Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-fv566 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T14:19:50.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Operations and the Occult

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Robert Palter
Robert Palter*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

What strikes one first about two recent books in philosophy of science is that they seem to be polar opposites in all important respects. Bridgman, of course, typifies the hard-headed and skeptical physical scientist, whose interest in the broad “philosophic” questions of scientific methodology stems largely from current problems in theoretical physics, but he is, nevertheless, very much concerned to extend the salutary effects of operational analysis to other intellectual disciplines. Jung, on the other hand, not only is a psychiatrist—and therefore professionally committed to a certain gullibility about mental phenomena—but he also is deeply convinced of the importance for science of such subjects as astrology and alchemy; and Pauli, although a distinguished physicist in his own right, has clearly been influenced by Jung's conception of archetypal ideas in the collective unconscious.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , October 1956 , pp. 297 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1956

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 P. W. Bridgman, Reflections of a Physicist, 2nd edition, enlarged; New York: Philosophical Library, 1955, pp. xvi, 576. $6.00

C. G. Jung and W. Pauli, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, translated by R. F. C. Hull and Priscilla Silz; New York: Pantheon Books (Bollingen Series LI) 1955, pp. viii, 247. $3.00

2 The mind's selective ability to focus its attention upon a particular event, often embedded in a welter of highly similar events (as in memory), is sometimes referred to as “singularization”. See, for example, Soal and Bateman (Modern Experiments in Telepathy, p. 170), who discuss the problem in connection with the interpretation of extrasensory perception experiments-.

3 An “aspect” refers to the relative position of two celestial objects in the zodiac. “Conjunction” means that the two objects in question are in the same portion of the zodiac; “opposition” means that the objects are in opposite portions of the zodiac, i.e., 180° apart. The critical aspects for marriage according to Ptolemy are the conjunction or opposition of sun-moon, moon-moon, and moon-ascendent (the ascendent is the zodiacal sign which is rising over the eastern horizon at the moment of birth).

4 This is Jung's value (p. 73); I find a value of 8.7 using Jung's data (Table I, pp. 66–67).