Co-incidentia oppositorum

 

Credit: Musical Linguist

Clas Svahn is a Swedish writer of books about the unexplained and paranormal, albeit often with a somewhat more skeptical slant than usual in that line of business. "Osannolikt: Märkliga möten och fantastiska sammanträffanden" was published in 2013 and isn´t one of his best. It´s an eclectic hodge-podge of...well, everything really, but I suppose a Fortean writer could get away with it by claiming that he is merely emulating Charles Fort! If there is any order in this book, it´s probably by co-incidence. OK, that was a pun on the book´s title, which in English would be "Unlikely: Strange encounters and fantastic co-incidences". 

Personal anecdotes told to the author (who works at a major daily newspaper) dominate, but he also discusses Carl Jung´s ideas about "synchronicity", Paul Kammerer´s speculations about the same, and various skeptical attempts to debunk the idea that co-incidences are mysterious rather than just the work of chance. An entire chapter is devoted to an interview with a Swedish scholar of statistics. And yes, Monsieur de Fontgibu and his plum pudding make a guest appearence. So do Nostradamus, Swedish seer Anton Johansson, and science fiction writer Jules Verne. 

While Svahn is honestly fascinated by the topic, he nevertheless veers strongly towards skepticism. Apart from chance, other mundane explanations suggest themselves. For instance, that extroverts have more "chance meetings" than introverts - obviously, since an extroverted connoisseur of Fortean plum puddings is more likely to encounter another one of the same ilk! Also obvious is that people who are highly impulsive and aggressive often have "bad luck" (especially in traffic). And in an era of rapid transit and internet, the number of "friends of friends" between you and anyone else in the world is rapidly getting smaller (especially on Facebook). 

Some of the anecdotes are extremely funny, for instance that a former president of the Swedish "car drivers association against drunken driving" was named Benny Ruus (in Swedish, "rusdryck" is an old word for alcohol) or that a police officer in charge of a fraud squad was named Alf Ärligh ("ärlig" meaning honest). Or what about a guy named Falk (Falcon) who once saved a hawk? 

With that little reflection, I leave you for now.