GM James Plaskett presents another of his
coincidence files.
Peter Brent
At 1:15 p.m. on December 17th 2000 I was in
Robert Mucci's junk and second hand bookshop
in Hastings Old Town High Street trying to sell
him some stuff that we were throwing out. Whilst
he was assessing it, and dealing with some other
customers, I glanced at some of the books he
had on his shelves. Atop a pile I saw The Autobiography
of Charles Darwin, and near to it in that pile
was a hardback biography of him - Charles Darwin
by Peter Brent. Then in an adjacent bookshelf
I noticed a paperback copy of that same book.
It was published in 1981. Lower down I saw a
copy of Koestlerıs The Roots of Coincidence,
a book I had read over a decade earlier.
I opened it, and saw that in the flyleaf was
handwritten the name of Peter Brent.
I pointed the coincidence out to both Robert
and a customer whom he seemed to be familiar
with. The customer said "I should buy that".
I did, and the paperback biography and the autobiography.
We did a deal where the payment for the stuff
I bought in also covered the outlay for these
books. Robert explained that he had recently
bought a bunch of books as a single lot at an
auction in London. He reasoned now that the
books written by Brent must have been from his
own private collection.
Koestlerıs 1972 work touches upon criticisms
of Darwinism, or rather on pro-Lamarckian statements,
as he refers to his recent biography of biologist
Paul Kammerer (The Case of the Midwife Toad),
whose experiments provided evidence for Lamarckian
mechanisms of inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Kammerer was also a collector and publisher
of coincidences. Indeed, Koestler points out
that only Jung, who together with the phycisist
[Wolfgang] Pauli produced the idea of Synchronicity,
and before them Paul Kammerer with his concept
of Seriality, attempted to come up with any
kind of theory to explain meaningful coincidences
Koestler noted a similarity between the claims
of the Lamarckians and the parapsychologists:
"... they were unable to produce a repeatable
experiment. Cases of apparent IAC (Inheritance
of Acquired Characteristics) in the animal kingdom
were rare, the phenomena were capricious; each
apparently clear-cut case was open to different
interpretations - and as a last resort, to accusations
of fraud. Moreover, though the Lamarckians were
convinced that IAC did occur, they were unable
to provide a physiological explanation for it
- as parapsychologists are unable to provide
a physical basis for ESP.
This curious parallel seems to have escaped
the attention of both Lamarckians and parapsychologists;
I have not seen it mentioned in the literature.
Perhaps one heresy is enough for one man. Paul
Kammerer shared both; yet he, too, seems to
have ben unaware of the connection between them."(
The Roots of Coincidence pp.134-135 ).
Do you agree or disagree with Plaskett's arguments?
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| From: |
Peter Brent | Subject: | 2001-12-20 22:56:12 |
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Natalie | Subject: | 2003-05-06 14:24:42 |
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| From: |
Kristy | Subject: | 2011-11-16 01:07:04 |
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Kristy | Subject: | 2011-11-16 01:07:04 |
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