A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to

supernatural Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings si ...

occult The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism a ...

, or

paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Nota ...

claims, or it may lead to belief in

fatalism Fatalism is a family of related philosophical doctrines that stress the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or destiny, and is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are thou ...

, which is a doctrine that events will happen in the exact manner of a predetermined plan. In general, the perception of coincidence, for lack of more sophisticated explanations, can serve as a link to

folk psychology In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, folk psychology, or commonsense psychology, is a human capacity to explain and predict the behavior and mental state of other people. Processes and items encountered in daily life such as pain, pleasure ...

and philosophy. From a

statistical Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...

perspective, coincidences are inevitable and often less remarkable than they may appear intuitively. Usually coincidences are chance events with underestimated

probability Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an Event (probability theory), event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and ...

. An example is the

birthday problem In probability theory, the birthday problem asks for the probability that, in a set of randomly chosen people, at least two will share a birthday. The birthday paradox is that, counterintuitively, the probability of a shared birthday exceeds 5 ...

, which shows that the

of two persons having the same birthday already exceeds 50% in a group of only 23 persons.

Etymology

The first known usage of the word is from c. 1605 with the meaning "exact correspondence in substance or nature" from the French ''coincidence'', from ''coincider'', from Medieval Latin ''coincidere''. The definition evolved in the 1640s as "occurrence or existence during the same time". The word was introduced to English readers in the 1650s by Sir

Thomas Browne Sir Thomas Browne (; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a deep curi ...

, in ''A Letter to a Friend'' (circa 1656 pub. 1690) and in his discourse ''

The Garden of Cyrus ''The Garden of Cyrus'', or ''The Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered'', is a discourse by Sir Thomas Browne. First published in 1658, along with its diptych companion '' ...

'' (1658).

Synchronicity

Swiss psychiatrist

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...

developed a theory which states that remarkable coincidences occur because of what he called "

synchronicity Synchronicity (german: Synchronizität) is a concept first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl G. Jung "to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection." In contemporary research, synchronicity ...

," which he defined as an "acausal connecting principle." One of Kammerer's passions was collecting coincidences. He published a book titled ''Das Gesetz der Serie'' (''The Law of Series''), which has not been translated into English. In this book, he recounted 100 or so anecdotes of coincidences that had led him to formulate his theory of seriality. He postulated that all events are connected by waves of seriality. Kammerer was known to make notes in public parks of how many people were passing by, how many of them carried umbrellas, etc.

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

called the idea of seriality "interesting and by no means absurd." Carl Jung drew upon Kammerer's work in his book ''Synchronicity''. A coincidence lacks an apparent causal connection. A coincidence may be synchronicity—the experience of events that are causally unrelated—and yet their occurrence together has meaning for the person who observes them. To be counted as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance, but this is questioned because there is usually a chance, no matter how small and in truly large numbers of opportunities such coincidences do happen by chance if it is only non-zero, see

law of truly large numbers The law of truly large numbers (a statistical adage), attributed to Persi Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller, states that with a large enough number of independent samples, any highly implausible (i.e. unlikely in any single sample, but with constan ...

. Some skeptics (e.g.,

Georges Charpak Georges Charpak (; born Jerzy Charpak, 1 August 1924 – 29 September 2010) was a Polish-born French physicist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992. Life Georges Charpak was born Jerzy Charpak to Jewish parents, Anna (Szapiro) and ...

and

Henri Broch Henri is an Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Luxembourgish form of the masculine given name Henry. People with this given name ; French noblemen :'' See the 'List of rulers named Henry' for Kings of France named Henri.'' * Henri I de Montm ...

) argue synchronicity is merely an instance of

apophenia Apophenia () is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. The term (German: ' from the Greek verb ''ἀποφαίνειν'' (apophaínein)) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the b ...

. They argue that probability and statistical theory (exemplified, e.g., in

Littlewood's law __NOTOC__ Littlewood's law states that a person can expect to experience events with odds of one in a million (referred to as a "miracle") at the rate of about one per month. It was framed by British mathematician John Edensor Littlewood. History ...

) suffice to explain remarkable coincidences. David Lane & Andrea Diem Lane, 2010
Desultory Decussation: Where Littlewood’s Law of Miracles meets Jung’s Synchronicity
www.integralworld.net

Charles Fort Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932) was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The terms "Fortean" and "Forteana" are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold w ...

also compiled hundreds of accounts of interesting coincidences and anomalous phenomena.

Causality

Measuring the

of a series of coincidences is the most common method of distinguishing a coincidence from causally connected events. To establish cause and effect (i.e.,

causality Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...

) is notoriously difficult, as is expressed by the commonly heard statement that "

correlation does not imply causation The phrase "correlation does not imply causation" refers to the inability to legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two events or variables solely on the basis of an observed association or correlation between them. The id ...

." In

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...

, it is generally accepted that observational studies can give hints but can never establish cause and effect. But, considering the probability paradox (see Koestler's quote above), it appears that the larger the set of coincidences, the more certainty increases and the more it appears that there is some cause behind a remarkable coincidence.

References

Bibliography

David Marks David Lee Marks (born August 22, 1948) is an American guitarist who is best known for being an early member of the Beach Boys. While growing up in Hawthorne, California, Marks was a neighborhood friend of the original band members and was a freq ...

: '' The Psychology of the Psychic''. pp. 227–46 * Joseph Mazur (2016). ''Fluke: The Maths and Myths of Coincidences'', London: Oneworld Publications.

Etymology

Synchronicity

Causality

See also

References

Bibliography

External links