Explain this SERENDIPITY and these COINCIDENCES?

[John H.]

--
johnYYYcoe at tpg.com.au

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"Jazz" <jazz1002 at charter.net> wrote in message
news:vhp9p726n0lcce at corp.supernews.com...
>
> "John H." <john at faraway.com> wrote in message
> news:3f1b70bc at dnews.tpgi.com.au...
> >
> >
> > --
> > johnYYYcoe at tpg.com.au
> >
> > remove YYY in reply
> > "The_Sage" <theeSage at azrmci.net> wrote in message
> > news:9a8mhv8981llhcvrljint4654e9hs8c891 at 4ax.com...
> > > >Reply to article by: "John H." <john at faraway.com>
> > > >Date written: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 23:25:42 +1000
> > > >MsgID:<3f1a97ee at dnews.tpgi.com.au>
> > >
> > > >'Co-incidence' is an appellation, not an explanation.
> > >
> > > That is exactly why coincidences are very important to psychologists
> > > since the reason for the appellation tells us more about the
> > > psychology of humans than it ever would about physically real reality.
> >
> > Imagine what would have happened if Fleming noted the way the bacteria
> were
> > killed and let it go at that. He had no logical explanation for this and
> > wrote up his results in 1928. It was until 1937 that Florey paid
> particular
> > attention to this Fleming's little read paper that pencillin came into
the
> > world. In medicine particularly, logic often follows the application of
a
> > treatment (psychiatric drugs are a very good example in this regard - it
> has
> > taken decades to begin to appreciate why these are efficacious and to
this
> > day no-one claims with complete certainty why anti depressants work).
> >
> >
> >
> > > From a subjective point of view, synchronicities are paranormal or
> > > magical and therefore not in the realm of science, especially since
> > > there is not one valid, properly documented and publicized case of
> > > someone writing down a dream or foreknowledge of an event way in
> > > advance of the event, and then having the event occur just as the
> > > dream or foreknowledge predicted it would. All we ever have are after
> > > the fact storytales where we have to take somebody at their word that
> > > it happened. Jung was no exception to this. But what is most
> > > significant about synchronicities isn't that they don't exist outside
> > > of our imagination, but that so many people want to pretend they exist
> > > and want to pretend that they are 'special' enough to have a few here
> > > and there. The reason for people wanting this tells us alot about the
> > > psychology of humans.
> >
> > Psychology is replete with after the fact stories of human behaviour and
> is
> > lousy at predicting the behaviour of individuals.
>
>
>
> Not too lousy at all if BF's techniques were used!
> Tis all the touchy-feely techniques
> Which have been rather lousy predictive models.
>
> Do not the laws of physics require
> A bit of destruction with measurement?
> Without measurement of man's being,
> How can one predict his behaviour?

Granted, unfortunately BF is largely ignored now. That's my point though,
even in science practitioners get carried away by fads and trends. It would
be great to see psychology become more grounded and that is slowly
happening, possibly because of new techniques which allow much greater
degrees of precision and penetration into the biological affects of a, b, or
c. It will be a very long road and we have only just started. Ironically
Freud's 1895 work < Project for a Scientific Psychology> clearly outlined
the need for a biological approach to understanding human behaviour. Freud,
however, knew the tools weren't available at his time. Now we have some of
those tools. So take heart, BF may rise yet again.


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