Rupert Sheldrake

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Dr. Rupert Sheldrake (born 1942) is a British biologist and author. He developed a hypothesis of morphogenetic fields, and has produced related research and publications, on topics such as animal and plant development and behaviour, telepathy, perception and metaphysics. He has a popular public following, particularly because of his books aimed at the general reader, but he is shunned by many in the scientific establishment, who often consider his work as bordering on New Age thinking. Taking science "as a set of methods for finding out about anything at all that admits of systematic investigation" (John Searle), he is trying to extend science into realms it has neglected so far. Sheldrake continues to publish scientific papers in a variety of journals.

1 Biographical sketch
2 New Science of Life
3 Later work
4 Animal telepathy
5 Seven Experiments That Could Change the World
6 Bibliography
7 References
8 External links

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Biographical sketch

Sheldrake grew up in Newark, Nottinghamshire, in the midlands of the United Kingdom. He later studied for a degree in biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, from where he graduated with Honours in the First Class.

Sheldrake held a fellowship and taught biology at Cambridge University (Clare College, from which he also studied natural sciences as an undergraduate and doctoral student), and was a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. He later went to Hyderabad, India, where he made contributions to crop physiology. While in India, he lived in a Christian ashram. His wife, Jill Purce, is a distinguished music therapist.

In September 2005, Sheldrake was appointed to the Perrott-Warwick Scholarship for psychical research and parapsychology by Trinity College, Cambridge.

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New Science of Life

In 1981, Sheldrake trailed his hypothesis of formative causation in an article in New Scientist magazine. The piece was provocatively headlined: "Scientific proof that science has got it all wrong". An editorial introduction admitted that, to modern science, an idea such as Sheldrake’s was "completely scatty", but justified its publication on the grounds that first, "Sheldrake is an excellent scientist; the proper, imaginative kind that in an earlier age discovered continents and mirrored the world in sonnets," and secondly, "the science in his ideas is good. … This does not mean that it is right but that it is testable".

His best known book, A New Science of Life, was published a week after the New Scientist article. He put forward the hypothesis of formative causation or morphogenetic fields (also called morphic fields), which proposes that phenomena — particularly biological ones — become more probable the more often they occur, and therefore that biological growth and behaviour are guided into patterns laid down by previous similar organisms. He suggests that this underlies many aspects of science, from evolution to laws of nature.

Over the next few months Sheldrake’s ideas were subjected to much discussion in journals and newspapers, and his book was reviewed in a variety of scientific and religious publications. Attitudes were predictably mixed and by no means all negative. Then, in September 1981, the scientific journal Nature carried an unsigned editorial (subsequently acknowledged to be by the journal’s senior editor, John Maddox) titled "A book for burning?".<ref>Template:Cite journal | issue=5830}}</ref> It reviewed and damned Rupert Sheldrake’s then recently-published book.

Though the editorial did not say the book ought to be burned (indeed, at one point it said the exact opposite), it gave this impression to casual readers, causing much subsequent controversy. Nature and Maddox have since published further highly critical reviews of Sheldrake's subsequent work.

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Later work

In more recent work Sheldrake has developed his ideas further and also conducted experiments (documented in subsequent books) on phenomena - particularly telepathy-related - which he believes could be explained by morphogenetic fields. Some of these experiments have apparently produced striking results, though many scientists remain unconvinced.

Sheldrake encourages such experiments to be carried out by ordinary people, and many have been, including some conducted by BBC TV's popular science programme Tomorrow's World, and investigations into the "sense of being stared at" involving thousands of schoolchildren in several countries.

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Animal telepathy

Sheldrake began working in the 1990s on the alleged telepathic powers of animals. Sheldrake has argued that dogs, by psychic ability, have an intuitive sense of knowing when their owners are coming home. Some of his writings on this subject are germane to cases of animals that appear to be able to detect medical problems in human being, a widely studied field (although there is evidence, for example, that dogs and other pets may be able to detect hypoglycemia in human beings, not all people agree that this is due to any psychic or paranormal powers. Recent studies have shown that dogs can detect the smell of prostate cancer in urine).

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Seven Experiments That Could Change the World

Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, published in 1994, encourages lay people to contribute to scientific research, and argues that skilful scientific experiments can be conducted on a shoestring budget. Of the experiments Sheldrake proposes in this book, the experiment designed to assess whether people are able to detect other people staring at them has engaged much research attention.

The public can also take part in experiments on Sheldrake's web site.

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