The Engineering of Coincidence
I’ve spent thirty years investigating the scientific basis of magic. Are there physical principles that underlie the ability to do magic? What happens if we take our best physical theories totally seriously? What would the Universe look like if you did magic?
I have attempted to give sensible answers to these kind of questions. Or, as it says on the back of the book:
“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 common: no-one knows why they work. The purpose of this book is to explain 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.
