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 phenomena or entities are those beyond the Scientific law, laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin 'above, beyond, outside of' + 'nature'. Although the corollary term "nature" has had multiple meanin ...

occult The occult () is a category of esoteric or supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of organized religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving a 'hidden' or 'secret' agency, such as magic and mysti ...

, 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. Not ...

claims, or it may lead to belief in

fatalism Fatalism is a belief and philosophical doctrine which considers the entire universe as a deterministic system and stresses the subjugation of all events, actions, and behaviors to fate or destiny, which is commonly associated with the cons ...

, 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 Folk psychology, commonsense psychology, or naïve psychology is the ordinary, intuitive, or non-expert understanding, explanation, and rationalization of people's behaviors and Cognitive psychology, mental states. In philosophy of mind and cognit ...

and philosophy. From a

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

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

probability Probability is a branch of mathematics and statistics concerning events and numerical descriptions of how likely they are to occur. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1; the larger the probability, the more likely an e ...

. 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 the same birthday. The birthday paradox is the counterintuitive fact that only 23 people are needed for that ...

, which shows that the

of two persons having the same birthday already exceeds 50% in a group of only 23 persons. Generalizations of the birthday problem are a key tool used for mathematically modelling coincidences.M. Pollanen (2024) ''A Double Birthday Paradox in the Study of Coincidences'',

Mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

23(24), 3882. https://doi.org/10.3390/math12243882

Etymology

The first known usage of the word coincidence 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 ( "brown"; 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 d ...

, 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 Thomas Browne concerned with the quincunx—a pattern of five points arranged in an ...

'' (1658).

Synchronicity

Swiss psychiatrist

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of Carl Jung publications, over 20 books, illustrator, and corr ...

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

synchronicity Synchronicity () is a concept introduced by Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, to describe events that coincide in time and appear meaningfully related, yet lack a discoverable causal connection. Jung held that this was a healthy fu ...

," 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 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 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

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 vast numbers of opportunities such coincidences do happen by chance if it is only non-zero (see law of truly large numbers). Some skeptics (e.g.,

Georges Charpak Georges Charpak (; born Jerzy Charpak; 1 August 1924 – 29 September 2010) was a Polish-born French physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992 for his invention of the multiwire proportional chamber. Life Georges Charpak was born ...

and Henri Broch) argue synchronicity is merely an instance of

apophenia Apophenia () is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. The term ( from the ) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmot ...

. They argue that probability and statistical theory (exemplified, e.g., in Littlewood's law) 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 strange 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) 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: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

, 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 seems 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 was 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 frequent participant at t ...

: '' 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

Further reading

External links