Moons ago I wrote that when we encounter interesting coincidences there seems to be a tendency, on the subject’s part, to interpret the situation in terms of quasi-causal agents (“the universe is trying to tell me something”) which are understood, however, to not be causal agents: they are stand-ins for what would play the role of a causal agent, if there was causation, with the simultaneous...
At this point I shall introduce more terminology, some of which I’ll borrow from mediaeval notions. A set of events like that of the death of Damocles and his clock stopping, where some can be understood as a metaphorical expression of others in the set, I’ll call a figuration (from the Latin figuratio). In the middle ages, there was a sense (in theology and philosophy) that things and events in...
I’ve started investigating the subtleties of a certain well-known phenomenon, using variations of the hypothetical case of the death of Damocles: the phenomenon of somehow “interesting” coincidences. For the time being, I shall keep that wording: various terms are widely in use for our phenomenon, but I’d like to avoid these, since they carry strong and distorting connotations. I’ll call our...
Leif Frenzel is a writer and independent researcher. He has a background in philosophy, literature, music, and information technology.