What's the probability of something happening? Or of two things happening at once? Scientists offer up explanations for 'meaningful coincidences.'
In February 1973, Dr. Bernard Beitman found himself hunched over a kitchen sink in an old Victorian house in San Francisco, choking uncontrollably. He wasn’t eating or drinking so there was nothing to cough up, and yet for several minutes he couldn’t catch his breath or swallow.
Beitman defines a coincidence as “two events coming together with apparently no causal explanation.” They can be life-changing, like his experience with his father, or comforting, such as when a loved one’s favorite song comes on the radio just when you are missing them most. mass media: A person thinks of an idea and then hears or sees it on TV, the radio or the internet. Thinking of someone and then having that person call unexpectedly is next on the list, followed by being in the right place at the right time to advance one’s work, career and education.
In his new book published in September, “Meaningful Coincidences: How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen,” he shares the story of a young man who intended to end his life by the shore of an isolated lake. While he sat crying in his car, another car pulled up and his brother got out. Hand calls this the law of truly large numbers. “You take something that has a very small chance of happening and you give it lots and lots and lots of opportunities to happen,” he said. “Then the overall probability becomes big.”
Johansen, the psychology professor at Cardiff, and his colleague Magda Osman, a professor of basic and applied decision-making at the University of Cambridge, are particularly interested in how we determine whether a coincidence is a chance event or not. One day, the patient was recounting a dream in which she’d received a golden scarab. Just then, Jung heard a gentle tapping at the window. He opened the window and a scarab-like beetle flew into the room. Jung plucked the insect out of the air and presented it to his patient. “Here is your scarab,” he said.
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