Deciphering The Cosmic Number [Hardcover]

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.

Arthur I. Miller addresses the foundational problem of the fine-structure constant (the "Cosmic Number") and the historical, biographical background entailed in the search for a solution to this mostly unsolved problem. The main title is only symbolic of the goal toward which Pauli and Jung were searching: the Philosopher's Stone, or Quintessence of alchemy, the attainment of an enlightened and individuated psyche. The "Cosmic Number" is symbolic of a vital archetypal process in nature, and the physical meaning as giving the strength of the electromagnetic interaction is only part of the problem that concerned Pauli in particular. What Pauli called his "background physics" was a catalyst for linking sense perceptions with creative concepts, and 137 was the "archetypal number" for this. So not only is the fine-structure constant a dimensionless number of fundamental importance in physics, it is of key symbolic significance to Jung's depth psychology and the history of alchemy.

In his study of the archetypal ideas of Johannes Kepler and Robert Fludd from the 17th century, Pauli traced the line of their research back to Pythagoras. While Plato is only briefly mentioned in this book, significant and remarkable parallels are to be found between the geometry of Plato's ideal City of Magnesia and Wolfgang Pauli's dream, "the great vision - of the World Clock". According to John Michell the ideal City of Magnesia is a form of the Cosmological Circle from ancient geometry. "By Plato's time, the very idea of a canon of music had been forgotten everywhere except in the academies of Egypt, but he himself had evidently studied and learned it, for the number code behind it is at the root of all his mathematical allegories and provided the scientific basis of his philosophy." (Dimensions of Paradise, p.9) and "The universe, human nature, and the mind of the Creator were made commensurable by number, which Plato called the 'bond' holding all things together." (p.230).

The fine-structure constant was introduced into physics by Arnold Sommerfeld, Pauli's professor and mentor, and being captivated by the mystery of spectral lines of the atom he said, "What we are nowadays hearing of the language of the spectra is a true music of the spheres within the atom, chords of integral relationships, an order and harmony that becomes even more perfect in spite of manifold variety."(p.64). Pauli's contributions to modern physics include the Pauli exclusion principle for electrons in the atomic orbit, the theoretical prediction of the neutrino particle, the fourth quantum number related to spin, CPT symmetry related to "mirror reflections," the legendary "Pauli effect," and his exit from the world stage from room number 137. Pauli also helped Jung to develop his theory of synchronicity, or acausal connecting principle related to meaningful events. Miller quotes Max Born on p.253: "If alpha (the fine structure constant) were bigger than it really is, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether (the vacuum, nothingness), and our task to disentangle the natural laws would be hopelessly difficult. The fact however that alpha has just its value 1/137 is certainly no chance but itself a law of nature. It is clear that the explanation of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy." Pauli concluded that "most modern physics lends itself to the symbolic representation of psychic processes." (p.162). Readers of Carl Jung may find this book more interesting than Pauli fans, as it is more biographical and "Jungian" in content.

The relationship between Wolfgang Pauli, the Nobel Prize winning scientist and influential person in the discovery of Quantum Physics, and C.G. Jung, famed psychologist, and founder of analytical psychology, has fascinated many people. The correspondence between the two men has been published, and there are now at least three books which deal with their relationship. The author has written several books on famed scientists, and he knows that field well. However, his knowledge and sensitivity to the work of Jung is not so deep. As I am a Jungian analyst I see that he really does not "get" Jung. So I found the part about Pauli more interesting, and I tended to skip the part on Jung, because I knew that history from my own study. Nevertheless, the book is well written, well researched, and I think it adds to the lore about these two men's relationship. The fact that these two men came from such different backgrounds and fields and yet forged a close relationship makes for a fascinating story.

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