AUDIOBOOK
About
New updated and expanded edition of the groundbreaking book that ignited a firestorm in the scientific world with its radical approach to evolution
• Explains how past forms and behaviors of organisms determine those of similar organisms in the present through morphic resonance
• Reveals the nonmaterial connections that allow direct communication across time and space
When A New Science of Life was first published the British journal Nature called it "the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." The book called into question the prevailing mechanistic theory of life when its author, Rupert Sheldrake, a former research fellow of the Royal Society, proposed that morphogenetic fields are responsible for the characteristic form and organization of systems in biology, chemistry, and physics--and that they have measurable physical effects. Using his theory of morphic resonance, Sheldrake was able to reinterpret the regularities of nature as being more like habits than immutable laws, offering a new understanding of life and consciousness.
In the years since its first publication, Sheldrake has continued his research to demonstrate that the past forms and behavior of organisms influence present organisms through direct immaterial connections across time and space. This can explain why new chemicals become easier to crystallize all over the world the more often their crystals have already formed, and why when laboratory rats have learned how to navigate a maze in one place, rats elsewhere appear to learn it more easily. With more than two decades of new research and data, Rupert Sheldrake makes an even stronger case for the validity of the theory of formative causation that can radically transform how we see our world and our future. Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., is a former research fellow of the Royal Society and former director of studies in biochemistry and cell biology at Clare College, Cambridge University. He is the author of more than 80 technical papers and articles appearing in peer-reviewed scientific journals and 10 books, including The Presence of the Past, The Rebirth of Nature, and Seven Experiments That Could Change the World.
Chapter 1
THE UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY
1.6 Minds
In psychology, the science of the mind, there are different schools of thought about the relationship between mind and body. The most extreme materialist solution is to deny the reality of the mind and to assume that only the body is real. This was the approach of the behaviorist school, which dominated academic psychology for much of the twentieth century. Behaviorists confined their attention to objectively observable behavior and ignored the existence of consciousness. But behaviorism was not a testable scientific hypothesis; it was a methodology. It is now out of fashion within academic psychology and has largely been replaced by cognitive psychology.
Like behaviorism, cognitive psychology rejects introspection, but it admits the existence of internal mental states, such as belief, desires, and motivations. Its dominant metaphor is the computer. Mental activity is thought of as "information processing." The mind is the software running the hardware of the brain. But the limitations of the computer metaphor are becoming increasingly apparent, not least through a new recognition of the role of the emotions and an acknowledgment that minds are embodied and actively related to the environment.
In the 1990s the philosopher David Chalmers made a distinction between what he called the "easy problems" of consciousness, like finding neural correlates of sensation--for example, which parts of the brain become active during the visual perception of moving objects--and the "hard problem" of "Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all?" There is a radical distinction between the biology of the brain and mental experience, which includes the expe
• Explains how past forms and behaviors of organisms determine those of similar organisms in the present through morphic resonance
• Reveals the nonmaterial connections that allow direct communication across time and space
When A New Science of Life was first published the British journal Nature called it "the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." The book called into question the prevailing mechanistic theory of life when its author, Rupert Sheldrake, a former research fellow of the Royal Society, proposed that morphogenetic fields are responsible for the characteristic form and organization of systems in biology, chemistry, and physics--and that they have measurable physical effects. Using his theory of morphic resonance, Sheldrake was able to reinterpret the regularities of nature as being more like habits than immutable laws, offering a new understanding of life and consciousness.
In the years since its first publication, Sheldrake has continued his research to demonstrate that the past forms and behavior of organisms influence present organisms through direct immaterial connections across time and space. This can explain why new chemicals become easier to crystallize all over the world the more often their crystals have already formed, and why when laboratory rats have learned how to navigate a maze in one place, rats elsewhere appear to learn it more easily. With more than two decades of new research and data, Rupert Sheldrake makes an even stronger case for the validity of the theory of formative causation that can radically transform how we see our world and our future. Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., is a former research fellow of the Royal Society and former director of studies in biochemistry and cell biology at Clare College, Cambridge University. He is the author of more than 80 technical papers and articles appearing in peer-reviewed scientific journals and 10 books, including The Presence of the Past, The Rebirth of Nature, and Seven Experiments That Could Change the World.
Chapter 1
THE UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY
1.6 Minds
In psychology, the science of the mind, there are different schools of thought about the relationship between mind and body. The most extreme materialist solution is to deny the reality of the mind and to assume that only the body is real. This was the approach of the behaviorist school, which dominated academic psychology for much of the twentieth century. Behaviorists confined their attention to objectively observable behavior and ignored the existence of consciousness. But behaviorism was not a testable scientific hypothesis; it was a methodology. It is now out of fashion within academic psychology and has largely been replaced by cognitive psychology.
Like behaviorism, cognitive psychology rejects introspection, but it admits the existence of internal mental states, such as belief, desires, and motivations. Its dominant metaphor is the computer. Mental activity is thought of as "information processing." The mind is the software running the hardware of the brain. But the limitations of the computer metaphor are becoming increasingly apparent, not least through a new recognition of the role of the emotions and an acknowledgment that minds are embodied and actively related to the environment.
In the 1990s the philosopher David Chalmers made a distinction between what he called the "easy problems" of consciousness, like finding neural correlates of sensation--for example, which parts of the brain become active during the visual perception of moving objects--and the "hard problem" of "Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all?" There is a radical distinction between the biology of the brain and mental experience, which includes the expe