Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Synchronicity

Definition: Synchronicity

Synchronicity

Noun

1. The relation that exists when things occur at the same time; "the drug produces an increased synchrony of the brain waves".

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 


Synonyms: Synchronicity

Synonyms: synchroneity (n), synchronisation (n), synchronism (n), synchronization (n), synchronizing (n), synchrony (n). (additional references)
Antonym: asynchronism (n). (additional references)

Top     

Specialty Definition: Synchronicity

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Synchronicity is a term used by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung to describe the alignment of universal forces with one's own life experience. Jung believed that some, but not all, coincidences were not mere chance, but instead a literal "co-inciding", or alignment of forces in the universe to create an event or circumstance. The process of becoming intuitively aware and acting in harmony with these forces is what Jung labelled "individuation." Jung said that an individuated person would actually shape events around them through the communication of their consciousness with the collective unconscious.

Jung spoke of synchronicity as being an acausal connecting principle, in other words a pattern of connection that works outside of or in addition to causality.

Jung's most well-known example of synchronicity involves plum pudding. He tells a tale of a certain Monsieur Deschamps who is treated to some plum pudding by his neighbor Monsieur de Fortgibu. Ten years later, he encounters plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant, and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to me M. de Fortgibu. Many years later, M. Deschamps is at a gathering, and is once again offered plum pudding. He recalls the earlier incident and tells his friends that only M. de Fortgibu is missing to make the setting complete, and in the same instant the now senile M. de Fortgibu enters the room by mistake.

Criticism

The theory of synchronicity is not testable according to any scientific method and is not widely regarded as scientific at all, but rather as pseudoscience. The theory of probability can explain events such as the plum pudding incident in our normal world, without any interference by any universal alignment forces. This is not to say that synchronicity is not a good model for describing a certain kind of human experience, but a refusal of the idea that synchronicity should be a "hard fact", i.e. an actually existing principle of our universe.

Some may say that synchronicity is a strand of magical thinking.

External link

Synchronicity is also a rock and roll album by The Police.



Synchronicity (album)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Synchronicity was a blockbuster 1983 (see 1983 in music) album by The Police. Their most popular release together, Synchronicity includes perhaps their best-known single, "Every Breath You Take". The album's title, as well as the two eponymous songs on the disc, are references to Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity.

Synchronicity topped both the Billboard Pop Albums and Billboard 200 charts. It won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

Track listing

  1. Synchronicity I (Sting) - 3:23
  2. Walking in Your Footsteps (Sting) - 3:36
  3. O My God (Sting [1]) - 4:02
  4. Mother (Summers) - 3:05
  5. Miss Gradenko (Copeland) - 1:59
  6. Synchronicity II (Sting) - 5:02
  7. Every Breath You Take (Sting) - 4:13
  8. King of Pain (Sting) - 4:59
  9. Wrapped Around Your Finger (Sting) - 5:13
  10. Tea in the Sahara (Sting) - 4:19
  11. Murder by Numbers (Sting/Summers) - 4:36

Personnel

Charting singles

1983	King Of Pain	                The Billboard Hot 100	        No. 13
1983	Synchronicity II	        The Billboard Hot 100	        No. 16
1983	Every Breath You Take	        Adult Contemporary	        No. 5
1983	King Of Pain	                Adult Contemporary	        No. 33
1983	Every Breath You Take	        Club Play Singles	        No. 26
1983	Every Breath You Take	        Mainstream Rock	                No. 1
1983	King Of Pain	                Mainstream Rock	                No. 1
1983	Synchronicity II	        Mainstream Rock	                No. 9
1983	Wrapped Around Your Finger	Mainstream Rock	                No. 9
1983	Every Breath You Take	        Pop Singles	                No. 1
1983	King Of Pain	                Pop Singles	                No. 3
1983	Synchronicity II	        Pop Singles	                No. 16
1984	Wrapped Around Your Finger	The Billboard Hot 100	        No. 8
1984	Synchronicity II	        The Billboard Hot 100	        No. 19

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Synchronicity."

Top     

Modern Usage: Synchronicity

DomainUsage

Screenplays

A synchronicity that borders on on predestination, one might say. (Buffy the Vampire Slayer; writing credit: Doreen Spicer)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top     

Commercial Usage: Synchronicity

DomainTitle

Books

  • Synchronicity (reference)

  • Synchronicity, Signs & Symbols (reference)

  • Unexpected Miracles: The Gift of Synchronicity, and How to Open It (reference)

    (more book examples)

  

Theater & Movies

  • Police: Outlandos To Synchronicity (reference)

  • Police: The Synchronicity Concert (reference)

    (more DVD examples; more video examples)

  

Music

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top     

Usage Frequency: Synchronicity

"Synchronicity" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 95.45% of the time. "Synchronicity" is used about 22 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words		Rank in English
Noun (singular)95.45%2176,261
Noun (proper)4.55%1339,140
                    Total100.00%22N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

Top     

Frequency of Internet Keywords: Synchronicity

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day

synchronicity

124

synchronicity the police

10

jung synchronicity

7

carl jung synchronicity

4

mark synchronicity

3

serendipity synchronicity

3

23 synchronicity

3

lyrics synchronicity

3

group performance synchronicity

2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top     

Misspellings: Synchronicity

Misspellings

"Synchronicity" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: sinchronicity, sychronicity, synchcronicity, synchonicity, synchroncity, synchronicty, synchronisity, synchronocity, syncronicity, synkronicity. (additional references)

Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

Top     

Anagrams: Synchronicity

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "c-c-h-i-i-n-n-o-r-s-t-y-y"

-3 letters: chronicity, synchronic.

-4 letters: cistronic, synchrony.

-5 letters: chronics, conicity, cryonics, historic, incisory, nicotins, orchitic, orchitis, ornithic, syntonic, thionins, tinhorns.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

Top     

Alternative Orthography: Synchronicity


Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

53 79 6E 63 68 72 6F 6E 69 63 69 74 79

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)

=

Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)

Braille (1829, in France) (references)

Morse Code (1836) (references)

...    -.--.    -.    -.-.    ....    .-.    ---    -.    ..    -.-.    ..    -    -.--.

Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01010011 01111001 01101110 01100011 01101000 01110010 01101111 01101110 01101001 01100011 01101001 01110100 01111001

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#83 &#121 &#110 &#99 &#104 &#114 &#111 &#110 &#105 &#99 &#105 &#116 &#121

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

0053 0079 006E 0063 0068 0072 006F 006E 0069 0063 0069 0074 0079

British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

53918069748481807569758691

Top     



INDEX

1. Definition
2. Synonyms
3. Usage: Modern
4. Usage: Commercial 		5. Usage Frequency
6. Expressions: Internet
7. Derivations
8. Anagrams 		9. Orthography
10. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.