When Ideas Find You

Six books. No connection between them whatsoever. Richard Osman’s latest thrillers (two of them!), picked up at an airport bookshop because I had twenty minutes before boarding. Brian McLaren’s theological exploration, chosen weeks earlier for entirely different reasons. Jaz Ampaw-Farr’s Because of You to read in full, Humankind after a recommendation from Mike Walker and Steve Chalke’s A Manifesto for Hope, arriving through a recommendation I can barely remember accepting. And then, sitting on my desk, waiting: Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization sent from Douglas Archibald, which may or may not continue the pattern.

All of them, somehow, conspiring to teach me about kindness and compassion.

This keeps happening. Not just to me, but to all of us. Ideas cluster. Themes emerge from disconnected sources. The universe appears to be running a curriculum we never enrolled in. The question isn’t whether this happens - it observably does - but what it means when it does.

Is the cosmos actually trying to tell us something? Or are we simply sophisticated pattern-recognition machines, hard-wired to find meaning in randomness? The answer, as with most interesting questions, refuses to be tidy.

The Pattern-Making Animal

Humans are rubbish at randomness. Our brains evolved to detect patterns because missing the rustle in the grass that might be a predator was a fatal error. Better to see a thousand patterns that aren’t there than miss the one that is. This cognitive inheritance makes us brilliant survivors and terrible statisticians.

Michael Shermer, in The Believing Brain, calls this “patternicity” or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. It’s why we see faces in toast, why gamblers believe in lucky streaks, why conspiracy theories flourish. Our pattern-detection software runs constantly in the background, throwing up connections whether they’re genuinely there or not.

The statistical reality is more sobering than we’d like. Thomas Gilovich’s work on the “hot hand fallacy” in basketball demonstrated that what players and fans perceive as hot streaks - periods when a player “can’t miss” - are actually just random clustering. Flip a coin enough times and you’ll get runs of five or six heads in a row. It doesn’t mean the coin has found its rhythm.

This phenomenon has a name: the Baader-Meinhof effect, or frequency illusion. You learn a new word, and suddenly you see it everywhere. Buy a particular car, and the roads seem full of identical models. It’s not that these things have multiplied; it’s that your attention has been primed. Your brain, having categorised something as relevant, now notices every instance.

So when I pick up six unconnected books that all speak to kindness, am I discovering a cosmic pattern or simply experiencing confirmation bias on steroids? Have these themes always been present, waiting for my attention to catch up?

Yet dismissing all pattern recognition as mere cognitive error throws out something valuable. The question isn’t whether our brains find patterns. The question is: what do we do with this capacity?

When Ideas Have Agency

Carl Jung, whose work on individuation I’ve referenced before when discussing personal integration, developed a concept that sits uncomfortably alongside modern scientific materialism: synchronicity. Not causation, but “meaningful coincidence.” Events connected not through mechanical cause-and-effect, but through meaning.

What’s particularly provocative about Jung’s synchronicity is that he didn’t develop it alone. He collaborated with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics. This wasn’t some mystic and a scientist talking past each other. It was two rigorous thinkers wrestling with phenomena that troubled them both. Pauli had his own experiences with uncanny coincidences, what became known as the “Pauli effect” - lab equipment mysteriously malfunctioning in his presence.

Their resulting work, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, published in 1952, proposed something radical: that there might be connections between events that don’t operate through physical causation. Not magic, not divine intervention, but a type of ordering principle in the universe we haven’t properly grasped.

Before we dismiss this as pre-scientific mysticism, I will make reference to Richard Dawkins’ concept of memes from The Selfish Gene. Ironically, given Dawkins’ materialist stance, this framework actually gives agency to ideas themselves. Ideas replicate, evolve, compete for mental real estate. They seek out receptive hosts. A good meme doesn’t wait passively to be discovered; it has characteristics that make it spread.

“Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” Richard Dawkins

What if ideas about kindness are ‘having a moment’? Not because the universe is teaching me specifically, but because these concepts are particularly virulent right now, finding purchase in minds primed by post-pandemic exhaustion, political polarisation, and collective anxiety?

This connects to something Robert K. Merton documented in his work on multiple discovery, which I’ve also touched on before when discussing the collaborative nature of innovation. Newton and Leibniz developing calculus simultaneously. Darwin and Wallace arriving at evolution independently. These aren’t coincidences in the traditional sense, but rather ideas whose time has come. The intellectual terrain has been prepared; the adjacent concepts are in place; the cultural moment is receptive.

We call this the zeitgeist - the spirit of the age. But perhaps it’s more accurate to think of it as ecological: ideas require certain conditions to flourish, like plants needing the right soil, sunlight, and moisture. When conditions align, the same ideas sprout in multiple locations.

So why kindness now? Why is this theme surfacing across my reading, appearing in novels, theology, manifestos? Perhaps because we’re collectively exhausted by cruelty. Perhaps because isolation taught us the cost of disconnection. Perhaps because the algorithm has noted my interests and is quietly feeding me more of the same.

Or perhaps (and this is where it gets interesting) all of these explanations are simultaneously true.

The Prepared Mind

Louis Pasteur observed that “chance favours only the prepared mind.” This cuts through the dichotomy between cosmic design and random coincidence. The question isn’t whether serendipity is real or imagined, but whether we’re prepared to notice it when it arrives.

The ancient Greeks had a word for this: kairos.  Not chronological time (chronos), measured in seconds and hours, but the opportune moment, the right time, the instant when conditions align for action. Kairos is qualitative, not quantitative. It’s not about when something happens on the clock, but about readiness and ripeness.

When I picked up Osman’s novels at the airport, was I randomly selecting from available options? Or was I - operating beneath conscious awareness - drawn to something that matched my current preoccupations and actually completing the trilogies I have loved thus far? Airport bookshops aren’t infinite; they’re carefully curated selections of commercially viable titles. Within that constrained set, did I gravitate toward something that resonated with questions I was already asking?

Arthur Koestler, in The Act of Creation, proposed the concept of “bisociation”. This is the creative leap that comes from connecting two previously unrelated frames of reference. But these connections require both frames to already exist in your mind. You can’t connect what you haven’t encountered.

This is where Heidegger’s concept of “thrownness” (which I’ve discussed before in the context of contemplative practice) becomes relevant again, but from a different angle. We’re always already situated in a particular context, with particular concerns, carrying particular questions. This context shapes what appears meaningful. I don’t approach the airport bookshop as a blank slate; I bring my preoccupations, my current thinking, my unresolved tensions.

The subconscious mind is far more active in our choices than we typically acknowledge. Daniel Kahneman, whose work on cognitive biases I’ve referenced extensively, particularly around decision-making and pattern recognition, would call this System 1 thinking: fast, automatic, operating beneath conscious awareness. It’s constantly processing, filtering, making micro-decisions based on patterns we don’t consciously recognise.

So when we experience serendipity - when ideas seem to find us - we might be observing our own subconscious doing its work. We’re not passive recipients of cosmic messages, but neither are we purely rational agents making conscious choices. We’re something more interesting: creatures whose conscious minds are often the last to know what we’re actually seeking.

This is preparedness: not just intellectual readiness, but emotional and psychological receptivity. When you’re wrestling with a question, even one you haven’t fully articulated, you become magnetised to anything that might help answer it. The themes don’t multiply; your attention becomes attuned.

The Serendipity Paradox

I think there’s a dangerous edge to pattern recognition, one we’d be foolish to ignore. Apophenia is the phenomenon or condition of seeing connections that aren’t there. It doesn’t just lead to harmless superstitions but really underpins conspiracy thinking, paranoid ideation, and the kind of rigid certainty that brings no contradiction. It’s the “I’ll believe the world is only 6,000 years old because the Bible says it” mentality that persists despite all evidence to the contrary. (Oh, and the Bible doesn’t actually say it, it’s just reverse logic in terms of genealogies of oral traditions which are notoriously unreliable if anyone actually looked!)

Michael Shermer documents how this pattern-seeking gone awry creates what he calls “agenticity” - the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency. The universe isn’t just showing me books about kindness; it’s “trying to teach me something”. My manager isn’t just unfriendly; they’re “part of a coordinated campaign”. These aren’t random events; they’re “all connected”.

This is where serendipity curdles into paranoia. The line between noticing meaningful patterns and constructing elaborate fictions is thinner than we’d like to admit. Both operate from the same cognitive machinery; the difference is calibration.

Yet the opposite danger is equally real: dismissing all pattern recognition as cognitive error. When we flatten everything to randomness, we miss genuine insight. We throw out intuition, ignore felt sense, dismiss the whispers of our subconscious that often arrive ahead of our conscious reasoning.

Iris Murdoch, the British philosopher and novelist, wrote extensively about the quality of attention we bring to the world. For Murdoch, attention isn’t just a cognitive act. She sees it as both moral and spiritual. The way we attend to reality shapes what reality reveals to us. In The Sovereignty of Good, she argues that we can cultivate the kind of attention that sees more clearly, that perceives connections others miss.

“I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important.” Iris Murdoch

This isn’t about seeing what isn’t there; it’s about seeing what’s actually present but easily overlooked. The mystic and the conspiracy theorist both pay intense attention to patterns, but the quality of their attention differs fundamentally. One seeks to understand what’s genuinely there; the other seeks to confirm what they’ve already decided must be there.

So how do we navigate this paradox? Perhaps by changing the question. Instead of asking “Is this pattern real?” which tempts us toward certainty we can’t have, we might ask: “What does my attention to this pattern reveal about what I’m working on?”

When I notice books about kindness clustering in my reading, the interesting question isn’t whether the universe is sending me a message. It’s why my attention is drawn to these themes now. What am I processing? What questions am I carrying? What tensions am I trying to resolve?

This reframe shifts serendipity from external validation to internal diagnosis. The pattern isn’t evidence of cosmic design; it’s evidence of my own psychological state. I’m not discovering a hidden curriculum; I’m discovering what I’m curious about.

The value isn’t in whether the pattern is “real” in some objective sense. The value is in what we do with our observation of the pattern. Serendipity becomes useful not as proof of cosmic intervention, but as a tool for self-understanding.

The Adjacent Possible

Stuart Kauffman, the complexity theorist, coined a phrase that perfectly captures how ideas find us: the adjacent possible. At any moment, only certain innovations are actually possible, those that are one step away from what already exists. You can’t invent the iPhone in 1850; too many prerequisite technologies haven’t been developed yet. But in 2007, with touchscreens, mobile computing, and internet infrastructure in place, the iPhone becomes adjacently possible.

This concept applies to ideas as much as technologies. We can only notice what’s adjacent to what we already understand. My reading about kindness isn’t random, and it isn’t cosmically ordained. More likely, it’s adjacently possible because I’ve been thinking about polarisation, exhaustion, and the cost of constant conflict. Kindness appears as a theme because I’m positioned where it can appear. I want to see kindness so perhaps that’s what becomes possible to see adjacent to my existing thinking. 

There is a recursive twist: noticing serendipity makes us notice more serendipity. Once I’m conscious that books about kindness keep appearing, I become more attuned to this theme in other contexts. Conversations reveal unexpected connections. News articles resonate differently. The pattern becomes self-reinforcing.

This isn’t delusion because it’s how attention works. By noticing a pattern, we expand our sensitivity to related phenomena. The pattern doesn’t multiply but our capacity to perceive it does. We move from unconscious filtering to conscious attending.

This is why Images of Organization may well contain material about kindness and compassion, even though it’s ostensibly about organisational metaphors. I’m now primed to see these themes. If the content is there - and Gareth Morgan’s work is rich enough that kindness-related material almost certainly exists - I’ll find it. Not because I’m forcing connections, but because my attention is calibrated (and also because Douglas knows me so would likely send me a book that would resonate with my thinking, of which kindness is a theme!).

The adjacent possible also explains why serendipity feels more frequent when we’re actively working on something. When you’re writing, relevant material seems to appear everywhere. When you’re starting a business, every conversation yields useful insights. Not because the universe is helping, but because you’ve tuned your attention to a particular frequency.

There’s a practical implication here too that I want to stress: I think serendipity can be cultivated. Not by performing rituals or believing harder, but by staying actively curious about specific questions. The more engaged you are with a genuine problem, the more your subconscious works on it, the more your attention tunes to relevant information, the more connections appear.

This is why serendipity doesn’t arrive during passive consumption. It emerges during active engagement, when you’re wrestling with ideas, making things, having conversations, testing assumptions. The adjacent possible reveals itself to those moving through possibility space, not those waiting for revelation.

Perhaps the deepest truth about serendipity is this: it’s not about the universe teaching us anything. It’s about us finally becoming teachable.

Key Takeaways

Pattern recognition is both gift and liability. Our brains evolved to find patterns, making us brilliant at detecting significance and terrible at accepting randomness. The same machinery that enables insight also generates superstition. Wisdom lies not in suppressing this capacity but in calibrating it. It’s learning when patterns merit attention and when they’re just noise.

Serendipity reveals our preoccupations. When ideas seem to find us, we’re likely observing our own subconscious at work. The clustering of themes across unconnected sources doesn’t prove cosmic design; it demonstrates psychological readiness. Use serendipity diagnostically: what does our attention to these patterns reveal about the questions we’re carrying?

Attention quality matters more than pattern frequency. Iris Murdoch was right: how we ‘attend’ shapes what we perceive. The mystic and the conspiracy theorist both see patterns, but one seeks to understand what’s genuinely present whilst the other seeks confirmation of predetermined conclusions. Cultivate the kind of attention that remains open to being wrong.

Ideas require receptivity. Pasteur’s “prepared mind” isn’t about accumulating information but it’s about developing psychological and intellectual receptivity. We can only notice what’s adjacent to what we already understand. Engagement with genuine questions primes our attention, making relevant information more visible when it appears.

Serendipity is recursive. Noticing patterns makes us notice more patterns. This isn’t self-deception because it’s how attention works. Once conscious of a theme, we expand our sensitivity to related phenomena. Use this deliberately: actively engaging with specific questions tunes our perception to relevant information across contexts.

The adjacent possible is real. We can only discover what’s one step away from where we currently stand. This applies to ideas as much as technologies. Serendipity arrives not randomly, but at the edges of our current understanding, which is why it feels more frequent when we’re actively working on something rather than passively waiting.

Ask better questions. Instead of “Is this pattern real?” (which we can’t definitively answer), ask “What am I working on that makes this pattern noticeable?” Instead of “What is the universe trying to tell me?” ask “What questions am I carrying that these connections might help address?” Reframe serendipity from external validation to internal insight.