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Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung
The extraordinary story of psychoanalyst Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli and their struggle to quantify the unconscious.
In 1932, the groundbreaking physicist Wolfgang Pauli met the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Pauli was fascinated by the inner reaches of his own psyche and not afraid to dabble in the occult, while Jung looked to science for answers to the psychological questions that tormented him. Their rich friendship led them, in Jung’s words, into “the no-man’s land between physics and the psychology of the unconscious . . . the most fascinating yet the darkest hunting ground of our times.� Both were obsessed with the far-reaching significance of the number �137”—a primal number that seemed to hint at the origins of the universe itself. Their quest to solve its enigma led them on a lifelong journey into the ancient secrets of alchemy, the work of Johannes Kepler, and the Chinese Book of Changes. This is the captivating story of an extraordinary and fruitful collaboration between two of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.
In 1932, the groundbreaking physicist Wolfgang Pauli met the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Pauli was fascinated by the inner reaches of his own psyche and not afraid to dabble in the occult, while Jung looked to science for answers to the psychological questions that tormented him. Their rich friendship led them, in Jung’s words, into “the no-man’s land between physics and the psychology of the unconscious . . . the most fascinating yet the darkest hunting ground of our times.� Both were obsessed with the far-reaching significance of the number �137”—a primal number that seemed to hint at the origins of the universe itself. Their quest to solve its enigma led them on a lifelong journey into the ancient secrets of alchemy, the work of Johannes Kepler, and the Chinese Book of Changes. This is the captivating story of an extraordinary and fruitful collaboration between two of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.
368 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
October 26, 2010
A month or so ago I wrote a review for some book where I talked about a hierarchal order of effort required by the reader to get through a book. I have no idea what book I was reviewing when I rambled about this, so if you know you can let me know and I'll fix this (I talked about this in my review for
(Thank you, Jessica!!!)), or else you can just nod along. I suggest you just nod along with me, when I'm talking out my ass it's best to just go along with me.
One of my assertions in that review was that reading non-fiction was generally required a lower level of work on the readers part of fill in the missing gaps. What this meant is that the author tells the reader what to think, he or she doesn't assume that the reader will be in a dialog with them. The author is there to impart information, and maybe as a result make the reader think a little bit, but the thinking isn't necessary. Nodding along and going, yes now I know is all that is required.
This book is fits my paradigm nicely. It's non-fiction. It imparts knowledge and kind of keeps the reader an arms distance away from actually interacting with the text. A book like this though fools you into thinking that this isn't the case. It feels like a warm and engaging read. This is a trick though to make the reader feel like she has gotten more out of the book than he really has.
The book is about Wolfgang Pauli, a German physicist who was making big breakthroughs with people like Bohr and Heisenberg; and his relationship with Carl Jung. The book's synopsis makes it sound like it will be about math and science with some mystical stuff thrown in, but it is really a kind of flimsy biography of Pauli with a bit of information about Jung thrown in and some math and science that gets varying amounts of explanation. Usually the explanations are either so simplistic that the reader learns very little (ie., imaginary numbers is defined as numbers you don't usually use everyday) or else the author pounds you with some big math explanation that left me scratching my head in wonderment. I imagine it would be very difficult to write about complex science in a language that idiots like I could understand, but I think this is one of the requirements to being a pop-science writer. Yes?
Not that Miller's writing is bad. It is quite good, this is a very readable book, it just seems to be skimpy on the information I'd like to know more about the importance of 137, what the big deal between a quantum number of 3 and a quantum number of 4 are, what exactly the funny math joke is in the equation Fermi wrote down and the author stated is quite funny (even a hint would have been nice). These are a few of the questions I kind of would have liked answered by the author, I know I could go look up these things, but judging from the bibliography I'd quickly move into reading that I would have no chance of understanding. Instead the reader learns many times that Pauli likes to have a good time in seedy neighborhoods. That he slept with prostitutes pretty regularly. Over and over again one learns about the Pauli effect, which is like a cloud of bad luck that surrounds him and causes bad shit to happen to other people when he is around but he remains unscathed. We learn about Jung's possible involvement with the Nazis. A fact that seems to have no bearing on anything in the book but is thrown in to get an idea of what Jung might have done during the war. Mixed in these stories are at least one fact that is so incorrect that it makes me wonder about many of the other facts in the book I know nothing about (Lenin was not an Anarchist. He was a Communist and a Bolshevik but never an Anarchist; this isn't a big deal to have this little side fact wrong, but it makes me wonder about things in the book that I'm just nodding along and going, 'uh-huh').
I'm being meaner than the book warrants. I wanted more substance and I got more fluff. Oh well.
One problem with getting more fluff than substance is that crazy math and science concepts didn't get explained as fully as they could have, and that means that little bits of knowledge made their way to me. Little bits of knowledge for me to possibly abuse as I see fit. As for example when on page 183 the author talks about experiments that had been recently carried out and something called the Dirac equation supported Pauli's view that there 'was no foundation for a view of life based on the pre-eminence of matter.' And that energy has no form and it's indestructible, where matter on the other hand has no law of conservation governing it. I don't really know what this means, but I can use this kind of information to play some pretty fun mental philosophical games. This has to do with the discovery of anti-matter and math and shit. I won't bore anyone with some of the weird philosophical ideas I could link this too but it's the kind of fact that I could easily see theorists running with (I don't really know what it means that there could be reality (for lack of a better word) without matter. Just energy. Obviously there is no way to conceive of a totally formless reality. I don't even know if this is exactly what is being talked about. (I don't want to have this explained to me by anyone who doesn't have a significant background in physics and math, really don't try to explain this to me.)).
The other part I find a little lacking in this book is the critical acumen to say bullshit to some of kookier numerological and mystical parts of the book. It's not that the author seemed to be buying into all of the silliness with mystical numbers and that, but the way the material was presented one might begin to feel the allure of all this talk about 'magic numbers' about 3 or 4 and their mystical properties, blah blah blah. Maybe there are mystical properties to numbers, but I doubt it's because you can start blabbing about stuff like there are (x) numbers of letters in (y) alphabet, and there are 7 openings in a persons head and five fingers and ten parts in the tree of life in the Kabbalah, and in Hebrew the word for Kabbalah means wisdom and it adds up to 137 and 4 is a magical number because 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 equals 10 which is the most perfect of numbers, and also if you build a triangle based on 4 it's equilateral, or perfect, and we have ten fingers and we are created in gods image so the 7 and 10 and the four limbs must all mean something, but there is also the one, God, and there is the trinity, which is God and Himself and Himseld disembodied, which is that what he was when he floated over the void, which is also chaos, which is woman in gnostic teachings and add the primordial woman, or Sophia (which is knowledge in Greek) to the trinity and you get four, but there is also the Goddess of Parmenides and the horses, and the One, and Four of Pythagorus. And the four elements of Democritus (or was it Empedocles, which either way he has the two the eternal conflict, strife and peace, love and hate-----) but if you lay these dicotomies out you can graph it along four poles in the dimensional space afforded us on paper, which is 2 in a 3 dimensional world, but of which we now know actually has 4 dimensions because of time, and this can go on and on and on, and whatever you are looking for can be found, because I wasn't even trying to pin down some other numbers. It's the idea that anything you are looking for can be found, or at least clues to its existence can be found, but they might only have meaning that we give to them.
So yeah, that is my review. I guess.
One of my assertions in that review was that reading non-fiction was generally required a lower level of work on the readers part of fill in the missing gaps. What this meant is that the author tells the reader what to think, he or she doesn't assume that the reader will be in a dialog with them. The author is there to impart information, and maybe as a result make the reader think a little bit, but the thinking isn't necessary. Nodding along and going, yes now I know is all that is required.
This book is fits my paradigm nicely. It's non-fiction. It imparts knowledge and kind of keeps the reader an arms distance away from actually interacting with the text. A book like this though fools you into thinking that this isn't the case. It feels like a warm and engaging read. This is a trick though to make the reader feel like she has gotten more out of the book than he really has.
The book is about Wolfgang Pauli, a German physicist who was making big breakthroughs with people like Bohr and Heisenberg; and his relationship with Carl Jung. The book's synopsis makes it sound like it will be about math and science with some mystical stuff thrown in, but it is really a kind of flimsy biography of Pauli with a bit of information about Jung thrown in and some math and science that gets varying amounts of explanation. Usually the explanations are either so simplistic that the reader learns very little (ie., imaginary numbers is defined as numbers you don't usually use everyday) or else the author pounds you with some big math explanation that left me scratching my head in wonderment. I imagine it would be very difficult to write about complex science in a language that idiots like I could understand, but I think this is one of the requirements to being a pop-science writer. Yes?
Not that Miller's writing is bad. It is quite good, this is a very readable book, it just seems to be skimpy on the information I'd like to know more about the importance of 137, what the big deal between a quantum number of 3 and a quantum number of 4 are, what exactly the funny math joke is in the equation Fermi wrote down and the author stated is quite funny (even a hint would have been nice). These are a few of the questions I kind of would have liked answered by the author, I know I could go look up these things, but judging from the bibliography I'd quickly move into reading that I would have no chance of understanding. Instead the reader learns many times that Pauli likes to have a good time in seedy neighborhoods. That he slept with prostitutes pretty regularly. Over and over again one learns about the Pauli effect, which is like a cloud of bad luck that surrounds him and causes bad shit to happen to other people when he is around but he remains unscathed. We learn about Jung's possible involvement with the Nazis. A fact that seems to have no bearing on anything in the book but is thrown in to get an idea of what Jung might have done during the war. Mixed in these stories are at least one fact that is so incorrect that it makes me wonder about many of the other facts in the book I know nothing about (Lenin was not an Anarchist. He was a Communist and a Bolshevik but never an Anarchist; this isn't a big deal to have this little side fact wrong, but it makes me wonder about things in the book that I'm just nodding along and going, 'uh-huh').
I'm being meaner than the book warrants. I wanted more substance and I got more fluff. Oh well.
One problem with getting more fluff than substance is that crazy math and science concepts didn't get explained as fully as they could have, and that means that little bits of knowledge made their way to me. Little bits of knowledge for me to possibly abuse as I see fit. As for example when on page 183 the author talks about experiments that had been recently carried out and something called the Dirac equation supported Pauli's view that there 'was no foundation for a view of life based on the pre-eminence of matter.' And that energy has no form and it's indestructible, where matter on the other hand has no law of conservation governing it. I don't really know what this means, but I can use this kind of information to play some pretty fun mental philosophical games. This has to do with the discovery of anti-matter and math and shit. I won't bore anyone with some of the weird philosophical ideas I could link this too but it's the kind of fact that I could easily see theorists running with (I don't really know what it means that there could be reality (for lack of a better word) without matter. Just energy. Obviously there is no way to conceive of a totally formless reality. I don't even know if this is exactly what is being talked about. (I don't want to have this explained to me by anyone who doesn't have a significant background in physics and math, really don't try to explain this to me.)).
The other part I find a little lacking in this book is the critical acumen to say bullshit to some of kookier numerological and mystical parts of the book. It's not that the author seemed to be buying into all of the silliness with mystical numbers and that, but the way the material was presented one might begin to feel the allure of all this talk about 'magic numbers' about 3 or 4 and their mystical properties, blah blah blah. Maybe there are mystical properties to numbers, but I doubt it's because you can start blabbing about stuff like there are (x) numbers of letters in (y) alphabet, and there are 7 openings in a persons head and five fingers and ten parts in the tree of life in the Kabbalah, and in Hebrew the word for Kabbalah means wisdom and it adds up to 137 and 4 is a magical number because 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 equals 10 which is the most perfect of numbers, and also if you build a triangle based on 4 it's equilateral, or perfect, and we have ten fingers and we are created in gods image so the 7 and 10 and the four limbs must all mean something, but there is also the one, God, and there is the trinity, which is God and Himself and Himseld disembodied, which is that what he was when he floated over the void, which is also chaos, which is woman in gnostic teachings and add the primordial woman, or Sophia (which is knowledge in Greek) to the trinity and you get four, but there is also the Goddess of Parmenides and the horses, and the One, and Four of Pythagorus. And the four elements of Democritus (or was it Empedocles, which either way he has the two the eternal conflict, strife and peace, love and hate-----) but if you lay these dicotomies out you can graph it along four poles in the dimensional space afforded us on paper, which is 2 in a 3 dimensional world, but of which we now know actually has 4 dimensions because of time, and this can go on and on and on, and whatever you are looking for can be found, because I wasn't even trying to pin down some other numbers. It's the idea that anything you are looking for can be found, or at least clues to its existence can be found, but they might only have meaning that we give to them.
So yeah, that is my review. I guess.
September 14, 2015
This is a very readable account of an archetypal quest by both Pauli and Jung. They helped each other deal with their shadow side and made long expeditions into the "dark hunting grounds" of the psyche. The title is symbolic of their journey in search of the Philosopher's Stone, or Quintessence of alchemy. For a more detailed review see our Amazon entry.
The fine-structure constant:
1/α � 157 � 337ρ/7 � 137.035 999 168, with the prime constant ρ � 0.414 682 509 851 111.
Sherbon, M.A. "Wolfgang Pauli and the Fine-Structure Constant," Journal of Science, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp.148-154 (2012).
Sherbon, M.A. "Fundamental Nature of the Fine-Structure Constant," International Journal of Physical Research, 3, 2(1):1-9 (2014).
Sherbon, M.A. "Quintessential Nature of the Fine-Structure Constant" GJSFR 15, 4: 23-26 (2015).
Latest experimental-QED determination of the fine structure constant: Aoyama, T., Hayakawa, M., Kinoshita, T. & Nio, M. "Tenth-Order Electron Anomalous Magnetic Moment - Contribution of Diagrams without Closed Lepton Loops," Physical Review D, 91, 3, 033006 (2015).
The improved value of the fine-structure constant 1/α = 137.035�999�157�(41)....
Fine Structure Constant Quotes
The fine-structure constant:
1/α � 157 � 337ρ/7 � 137.035 999 168, with the prime constant ρ � 0.414 682 509 851 111.
Sherbon, M.A. "Wolfgang Pauli and the Fine-Structure Constant," Journal of Science, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp.148-154 (2012).
Sherbon, M.A. "Fundamental Nature of the Fine-Structure Constant," International Journal of Physical Research, 3, 2(1):1-9 (2014).
Sherbon, M.A. "Quintessential Nature of the Fine-Structure Constant" GJSFR 15, 4: 23-26 (2015).
Latest experimental-QED determination of the fine structure constant: Aoyama, T., Hayakawa, M., Kinoshita, T. & Nio, M. "Tenth-Order Electron Anomalous Magnetic Moment - Contribution of Diagrams without Closed Lepton Loops," Physical Review D, 91, 3, 033006 (2015).
The improved value of the fine-structure constant 1/α = 137.035�999�157�(41)....
Fine Structure Constant Quotes
July 22, 2009
I bought this book because I was intrigued by the title. As a non-scientist I love books which elucidate science for the ordinary reader - the lay person - and which inspire me to see the world in a different way and this is certainly one of those. It’s a fascinating read about two seminal and intriguing personalities - Wolfgang Pauli, a major figure in the development of quantum physics, and Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis. Pauli was a very atypical scientist. While other scientists were very competitive and obsessed with their work, he was a more rounded personality. He spent time in the bar districts of Hamburg, had relationships with cabaret singers and eventually went too far and ended up on Jung’s couch. This marked the beginning of a very fruitful relationship for both Jung and Pauli. As well as science and psychoanlysis, the book ranges across alchemy, the I Ching, mandalas and other areas which were of interest to Jung and also became of interest to Pauli, who realised that science alone was not enough to give a full description of the universe. Miller tells this fascinating story lucidly and brilliantly.
August 14, 2010
More about Pauli than Jung. The science became a little overwhelming at times for this non-mathematician. But it was fascinating to learn just how open the giants of quantum physics were to non-rational ways of knowing, as opposed to today's shrill new atheists (e.g., Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.), who would have run Pauli out of town on a rail.
March 29, 2016
Disappointing :(
October 2, 2013
A very fascinating read of the relationship between two exceptional individuals who each pushed the boundaries of their respective fields.
November 24, 2019
Muito bom e um potencial desperdiçado ao mesmo tempo.
June 5, 2023
An obsessive pursuit of 137� a story of a lifetime!
‘There was something about 137—both a prime and a primal number—that tickled everyone’s imagination.* �
Far beyond fascinating read!
‘There was something about 137—both a prime and a primal number—that tickled everyone’s imagination.* �
Far beyond fascinating read!
March 16, 2014
On the surface, Arthur I. Miller’s latest book is a “joint biography� of two of the great minds of the 20th century, quantum physics pioneer Wolfgang Pauli and master of psychoanalysis Carl Jung. (This two-in-one approach that has served Miller well in the past; his earlier book Einstein, Picasso garnered wide acclaim.) Pauli, it turns out, met with Jung on numerous occasions; they became close friends, with Pauli eventually becoming one of Jung’s regular clients.
The two great thinkers shared similar obsessions. They were men of science, but they feared that physics would always be “missing something� as long as it neglected the inner workings of the mind.
Jung obsessed over mental “archetypes� � primitive, subconscious images that are somehow hard-wired into our perception of the world. He saw great significance in “mandalas,� four-sided figures common to many Eastern religions. And he was fascinated by the Kabbalah, a fiendishly complex branch of Jewish mysticism.
Pauli, for his part, was enamoured with Johannes Kepler, who tried (unsuccessfully) to explain the structure of the solar system in terms of geometry alone. He was also intrigued by a less-well-known contemporary of Kepler � an English Rosicrucian named Robert Fludd, who believed that simple pictures and geometrical forms held the key to comprehending the cosmos. Even as Pauli struggled with problems in quantum physics, Miller explains, he felt “the need for a fusion of physics with Jung’s analytical psychology in order to understand first the unconscious and then the conscious.�
Pauli began experiencing bizarre dreams, and turned to Jung for help in making sense of them. The dreams feature a startling mix of geometrical figures, motifs from physics (clocks, pendulums) and mysterious figures that hint at Jung’s beloved archetypes (the Uroboros, a veiled woman, an ape-man � to name a few). Pauli tells Jung of 400 separate dreams, and, Miller notes, Jung examines nearly 60 of them in detail. (Perhaps not surprisingly, Pauli kept his visits with Jung a secret; when Jung wrote about them, he referred to his famous patient only as a “great scientist.�)
Numerology is never far below the surface of Miller’s story, and the number that troubled Pauli the most was 137. As physicists pored over the equations that determine the spectra of the chemical elements, a particular combination of physical constants kept cropping up. Referred to as the “fine structure constant� and designated by the Greek letter alpha (α), it combined the speed of light (crucial in Einstein’s relativity) and Planck’s constant (which lies at the heart of quantum theory), along with the magnitude of the charge of an electron. By themselves, each of these would have to be expressed in some particular units (say, meters per second for the speed of light); but when put together in this way, the result is a “pure number.� Arnold Somerfeld, who first wrote down the formula for α, worked out its value as 0.00729; soon it was noticed that this could be expressed more “cleanly� as 1/137. But why 137? What is so special about that particular number?
Pauli obsessed over it, and he wasn’t alone; Sir Arthur Eddington, Enrico Fermi, and Richard Feynman all took stabs at it over the years. Jung, with his knowledge of the Kabbalah, also found enormous significance in 137. As Miller points out, every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a number associated with it, and � lo and behold! � the letters in the word “Kabbalah� itself add up to 137. Remarkable � or, perhaps, a meaningless coincidence.
The history here is fascinating, as are the insights into the personalities of these great men. Yet Miller’s thesis � that the Pauli-Jung collaboration is bearing fruit today, with the study of consciousness becoming “a burgeoning field of research using concepts from quantum mechanics� � may be somewhat exaggerated. (Note: This is adapted from a review I wrote for New Scientist.)
The two great thinkers shared similar obsessions. They were men of science, but they feared that physics would always be “missing something� as long as it neglected the inner workings of the mind.
Jung obsessed over mental “archetypes� � primitive, subconscious images that are somehow hard-wired into our perception of the world. He saw great significance in “mandalas,� four-sided figures common to many Eastern religions. And he was fascinated by the Kabbalah, a fiendishly complex branch of Jewish mysticism.
Pauli, for his part, was enamoured with Johannes Kepler, who tried (unsuccessfully) to explain the structure of the solar system in terms of geometry alone. He was also intrigued by a less-well-known contemporary of Kepler � an English Rosicrucian named Robert Fludd, who believed that simple pictures and geometrical forms held the key to comprehending the cosmos. Even as Pauli struggled with problems in quantum physics, Miller explains, he felt “the need for a fusion of physics with Jung’s analytical psychology in order to understand first the unconscious and then the conscious.�
Pauli began experiencing bizarre dreams, and turned to Jung for help in making sense of them. The dreams feature a startling mix of geometrical figures, motifs from physics (clocks, pendulums) and mysterious figures that hint at Jung’s beloved archetypes (the Uroboros, a veiled woman, an ape-man � to name a few). Pauli tells Jung of 400 separate dreams, and, Miller notes, Jung examines nearly 60 of them in detail. (Perhaps not surprisingly, Pauli kept his visits with Jung a secret; when Jung wrote about them, he referred to his famous patient only as a “great scientist.�)
Numerology is never far below the surface of Miller’s story, and the number that troubled Pauli the most was 137. As physicists pored over the equations that determine the spectra of the chemical elements, a particular combination of physical constants kept cropping up. Referred to as the “fine structure constant� and designated by the Greek letter alpha (α), it combined the speed of light (crucial in Einstein’s relativity) and Planck’s constant (which lies at the heart of quantum theory), along with the magnitude of the charge of an electron. By themselves, each of these would have to be expressed in some particular units (say, meters per second for the speed of light); but when put together in this way, the result is a “pure number.� Arnold Somerfeld, who first wrote down the formula for α, worked out its value as 0.00729; soon it was noticed that this could be expressed more “cleanly� as 1/137. But why 137? What is so special about that particular number?
Pauli obsessed over it, and he wasn’t alone; Sir Arthur Eddington, Enrico Fermi, and Richard Feynman all took stabs at it over the years. Jung, with his knowledge of the Kabbalah, also found enormous significance in 137. As Miller points out, every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a number associated with it, and � lo and behold! � the letters in the word “Kabbalah� itself add up to 137. Remarkable � or, perhaps, a meaningless coincidence.
The history here is fascinating, as are the insights into the personalities of these great men. Yet Miller’s thesis � that the Pauli-Jung collaboration is bearing fruit today, with the study of consciousness becoming “a burgeoning field of research using concepts from quantum mechanics� � may be somewhat exaggerated. (Note: This is adapted from a review I wrote for New Scientist.)
January 9, 2013
According to C.G. Jung we are at a pivotal moment in history. The grip of the conscious animus is giving way to the embrace of the unconscious anima. The tides of battle are evident in our culture: the struggle between empirical science and the revelation of its interdependence on "consciousness" and spirituality. Also, the global cry for mystery: a striving towards our numinous, mythological past apparent in modern-day apocrypha. The relationship between Jung and Pauli is the path through the wilderness: a model for the development of human thought as we leave the age of causality and enter the age of synchronicity.
Miller leads the reader in an exciting but delicate way through some of the hugest concepts that have been discovered (or rediscovered, as in in a Jungian anamnesis) not only in the 20th century, but reaching back through history. This book touches upon philosophy, mathematics, physics, and psychology. It is a nucleus of thought connecting mysticism with modern science and sheds light on the beauty and mystery of Creation.
Miller leads the reader in an exciting but delicate way through some of the hugest concepts that have been discovered (or rediscovered, as in in a Jungian anamnesis) not only in the 20th century, but reaching back through history. This book touches upon philosophy, mathematics, physics, and psychology. It is a nucleus of thought connecting mysticism with modern science and sheds light on the beauty and mystery of Creation.
April 18, 2014
A fascinating topic, one which I intend to pursue more deeply via the original writings of Pauli and Jung themselves.
This book itself, however, was not especially helpful (other than for providing some biographical and historical context/background). I didn't find this book thoughtfully conceived nor well written. The supposedly main topic (the mystical number 137) is not even introduced until the last chapter, and even when it is, it is not given any more central significance (actually less) than the many other themes and details of Pauli's life which the book discusses.
The author does an adequate job with biography and history (provided that the reader is patient enough to wade through a whole lot of insignificant detail). When discussing ideas, however, I found the writing weak. As I read the author's discussion of topics with which I have familiarity (particularly the physics)it occurred to me that if I hadn't already known the (admittedly challenging)ideas the author was attempting to convey, I would have been utterly confused and misled by his choice of words.
This book itself, however, was not especially helpful (other than for providing some biographical and historical context/background). I didn't find this book thoughtfully conceived nor well written. The supposedly main topic (the mystical number 137) is not even introduced until the last chapter, and even when it is, it is not given any more central significance (actually less) than the many other themes and details of Pauli's life which the book discusses.
The author does an adequate job with biography and history (provided that the reader is patient enough to wade through a whole lot of insignificant detail). When discussing ideas, however, I found the writing weak. As I read the author's discussion of topics with which I have familiarity (particularly the physics)it occurred to me that if I hadn't already known the (admittedly challenging)ideas the author was attempting to convey, I would have been utterly confused and misled by his choice of words.
April 10, 2014
I really enjoyed this book. Arthur I Miller has a great knack for explaining physics and psychology. This is the story of two great minds in completely different fields in the 20th century, Wolfgang Pauli and Karl Jung. Paulii started the field of quantum physics and Jung started the way we think about personalities and the mind. These two men are very similar and take their work seriously. Because Pauli took his work so seriously, he needed a psychiatrist and got help. These two giants of science created a friendship and a legacy that we use today without knowing. This is s fasciating story of men ahead of their time and these scientists had a great relationship. I am really starting to believe that history forgets a lot of great people and books give life to them and their legacy. If anyone is curious about what 137 is, read this book. I enjoyed it a lot. It stimulates you to do better and to say that your legacy will be realized in future generations.
February 10, 2018
Tracking the lives of two amazing men at the opposite ends of the scientific spectrum: Jung’s psychoanalysis went deep into the collective unconscious to uncover archetypes, alchemy and UFOs while Pauli theories about atoms, the exclusion principle and parity experiments that reverse time. The many places where their lives intersect produces awe-inspiring investigations into synchronicity and numerical clues to the entire universe. Miller does not take a convention route through the many discoveries, but instead relies on the letters and articles written alongside novels, plays and poems that came from this intellectually productive moment (or in some interludes a few hundred years prior with Kepler, Fludd and Rosencrusian). The most fitting example of both Pauli and Jung comes the neutrino from the parody Faust in Copenhagen, an unexpected quality, like the number 137, that reveals hidden truths about mind and matter.
Currently reading
January 23, 2011I am about 1/3 through this book. It is exciting, but sometimes goes off into dark alleys of that seem to not be related to the objectives of the book, but then you see the connection the author was making and think EURIKA!
A great lesson that even the most lofty human goals are done by mere humans with the same limitations as the rest of us.
A great lesson that even the most lofty human goals are done by mere humans with the same limitations as the rest of us.
August 14, 2010
I was expecting a book that dealt more with numerology and its relation to the fundamentals of science. What I got instead was a half-biography of a physicist and a quarter-biography of a psychologist. It was still interesting, but it got a little redundant after a while.
December 20, 2011
fascinating portrait of Pauli tackling both the exoteric puzzles of quantum physics and the esoteric puzzles of human consciousness and finding parallels between the two, with the help of Jung.... amazing biographical story.
January 16, 2015
Nicely done. I love the way Miller portrays both men's lives.
The strangest part about this book is that I had one of the same dreams as Pauli the night before I read the chapter describing that very dream. The collective unconscious!!
The strangest part about this book is that I had one of the same dreams as Pauli the night before I read the chapter describing that very dream. The collective unconscious!!
June 5, 2020
I really thought this book would be right up my alley. I love patterns and like physics, and Jung's Collective Subconscious is making a big appearance in the book I'm writing.
But this did nothing for me.
It's a biography of Pauli's life, mostly, and his discoveries in physics. I'm down with that part, even though it's for the most part boring. The stuff Pauli actually talked about with Jung though, didn't turn out to be about numbers. It was dream analysis.
So the second half of the book is just huge chunks of Pauli's dreams, and Jung's crackpot analysis of them. I mean, I believe there can be truth and meaning to dreams. In the same way that I think rituals can bring people peace and prayer can heal. If you believe in them, you'll look for truth in them and act in ways to bring that truth about.
It doesn't demean the ritual to look at it that way. After all, if you didn't do the ritual and have the belief, then it wouldn't work. So it shouldn't matter a jot to you if someone else thinks it's all in your mind and not some cosmic force working on you, since it *works*, doesn't it?
But that element of the book left nothing I could take from it, and as a whole it just went over things I already knew about physics so I was entirely underwhelmed.
That said, I was reminded about fuzzy logic and the eastern inclusion of 'true and not true' as an option, which opposes Aristotelian logic. I don't think the book mentioned this specifically, it just talked about Eastern influences like the I Ching and it reminded me, so don't go hunting in here for information about it.
So one day that is a rabbit hole I intend to go down further, and I guess the book was worth at least that much to me.
At the end of the book it mentions is wife Franca outlived him by three decades, and in that time "did her best to delay the publication of his correspondence with Jung. To the end Franca believed that it would detract from his image of a serious scientist."
Don't think it detracts from his image, but I'm on team Franca. It does nothing to add to his legacy either.
Also this was the LAST BOOK ON MY SHELF so I have finished my New Year's Reading Resolution and made up for all the years from 2012 onwards that I missed. Huzzah! I am so happy, someone get me some sauvignon blanc and Indian food post haste. This demands celebration.
But this did nothing for me.
It's a biography of Pauli's life, mostly, and his discoveries in physics. I'm down with that part, even though it's for the most part boring. The stuff Pauli actually talked about with Jung though, didn't turn out to be about numbers. It was dream analysis.
So the second half of the book is just huge chunks of Pauli's dreams, and Jung's crackpot analysis of them. I mean, I believe there can be truth and meaning to dreams. In the same way that I think rituals can bring people peace and prayer can heal. If you believe in them, you'll look for truth in them and act in ways to bring that truth about.
It doesn't demean the ritual to look at it that way. After all, if you didn't do the ritual and have the belief, then it wouldn't work. So it shouldn't matter a jot to you if someone else thinks it's all in your mind and not some cosmic force working on you, since it *works*, doesn't it?
But that element of the book left nothing I could take from it, and as a whole it just went over things I already knew about physics so I was entirely underwhelmed.
That said, I was reminded about fuzzy logic and the eastern inclusion of 'true and not true' as an option, which opposes Aristotelian logic. I don't think the book mentioned this specifically, it just talked about Eastern influences like the I Ching and it reminded me, so don't go hunting in here for information about it.
So one day that is a rabbit hole I intend to go down further, and I guess the book was worth at least that much to me.
At the end of the book it mentions is wife Franca outlived him by three decades, and in that time "did her best to delay the publication of his correspondence with Jung. To the end Franca believed that it would detract from his image of a serious scientist."
Don't think it detracts from his image, but I'm on team Franca. It does nothing to add to his legacy either.
Also this was the LAST BOOK ON MY SHELF so I have finished my New Year's Reading Resolution and made up for all the years from 2012 onwards that I missed. Huzzah! I am so happy, someone get me some sauvignon blanc and Indian food post haste. This demands celebration.
July 4, 2021
Strange but interesting book, a quasi-joint biography of Wolfgang Pauli, Nobel Prize winning physicist (in 1945 for his enunciation of the Exclusion principle) and Karl Jung, towering 20th century psychologist. It is also very much an exposition of ideas, in their respective fields and veering off at times into strange byways including ancient mysticism, alchemy and religion. The 'Cosmic Number' referred in the title is mainly 137 or actually 1/137 also called the Fine Structure Constant or .0007299. It is considered a fundamental physical constant and is also known as 'Sommerfeld's Constant', after Arnold Sommerfeld a mentor of Pauli, The latter became semi-obssessed with it's significance and spent considerable time trying to explain it. In a bizarre twist Pauli died in 1958 in Room 137 of a Zurich hospital. There are numerous fascinating and often funny tales from Pauli's life which included close collaborations (and bitter disagreements) with Werner Heiseneberg, Niels Bohr and other famous physicists of the early quantum mechanics era. Bohr's famous comment on things he thought wrong 'very interesting' made me laugh! The book is much more about Pauli and his life and work but the interactions between the two with Jung and his dream interpretation form some of the more bizarre sections of the book, especially the chapter on Mandalas (something I was utterly unaware of). Both the physics and psychology wander off into some fairly esoteric terrain and left me behind at times. But the author did a pretty good job of trying to tie together such utterly divergent disciplines. Not having much background in psychology, I did learn that Jung basically invented the terms 'introvert' and 'extrovert' and it seems that the Myers-Briggs theory comes straight out of Jungian ideas. It's hard to invent something totally new!
February 23, 2020
A fascinating book! The science was amazing, the psychology intriguing. I could not put it down, and I would probably have finished it sooner, but I kept re-reading passages. In their own way, Pauli, Jung, and their contemporaries were arrogant - the type of arrogance that no doubt comes with such brilliance and for which I truly can give them a pass - but the one thing that marred their . . . what? character? mode(s) of thought? perspective? . . . was whether they were working on the infinitely vast or the immeasurably minute, every time they came close to understanding any one of them would quite casually dismiss God from the equation. So close, gentlemen, and yet so far!
April 2, 2025
This book would be most appropriate for readers with a strong physics background interested in Pauli and Jung. Personally, I found most of the physics about my head and most of the treatment of Jung to be too simplistic. What was interesting were the biographical details about the two men and their relationship.
March 1, 2019
Arthur Miller presents a uniqe link between physics and psychology, represented by one of the premier figures in both fields (Wolfgang Paul and Carl Jung). Highly interesting for a fan of quantum physics, though my mind got mix-mastered at times. 137!
April 7, 2019
Spectacular!
Where do ideas come from? How are they related to archaic content of the collective unconscious? The brilliance of two giants of the 20th century illuminates the richness of the mind beyond our timid boundaries.
Where do ideas come from? How are they related to archaic content of the collective unconscious? The brilliance of two giants of the 20th century illuminates the richness of the mind beyond our timid boundaries.
February 2, 2020
This is a phenomenal read. If you love Jung, Pauli, synchronicity, symmetry, and elegant mathematics this is a book I can warmly recommend! Many years back I had an incredible experience with the number 137. Now I have an even deeper appreciation for this fine number.
July 12, 2022
yesterdayyyyy
I saw some flying ants flyy awayy
seeking new empires where they would stay
it made all life, seem kinda cray
then suddenly
I had this magical epiphany
and evrybody seemed to move with me
we flew away, where we should be
I saw some flying ants flyy awayy
seeking new empires where they would stay
it made all life, seem kinda cray
then suddenly
I had this magical epiphany
and evrybody seemed to move with me
we flew away, where we should be
February 10, 2024
I was a bit disappointed, maybe expecting too much. I knew nothing about Jung or Pauli before and now learned basic biography of each. Those parts were fine. I didn't click with the alchemy concept but I want to learn more about Kepler now. Thanks for that.
May 12, 2019
A serious book. I must give myself props for actually reading this. And a bonus is that within this book is a grand history of the origins of modern physics.
February 20, 2020
Know the men behind the science
Did not explain what 137 is. Just that it exists. And drives people crazy. In the end will it drive you crazy as well?
Did not explain what 137 is. Just that it exists. And drives people crazy. In the end will it drive you crazy as well?
August 26, 2024
Some fascinating people and scientific / philosophical / psychoanalysis in the pages, but a bit too much of the technical physics.
December 26, 2015
I was pleasantly surprise at the scientific information of atomic physics, insights, personal history of the Wolfgang Pauli and C.G. Jung, as well as the historical background of the scientific breakthrough. Arthur I. Miller did a good job of his research into writing and presenting it with his exciting exciting style of writing. I was captivated by his way of unfolding and build up of information that are both chronological and appropriate.
This book not only provide great amount of details the physical world of quantum physics, it also illuminated the brilliance of C.G. Jung's discovery and methodology of psychology. The friendship between the two great minds seemed synchronically woven by their pursue of scientific knowledge. However readers have to have a certain amount of dispositions and knowledge to draw the line between healthy and unhealthy obsession - for me, in order to have a breakthrough in anything, we do need a good amount of healthy obsession, before the unhealthy mentality consumes us into oblivion (in this case, Wolfgang Pauli was close to having a mental breakdown).
The mystical part of the book does provide a third dimension (after science and psychology) in the same way that Einstein's special theory of relativity informs us that time is the fourth dimension. Mysticism, and even science, can become an unhealthy obsession if we are not careful and wise about them.
For example, not revealed in the book, was how C.G. Jung manage to gain wisdom for his analytical psychology (as opposed to Freud's psychoanalysis) by studying and understanding the mystical writings and images of alchemical works. This to me shows Jung's brilliance in understanding the occult.
Personally, whether synchronicity is valid (can be proven) or not is besides the point. Coincidences do happen but what and how we gather from these coincidences will lead us to conclude from our experiences in life. Even if something is so 'destined' that it happen out of coincidence (or snychronically), without any truthful answers, we still have to keep an open mind about them. By being open-minded, it means that when we embraced any system of spirituality, we have to have the understanding and faith in what we know and ALWAYS count our blessings to know what we have instead of what is missing. Knowledge is still the only way to know what is true and what is not.
This book not only provide great amount of details the physical world of quantum physics, it also illuminated the brilliance of C.G. Jung's discovery and methodology of psychology. The friendship between the two great minds seemed synchronically woven by their pursue of scientific knowledge. However readers have to have a certain amount of dispositions and knowledge to draw the line between healthy and unhealthy obsession - for me, in order to have a breakthrough in anything, we do need a good amount of healthy obsession, before the unhealthy mentality consumes us into oblivion (in this case, Wolfgang Pauli was close to having a mental breakdown).
The mystical part of the book does provide a third dimension (after science and psychology) in the same way that Einstein's special theory of relativity informs us that time is the fourth dimension. Mysticism, and even science, can become an unhealthy obsession if we are not careful and wise about them.
For example, not revealed in the book, was how C.G. Jung manage to gain wisdom for his analytical psychology (as opposed to Freud's psychoanalysis) by studying and understanding the mystical writings and images of alchemical works. This to me shows Jung's brilliance in understanding the occult.
Personally, whether synchronicity is valid (can be proven) or not is besides the point. Coincidences do happen but what and how we gather from these coincidences will lead us to conclude from our experiences in life. Even if something is so 'destined' that it happen out of coincidence (or snychronically), without any truthful answers, we still have to keep an open mind about them. By being open-minded, it means that when we embraced any system of spirituality, we have to have the understanding and faith in what we know and ALWAYS count our blessings to know what we have instead of what is missing. Knowledge is still the only way to know what is true and what is not.
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