Paul Kammerer

Biologist and Theorist

1880 - 1926

BiologyZoologyStatistics

"The succession of rain and sunshine, the drawing of lottery numbers, do not obey blind chance, but an immanent order of the universe."

An Austrian biologist, he was the first scientist to attempt a rigorous and mathematical study of coincidences with his 'Law of Seriality'.

Key Points at a Glance

Who is He?

A brilliant yet controversial Austrian biologist, captivated by the meticulous observation of nature's anomalies.

Notable Achievement

He was the very first scientist to systematically catalog and classify the 'coincidences' of everyday life mathematically.

Synchronicity

He formulated the 'Law of Seriality', a hypothetical force of attraction that would group similar events in time, foreshadowing the concept of synchronicity.

Biography

The Collector of Coincidences

Paul Kammerer was a brilliant yet eccentric Viennese biologist. Beyond his highly controversial work on the inheritance of acquired characteristics (notably the midwife toad affair), he became passionately engaged early on in the observation of statistical anomalies.

For over twenty years, he spent hours seated on park benches in Vienna or in trams, frantically noting in a notebook all the strange recurrences of his daily life: the number of people passing by with a green umbrella, sequential ticket numbers, repeated surnames within a single day.

The Toad Affair and the Tragic End

Kammerer's career was destroyed by a resounding scientific scandal in 1926. His specimens of toads (supposedly proving Lamarckian inheritance) were discovered to be falsified, with someone having injected India ink into their limbs.

Although it was never proven that Kammerer himself was the forger (some speculate a zealous assistant or a conspiracy), the dishonor was complete. A few weeks after the scandal was revealed in the journal Nature, Kammerer went to the woods of Schneeberg and took his own life with a bullet to the head.

Major Works

The Systematic Observation of Recurrences

Kammerer accumulated hundreds of direct observations, establishing precise typologies for what was then considered mere chance.

Visions & Theories

The Law of Seriality

In 1919, Kammerer published the fruits of his empirical observations in 'Das Gesetz der Serie' (The Law of Series). He postulated the existence of an unknown natural force or principle, acting parallel to the force of gravity.

According to him, just as gravity groups physical matter in space, the force of 'seriality' groups similar events in time. It is a force of affinity. He described this as the 'imitation of the universe upon itself'. Things that resemble each other tend to occur together.

Difference with Jung's Synchronicity

Unlike Jung, Kammerer's approach was entirely devoid of psychology, meaning, or mysticism. It was a purely physical theory. He sought a causal, material explanation (albeit unknown), where Jung would later see an acausal principle linked to the observer's consciousness.

Nevertheless, Kammerer's work (which Albert Einstein deemed 'original and by no means absurd') provided the empirical foundation upon which Jung began to contemplate synchronicity.

Reference Works

The Law of Series (Das Gesetz der Serie)

The foundational work published in 1919 where he presents his theory of a natural affinity force explaining coincidences.