Dr Rupert Sheldrake (born 1942) is a controversial British biologist and author. He invented the 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 conventional science.
Sheldrake taught biology at Cambridge University, and was a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. Then, in his well-known 1981 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; a hypothesis which he suggests underlies many aspects of science, from evolution to laws of nature. This provoked great controversy, and Sheldrake has since worked outside the realm of academic science, which regards his work as bordering on New Age thinking. He continues to publish scientific papers, but not in mainstream journals.
In later work he has developed his ideas further and also conducted experiments (documented in his books) into phenomena which he believes could be explained by morphogenetic fields. Some of these experiments have apparently produced striking results, though mainstream 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.
Bibliography
- A New Science of Life (1981, second edition 1985)
- The Presence of the Past (1988)
- The Rebirth of Nature (1990)
- Seven Experiments That Could Change the World (1994)
- Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home (1999)
- The Sense Of Being Stared At (2003)
With Ralph Abraham and Terence McKenna:
- Trialogues at the Edge of the West (1992)
- The Evolutionary Mind (1988)
- Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness
With Matthew Fox (priest):
- Natural Grace (1996)
- The Physics of Angels (1996)
External links
- Sheldrake Online
- Nautis Project
- GWUP on Sheldrake (a critical article in German) Babelfish automatic translation
- The pychic staring effect: An artifact of pseudo randomization
- Sheldrake introduces 'The Extended Mind: Recent Experimental Evidence' (Video at Microsoft Research)
- Skeptic's Dictionary article on 'morphic resonance'
- Rupert Sheldrake: The delightful crackpot - November 1999 article in Salon magazine