Synchronicity and Scholasticism

Kevin Vail
P 739 – Freud, Jung & Religion
Dr. Felicity Kelcourse – instructor
Kevin Vail P 739 – Dr. Felicity Kelcourse 2

Quid est veritas? Pilate’s famous question to Jesus Christ, was for many centuries read as

a mockery of pagan ignorance. However, today, it is often repeated as though it were among the

most profound statements in all the scriptures. What has led Western civilization to such a

profound skepticism of humanity’s ability to know the truth and what light can be shed on this

problem by modern psychology, modern physics and postmodern theology?

In the middle part of the 17th century a Frenchman named Rene Descartes attempted to

rescue philosophy from the nominalism that had destroyed Scholasticism. The nominalists held

that universals had no ontological existence; they existed only in the intellect (post res). The

human intellect could only reason from the particular to the universal and these universals

existed only as names (flatus vocis), there were no Platonic forms (ειδος). Descartes therefore

tried to root all existence and knowing within the human intellect. His famous formula, cognito

ergo sum, in effect locked all knowing within the mind. As a consequence of this move, he

posited the existence of two separate realms of being – mind (res cognitas) and matter (res

extensa). Descartes therefore created a world of mind that did not interact with the realm of

matter. The realm of matter became a realm of factum, that which is accomplished and is clearly

discernible.

The next move toward skepticism came from the British empiricists David Hume and

John Locke in the 18th century. They denied the existence of final and formal causes and rooted

human knowing solely in material and efficient causality. The German, Immanuel Kant,

completed this move by defining metaphysics as noumena and therefore unknowable. Kant

added to the picture, a priori categories of the intellect that structured knowledge and made

human beings co-creators of their own experience rather than passive receivers of information.

However, this co-creation was nearly wholly limiting and imposed on experience internally
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generated categories, such as time, space and multiplicity; which he held did not exist in

“reality”. Kant’s philosophy made a pure experience of the outside world impossible. His

writings inaugurated the era of German idealism into which modern psychology was born.

Philosophy has, since Descartes, split the world in two and has increasingly isolated the mind

within a shell of illusion and deception. In this weltanschauung, Freud was able to uncritically

present his “projection theory of God” and it can be said that, in the West is it a common

conception among people that man creates God.

Modern physics, beginning with Isaac Newton developed alongside the aforementioned

moves in epistemology and came to rely exclusively on knowledge of material and efficient

causality. Physicists embraced the notion that a narrowly defined method of inductive reasoning

was the only path to true knowledge of the world and as the sciences became more specialized

and philosophy receded into the background of academia, they forgot that their assumptions

constituted, in and of themselves, a philosophical position. In the words of quantum physicist

and philosopher Wolfgang Smith “scientists have promulgated philosophic opinions of the most

dubious kind as established scientific truths, and in the name of science have thrust upon an

awed and credulous public a shallow world-view for which in reality there is not a shred of

scientific support” (2000).

In the 20th century, through the work of two scientists, a physicist and a psychiatrist, an

opening appeared by which that split is could be healed. Wolfgang Pauli, along with Niels Bohr

and Werner Heisenberg, discovered the fundamental principles of the most successful and

accurate theory of reality to date, quantum mechanics. Carl Jung founded analytic psychology,

one of three major schools of psychodynamic psychology. It is my contention the work of these

two revolutionary thinkers has opened the door to a more holistic understanding of reality that
Kevin Vail P 739 – Dr. Felicity Kelcourse 4

dissolves the Cartesian bifurcation into res cognitas and res extensa. The mediator between the

psychology of Carl Jung and the physics of quantum mechanism is the theology of St. Thomas

Aquinas as explicated and developed by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Wolfgang

Smith.

The philosopher of science and physicist Thomas Kuhn has argued the progress of

science can be viewed best as a series of “non-cumulative development episodes in which an

older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one” (1970, p. 91). The

new weltanschauung of postmodernity is much more willing to accept an epistemological

pluralism that embraces all four of the Aristotelian causes. While it is neither possible nor

desirable to return wholly to the worldview of the Middle Ages, the dogmatic skepticism of

modernity no longer serves science or theology (if indeed it ever did). The modern juxtaposition

of “faith” against “science” has resulted only in twin fundamentalisms that produce knowledge

without meaning and faith without understanding.

A significant component of this opposition between faith and science is the assertion by

modern science that it speaks from a position of theological neutrality. Modern theology has, too

often, relegated itself to a subservient position vis-à-vis an allegedly more fundamental secular

reason. In his magnum opus Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, John

Milbank has documented the roots of secularism in heretical and re-paganized theology of the

late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He writes,

If theology no longer seeks to position, qualify or criticize other discourses, then it is

inevitable that these discourses will position theology: for the necessity of an ultimate
organizing logic … cannot be wished away. A theology ‘positioned’; by secular reason
suffers two characteristic forms of confinement. Either it idolatrously connects
knowledge of God with some particular immanent field of knowledge – ‘ultimate’
cosmological causes, or ‘ultimate’ psychological and subjective needs. Or else it is
confined to intimations of a sublimity beyond representation, so functioning as to confirm
negatively the questionable idea of an autonomous secular realm, completely transparent
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to rational understanding (1993, p. 1).

In other words, modern theology has either a) allowed itself to be subservient to human sciences,

particularly sociology and psychology or b) rejected all human knowledge in a kind of fideism.

Either way, theology has lost its position as “Queen of the Sciences” and has too often allowed

itself to be positioned as “the crazy aunt in the basement”. A postmodern approach to Jung’s

psychology and its relationship to Christian thought will therefore have to address these

fundamental concerns in the areas of ontology and epistemology. The postmodern view asserts

that all narratives proceed from assumptions that cannot, in themselves, be demonstrated. The

Western notion of secular reason is no different. Secular reason is such a narrative, rooted in an

epistemology and an ontology, and has no claim to being more “universal” or objective.

Perhaps the most famous contribution of Jung to the modern science of psychology is his

concept of the archetype. Jung definition of the archetype evolved and changed over his career.

In early writings, he identified the archetype as a “the forms which the instincts assume” (1931,

p. 157). This formulation is most indebted to Jung’s collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Other

definitions of the archetype presented something of a cross between a Kantian a priori category

of the understanding and a Platonic ειδος. For example in “Instinct and the Unconscious” he

wrote, “In this ‘deeper’ stratum we also find the a priori, inborn forms of ‘intuition’, namely the

archetypes of perception and apprehension, which are the necessary a priori determinants of all

psychic processes” (1948, p. 133). In his 1952 essay on Synchronicity, Jung defined the

archetype as “the introspectively recognizable form of an a priori psychic orderedness” (p. 516).

For Jung, the archetypes were the foundation of the psyche for all human beings. More structure

than content, archetypes are instantiated in mythology, religion, art, literature and music as well

as in dreams. Their content is culturally derived but their form is universal. His writings deal
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directly only with a handful of archetypes but their number is theoretically infinite.

A starting point for the discussion between psychology, physics and theology can be

found in Jung’s study of what he termed “synchronicity”. Marie-Louise von Franz, a student of

Jung, has defined synchronicity as “a coincidence of two psychic states: (1) The normal, causally

explainable state of our perception of the outer world; (2) the state represented by a critical

experience that gives the impression of an overlay or interruption of the normal state by an

archetypally conditioned constellation” (1988, p. 209). Synchronicity proper refers to the

confluence of external events and psychic meaning. Jung related this concept to experiments in

parapsychology dealing with ESP effects, to astrology and to apparently “chance” occurrences in

the lives of his patients, which coincided with psychic states and affects. Jung drew from the

philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Gottfried Leibniz as well as his own clinical experience

and expertise to postulate the existence of “acausal orderedness”, i.e. “a priori factors such as the

properties of natural numbers, the discontinuities of modern physics, etc.” (1952, p. 516).

“Acausal orderedness” is not synchronicity per se but an extension of it (Von Franz, 1998).

The “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics supports just such a view of

reality. As Wolfgang Smith has cogently summarized, “There is a simple and obvious ‘principle

of indetermination’, operative within the familiar corporeal domain, which affirms that neither

the external world at large, nor the least object therein, can be known or perceived ‘without

residue’. It cannot be thus known, moreover, not simply or unilaterally on account of a certain

incapacity on the part of the human observer, but also by the very nature of the corporeal entity

itself” (2005, p. 11). Reality requires human subjectivity to be “complete”. The object is

orientated towards being known. In the quantum world, one may again speak of the τελος of a

thing.
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Quantum mechanics has demonstrated principles such as indeterminacy, non-locality and

complementarily. Each of these principles undermines the mechanistic, causally bound universe

of Descartes and Newton. They suggest a universe, which is less a collection of factum and more

a continual process of creation. Jung himself intuited just such a perspective. He wrote,

I incline in fact to the view that synchronicity in the narrow sense is only a particular
instance of general acausal orderedness – that, name, of the equivalence of psychic and
physical processes where the observer is in the fortunate position of being able to
recognize the tertium comparationis … This form of orderedness differs from that of the
properties of natural numbers or the discontinuities of physics in that the latter have
existed from eternity and occur regularly, whereas the forms of psychic orderedness are
acts of creation in time … We must regard them as creative acts, as continuous creation of
a patter that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not derivable from
any know antecedents … [From this point of view] we must take the contingent partly as
a universal factor existing from all eternity, and partly as the sun of countless individual
acts of creation occurring in time. (1952, pp. 516-7).

Jung himself was unable to completely transcend his assumptions of logical positivism, though

he did recognize, in part, the essential place of both formal and final causality in any complete

framework of understanding.

The importance of these forms of causality is highlighted by the principle of

indeterminacy in quantum mechanics. It is derived from experimental findings, which show that

it is impossible to predict the position and trajectory of quanta in the abstract. There is no “one-

to-one correspondence between every element of the physical theory and the observed reality”

(Kafatos & Nadeau, 1990, p. 14). This conclusion leads us to the related principles of

complementarily and non-locality. Complementarily refers to the logical framework proposed by

Niels Bohr to cope with the fact that “in the quantum world, positions and momenta … cannot be

said even in principle to have definite values… It is only through acts of observation … that a

definite value of the physical quantity is realized. This implies that the physical system does not

exist in a well-defined state in which changes in to system occur continuously, and that the future
Kevin Vail P 739 – Dr. Felicity Kelcourse 8

state of this system cannot be predicted” (Kafatos & Nadeau, 1990, p. 36). Absent the

observation, only one or the other of these two variable, position or momenta, is predictable.

Smith, following Heisenberg, links this indeterminacy and complementarily to Aristotelian

categories of potency and act. The physical system exists in state of potentiae, which move to act

when it is interacted upon by the observing intellect (2005).

The principle of non-locality is perhaps the most bizarre since it completely violates the

most basic notions of reality in the Cartesian framework. Non-locality refers to the conclusions

arrived at by John Bell in the 1960’s. Bell’s theorem demonstrated that two particles, deployed in

what is know as “space-like separated region” (where no subliminal communication between the

particles is possible), would continue to correlate with each other in spin and polarization and

assure the net angular momentum remained zero. Relativity theory assures us that no faster-

than-light communication between the particles is possible, therefore we are left with what

Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” (cited in Kafatos & Nadeau, 1990, p. 66). The

scientific finding is pure data no scientific explanation suffices. An explanation requires we

move beyond the reductionistic materialism that underlies classical physics. The most cogent

explanation is a recognition that the two particles originate in the same ειδος, i.e. pattern or

essence.

Von Franz has argued “that which we designate as matter or energy in the external world

is an archetypal image, just as the mind is” (1988, p. 16). However, what she means by this is

mired in German idealism. Jung and his followers have consistently held to their Kantian denials

of metaphysics. Jung himself often and emphatically picked up the mantle of the “empiricist”.

However, as Kuhn and others have shown, this is the weltanschauung of the 19th and early 20th

century. I submit that their denial of metaphysics is no more valid than a perspective that
Kevin Vail P 739 – Dr. Felicity Kelcourse 9

embraces traditional metaphysics. I propose to peel back the layers of skepticism and examine

the phenomena of acausal orderedness in the light of a Thomist epistemology. If physics cannot

explain these phenomena without recourse to metaphysics, then a Christian metaphysics is as

good as any other.

A representation epistemology founded on the ontological assumptions of the Cartesian

theatre cannot explain the observations and predictions of quantum mechanics. Res extensa and

res cognitas do not interact in that fashion. Therefore the scientific thing to do is to throw out the

unprovable assumptions that do not work. When one does so however, the impulse seems to be

to replace it with a pantheistic or monistic ontology that remains trapped in immance. Kafatos

and Nadeu do so in their work, which has been cited several times in this paper. Thomism,

however, both provides a framework that is neither pantheistic nor monistic and provides

categories for understanding these phenomena.

St. Thomas Aquinas was an Italian theologian of the Middle Ages whose writings have

continued to inform the basic theology of the Roman Catholic faith until the present day. At the

close of the 19t century, Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical letter Aeterni Patris wrote, “We exhort

you, venerable brethren, in all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to

spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of society,

and for the advantage of all the sciences” (1879, no. 31). His theology remains the gold standard

against which all others are measured.

St. Thomas’ epistemology is fundamentally ontological, which is what quantum

mechanics would seem to require. St. Thomas answered the question first presented in this essay,

quid est veritas?, with the formula, “aequatio rei et intellectus” (adequation of reality and

intellect). Some modern scholars have read into this formula a correspondence theory of truth,
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but a correspondence between what and what? A careful reading of St. Thomas will reveal that

for him a thing was true insofar as it corresponded with the divine intellect. St. Thomas writes “A

thing is said to be true principally because of its order to the truth of the divine intellect rather

than because of its relation to the truth of the human intellect” (De Veritate, Q.1 a. 4) and

“Natural things are said to be true in so far as they express the likeness of the species that are in

the divine mind” (De Veritate, Q. 16 a. 1 resp.). Milbank and Pickstock have argued that in St.

Thomas, truth and being are convertible. They write,

From the outset, then, Aquinas shows us that he does not intend to refer truth to being,
as if it were at a kind of static speculative epistemological remove from being. Rather he
is asking about truth as a mode of existence. This is not, however, to suggest that truth is
a particular kind of being, but rather that it is convertible with Being as such in the
entirety of both terms (2001, p. 6).

The Aristotelianized neo-Platonism of the Scholastics assumed the convertibility of goodness,

truth, beauty, and being. For St. Thomas, human knowing occurred through a process of μεθεξις.

Aquinas categorizes the intellect as a “proper accident” of the soul and as such it is “an example

of the second act of operation … which is beyond the first act of subsistence. Here … a

seemingly semi-accidental second act can rise ontologically above the first act and even come to

define a thing’s essence beyond its essence, in a super-essential way” (Milbank and Pickstock,

2001, p. 12). When a human person reasons, he or she analogically participates in the divine

reason. The ειδοξ exist within the divine intellect, in which Being and Truth are convertible.

Quantum mechanics shows us the particular does not appear in act until the physical

system is interacted with by observation. At that point, when the wave function collapses, the

form is abstracted in the intellect and all possibilities narrow to one. What then are the archetypes

but the ειδος of the divine mind in which the human intellect participates? The formal, the

material, the efficient and the final cause come together in the act of intellection since these are
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the things by which we know a thing at all. In that way, all acts of intellection are synchronicity

or “acasual orderedness”.

An essay of this length can hardly scratch the surface of these issues but it does suggest

directions for the integration of Thomism and Jungian psychology. However, it is the latter that

must be submitted for revision by the former. If theology is going to be a meta-discourse it can

no longer allow itself to be positioned by the human sciences. There are many problems to be

solved but the first step must be to set psychology on a solid foundation.
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References

Aquinas, Thomas, St. (2009). Questiones Disputatae de Veritate (Robert W. Mulligan, S.J.,
James V. McGlynn, S.J. Robert W. Schmidt, S.J. Trans.) (Joseph Kenny, O.P. Ed.).
Retrieved 4/24/2009 from http://www.diafrica.org/kenny/CDtexts/QDdeVer.htm.

Jung, C. G. (1952). “Synchronicity” In William McGuire (Ed.), The Structure and Dynamics of
the Psyche: Including “Synchronicity an Acausal Connecting Principle” Collected
Works Vol. 8 (R.F.C. Hull Trans.) (pp. 417 - 519). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.

------------ (1948). “Instinct and the Unconscious” In William McGuire (Ed.), The Structure and
Dynamics of the Psyche: Including “Synchronicity an Acausal Connecting Principle”
Collected Works Vol. 8 (R.F.C. Hull Trans.) (pp. 417 - 519). Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.

------------ (1931).“The Structure of the Psyche” In William McGuire (Ed.), The Structure and
Dynamics of the Psyche: Including “Synchronicity an Acausal Connecting Principle”
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University Press.

Kafatos, M. and Nadeau, R. (1990). The Conscious Universe: Part and Whole in Modern
Physical Theory. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (2nd Ed.). Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.

Leo XIII, Pope. (1879). Aeterni Patris. Retrieved April 24, 2009 from
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-
xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris_en.html .

Milbank, J. (1993). Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (2nd Ed.).
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Milbank, J. and Pickstock, C. (2001). Truth in Aquinas. New York, NY: Routledge.

Smith, W. (2005). The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key. (3rd Ed.). Hillsdale,
NY:Sophia Perennis.

------------ (2000). The Plague of Scientistic Belief. Homiletic & Pastoral Review, (April, 2000).
Retrieved April 24, 2009, from http://www.webcitation.org/5XP1NFp3B.

Von Franz, M. L. (1988). Psyche and Matter. Boston, MA:Shambhala Publications.