The Cunning of Geist 030 - Synchronicity, the I-Ching, and Hegel
Psychologist C. G. Jung coined the term 'synchronicity,' which is a powerful psycho/physical concept that ties together causality with meaning.
In comparing the Western and Eastern mind, he states "While the Western mind carefully sifts, weighs, selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture of the moment encompasses everything down to the minutest nonsensical detail, because all of the ingredients make up the observed moment" (Foreward, The I-Ching or Book of Changes, Wilhelm/Baynes translation).
Jung is saying that a moment not only has 'causal' relations, but 'meaning' relations as well. He compares this to the finding of quantum physics: “The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure. The microphysical event includes the observer just as much as the reality underlying the I Ching comprises subjective, i.e., psychic conditions in the totality of the momentary situation." (Ibid).
This has clear correspondence to Hegel's notion that substance is subject. As Slovene philosopher Mladen Dolar expresses it, "Hegel proposed the fundamental adage that everything depends on a single statement, namely, that the true is not to be comprehended only as a substance but equally as a subject—in brief, substance is subject” (e-flux. com, #34, Hegel and Freud, 2012).
This episode explores this fascinating concept in light of Hegelian philosophy.