Authored by Alain Negre – originally published in French on “Espace Francophone
Synopsis
Contemporary cosmology gives rise to an abundance of questions and models attempting to explain current paradoxes such as dark matter and energy, the total disappearance of antimatter, and the improbable alignment of the constants of physics that would allow our existence.
The term “enantiodromia” referenced in the title of this article comes from pre-Socratic philosophy. It denotes a philosophical view where tensions between opposites govern the cycles of natural life. All that exists constantly cycles into its opposite, creating what we see as change. This relationship means change is not chaotic; instead, change operates along a natural continuum. In modern scientific terms, this process is referred to as a self-regulating loop. There are moderation processes, such as the Lenz-Faraday law of electromagnetism, which are well understood in modern physics but have never been demonstrated at the global scale of the universe.
The psychiatrist Carl Jung drew all his empirical material from his patients. Psychology is an empirical science and deals with realities. But human nature is partly empirical and partly transcendental. Jung revitalized the concept of enantiodromia and applied it to the paradoxical nature of the human psyche.
The physicist Kepler who set the new science in motion in the XVIIth century, was deeply religious. The same was also true, later on, for Newton, Faraday, and others. They believed the laws they were discovering were the laws of God. But, gradually, references to God’s unifying power disappeared, and now physicists only mention “the laws of physics” without any reference to God. However, contemporary physicists continue to be driven by the dream of unifying all the fundamental forces, but this search for the one underlying principle is hauntingly pursued without ever admitting what they actually presuppose is that there is a “One”. This is a metaphysical hypothesis.
This article builds on Jung’s hypothesis of an underlying psychophysical level, a metaphysical hypothesis that he made in the last part of his life in his collaboration with physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Furthermore, both scholars were interested in the nature of the number, an “archetype of order which has become conscious” according to Jung, and a “primary probability” of the unconscious according to Pauli.
Discussions about contemporary cosmology often get bogged down over pointless debates that confuse different realms of existence. There is a necessity to tackle the topic from a transdisciplinary perspective, which considers and respects the different levels of reality. Yet, links do exist between these levels. The archetype of the number is what links – through reflections – these distinct levels.
You are invited to read the whole article, which is divided into the eight subsequent posts listed below:
1. The roots of scientific knowledge
2. The archetype: ordering factor, formative principle of the universe
3. Models of the universe as a whole
4. On the boundary between science and myth
5. From cosmological models to the archetype of four
6. From the dialectical work of forces to the archetype of three
7. The universe is self-produced through opposites
8. The universe and the soul of the world
About the author: Alain Negre
Alain Negre was born in 1950. A physicist and electronics engineer, he has worked in the semiconductor industry and taught at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie in Grenoble. At the same time, he has become interested in mind-body issues and the relationship between science and spirituality. He is the author of “The Archetype of the Number and its Reflections in Contemporary Cosmology” (Chiron Publications)
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..