Speaker
Description
Wolfgang Pauli developed an original interpretation of quantum mechanics in terms of Bohr’s correspondence principle as an ontological texture of physical reality and complementarity principle as a generalization of the correspondence principle. Following Pauli, there is an a-causal connection, a statistical correspondence (non-separability/ “synchronicity”) between quantum microcosm and (human) macrocosm. This kind of non-mechanistic conception of Nature as well as the idea of non-separability of the world and of synchronicity, as stated by Carl Gustav Jung itself, was firstly developed by Leibnitz: from this point of view, we can look at quantum physics (as well as for relativity it was shown) as related to a new emergence of concepts belonging to the Leibnitzian (anti-Newtonian) tradition. By a historical analysis of Kepler’s works and of part of the so-called ‘scientific revolution’, Pauli has started to show that physical theories and the related ‘mental representations’ could have their roots in archetypical images of the collective unconscious which have been investigated by Carl Gustav Jung. For example, there were geometrical archetypical images which could have determined the mental representations and the cosmological and physical theories of space, time and Nature. Modern physics is not only a rational mathematical construction, but above all is a fruit of a scientific epistemology of imagination. Thus, Pauli suggested not only a new physical, philosophical and historical interpretation, but also a very original psychoanalytic interpretation of quantum physics in terms of collective unconscious’ archetypal images and considered it as a new kind of alchemy, which recovered the removed unity of Psyché and Physis and implied the unity of the whole field of knowledge and of Eastern and Western traditions, and led to an ethical transformation of mankind in front of a re-enchantment of Nature.
