The Science Delusion-Freeing the spirit of enquiry

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British biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, is the author of more than ...

Book Review: ‘The Science Delusion’ by Rupert Sheldrake

Freeing the spirit of enquiry

By Louis Makiello
Epoch Times Staff Created: August 31, 2012 Last Updated: September 7, 2012

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 Part one in a series of two

Rupert Sheldrake (Joan Hill)

Are minds and memories inside brains? Are the laws of nature fixed? Is nature purposeless and are phenomena like telepathy illusory? Not necessarily, says U.K. scientist Rupert Sheldrake in his latest book, The Science Delusion, a title that challenges the paradigms of high-profile materialists such as Richard Dawkins. This article looks at some ideas set out in the book.

Rupert Sheldrake, a former Director of Studies at Cambridge University, is well known for his unorthodox approach to biology. In addition to more conventional research, he has investigated the sense of being stared at and telepathy.

In his latest book, which is titled Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery in North America, Sheldrake challenges 10 core beliefs that he holds most scientists take for granted, despite a lack of evidence. These include the conservation of matter and energy, that conventional medicine is the only kind that works, that all matter is unconscious, and that humans are merely genetically programmed robots.

The book highlights the rift between paranormal researchers and mainstream scientists.

“The materialist premise is that the nature of minds is already understood in principle: mental activity is brain activity, and is located inside heads,” writes Sheldrake. “Hence psychic phenomena are impossible.”

“The premise of psychic researchers is that psychic phenomena are possible, although not yet understood; and only by studying them can more be found.”

Sheldrake goes into great detail describing how people went from believing the whole universe was alive to thinking that everything, including planets and animals, is mechanical and governed by mathematics.

“The starting point for modern science was the rejection of the older, organic view of the universe. The machine metaphor became central to scientific thinking, with very far-reaching consequences.”

He goes on to accuse materialists of smuggling vitalism into materialism by the back door.

“Mechanists expel purposive vital factors from living animals and plants, but then they reinvent them in molecular guises. One form of molecular vitalism is to treat genes as purposive entities with goals and powers that go far beyond those of a mere chemical like DNA. The genes become molecular entelechies. In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins endowed them with life and intelligence.”

DNA Does Not Hold All the Answers

Sheldrake points to the Human Genome Project as the great failure of materialism. He quotes The Selfish Gene: “This DNA can be regarded as a set of instructions for how to make a body … It is as though, in every room of a gigantic building, there was a bookcase containing the architect’s plans for the entire building. The ‘bookcase’ in a cell is called the nucleus. The architect’s plans run to 46 volumes in humans—the number is different in other species.”

If DNA really is the blueprint for living organisms, understanding it will bring a revolution in the science of life. States and private enterprise have invested billions in biotechnology. The Human Genome Project alone cost US$3 billion. Scientists dreamed of preventing and curing most if not all human diseases. However, after the human genome was fully sequenced in 2003, biologists were left scratching their heads, wondering why humans are so different from other organisms.

Sheldrake points to the “missing heritability problem:” “In practice, the predictive value of human genomes turned out the be small, in some cases less than that achieved with a measuring tape [...] By measuring the height of parents, their children’s heights can be predicted with 80 to 90 percent accuracy [...] Recent ‘genome-wide association studies’ compared the genomes of 30,000 people. In other words, the ‘height’ genes did not account for 75 to 85 percent of the heritability of height.”

Sheldrake quotes Jonathan Latham, director of the Bioscience Resource Project, “The most likely explanation for why genes for common diseases have not been found is that, with few exceptions, they do not exist. … The likelihood that further searching might rescue the day appears slim. A much better use of the money would be to ask: If inherited genes are not to blame for our commonest illnesses, can we find out what is?”

As well as costing a lot of money, molecular biology has drastically affected the way biology is taught, he says. Scientists have now dropped the taboo over epigenetics, the theory that acquired characteristics can be passed to offspring. (Sheldrake gives the example of a body builder’s children tending to have larger muscles). But scientists are still unwilling to challenge the assumption that heredity is passed down materially, through molecules and chemicals.

Morphic Resonance and Morphogenetic Fields

As an answer to the problems of materialistic biology, Sheldrake offers his own theory: morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields. A morphogenetic field is a concept from developmental biology; it refers to mathematical structures that govern the development of different cell structures in the embryo.

The materialistic understanding is that chemical genes and proteins interact with mathematics to create the embryo. Inheritance is carried within the chemicals.

Sheldrake offers another explanation; morphogenetic fields inherit their form via morphic resonance from previous similar organisms. Such resonance takes place across time and space.

“Inheritance depends on genes and on morphic resonance,” he writes. “If fruit flies develop abnormally under abnormal conditions, then the more the abnormality occurs, the more likely it will be to happen again under the same conditions.”

Sheldrake compares geneticists to people who think a TV’s image and sound are produced by the wires and transistors inside the set. The geneticist does not believe in electromagnetic waves and hopes to understand how the TV works by evermore detailed analysis of the components and how they interact.

Although genetic mutations can cause changes in an animal’s body or behavior, this does not prove that body and behavior are programmed in the genes.

“Some genetic mutations affect the tuning, with the result that a part of the embryo resonates with one morphogenetic field rather than another, resulting in a different structure, like a TV set tuned to a different channel.”

He gives examples of this, such as fruit flies developing legs in the place of antenna. The theory of morphic resonance explains why homeobox genes (genes that control the development of embryos and larvae) in species as different as humans and fruit flies are so similar; the real blueprints for development are contained in morphogenetic fields.

Sheldrake holds that this theory is testable and has set out evidence in previous books. He also holds that a virtual future organism may influence the development of an embryo backward through time. He calls such a virtual end an “attractor.”

Morphogenetic fields, in his view, are but one type of morphic field, which govern everything from animal and human behavior as well social and cultural systems to crystals and planetary systems.

It is very difficult to obtain a new type of crystal, but after it has been made repeatedly, all over the world, chemists will find it easier to make.

What Are Memories?

People usually think that memories are stored as traces in the brain. Sheldrake disputes this and offers a radically different explanation.

Many studies have sought to identify the location of physical memory traces in the brain but have failed. Experiments often involved teaching animals a skill, incising or cutting out brain parts, and then testing to see if they still remember the skills.

All have failed to pin down the location of memory and only proved that memories can be retained by creatures like monkeys, squirrels, and octopuses even after large chunks of brain are removed, leading researchers to conclude that memories are stored in the whole brain.

Sheldrake talks of humans with extreme hydrocephalus (water on the brain). Some are left seriously retarded by the condition, with much of the skull filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Others, however, have IQs way above 100. In one case, a young man who had a brain only 5 percent of normal size got a first class degree in mathematics. Sheldrake cites a study on caterpillars which concluded that moths could remember what they had learned as caterpillars.

The U.S. version of Sheldrake's new book is called 'Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery.' (Joan Hill)

Again, resorting to the TV analogy, Sheldrake proposes that when remembering, we may be tuning into ourselves in the past via morphic resonance.

Sheldrake also claims that thanks to morphic resonance, if one type of animal learns a new trick, it is easier for similar animals to learn the same trick later.

“If animals, like squirrels, learn a new trick in one place, the more squirrels that learn it, the easier it should become for squirrels of the same species all over the world.”

This theory is testable and Sheldrake cites a study testing rats’ ability to escape from a water maze. Experiments conducted at Harvard, Edinburgh, and Melbourne universities showed that all similar rats learned how to escape faster after some had learned to escape previously. They found that this effect was not passed down through genes.

Such an effect could also exist for humans learning to snowboard or play computer games but is hard to measure.

One human skill that is easy to measure is IQ test performance. Here, Sheldrake offers his own explanation for the Flynn Effect, the steady improvement of IQ test scores over time, measured in many parts of the world.

People are not becoming more intelligent, but rather, the tests are becoming easier to do because so many people have done them before. Universities in America and Europe have tested morphic resonance in human learning, and most studies, says Sheldrake, have given “positive, statistically significant results.”

Telepathy and Psychic Phenomena

Many studies on telepathy have been carried out in labs, often involving one person guessing which card or picture someone else is holding. Although the success rate was usually only a little above that expected by random guessing, put together, the overall results were “hugely significant statistically,” says Sheldrake.

He disagrees with skeptics’ claims that this is due to researchers only publishing positive results. To bring the numbers back down to the random guessing rate, there would have to be more than 3,300 unpublished studies for every conclusive one.

Sheldrake goes on to point out two major flaws in lab testing: tests involve strangers trying to read each others’ minds in a controlled, repetitive, and boring environment. Telepathy, says Sheldrake, usually occurs between people who are closely bonded.

Nonetheless, a series of studies in the 1970s involving sensory deprivation and four different pictures achieved hit rates of 35 per cent and 34 per cent, well above the 25 percent result of guessing at random. When studies were conducted with people who knew each other well, the results were even higher.

Another study found that it was possible to influence people’s dreams. Sheldrake gives an example: “The subject dreamed of a dead rat in a cigar box, while the sender was looking at a picture of a dead gangster in a coffin.”

Sheldrake says that “in most, if not all, traditional societies, telepathy seems to be taken for granted and put to practical use.” In Norway, there is a special word—vardøger—that describes knowing someone is going to visit.

Sheldrake refers to an account by the Afrikaner adventurer Laurens van der Post, describing how the Kalahari bushmen he was living with knew when members of the tribe had killed an eland 50 miles away from their camp. Sheldrake encourages anthropologists to study this phenomenon.

Sheldrake designed his own experiment to test for telephone telepathy. He monitored someone in a room for a period of time during which one of four of the person’s close friends were to call. Sheldrake selected a friend at random and asked them to call. The person in the room had to guess who was on the line before picking up.

This experiment was designed to eliminate the possibility of the person guessing from friends’ routines and unconsciously predicting when they were most likely to phone. In 45 percent of cases, the person guessed correctly, way above the 25 percent chance level. Sheldrake also found that with people who didn’t know each other, this experiment yielded results around the chance level.

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Distance didn’t seem to matter and this experiment worked even with friends thousands of miles away from each other.

Telepathy doesn’t only occur among humans, but also among animals as well as between humans and animals. Sheldrake has carried out experiments that have confirmed that dogs and cats know when their owners are returning.

Premonition, Precognition, and Presentiment

Sheldrake has collected a database of 842 cases of human premonitions, precognitions or presentiments, including people who see the future in dreams. He has also looked at the same phenomenon in animals.

He cites the case of British biologist Rachel Grant, who was carrying out a study on the mating of toads in Italy, only to observe a mass exodus of toads ahead of the 6.4-magnitude quake that struck Italy in April 2009. Grant told the press that her findings “suggest that toads are able to detect pre-seismic cues such as the release of gases and charged particles, and use these as a form of earthquake early warning system.”

But Sheldrake writes: “If it turns out that they are indeed reacting to subtle physical changes, then seismologists should be able to use instruments to make better predictions themselves. If it turns out that presentiment plays a part, we will learn something important about the nature of time and causation. By ignoring animal premonitions, or by explaining them away, we will learn nothing.”

Dean Radin, a U.S. academic, devised an experiment in the 1990s to test for presentiment. He monitored human subjects’ emotional arousal using electrodes attached to the fingers (as in lie detector tests). The activity of sweat glands, which varies following people’s emotional states, results in changes in skin resistance.

The subjects were shown various photos. Most photos showed calm things like landscapes but some were shocking, such as corpses cut open. A computer selected the them at random. When the calm pictures were displayed, the subjects remained calm; when the shocking ones were displayed, the increase in electrodermal activity could be measured via the electrodes.

Researchers were surprised to find that the increase in electrodermal activity occurred up to four seconds before the photo was shown to the subject, despite being selected only milliseconds earlier by a computer. Sheldrake writes: “People seem to be influenced by themselves in the future, rather than by objective events.”

He relates this to his own theory of morphogenetic fields. “This is in agreement with the way that attractors pull organisms towards their inherited or learned goals, with flows of influence from virtual futures through the present towards the past.”

Universal Constants May Not Be Constant

In addition to biology and philosophy of science, Sheldrake comes up with amusing and intriguing ideas in other fields of science.

Speaking of the speed of light, he writes, “By 1927, the measured values had converged to 299,796 kilometers per second. At the time, the leading authority on the subject concluded, ‘The present value of c [the speed of light] is entirely satisfactory and can be considered more or less permanently established.’

“However, all around the world from about 1928 to 1945, the speed of light dropped by about 20 kilometers per second. (…) In the late 1940s the speed of light went up again by about 20 kilometers per second and a new consensus developed around the higher value.”

Sheldrake says that in the future, scientific periodicals may carry regular news reports on the latest value of c, much like weather reports or stock-market indices.

Questioning the Conservation of Energy

The book discusses a range of experiments aimed at testing the conservation of energy in living organisms. This involves keeping humans or animals in airtight chambers and measuring energy input through food, heat and work produced, oxygen consumed, and carbon dioxide produced.

In some experiments, more than a quarter of energy is unaccounted for. In other experiments, Sheldrake holds that scientists averaged data from different experiments, and discarded some data to arrive at a result that followed the conservation of energy law.

“Although most people do not realize it, there is a shocking possibility that living organisms draw upon forms of energy over and above those recognized by standard physics and chemistry,” he writes.

Sheldrake goes on to tackle the phenomenon of “inedia,” wherein people do not eat for months or years without any adverse effects. He discusses the many holy people in India and the West, from past to present, who are said to survive without food, and in some cases water too.

Sometimes, the fasting seems to happen due to illness, rather than spiritual devotion. Sheldrake cites the 2010 study of Indian yogi Prahlad Jani [/n2/science/study-on-yogi-prahlad-janis-fasting-miracles-concludes-35126.html] who was monitored for two weeks by the Indian Defense Institute of Physiology and Allied Science.

Sheldrake calls for further study of the phenomenon: “Are there new forms of energy that are not at present recognized by science? Or can the energy in the zero-point field, which is recognized by science, be tapped by living organisms?”

Sheldrake relates the failure to experimentally verify the conservation of energy in living creatures to physics’ theory of dark matter.

When physicists observed the motion of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, they were surprised that the galaxies were not following the laws of the motion of matter. There seemed to be much greater gravitational attraction than should be possible. They thus concluded that a large amount of invisible matter must be present. They called it “dark matter” and it remains hypothetical and unobservable.

Cosmologists now believe that only a small fraction of the universe is made up of observable matter and energy such as atoms, stars, galaxies, gas, planets, and electromagnetic radiation. Most of the universe is made up of dark matter, they say.

Most theories of dark matter state that the density of dark matter is constant. Therefore, since the universe is expanding, dark matter is constantly coming into being. This refutes both the second law of thermodynamics, and the conservation of matter—two cornerstones of physics.

Sheldrake writes: “The universe is now like a perpetual-motion machine, expanding because of dark energy, and creating more dark energy by expanding.” He goes on to call out scientists on their prejudices against perpetual-motion machines: “Skeptics claim that all these devices are impossible and/or fraudulent, and some promoters of ‘free energy’ devices may indeed be fraudulent; but can we be sure that they all are?”

He says that misguided scientific advisers may be to blame for discouraging investment in research into “over unity” devices (which supposedly produce more than one unit of energy for every unit of energy put in). “But perhaps some of these devices really do work, and really can tap into new sources of energy.” He goes on to suggest a prize to be put up for the creation of such a device.

Alternative Medicine Should Become Mainstream

In addition to modern materialistic medicine, rival medical systems, such as homeopathy, chiropractic, and traditional Chinese medicine, are also widely used. However, government research, most national health services, and private medical insurance schemes ignore such rival systems, and stick to Western medicine.

Sheldrake begins by acknowledging the extraordinary achievements of modern Western medical science. The huge leaps forward in public health through immunization and improved hygiene were not thanks to any particular dogma, he says. Neither materialism nor the mechanistic theory of life should claim credit. Antibiotics also were discovered by chance. Most modern drugs are either chemical compounds isolated from herbal remedies or discovered by trial and error.

After a brief history of Western medicine, Sheldrake criticizes corrupt practices within the pharmaceutical industry. “Some companies go to great lengths to make their drugs look safer and more effective than they really are, creating an illusion of scientific respectability for their claims. [...] They offer large fees to scientists to put their names to articles that have been ghostwritten by authors paid by the drug company.”

Sheldrake goes on to tackle the placebo response. He relates this to the power of hypnosis on the body. He cites hypnotists’ abilities to induce blisters on the skin by convincing people they are being burned. He also cites the treatment of warts by “magical” methods as often being more effective than conventional ones.

When modern medicine tests a treatment’s effectiveness, it seeks to ignore the placebo response. Sheldrake asks the question: do some treatment methods give a better placebo response than others?

He then talks about the effect of spiritual practices on health. “The effects of prayer or meditation on health and survival have been investigated through prospective studies in which people who prayed or meditated and otherwise similar people who did not pray or meditate were identified at the start of the study and watched over a period of years to see if their health or mortality turned out differently. It did. On average, those who prayed or meditated remained healthier and survived longer than those who did not.”

He cites a U.S. study in which 1,793 over 65s were tracked for six years. After correcting for factors such as lifestyle, those who prayed had a 55 percent better survival rate. “If a new drug or surgical procedure had such dramatic effects on health and survival as spiritual practices, it would be hailed as a medical breakthrough,” he writes.

Sheldrake then urges the development of a new way to test treatment methods other than the randomized double-blind placebo controlled study. Mainstream and alternative treatments should all be compared so as to determine which one works best, which has the greatest variability of results between practitioners, and which is the most cost-effective.

On the sensitive question of end-of-life care, Sheldrake says patients who receive palliative care rather than aggressive treatments to prolong life lead better quality lives. Palliative care costs less, and in one study, lung cancer patients who received palliative care actually survived longer than those receiving aggressive anti-cancer therapy.

The Illusion of Objectivity

Throughout his book, Sheldrake challenges different assumptions and beliefs held by the scientific community. Scientists themselves are often unaware of their own prejudices, he says. Those who idealize science believe that scientists are “the epitome of objectivity, rising above the sectarian divisions and illusions that afflict the rest of humanity.”

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He cites comedian Ricky Gervais as a prime example of a layperson having blind faith in the infallibility of science.

Scientists themselves perpetuate the ideal of the scientist as an objective, godlike, disembodied mind “freed from the normal limitations of bodies, emotions, and social obligations.” Stephen Hawkins has captured public imagination precisely because he is “as close to the disembodied mind as a human can be.”

Quantum theory has found that the very act of observing an experiment affects the outcome, but scientists still mostly write reports in the passive voice, as do schoolchildren in science class.

Sheldrake urges drastic reforms for scientific education, funding for science, and health care. At stake, he says, is the advancement of science, public health, mental well-being, and even the safety of our species, which is endangered by modern science’s effect on ecology.

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Banned TED Talk: Rupert Sheldrake – The Science Delusion

April 10, 2013 by Joe Martino

Rupert Sheldrake is a fascinating member of the scientific world. The video below is of his TED talk where he covers “The Science Delusion.” This TED talk was controversially banned by the TED community after being aired.

If you have studied any area of science on your own or in school, you may have noticed or have come across the fact that there are many differing beliefs in the scientific world. While this statement seems impossible given that science is supposed to be based on evidence which produces theory, it is a delusion not to realize that much of what is strictly believed in the scientific world is only believed due to the common acceptance that is put into mainstream ideas — much like what takes place within religion. That is not to say that there aren’t amazing scientists out there coming up with profound findings and adding powerful contributions to all fields, it’s to bring light to the fact that in a mainstream sense one could say science is “stuck” or more accurately put, we have put a freeze on certain areas of science.

“How can science be stuck? You are missing the point of science! Science is not a thing its a method!” While I totally agree that science is a method, what I am alluding to in this article is that many of the theories we have come to believe that science has produced have been scientifically proven to be incorrect yet we continue to go along with them. The reason this happens is because in many cases we are no longer using the scientific method as it is meant to be used. The stage in the method where we are supposed to go back and a re-develop a hypothesis after evidence proves the the initial theory wrong, we instead get stuck in maintaing our belief because of the money, fear, ego and pride that get in the way.

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I have been researching many areas of science, world events, health etc. over the past 5.5 years. I did not learn what I know in school as I left before completing any degrees. Something I whole heartedly belive is that in some ways I feel my lack of formal education has been a gift. Very often we can get stuck on the idea that what we have learned in school is absolute. It’s prestigious, it can’t be wrong. Heck, we paid thousands of dollars for it so it MUST be true. Yet the more I look at the people who are making scientific discoveries in the world the more I see educated people becoming livid about the fact that these new findings must not be true. It simply can’t be. I have heard the statement “It’s pseudo-science” just about anytime a belief is challenged. A new finding requires many peer reviews for it to be taken seriously, but pre-existing mainstream beliefs require none and can be written on a cereal box yet it’s still absolute fact. We have a major challenge on our hands in that we have a very hard time keeping our emotions out of how we view and perceive our world. This is not our nature, but simply our ego’s taking hold of the situation.

Rupert Sheldrake outlines 10 dogmas he has found to exist within mainstream science today. He states that when you look at each of these scientifically, you see that they are not actually true.

1. Nature is mechanical or machine like

2. All matter is unconscious

3. The laws or constants of nature are fixed

4. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same

5. Nature is purposeless

6. Biological heredity is material

7. Memories are stored inside your brain

8. Your mind is inside your head

9. Psychic phenomena like telepathy is not possible

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that works

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/04/10/banned-ted-talk-rupert-sheldrake-the-science-delusion/

The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake

John Greenbank is unconvinced by Rupert Sheldrake’s lively heresies.

Rupert Sheldrake has been a distinguished biochemist and cell biologist, but his latest book, The Science Delusion, is disturbingly eccentric. Fluently superficial, it combines a disorderly collage of scientific fact and opinion with an intrusive yet disjunctive metaphysical programme.

I was an undergraduate student of biological sciences at Cambridge at the same time as Sheldrake, and I remember his commenting on Peter Medawar’s review of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s book The Phenomenon of Man (1959) and laughing at the idea of Teilhard ‘vibrating’ with the universe. Medawar’s review had been merciless: “Teilhard habitually and systematically cheats with words. His work, he has assured us, is to be read, not as a metaphysical system, but ‘purely and simply as a scientific treatise’ executed with ‘remorseless’ or ‘inescapable’ logic; yet he uses in metaphor words like energy, tension, force, impetus and dimension as if they retained the weight and thrust of their specific scientific usages.” Nevertheless, The Phenomenon of Man made a deep impression, I think, and it is Sheldrake’s own understanding of science that is now deluded. Although science has progressively revealed the workings of nature by direct engagement with it, Sheldrake wishes to free it from what he believes are its materialist intellectual shackles – and to make it “more exciting and engaging.”

Anti-Science Science

Some decades ago, the scientific establishment – in the person of an Editor of Nature, John Maddox – pounced on Sheldrake’s first book, A New Science of Life (1981), declaring it scientific heresy. Indeed it was, for in rejecting conventional understanding it broke faith with the community of scientific thinkers. Such perceived treachery is deemed punishable behaviour: heretics are never to be treated lightly. Sheldrake was indeed duly punished by a closing of ranks, the denial of official recognition for his views, and a block on funding for further research even in orthodox fields of science.

So who are the intended readers for this new book? The back cover of The Science Delusion (in America it’s called Science Set Free) lists some ‘amazing possibilities for scientific investigation’. For examples: the universe may be alive, and nature may have a purpose; the so-called ‘laws of nature’ may themselves be evolving, and matter and energy in the universe increasing; our minds may exist outside our brains, and our memories may not be brain-based but activated when we ‘tune in’ to the past; our children may inherit physical characteristics that parents have acquired since their own births; and whilst ‘energetic causation’ is from the past towards the future, ‘mental causation’ may work backwards from the future. Although these ideas are posed as open questions, they are intended to raise doubts. Sheldrake hopes thereby to gain the reader’s confidence before proceeding to cast doubt on the whole enterprise of science. A tone of derision appears early on in The Science Delusion when Sheldrake objects that an article written for the Wall Street Journal by Ricky Gervais “portrays scientists as open-minded seekers of truth.” So, Gervais the entertainer, turned spokesman for science, is mocked about science by a scientist turned entertainer.

Sheldrake introduces his pet interests – telepathy, the survival of memory after death, the purpose of nature and evolution, the consciousness of matter – saying that all are dogmatically denied by the establishment. In lining up the alleged dogma and serially berating his orthodox colleagues, he claims to be motivated by a “spirit of radical scepticism.” However, this spirit is manifested through a sleight-of-hand, where, for example, the alleged ‘dogma’ that matter is unconscious is turned into the question ‘Is matter unconscious?’

Scientific uncertainty is portrayed as unreliability or contradiction; yet Sheldrake’s own claim that laws may vary across the universe is based merely on the evidence of historical variation in measured constants. He dismisses the intellectual struggle of cosmologists to understand the universe as “a new, extravagant form of Platonism” (p.97), telling us that physical laws are but habits of the universe. He is convinced that “regularities of nature do not depend on an eternal mind-like realm beyond space and time [my italics] but on a kind of memory inherent in nature.” (p,85)

Sheldrake also claims that “the very idea of a law of nature is anthropocentric.” Yes, but isn’t that because science itself is anthropocentric? And then he writes, “Some philosophers of science… argue that [scientific laws] are generalisations based on experience.” (Again, my italics.) So (Sheldrake argues), since materialistic science does not depend for it’s truth on any judgement as to an absolute ground of experience, it must be wrong; but scientific curiosity is not in any need of metaphysical support or external validation. Scientists see their work as simply a mode of human activity, with its own rules and standards.

‘Teleology’ is the study of purposes or design in nature, and here scientists need to especially be on their guard. But Sheldrake shows little caution. For example, he asks the unanswerable question “Do morphogenetic fields really exert a causal influence, drawing organisms towards their goals?” He also believes that a purely evolutionary (natural selection) explanation of eyes “does not explain the purposiveness of living organisms: it presupposes it.” (p.131) However, science cannot propose a creative agent, for that is beyond its scope.

Resonating with the Universe

Sheldrake’s foundational metaphysical belief is ‘morphic resonance’. The idea of morphic resonance rests on a fallacy of thought, that of the ‘stolen concept’, which error is further compounded through the associated fallacy of the ‘argument from ignorance’ (or ‘wishful thinking’), before the idea is finally illicitly objectified by ‘false reification’. Thus, disillusioned by what he sees as the mechanistic neutrality of current science, Sheldrake makes an irrational conceptual leap to an alternative outlook by stealing the concepts ‘morphic’ and ‘resonance’ from their legitimate backgrounds, in biology and physics respectively. Because morphogenesis (the shaping of an organism’s form by cellular biochemistry) has not identified any substance responsible for co-ordinating the overall form – for instance, a vital fluid or a life force (élan vital) – Sheldrake invents one, which he calls a ‘morphogenetic field’. This field supposedly constrains the results of development so that an organism grows into the right shape. This cannot even be called a hypothesis, but is merely an argument from our incomplete knowledge of the processes of biology. And the proposal that morphic fields are “fields of probability, like quantum fields” is simply meaningless. (As an alternative to morphogenetic fields, might we not consider the universe connected together by an infinitesimally thin, perfectly elastic and infinitely extensible thread, through which energies and biological information can flow instantaneously?)

Whilst the exact status of scientific descriptors (facts, concepts and theories) are always under the legitimate scrutiny of philosophers, any acceptance of a new physical force, field, or sphere of action, must come from within a scientific community after appropriate investigation. But such is Sheldrake’s mistrust of what he understands as materialism that consciousness – a term used liberally and without definition – presents an insoluble problem. He sees it as unrelated to the material, so a dualism is implied. But to accept mind/matter dualism is to recognise two distinct realities, and science has no procedures for handling or analysing such a separation. So, again we encounter bad thinking, with faith in consciousness treated as a reason to believe in it, and then that concept being illegitimately made into a thing so that ‘mind’ can float free. Sheldrake castigates the whole area of cognitive psychology as just more materialism, ignoring the brilliant representational work of British neuroscientist David Marr.

An attempt is made to escape from materialism through panpsychism – a modification of materialism in which consciousness is an inherent property of all matter, and is not presumed to arise at any particular level of material complexity; when matter is assembled into brains, for example. Sheldrake warms to panpsychism, as to him the material world seems to imply evidence of both purpose and mind, and he mistakenly turns to Alfred North Whitehead. His discussion of Whitehead’s Process and Reality left me with “a feeling of suffocation, a gasping and flailing around for sense” – as Medawar said of Teilhard de Chardin.

Whitehead is invoked by Sheldrake to underpin his own references to quantum theory. Sheldrake tells us that “Even the smallest possible processes, like quantum events, are both physical and mental” (p.121) and “the wave theory of matter destroyed the old idea of material bodies as essentially spatial” (p.120) The abstractions of quantum physics are presented as familiar: for example, “Thus the mass of an electron, for example, arises through its interaction with the Higgs field, and this interaction depends on special Higgs particles, called Higgs bosons, which are hypothetical.” From this understanding of the quantum world he confidently jumps to statements about free will.

Messing with Biology

After the euphoria of genome studies at the turn of the millennium, the promise of increased power for politicians and fame and fortune for ambitious scientists dwindled to a reluctant acceptance of a ‘missing hereditability problem’: a one-for-one matching of genes with human characteristics has not yet shown up. This problem is somewhat exultantly reported by Sheldrake, who, instead of pausing for thought as to the precise scientific implications of this situation, abandons all faith in such a quest. It may very well be possible to make a representational analysis for gene action like the one David Marr made for cognitive capacity, but Sheldrake no longer believes in progress in molecular biology. For example, he abandons reason in explaining biological continuity during insect metamorphosis (when, for example, a caterpillar turns into a butterfly), saying that “almost all the caterpillar tissues are dissolved before the new structures of the adult develop. Most of the nervous system is dissolved as well.” (My italics.) The implication here seems to be that all identity is lost, leaving us with the problem of explaining what determines the adult. (Sheldrake’s interest here is not the physical transformation, but how behaviour learned by a caterpillar is transferred to the adult.)

Discussing the perception of objects, Sheldrake finds it impossible to accept a ‘representational’ understanding that fits our subjective sensation of seeing or sensing directly, although we all represent the physical world in our sensation of it. This is so surprising because it is plainly impossible for the eye actively to see (by itself, as it were): instead there must be a mechanistic pathway that allows photons of light impinging on the retina to thereby influence the brain and so our perceptions. To argue otherwise is to be obtuse in the extreme – both illogical and unobservant – but this is what Sheldrake does.

In criticising Francis Crick for his materialist interpretation of human behaviour, Sheldrake quotes Carl Sagan – “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.” (Although in the next chapter this exact quote is dismissed as a materialist slogan!) Sheldrake wants to replace material traits or structures by ‘patterns of goal-directed activity’. But his discussions of this are unpersuasive because such capacities would be much more in evidence if true: secrets would be insecure, insider-dealing could be transmitted to others to be carried out by proxy, lottery numbers would be forecast, and the winnings spread widely.

Sheldrake’s core ideas depend on what might be called ‘paranormal’ activity. But experimental support for the paranormal is unreliable, for it is subject to the contamination of expectation – a self-invalidation akin to ‘leading the witness’. Freeman Dyson is cuttingly specific about this: “Recently Rupert Sheldrake did some interesting experiments on ESP in dogs. Dogs are much better than humans for such experiments. Dogs are dumb, they are not interested in the outcome of the experiment, and they do not cheat. Unfortunately Rupert Sheldrake is not a dog. He is human, and his essential role in his experiments makes his results questionable.” (Scientific American, 13/05/11.) Much that is used as evidence in this area reminds me of films where someone says “Something’s not right! Let’s get out of here!” Time and again we are presented with disingenuous arguments resting on dubiously-applied quantum concepts like ‘wave function’ and ‘multi-dimensional space’, that appear as if they’re being used like mantras to induce a state of belief in his ideas.

Senses of Science

There are several credible theories of science. In the 1950s, Willard Quine switched the attention of the philosophy of science from items of sense data to full systems of belief. In the present context, what we hold to be true about reality – our temporary metaphysical beliefs – should fill out our best scientific theories. Radically new ideas should be accommodated within a receptive conceptual framework. The very notion of a scientific system suggests that answers about the world are to be found not by expanding the terms of reference, but by seeing things from a different angle, or by bringing new ideas into conformity with the established beliefs.

Another, contrasting, individual strode onto the science scene in the 1960s with his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn says, “There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like ‘really there’.” That is, all notions of what is really there depend upon their place within what Kuhn called a paradigm, which is an accepted basic way of understanding the world. In practice, Kuhn says, different paradigms can be accommodated within the same subject, as long as these paradigms operate at different levels of detail. Perhaps Sheldrake would like to have discovered a new paradigm to operate alongside those already accepted by science. He wants to raise science to a new level that somehow recognises within its discipline a vibrancy in all living things that transcends their mere assemblies of atoms and molecules. As he finally despairs: “The bottom has dropped out of the atom, and a zoo of evanescent particles seems unlikely to explain the shape of an orchid flower, or the leaping of a salmon, or the flight of a flock of starlings.” But Sheldrake has himself lost the sense of science being a disinterested pursuit of curiosity. Instead he has a creed, and an agenda. Thus a scientist fascinated by a problem cannot investigate freely, but is hampered by ‘the mechanistic tradition’. The reader is encouraged to anticipate a revelation that processes are at work apparently requiring the redefinition of terms – ‘energetic’, the ‘laws of nature’, ‘acquired’ characteristics, ‘mental causation’ etc. But what Sheldrake can’t accept is that, across all fields of science, the world continues to be amenable to a purely materialist interpretation.

It is clear that Sheldrake must have a theory for everything, but I find ‘morphic fields’, ‘morphic resonance’, and ‘perceptual fields’ both absurd and irrelevant – fabrications superimposed on experience as spurious explanations. The Science Delusion itself is a preposterous confection. It may unsettle some general readers and turn others away from science, but for the scientifically-initiated it is simply incoherent. A truer (although totally subversive) title would be The Phenomenon of Science and the Delusion of Man. As an antidote for the perplexed reader, I can only recommend Kuhn’s 1969 Postscript to the Second Edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

© John Greenbank 2012

John Greenbank graduated in Natural Sciences and English from Clare College, Cambridge, and in Mathematics from the Open University. He was a Science Subject Officer with Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations in Cambridge. He is currently developing a range of modern shortwave crystal radio designs for amateur construction.

• The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake, Coronet, 2012, 400 pages, £20 hb, ISBN 978-1444727920

http://philosophynow.org/issues/93/The_Science_Delusion_by_Rupert_Sheldrake

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