cWhat do one of the fathers of quantum physics, Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) and the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) have in common? And what about the realm of the rational, the measurable, with that of the irrational, of emotions? The matter is not so simple but the two worlds are not as far apart as it might seem. To find out, Gabriella Greison, physicist and well-known popularizer (she has 10 books, 5 podcasts and 3 TV programs behind her), went on their trail. She left from Princeton, in America, where Pauli taught during the Second World War, to arrive – via CERN in Geneva – in Zurich, where the physicist attended the psychoanalyst’s office as a patient.
Gabriella Greison. His latest book is Everything is Connected (Mondadori).
A long journey in stages, he explains Greison“For continue the path that Pauli left unfinished with his last lesson at the ETH of the Swiss city».
You have to remember that Pauli, Nobel prize winner in 1945, who according to Einstein was his only worthy successor, was a man who loved excesses: avid whiskey drinker, frequenter of brothels, never returned home before dawn, often got involved in street fights. Not exactly a scientist all laboratory and fixed hours, in short. He had started the analysis sessions with Jung because he wanted him to explain to him what love is: a feeling that Pauli, used to paying for his relationships, didn’t know. It is to be thought that he had a lot to learn. But Jung too was fascinated by his so “special” patient, because he was looking for a scientific basis for his theories about him. Result: they met every Monday at 12, Pauli explained quantum physics to Jung and didn’t pay. He was a mutual exchange between sublime minds.
The cover of Gabriella Greison’s latest book, Everything is Connected (Mondadori).
“Trying to balance everything, looking for a unification between the two worlds: I tried to continue on Pauli’s path”, says the author. From a scientific point of view, Pauli is famous for having mathematically discovered the exclusion principle, which won him the Nobel Prize: «If matter is made of air, why can’t I crush an object completely? For the exclusion principle», explains Greison, «according to which electrons cannot go below their orbit. But Pauli is also responsible for the mathematical discovery of the spin of electrons and that of neutrinos. Today and their study is one of the last frontiers of scientific research».
Jung owes the concept of synchronicity, to explain coincidences. «Developing this new concept, analyzing synchronicities, we understood that there is not always a cause that makes things happen, there is not always a triggering action, but there is also the likelihood that certain things will happen that we don’t even imagine,” says the author. Jung gives the example of a patient of hers who had told him that she had dreamed that someone had given her a precious gold beetle. While she was talking, something had banged against the window: it was indeed a beetle.
«In quantum physics it is called entanglementcorrelation», explains Greison, who titled his own Entanglement the show with which he will debut at the Menotti theater in Milan on April 22nd. «If two systems come into contact, information is exchanged, and that also applies to love. What’s more connected? It applies to both material and intellectual life.
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