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Read our interview with Arthur I. Miller

ON THE surface, latest book is a joint biography of two great minds of the 20th century: quantum physics pioneer and psychoanalysis master . This two-in-one approach has served Miller well; his 2001 book Einstein, Picasso attracted wide acclaim. But whereas Einstein and Picasso never actually met, Pauli, we learn, met Jung on numerous occasions. They grew to be close friends, and Pauli became one of Jung鈥檚 regular clients.

The two shared similar obsessions. Both were scientists, but each feared that physics would always be missing something if it neglected the inner workings of the mind.

Jung obsessed over mental archetypes 鈥� primitive, subconscious symbols hard-wired into our perception of the world 鈥� and was fascinated by the , a fiendishly complex branch of Jewish mysticism.

Pauli, for his part, was enamoured by , who tried (unsuccessfully) to explain the structure of the solar system in terms of geometry alone. He was also intrigued by a lesser known contemporary of Kepler 鈥� , a member of the Rosicrucian secret society, who believed that simple geometrical forms held the key to unlocking the cosmos. As Pauli struggled with problems in quantum physics, Miller explains, he felt 鈥渢he need for a fusion of physics with Jung鈥檚 analytical psychology in order to understand first the unconscious and then the conscious鈥�.

鈥淎s Pauli struggled with quantum physics, he felt the need to fuse physics with Jung鈥檚 psychology鈥�

Pauli began experiencing bizarre dreams and turned to Jung for help in making sense of them. The dreams featured a startling mix of geometrical figures, motifs from physics (clocks and pendulums) and mysterious figures reminiscent of Jung鈥檚 archetypes (the serpent eating its tail, a veiled woman and an ape-man, to name a few). Although Pauli described 400 dreams to Jung, these visits were kept a secret; when Jung wrote about them, he referred to his famous patient only as a 鈥済reat scientist鈥�.

Numerology is never far beneath the surface of Miller鈥檚 story. Pauli was troubled by the number 137. As physicists pored over the equations that determine the spectra of the chemical elements, a particular combination of physical constants kept cropping up. Referred to as the 鈥渇ine structure constant鈥�, it combined the speed of light (crucial in Einstein鈥檚 relativity) and Planck鈥檚 constant (the heart of quantum theory), along with the magnitude of the charge of an electron. By themselves, each of these has to be expressed in some particular units (say, metres per second for the speed of light), but combined, the result is a unitless 鈥減ure number鈥�. Arnold Somerfeld first worked out its value as 0.00729, equivalent to (roughly) 1/137.

Why 137? Pauli obsessed over it, and he wasn鈥檛 the only great physicist to do so: Arthur Eddington, Enrico Fermi and Richard Feynman all took stabs at it over the years. Meanwhile Jung, with his knowledge of Kabbalah, also found enormous significance in 137. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a number associated with it, and 鈥� lo and behold 鈥� the letters in the word 鈥淜abbalah鈥� add up to 137. Remarkable 鈥� or a meaningless coincidence.

The history is fascinating, as are the insights into the personalities of these great thinkers. Miller, however, seems oddly accepting of Pauli and Jung鈥檚 musings, which these days we would label pseudoscience. And Miller鈥檚 thesis that their ideas are bearing fruit today, with the study of consciousness 鈥渁 burgeoning field of research using concepts from quantum mechanics鈥�, is somewhat exaggerated.

Read our interview with Arthur I. Miller