Rupert Sheldrake: The materialist ideology promotes a high degree of conformity in scientific thinking because it is indeed ideological, and materialists are unforgiving towards heretical deviations from this belief system. Over the course of the 20th century, the atmosphere within biology became increasingly intolerant at the same time as physics opened up a wider range of possibilities. There are still great limitations on what professional physicists can think, but there is a toleration of alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics, divergent interpretations of cosmology, the question of whether there is one universe or many, and so on.
Another reason for the greater uniformity of thinking is the professionalization of science. In the 19th century, many of the most creative scientists were not professionals. For example, Charles Darwin was an amateur naturalist living on a private income, with no academic post or government grant. He was much freer as a result. Now, the vast majority of scientists rely on salaries and are far more aware of peer-group pressure. In fact, the peer-review system for jobs, grant applications, and publication of papers in journals means that peer pressure dominates their lives. In the nineteenth century, there were fewer constraints on creative and independent thinking.
James Barham: Like you, we at TBS are very much interested in doing what we can to help “extend the boundaries of what is not regarded as unthinkable,” as Thomas Nagel put it in his recent book, Mind and Cosmos7. The reasons are many, but the overriding one is the danger we believe scientism8 poses to human freedom and dignity, as well as to morality and limited self-government.
At the same time, we believe that the most obvious way to reform science is by demonstrating a better way forward that is recognizable as such to scientists themselves. In other words, give scientists a better way of doing science and let them vote with their feet.
Accordingly, we would like to devote a good part of this interview to pressing you on a number of scientific points, teasing apart what seem to us to be your most promising hypotheses and speculations, using your new book, Science Set Free, as a constant point of reference. So, here goes.
First, let’s discuss “morphic resonance,” which appears to be your most widely discussed contribution. Could you begin by giving our readers a thumbnail sketch of the theory?
Rupert Sheldrake: In brief, morphic resonance is the hypothesis that there is a kind of inherent memory in nature. In the most general terms, the “laws of nature” are more like habits. Within each species, each individual draws upon a collective memory and in turn contributes to it. My proposal is that this works on the basis of similarity: the similarity of three-dimensional vibratory patterns in self-organizing systems. Self-organizing systems include atoms, molecules, cells, organs, organisms, societies of organisms (like flocks of birds), solar systems, and galaxies. This definition excludes systems that do not organize themselves, like tables, chairs, and machines, which are put together according to external designs, to serve external purposes.
James Barham: In a recent interview, you wrote: “The idea that animals and plants are machines is really Dogma Number One.” To which we can only say: “Amen!” We, too, feel that it is in the arena of rethinking the fundamental nature of living systems—in “seeing past Darwin,” as we like to put it—that the fight to defend the human spirit against scientism can be most effectively joined. And that is one reason why we are so interested in your morphic resonance hypothesis.
We see the Darwinian, reductionist approach to teleology, or goal-directedness—a property that is manifest in all living systems—as lying at the intellectual root of scientism, and we see nonlinear dynamics as a very fruitful way of tackling the problem of teleology head-on, by plowing straight through the Darwinian roadblock.
Would you agree? Or does your interest in nonlinear dynamics lie in a different direction from ours?
Rupert Sheldrake: Dynamics is a branch of mathematical theory dealing with change, and a central concept in dynamics is that of the attractor. Instead of modelling what happens to a system by considering only the way it is pushed from behind, attractors in mathematical models provide an explanation in terms of a kind of pull from the future. The principal metaphor is that of a basin of attraction, like a large basin into which small balls are thrown. It would be very complicated to work out the trajectory of each individual ball starting from its initial velocity and angle at which it hit the basin; but a simpler way of modelling the system is to treat the bottom of the basin as an attractor: balls thrown in from any angle and at any speed will end up at the bottom of the basin.
In the 1950s, the British embryologist C.H. Waddington proposed that morphogenetic fields contained what he called “chreodes” (Greek for “necessary paths”) which channeled developing organs and embryos towards attractors, understood as the form of the mature organ or organism. He compared organs developing under the influence of these fields to balls rolling down valleys.
Later, more technical mathematical models of morphogenetic fields and dynamical attractors were developed by René Thom and others. “Strange” or “chaotic” attractors, as they are called, are just one kind of attractor in dynamical systems theory.
The attractors within morphic fields are more complex, and perhaps less “chaotic.” The word “morphic” comes from the Greek word morphē, meaning “form,” and expresses the idea that morphic attractors pull developing systems towards them, and that the form of the attractor depends on a kind of memory given by morphic resonance.
Thus, for example, an oak seedling is attracted towards the mature form of an oak tree through the morphic attractor in its morphogenetic field. These attractors act as ends or goals, and in that sense are teleological, where “teleology” is the subject of ends or goals or purposes (from the Greek word telos, meaning “end” or “goal”).
James Barham: Many would say that the whole point of the concept of a virtual, phase-space attractor is that it helps us conceive of teleological or goal-directed action in living systems in a way that does not require us to say that there is “backwards causation” of the future on the past. And yet you are not bashful about invoking backwards causation in your work. Why is that? Wouldn’t it be preferable to avoid backwards causation, if possible?
Rupert Sheldrake: Attractors attract. In that sense, they imply teleology or final causation, or the pull of ends or goals. So, there is a kind of virtual backwards causation from virtual ends or goals. If I decide to visit San Francisco in six months’ time, that acts as a kind of virtual attractor: I book my airline tickets and make my arrangements in accordance with this plan, directed towards a future which does not yet exist. I am not saying that all this is caused by my future stay in San Francisco, because all sorts of unforeseen circumstances could prevent my actually getting there. Nevertheless, I think in some situations there is a kind of backwards causation.
This is one of the reasons that I take research within parapsychology seriously. I think there is good evidence for precognitive dreams, and also for presentiment, whereby an emotional arousal can have a physiological arousing effect five or six seconds in advance. Perhaps the intellectual world would be a neater place if we disregarded this evidence; but it can’t be disregarded just because it does not fit into a particular theory of time and causation.
So, in summary, I think that ends or goals are given by virtual futures that pull organisms towards them, but sometimes there are influences from actual futures, rather like occasional memories of the future.
James Barham: Virtual attractors are purely mathematical concepts. The real question is: What type of physical field underlies the goal-directed behavior of living systems—including that of human beings—which then shows up as a closed, phase-space trajectory? Here, you speak of “morphic fields.” Fair enough. But what is a morphic field, exactly?
Rupert Sheldrake: Fields are most generally defined as regions of influence. A magnetic field is within a magnet and is also a region of magnetic influence around it. The earth’s gravitational field is within the earth and stretches out invisibly far beyond it keeping the moon in its orbit.
Morphic fields are