Rupert Sheldrake

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íDr Rupert Sheldrake (born 1942) is a controversial 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. 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 held a fellowship and taught biology at Cambridge University, and was a Research Fellow of the Royal Society.

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".

A week later, in his well-known book A New Science of Life, 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.

This was mid-June, and over the summer 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 came the bombshell in Nature. In September 1981 the prestigious scientific journal Nature carried an unsigned editorial (subsequently acknowledged to be by the journal’s senior editor, John Maddox) titled "A book for burning?" (Maddox, 1981). It reviewed and damned Rupert Sheldrake’s then recently published book.

Nowhere did the editorial actually say the book under review ought to be burned. Indeed, it said the exact opposite: "Books rightly command respect … even bad books should not be burned; … [Dr Sheldrake’s] book should not be burned." But it also contained the comment "[Sheldrake’s] book is the best candidate for burning there has been formany years" and — probably the real clincher — there was that headline: "A book for burning?" Dozens will read a headline who never read the text, and how many of those troubled to note the question mark at the end of the heading? Thus the idea was born: Nature says Sheldrake’s book should be burned.

Accoding to Journal of Consciousness Studies editor Anthony Freeman, this is when the controversy started.

Sheldrake has been considered a heretic by many in the academic establishment who often consider his work as bordering on New Age thinking. He continues to publish scientific papers in a variety of scientific journals.

In later work he has developed his ideas further and also conducted experiments (documented in his books) on phenomena 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.