Synchronicity: The Orchestra of Design

The Miracle of Jericho

The year is 2021, and technology is moving fast. Too fast for some in fact; and for others simply a joy ride. The miraculous in our time is something we haven’t yet found a scientific/logical explanation for.

Interesting times.

You most likely would have watched I, Robot (and yes, the book is better. Asimov, as they say, “went off”), and/or Minority Report. Most of the technologies in those movies are commonplace now, so much so that entire careers and industries have been built out of them.

It is clear that a lot of elements make up for this success, and while no particular entity can claim to be more important than the rest, we cannot but agree that none of these different technologies could have come together if the designers and engineers behind them didn’t find a way to effectively connect them, to create some level of synchrony in their operations.

For a world that it largely out of order, we continually experience pockets of somewhat unexplainable episodes of synchrony.

The second law of thermodynamics states that everything in the universe tends towards disorder (this is not an explanation for misdemeanor, maybe you’re just badly behaved 😏), and in complex systems, chaos.

With that in mind, you would expect the world to be in constant disarray, with systems failing left and right.

What we have instead is a complex, ordered system, with its smaller domiciled systems working in synchrony. Some of these things are literally miracles.

How can a system observed to be heading for disorder, exhibit this level of order?

Maybe a few examples will help put this in perspective.

You’re sitting outside your house, passing time with a few friends over drinks and the soothing evening breeze. There’s a tree just by the fence. It’s night and the street just ahead is missing a street light, so the tree is poorly lit. With faint moonlight, you see its outlines on the backdrop of a dimly lit sky. Occasionally you see a bright flash every few seconds. You pay no attention to it at first, but a few minutes later, you see three flashes, where there used to be one. You’re curious now, your friend’s story isn’t so interesting anymore. Three increased to ten, and then doubles. You’ve lost count now, and you’re wondering how Christmas lights suddenly appeared on the tree. You take a few steps towards the tree, a lot of thoughts running through your curious mind. As you get closer, you realize what these lights are, and you can’t help but laugh at the simplicity of it all. You’re looking at fireflies literally “doing their thing”.

You turn back to join your friends, and as you walk back down, a nagging question keeps replaying in your head.

How did over 100 autonomous insects know to glow at the same time, in perfect synchrony?

It’s almost like they were programmed to.

Synchronicity is a term originally coined by psychologist Carl Jung that refers to deeply meaningful coincidences which mysteriously occur in your life. When you experience synchronicity, you'll have experiences that seem far too significant to be mere day-to-day serendipitous encounters.

Now to something more interesting.

Over the years, it’s been observed that women living together tend to have their menstrual cycles at about the same period. This usually happened after a few months of living together. The theory is that women’s pheromones interact when they are in close proximity, causing them to have their period at the same time.

Further research over the years adjusts this theory. The truth is, periods do sync, but most likely at the middle of the year. Somehow all the varying lengths of cycles tend to “converge”. What’s more interesting is that the patterns for menstrual cycles tend to be in synchrony with Lunar cycles.

In fact, many species synchronize reproductive behavior with a particular phase of the lunar cycle to increase reproductive success.

In many marine species and some terrestrial species, reproductive behavior is synchronized with a particular phase of the lunar cycle (often full or new moon). This arrangement increases reproductive success by synchronizing the reproductive behavior of the individual members of a species. With this in view, it is of interest that the human menstrual cycle has a period close to that of the lunar cycle and that several older studies report a relationship between the cycles. While the study is still in progress, it is worthy of note, that there have been recorded cases of period synchrony.

Some attribute these things to coincidence.

But even the definition of coincidence is dwarfed by some of these occurrences.

Time to steal your heart…

In 1656, Chriatiaan Huygens designed the first working pendulum clock. The goal was to help sailors figure out where they were on the globe.

In those times, Latitude could be judged by measuring the position of the sun

and stars, but for Longitude, you'd need to know the time at some fixed location, like their home port.

Clocks at the time were routinely out by at least 15mins a day, so they were in effect, useless. Huygens pendulum clock, however, was accurate up to 15seconds.

His setup was to attach two clocks (in case one stopped or was damaged) to a heavyweight so they won't get tossed around or fall due to the heavy waves and wind.

While testing them out in his home in 1655, he made a stunning discovery. Two of his clocks hanging from a wooden balance spontaneously synchronized after about 30 minutes. As one clock swung one way, the second would swing the other way. As one would tick, the other would...tock.

To confirm his thoughts, he unsettled both clocks and put them back together again. After about 30 minutes again, they were back in sync. This however did not happen when he paced them far apart from each other.

When he brought them back together, the synchrony returned.

Huygens soon realized that they were synchronized because they hung from the same beam. It transferred mechanical vibrations from one clock to the other, making the two oscillators coupled.

He was the first to discover to observe this kind of spontaneous synchrony in inanimate objects.

A close look at metronomes will better demonstrate this. Out of sync in the beginning, but within a short time, they all swing in unison. This happens, regardless of how many metronomes you have.

Impressed?

Now, let's walk through a miracle.

Jericho was a city promised to the Israelites.

But it’s not like the people within the city were going to give up their homes just like that. The story goes that the walls of Jericho were at least 13 feet tall and 6 feet wide, with a watchtower that was 28 feet tall. Practically impregnable.

It’s laughable that the Israelites only had to blow trumpets for the wall to cave in. I’m sure structural engineers and architects would like to have a word with the builders.

But it wasn’t so simple. Let’s try to go behind the scenes.

The leader of the Israelites, Joshua was instructed by God to march around the city once every day, for 7 days.

So ordinary. Right?

Now, throw in the little we’ve learned about synchronicity and transference of mechanical vibrations. Imagine thousands of people walking in synchrony. The number of vibrations would be astronomical.

Yes, you’re wondering how thousands of men ended up striking the ground at the same time, rhythmically. It’s not like they had any knowledge of synchronicity of the effects of transference.

But this is actually a regular occurrence that we ignore. Groups of people walking together have been observed to fall in sync over time as they walk. A phenomenon called Crowd Synchrony. It’s so commonplace that we rarely notice. Well, maybe children do.

Remember those times you tried to match your mum’s footsteps as she held your hand?

Now, back to Jericho.

The walls definitely did not fall on the first day, not even on the 5th. Imagine the wear on the walls, from sustained vibrations over 7 days.

And then there was the trumpet.

It’s not what we would call a weapon, under normal circumstances, but today, we have LRADs (Long-Range Acoustic Devices) and Sonic and Ultrasonic Weapons (USW). The Israelites had their trumpets and vocal cords.

If you think they’re not remotely dangerous, it would interest you to know that a single human is capable of generating 120 decibels, and only 100 dB is needed to smash glass. Imagine the amount of damage tens of thousands would do.

Of course, we’d have to factor in the direction the sound is focused on, but let’s go on a wild guess here and say it was at the wall.

We all know what happened after 7 days.

Too hard to prove right? But what if this has happened recently? Well, almost happened?

But I guess history saved the day.

Don’t believe me?

Well, on June 10, 2000 the Millennium Bridge across the Thames in London was opened to much excitement. As the number of people walking across increased, it began to wobble, leading police to restrict access to the bridge. Two days later, the 18million pound bridge was closed, for 2 years.

Why did they do this?

Apparently, it’s been long been known that armies should break steps when crossing bridges. This, in fact, dates back to an incident in 1832, where 74 men from the 60th rifle core were matching in synchronized steps across the Broughton suspension bridge. It collapsed under their footsteps. Although there were no casualties, over 15 men were injured.

You see, synchronization is all around us. It is what keeps our bodies from falling apart. If there was no synchroneity in the hearts, it wouldn’t function as it should. How long do you think we would last?

Closely related to synchronicity is balance.

Not enough synchronization leads to disorder, and too much of it, and chaos will most likely occur.

This, in simple terms is why a seemingly ordered universe seems headed for chaos. It can be argued, that our world invariably seeks balance.

The right amount of order and disorder to keep it alive.

The world around us is full of systems in constant interaction, all designed. Our constant interaction creates synchrony both with ourselves and with the systems we encounter.

We’re living in an oxymoron, and if the universe ever wrote a joke, it would be about its own existence.