through the design of experiments and the analysis of historical data. I became an expert in being able to perform a wide range of experiments with vast array of materials, machines, people and equipment. I knew the experiments were successful as my employers made millions of dollars from them. Never once did I come across any type of synchronicity that interfered with the experimental data in any way. There was simply no synchronicity evident in any way. There should have been with having performed so many thousands of studies. I should have been plagued with false positives as result of synchronous effects.
I just reviewed Synchronicity and in fact when I analyzed the data it seemed that Jung was wrong in his conclusion. He did not have a sufficient understanding of the system that he was trying to use to analyze events and he admittedly was not very experienced in the design of experiments. What he found was was the sun and moon in the charts of married people were more often in conjunction than would be expected. He also found that the moons of both people were in conjunction more often than expected. The third thing he found was that the ascendant and the moon was slightly more likely to occur than expected. He had three batches of charts and the most abundant feature of each of the batches was one of the above, but each was different. From this he concluded that there was probably nothing to astrology, due to the fact that each batch had a different outcome and that the results were due to an acausal connecting principle. Jung found many other astrological factors significant, but dismissed them overall due to the fact that he thought he was working with planetary characteristics, whereas he was actually testing the planetary aspects and not the characteristics of the planets themselves. The planets involved would indicate the “flavour” of the interactions and not the probability of the event itself. The event in this case being marriage. No where in the studies, or in the astrological study itself is there any contradiction of the basic laws of astrology. In this limited format it would be non productive to examine all facets of the study. Suffice it to say that he found astrological factors were more predominant than was expected in the order of billions to one against chance.
In polymer chemistry it an unknown what really happens in a complex chemical reaction. I worked for years with urethanes. They are comprised of a complex soup of polyols, catalysts, chain extenders, isocyanates, and crosslinkers and the only way to have an idea of how these chemicals will react so that you can create the compound that you desire to achieve is only determine by extensive analysis through the design of experiments. You mix a wide variety of chemicals and get almost the same material in the end, but the subtle characteristics of the material will change. In astrology we are confronted with same kind weird black box chemistry that urethanes confront the engineer and scientist with. Many compounds reacting in predictable way. Add a little water to urethane and you get foam. Make sure it is completely dry and you get the material you make the most durable type of bumpers for cars and car bodies. You also and very fine sand to the mixture when your making bumpers. Another are of urethanes are paints, which is what your car is painted in. In theory, which was actually done in Germany, you can build a car entirely from urathanes. You can make them almost as hard as metal, or as soft as the couch that is your favorite. You can even paint it in any colour you wish. The only things you can't do are the windows, motors and all the high temperature items, wires, etc. But, its all urethane and it takes thousands of hours of experimentation to make it work. The white rabbit that comes out of the box may be a slightly different kind of white rabbit every time, but it will be the only white rabbit in a box of black rabbits and it is the rabbit that comes out, except when there is a machine failure and you get a defect. Stupid black rabbit!
In astrology you have 360 degrees. All of which act slightly different, which I have run experiments on in the form of predicting and publishing the events of the coming year. (See the International Astrologer, “Next Years News”) I did observe “synchronistic” effects and these predictions were largely based upon the exact degrees of the astrological factors. So, we have 360 degrees. There also twelve signs, each with three decanates. Each degree can be considered a positive and negative side, so 720 micro elements. Then there the eight, or nine, or maybe ten, or maybe more planets, depending which day of the week it is for the astronomers. I read in the recently that astronomers were now considering Vesta to be a minor type of planet. Something above an asteroid. Of course many astrologers use asteroids including Vesta and several others and have noticed “synchronistic” effects. We can add another ten to our ingredients to make make our product. And, then there are the stars. Many astrologers use stars in their determinations and they too have observed “synchronsitc” effects. I ran thousands of astrological experiments over four decades and observed many “synchronstic” effects, but it was tough nut to crack to determine a set that could easily handled. The earthquake studies showed that the planetary aspects were involved, strangely enough, with the rate of earthquakes on the earth. I found solid statistical correlation with the aspects of the 24th harmonic and the frequency and timing of earthquakes. My recent study of the correlation between the time of births and subsequent deaths of people also revealed the influences of the aspects of the 24th harmonic. So, we can add 13 more to our list.
We have then 360x720x12x3x9x10x13 interactions with everything moving all the time. It's an extreme wonder that Jung observed anything at all. I made so many studies of various interactions between people and never got anything but random results, but kept getting experimental results that said it worked, but there was a problem with quantification and solid statistics. This was due to the fact that events do not repeat in everyday life. Jung determined that aspects of the 24th harmonic were more likely to occur between the studied marriage partners than chance would predict. The conjunction is one of the aspects of the 24th harmonic. It was not different white rabbits, it was the same white rabbit, 24th harmonic vibration. It is simple as that. The astronomers at the University of Colorado and in many other facilities around the world have determined that the aspects of the 24th harmonic control the rate of storms on the sun and the climate of the earth.
Jung would have had us believe in a magical explanation for the events, rather than the more logical of the astrological factors involved. There is no synchronicity in that respect, I am afraid to say. It is a great disappointment for me as I was very impressed with the theory for a great many years, but in the end my belief in synchronicity hampered my efforts to truly determine what the astrological influences were as I believed that many of them were synchronicity, but they were not they were the forces of nature at work. Whatever it is that is happening is an unknown as far the kind of strange synchronistic events we are all subject to, but Jung's conclusion from his experiment was premature. He did not have the earthquakes studies, or the sunspot and climate which all demonstrate the same kind of aspects he observed.. To quote Johannes Keplerus, “That the constellations do something to us is self evident, exactly what it is that they do is mystery.”
The re-analysis of Jung's study on sychronicity follows:
On pages 48-50 in Synchronicity, by Carl Jung he gives the result in tabular form of his study. He used 48 possible aspects, however a number of the aspects are not what would be considered to be positive in creating stable relationships. Many such as Mars opposition to the Sun are actually negative in their influence and would tend to disrupt many relationships. Of the aspects used I determined that 22 of them were positive and 26 were negative in their influences. This meant that almost 54% were negative and only 46% were positive. This skewed the results in a peculiar way. Even though only 46% of aspects were positive 49% of the batch contained these aspects. This displays an excess of 7% over the expected rate proportionally. On page 50 Jung shows the proportionality of the aspects and in this case the excess of positive to negative aspects proportionally is 10% over the expected number. In other words Jung’s data shows that in the married couples studied there were 110% of the expected number of positive aspects as compared to only 90% of the expected number of negative aspects. The study was of 180 couples and to find such an large discrepancy between the negative and positive aspects is extremely unlikely to occur if it was just due to chance. The results also showed that the top three aspects proportionally were Moon conjunct the Sun, Ascendant conjunct to Venus and Moon conjunct to the ascendant, all positive aspects. The predicted number of positive in the top three would only be 1.41, but the results were 3. This is astronomically unlikely if the results were due to chance. Four out the top five aspects were positive when the expected number was only 2.3.
Due to getting these kinds of statistics that showed that the data was highly skewed in favour of astrology Jung made three batches in total. The first batch of 180 had Moon conjunct Sun and the most common aspect. The second batch of 220 pairs had Moon conjunct Moon as the most common aspect and the third batch of 83 couples had Moon conjunct the ascendant as the most common aspect. The predicted number of batches with positive aspects being most abundant is only 1.38, and yet all three were dominated by positive aspects. This is not possible if the results are due to chance as Jung has stated and merely a coincidence caused by an acausal connecting principle, or synchronicity.
If we take all the results of Jung’s studies together they all agree that positive aspects between people are more likely to occur than negative aspects and so, we must conclude that the astrological effects overwhelmed any notion of synchronicity. What the results actually show is that the astrological factors are what created these effects and not some strange magical process. It is not psychological and the mind is not creating these physical phenomena as Jung would have had us believe. Jung thought that because the aspects were not the same aspect then it proved that the results were not astrological, but rather were due the processes of synchronicity. In fact what Jung failed to comprehend is that astrological aspects can often be exchanged for one another and produce very similar results. Positive aspects, no matter what the astrological elements of the aspect are result in a tendency toward positive events, while negative aspects trend towards negative events. This is exactly what Jung discovered, however it was entirely distasteful for him to believe that there was any truth to astrology, so he skewed the results and towards a negative result for astrology and towards positive results for his pet theory: synchronicity. What he stated in his conclusion on page 60 of Synchronicity was that if you had boxes of with all black and only one white ant in them that the white ant came out first all three times. He then stated that while the white ant came out first all three times. He states that the probability of this happening is 1 to 62,5 million to one odds against chance of happening. Then he goes on to state that the problem is that they are not the same white and and thus this did not prove astrology, but was rather just a bizarre coincidence that could only be explained by the effects of sychronicity, Due to the interchangeability of the astrological aspects what Jung in fact discovered was that that it was indeed the same white ant and that while there was only a 9.7% chance of all three batches having a positive aspect as the most abundant 100% of the results showed this characteristic.
The ultimate conclusion then of Jung’s results are that synchronicity played no role in the results and the astrological factors were what was at work. Synchronicity is revealed as a chimera and astrology as a force of nature. While some of his anecdotal results, such as the arrangement of people seated at a dinner party, are suggestive of an application of synchronicity, anecdotal evidence is not proof, while the statistics do show the astrological effects.
It is sad to say that there is no proof for synchronicity, but then again it is very enlightening to discover that the astrological factors do play an important role in the important events of ones life such as marriage. We live in an astrological universe, not one based upon the weirdness and unpredictability of synchronicity. To quote Albert Einstein, “God does not play dice with the universe!”
The link is for the data analysis sheet.