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The Engineering of Coincidence: a scientific explanation of magic
“Magic is the engineering of coincidence”
Fireballs. Wands. Turning people into frogs. Everyone knows that wizards like Harry Potter are fictional. But is there real magic in the world?
The psychiatrist Carl Jung was obsessed with coincidences that seemed too incredible to be truly coincidental. He was convinced that they revealed a deeper level of reality, and called this revelation ‘synchronicity’.Years of rigorous scientific experiments have shown that people are capable of reading each other’s minds, influencing random number generators, and even seeing into the future.Millions of self-help books are sold every year on the premise that you can change your life by the power of thought.These forms of magic all have something in no-one knows why they work. The purpose of this book is to explain (without invoking the supernatural) why they work, taking some of our most successful scientific theories, then weaving them together into a new way of looking at the world.
A world where you can engineer coincidence.
A world where you can do magic.
"A slim but demanding volume" - Prog Magazine
"What have you got to lose but your prejudices about what we laughingly call 'reality'?" - Fortean Times
Fireballs. Wands. Turning people into frogs. Everyone knows that wizards like Harry Potter are fictional. But is there real magic in the world?
The psychiatrist Carl Jung was obsessed with coincidences that seemed too incredible to be truly coincidental. He was convinced that they revealed a deeper level of reality, and called this revelation ‘synchronicity’.Years of rigorous scientific experiments have shown that people are capable of reading each other’s minds, influencing random number generators, and even seeing into the future.Millions of self-help books are sold every year on the premise that you can change your life by the power of thought.These forms of magic all have something in no-one knows why they work. The purpose of this book is to explain (without invoking the supernatural) why they work, taking some of our most successful scientific theories, then weaving them together into a new way of looking at the world.
A world where you can engineer coincidence.
A world where you can do magic.
"A slim but demanding volume" - Prog Magazine
"What have you got to lose but your prejudices about what we laughingly call 'reality'?" - Fortean Times
- GenresNonfiction
119 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 24, 2019
18 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 23, 2021
"The subject of this book is magic, and the purpose of it is to explain how it works."
Maybe you've already heard of the term 'synchronicity'.
It was introduced by psychologist Carl G. Jung to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related, yet lack a causal connection.
What this book tries to do, is to explain the mechanics behind such 'coincidences'.
And it also claims to learn you how you can 'engineer' such coincidences, which is the magic talked about during the whole book.
A play in three acts
The book consists of 3 parts.
The first one is the best part of the whole book. It talks about 'theoretical magic'. Even though the explanations are rather brief and simplified, this may be an interesting first encounter for some readers with more complicated theories like relativity, quantum physics, entropy and chaos theory. These all serve to explain the author's vision on a timeless multiverse and it's role in the mechanism of magic. Actually I thought about giving an extra star in my rating for this part, but then the rest of the book came and I chose another path in my multiverse.
The second part explains the techniques of 'practical magic'. Actually this felt quite amateuristic.
And this feeling totally peaks in part 3, where it's time for 'speculations'. From near death experiences over dark matter to the function of the orgasm. We learn the author's view on several subjects.
Me, myself and I
The author likes to put himself in the foreground, instead of letting facts speak for themselves.
A few names of scientists are mentioned, but not once do you get really accurate data about the studies they conducted. There are no footnotes nor is there a list of references at the end of the book. As a reader you often don't know on which exact sources of information the author bases all his assumptions.
Furthermore, the use of the word 'magic' becomes irritating after a while. Especially in combination with the second and third half of the book which become very spacey at moments.
All of this makes the book losing more and more of it's credibility and thus not suited for the more critical reader.
*Thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Maybe you've already heard of the term 'synchronicity'.
It was introduced by psychologist Carl G. Jung to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related, yet lack a causal connection.
What this book tries to do, is to explain the mechanics behind such 'coincidences'.
And it also claims to learn you how you can 'engineer' such coincidences, which is the magic talked about during the whole book.
A play in three acts
The book consists of 3 parts.
The first one is the best part of the whole book. It talks about 'theoretical magic'. Even though the explanations are rather brief and simplified, this may be an interesting first encounter for some readers with more complicated theories like relativity, quantum physics, entropy and chaos theory. These all serve to explain the author's vision on a timeless multiverse and it's role in the mechanism of magic. Actually I thought about giving an extra star in my rating for this part, but then the rest of the book came and I chose another path in my multiverse.
The second part explains the techniques of 'practical magic'. Actually this felt quite amateuristic.
And this feeling totally peaks in part 3, where it's time for 'speculations'. From near death experiences over dark matter to the function of the orgasm. We learn the author's view on several subjects.
Me, myself and I
The author likes to put himself in the foreground, instead of letting facts speak for themselves.
A few names of scientists are mentioned, but not once do you get really accurate data about the studies they conducted. There are no footnotes nor is there a list of references at the end of the book. As a reader you often don't know on which exact sources of information the author bases all his assumptions.
Furthermore, the use of the word 'magic' becomes irritating after a while. Especially in combination with the second and third half of the book which become very spacey at moments.
All of this makes the book losing more and more of it's credibility and thus not suited for the more critical reader.
*Thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
April 14, 2020
Buy this book
If like me, you havent given any serious thought to the science of the universe, or considered coincidence to be anything more than just that.. a coincidence..then this book will change all that! Real physics explained lucidly in a way that someone with no previous knowledge can grasp. This is much more than the book suggests, much more! By the end of the book I had two opposing thoughts.. I need to read this again right now.. and I need to rest my mind while it digests all the new ideas. Two days later, I'm still digesting the implications in this book, my curiosity is well an truly ignited! I will add that this is not my normal type of book, it was by sheer chance that an advert for this book popped up just as I was trying to get my head around an unbelievable coincidence in my own life. Buy the book, enjoy!
If like me, you havent given any serious thought to the science of the universe, or considered coincidence to be anything more than just that.. a coincidence..then this book will change all that! Real physics explained lucidly in a way that someone with no previous knowledge can grasp. This is much more than the book suggests, much more! By the end of the book I had two opposing thoughts.. I need to read this again right now.. and I need to rest my mind while it digests all the new ideas. Two days later, I'm still digesting the implications in this book, my curiosity is well an truly ignited! I will add that this is not my normal type of book, it was by sheer chance that an advert for this book popped up just as I was trying to get my head around an unbelievable coincidence in my own life. Buy the book, enjoy!
December 20, 2022
I'm not sure about this. I thought at first, it was a book about probability and how to use actual probability against human intuition about probability.
I was, however, completely wrong in this assumption. This is actually one man's attempt to reconcile the universe (or multiverse) into a system that allows magick (as in the occult) to exist. The author's own model of static, timeless multiverse where each decision has already been preordained, not in the classic fatalist model, but rather in an, each decision creates an array of similar universes, each following the different paths, kind of way. It's a strange idea, but no less strange than any other multiverse conjecture. The difference is that with the static model, everything that could be done is already present. As such, it allows the possibility of hopping between and experiencing echoes of, other timelines.
I was, however, completely wrong in this assumption. This is actually one man's attempt to reconcile the universe (or multiverse) into a system that allows magick (as in the occult) to exist. The author's own model of static, timeless multiverse where each decision has already been preordained, not in the classic fatalist model, but rather in an, each decision creates an array of similar universes, each following the different paths, kind of way. It's a strange idea, but no less strange than any other multiverse conjecture. The difference is that with the static model, everything that could be done is already present. As such, it allows the possibility of hopping between and experiencing echoes of, other timelines.
October 22, 2023
An interesting book which partly looks at aspects of cosmology and then looks at “magical” techniques to possibly achieve what you want. I found it a bit mixed & am not sure how it fits in with other ideas such a positive thinking & the law of attraction. It’s a short book which could do with expanding ideas.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews