''Unus mundus'' (

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for "One world") is an underlying concept of

Western philosophy Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word ' ...

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

, and

alchemy Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...

, of a primordial unified reality from which everything derives. The term can be traced back to medieval

Scholasticism Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon the Aristotelian 10 Categories. Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translate ...

though the notion itself dates back at least as far as

Plato's allegory of the cave The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato's Cave, is an allegory presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work '' Republic'' (514a–520a) to compare "the effect of education ( παιδεία) and the lack of it on our nature". It is written a ...

. The idea was popularized in the 20th century by the Swiss psychoanalyst

Carl Gustav 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 ...

, though the term can be traced back to scholastics such as

Duns Scotus John Duns Scotus ( – 8 November 1308), commonly called Duns Scotus ( ; ; "Duns the Scot"), was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. He is one of the four most important ...

C. G. Jung ed, ''Man and his Symbols'' (1978) p. 402 and was taken up again in the 16th century by

Gerhard Dorn Gerhard Dorn (c. 1530 – 1584) was a Belgian philosopher, translator, alchemist, physician and bibliophile. Biography The details of Gerhard Dorn's early life, along with those of many other 16th century personalities, are lost to history. ...

, a student of the famous alchemist

Paracelsus Paracelsus (; ; 1493 – 24 September 1541), born Theophrastus von Hohenheim (full name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance. He w ...

Jung and Pauli

Jung, in conjunction with the physicist

Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (; ; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics fo ...

, explored the possibility that his concepts of

archetypes The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be any of the following: # a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ot ...

and

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 ...

might be related to the ''unus mundus'' - the archetype being an expression of ''unus mundus''; synchronicity, or "meaningful coincidence", being made possible by the fact that both the

observer An observer is one who engages in observation or in watching an experiment. Observer may also refer to: Computer science and information theory * In information theory, any system which receives information from an object * State observer in con ...

and connected

phenomenon A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...

ultimately stem from the same source, the ''unus mundus''.Jung, p. 384-5 Jung was careful, however, to stress the tentative and provisional nature of such explorations into a unitarian idea of reality.

References

External links

The Psychic Continuum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Unus Mundus Alchemical concepts Analytical psychology Western esotericism

Jung and Pauli

See also

References

Further reading

External links