The Roots of Coincidence

Book excerpt: "Mr. Koestler's main concern is with demonstrating that, contrary to what one might expect- namely, that...paranormal events are most disturbing because they seem to break what most of us think are the laws of the real world- it is precisely modern physics that offers a "rapprochement" between the real world and parapsychology, even if the rapprochement is "negative in the sense that the unthinkable phenomena of ESP appear somewhat less preposterous in the light of the unthinkable propositions of physics." As Mr. Koestler so lucidly and wittily demonstrates, modern physics depicts a world of noncausational paradoxes- a wonderland of Heisenbergian Principles of Uncertainty, of mysterious elementary particles, of psi-fields, anti-electrons, multi-dimensionality, and time running forward and backward. And unlike Newton's clockwork universe, this new world is not at all uncongenial to the dice-shooter convinced that he has a "hot" hand or the sensitive who insists that his dreams are premonitory" -- by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times, August 11, 1972.