![]() ![]() Kammerer further developed some theories as to how the law of seriality may work, including an imitation, persistence and attraction hypothesis. In this post we take a closer look at what Kammerer’s law of seriality means for five specific fields, and how it can be applied. Interest in Kammerer revived in 1971 with the publication of Arthur Koestler's book, The Case of the Midwife Toad. Koestler surmised that Kammerer's experiments on the midwife toad may have been tampered with by a Nazi sympathizer at the University of Vienna. On the Metaphysics of Seriality in 'Dexter' and Kammerer (S. Multitude of arts in the representative regime, but appeal to a 'dark and gritty' ethical. Of Paul Kammerer's Law of the Series, a metaphysical exaltation of seriality as a. BOOK REVIEW: The Roots of Coincidence: An Excursion into Parapsychology by Arthur Koestler (Vintage Books) 1972 With psychologist Carl Jung most associated with discovering the concept of “synchronicity” (the occurrence of two or more events that appear to be meaningfully related but not causally related) and physicist Wolfgang Pauli the discoverer of what he called the law of “seriality,” and the two researcher’s contributions to the “genesis of the concept of acausal synchrony” are strong. And the late writer Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), who died three months to the day prior to the UK release of The Police album Synchronicity (via suicide) – more about that in a bit – was struck by these theories and decided to expound upon them in his 1972 book The Roots of Coincidence, one that appears to be out of print but available in used form at Amazon.com. Journalist, a particularly fascinating 20 th century figure and Hungarian Jew who spent time in a horrific fascist prison during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 (which he wrote about in Dialogue with Death and an incident I noted here in my Dust Devil Dreams post '), wrote the powerful anti-Stalinism novel Darkness at Noon and would later embrace psychic phenomena and mysticism. “We are surrounded by phenomena whose existence we studiously ignore; or, if they cannot be ignored, dismissed as superstitions,” writes Koestler, in a book that coincided with a famous 1972 Time magazine cover story: “.” UFOs, ESP, mysterious creatures, astrology, ghosts Koestler’s book came out at a time when there was serious interest in synchronicity and dream interpretation. “The Jung-Pauli theory of ‘Synchronicity,’ conceived by a physicist and a psychologist, both eminent in their fields, represents perhaps the most radical departure from the world-view of mechanistic science in our time,” writes Koestler. Continuing, he writes,“Synchronicity and Seriality are modern derivations of the archetypal belief in the fundamental unity of all things, transcending mechanical causality,' adding later that these limiting terms should be referred to as “confluential events.” Sting, singer and bass player for the rock band The Police (and now a successful solo artist) has long advocated Koestler’s ideas, naming the band’s 1981 album Ghost in the Machine (for Koestler’s 1967 book and mentioned here in The Roots of Coincidence) and their 1983 album Synchronicity. Writing over at Popdose.com, Jack Feerick addresses Sting’s and their influence on his former band’s music, writing: “ Koestler’s 1972 The Roots of Coincidence addressed psychic phenomenon – precognition and the like – in terms of quantum mechanics, with Koestler postulating that subatomic events could send ripples back in time. (Sting’s) reading of Koestler sent him to the works of Carl Jung, especially Synchronicity (1952).” Back to The Roots of Coincidence, Koestler is a bit all over the map. In the chapter “The ABC of ESP,” he notes how NASA even embraced the possibilities of extra-sensory perception and noted that during Edgar Mitchell’s flight aboard Apollo 14, in 1971, the astronaut “attempted during the flight to establish telepathic contact with four selected subjects on earth,” notes Koestler. Kammerer S Law Of Seriality In Arts![]() The results, while not available in 1972, were later said, by Mitchell () to have been “good,” considering he was 200,000 miles from the subjects he was psychically connecting with in a lab on earth. Koestler’s talk of “” where humans (a “holon” or an entity that is more than the sum of its part while also part of a large “whole”) are really embracing a Janus-like “duality” (“” as Private Joker puts it in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket). Heiwa tokei cv drivers. Yes, Koestler's work is 43 years old and some of his embrace of (the true Seriality discoverer) Paul Kammerer, a Lamarckian, has brought some of his ideas into question, as Kammerer was accused of faking results related to his study of midwife toads, something Koestler wrote extensively about. Regardless, Koestler brings up some fascinating subjects and idea throughout The Roots of Coincidence. In fact, even then, he felt we had so much more to learn about coincidence, seriality and synchronicity and that it was time to end the ridiculing of parapsychology and paranormal research, as many so-called 'skeptics' are apt to do in our increasingly nihilistic society. Concludes Koestler: “In science fiction it is taken for granted that telepathic communication and psychokinetic manipulation of matter will become commonplace in the not-too-distant future; and science fiction has proved to be an astonishingly reliable prophet.” Let's hope he is right! Red Dirt Report was launched July 4, 2007 as an independent news website covering all manner of news, culture, entertainment and lifestyle stories that affect and interest Oklahoma readers and readers outside of our state. Our mission is to educate, promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, government and politics. Our experienced journalists provided balanced in-depth coverage of news stories that affect Oklahomans. Our opinion/editorial stories come from a wide range of political view points. We carry out our mission by reporting, writing, and posting news and information. While Jung insisted that meaningful coincidences could be explained through the “constellation” (activation) of archetypes, his contemporary Paul Kammerer thought they could be explained by current scientific principles. John Townley is keeping Kammerer’s perspective alive and evolving. To listen to our radio interview please click. John Townley writes: “Paul Kammerer (1880-1926) was an Austrian biologist who studied and advocated the Lamarckian theory of inheritance–namely that environmentally induced genetic changes in the parent could influence the genetics of the offspring. His work was condemned by followers of the incoming Darwinian theory. However, he has recently been recognized as having uncovered the principles of epigenetics, far ahead of his time. “Equally important may have been Kammerer’s other passion–collecting coincidence stories. He published a book with the title Das Gesetz der Serie ( The Law of the Series, 1919) in which he recounted some 100 example anecdotes of coincidences organized into types, sub-types, and families, not unlike Linnaeus’s biological categories. “He proposed that coincidences are actually just visible peaks of larger moving entities of organized information, which he called “constellations of bodies and forces” that displayed affinity and attraction under natural law. He developed some basic principles of how it might work, drawing on the physics of his time, including an “imitation hypothesis”, an “attraction hypothesis” and the principle of “persistence”, an extension of inertia that applied to systems and information as well as physical bodies. Kammerer S Law Of Seriality In Art![]() Kammerer S Law Of Seriality In ArticleAgain ahead of his time, much of what he describes as “seriality” is similar to what has more recently developed in chaos, complexity, and catastrophe theories. “Albert Einstein himself called Kammerer’s theories “interesting, and by no means absurd”, while Carl Jung later drew upon Kammerer’s work in his essay Synchronicity. Kammerer S Law Of Seriality In Art ImagesBut Kammer’s approach to coincidence is almost the opposite of Jung’s, who attributed most of “synchronicity” to the inner world of the subconscious and psychological “archetypes”. Kammerer believed coincidences happen externally, as a part of less-obvious ongoing real-world systems, and we just notice them, more or less selectively, as they rise to the level of our attention. “By removing coincidence from the murky world of individual psychological projection, he opens up possibilities of research that views the specific incidents as part of a larger, shared structure. His refreshingly-physical approach may be a helpful key in studying all sorts of anomalistic events and uncovering hidden patterns in fields as far apart as parapsychology, homeopathy, astrology, ritual, epidemiology, criminology, historical anthropology, creativity and the arts, and statistics.” To hear Townley discuss Kammerer, please listen to our interview. For Townley’s synopsis of Kammerer’s ideas please click. If you would like to read an introduction to the translation of The Law of Seriality or request a copy of the full translation, please click.
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