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Impossible... for the Current Physics

Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum 89 (1996), pp. 483-486.

Discussions

Rupert Sheldrake

Impossible... for the Current Physics

Reply to the Open Letter by Giuseppe Sermonti

Dear Giuseppe,

Thank you for your open letter and your remarks on Seven Experi-

ments.

You seem pleased that these experiments could help to make the

world seem more enchanted, and at the same time worried that physi-
cal explanations could lead to this enchantment being taken away
again. But I do not think that finding explanations for unexplained
phenomena will narrow our vision. Such explanations may well go
beyond anything in the current paradigm of science, and help to give
us a larger scientific world view. This would not be a reductive proc-
ess, but an expansive one.

Much depends on how we define the words ‘physical’ and ‘nor-

mal’. I think that the mysterious abilities of animals to know when
their owners are coming home, for example, or the ability of people to
know when they are being looked at may have a physical explanation.
But this explanation may not be part of existing physics. I think the
explanation will be physical in the sense that physics deals with na-
ture; its etymological root is in the Greek word for nature, phusis. In
this sense anything that is part of nature is physical, although it may
not be part of existing physics. It could however be part of a physics
of the future.

In the same way if ‘normal’ is defined in terms of what science can

Rupert Sheldrake

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currently explain, many of the phenomena I am discussing seem para-
normal. However they may seem normal if science expands. We have
to remember that the current scientific definition of the paranormal is
based on a narrowly academic starting point. The sense of being
stared at, for instance, has been experienced by the great majority of
the population and from most people’s point of view is normal, not
paranormal. The seemingly inexplicable powers of pets, likewise, seem
quite normal to most pet owners, who usually take them for granted.

When C.G. Jung called synchronicity ‘an acausal connecting prin-

ciple’ he was limiting the use of the word ‘causal’ to that accepted in
mechanistic science. I prefer to consider widening our scientific un-
derstanding of causation.

My purpose in this book is three-fold. The first is to open up to

scientific enquiry areas that have been neglected or subject to taboos.
The second is to point out that original research need not be the
monopoly of a scientific priesthood. The third is to explore the idea
of interconnections between organisms and other members of their
social group, and also between organisms and their environment
which could, I think, be explained in terms of morphic fields.

In the hypothesis of formative causation (Sheldrake [1981],

[1988]) I make two fundamental proposals. The first is that self-or-
ganising systems are interconnected and co-ordinated through
morphic fields. These fields are spatially extended, and embrace all the
parts of the whole system. For example, the morphic field of a devel-
oping embryo is within and around the entire embryo, just as a mag-
netic field is within and around a magnet. Likewise, the morphic field
of a social group is within and around all the members of the society.
Thus termites are embedded in the morphic field of the colony,
which is greater than any individual within it. If the queen is killed or
disturbed, the field is perturbed, but not destroyed. Termite colonies
can respond to the loss of their queen by the production of new
queens, and the social group can continue for decades, far longer than
the life of any individual within it, including the queen. In this re-
spect termite colonies are like human societies, continuing over gen-
erations.

The second aspect of my hypothesis of formative causation is that

morphic fields contain a kind of memory given by the process I call
morphic resonance. This means that the fields themselves should

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Impossible... for the Current Physics

evolve in time. Most tests of the hypothesis of formative causation to
date have involved an attempt to detect these changes in time (see for
example my article in Biology Forum 85: 431-443).

The experiments I am proposing in Seven Experiments are not

principally to do with the temporal aspects of morphic fields, but
rather with their spatial extension, and their ability to connect organ-
isms with each other and with the environment. My aim is not to
attempt to prove the impossible. Nor is it to deny the importance of
normal physics, nor to diminish the wonderful ability of some migra-
tory birds to recognise patterns in the stars. It is to explore areas that
lie beyond the prevailing scientific paradigm. I hope that this process
will help to enlarge science, and to change our view of the world.

I do not think that this new view of the world will remove wonder

from our experience. Rather I think it will help us to recognise aspects
of nature that we have been trained to ignore or deny in the interests
of a constricted rationality. I think both nature and human reason are
greater than current science generally admits.

Yours,

Rupert Sheldrake

REFERENCES

Sheldrake, R. [1981], A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation.

Blond and Briggs, London.

Sheldrake, R. [1988], The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of

Nature. Collins, London.