Synchronicity and the limits of re-enchantment

Since C.G. Jung's (1875?1961) death fifty years ago the majority of work on synchronicity has concentrated, like Jung's, either on the connections of the concept to science, religion, and the relationship between science and religion, or, more fully than Jung's, on the clinical implications of the concept. However, Jung also hinted at important social and cultural implications of synchronicity that so far have been little explored. The present paper looks at synchronicity in relation to disenchantment ? a theme that connects to both science-religion debates and sociological and cultural debates. Using as a reference point Charles Taylor's characterisation in A secular age (2007) of the transformations that led from the enchanted, pre-modern world to the disenchanted, modern world, the paper considers the extent to which Jung's concept of synchronicity contributes to a re-enchantment of the world. It concludes that the re-enchantment is substantial but avowedly partial, for Jung was attempting not, impossibly, to return to pre-modernity but rather to transform modernity by retrieving important aspects of the pre-modern.