THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature

by Rupert Sheldrake ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 1988

Cambridge-educated biochemist Sheldrake is associated with a hypothesis concerning growth and development that he calls ""formative causation."" Essentially, he postulates that something other than genes must be involved in determining how a fertilized egg becomes an embryo, an embryo a fetus, and ultimately an individual with fully developed organs and supporting structures. That something he calls ""morphic fields,"" echoing terms and concepts (like ""morphogenetic"" fields) that earlier biologists have invoked as guiding principles governing the development of the form (the ""morph"") of organisms and their parts. Admittedly, morphic fields are rather nebulous. They act upon matter through ""morphic resonances"" that can operate across time and space. Thus matter is imbued with a collective memory based on successive generations resonating with the morphic fields associated with their ancestors. Moreover, morphic fields accompany everything--from particles to planets, from snowflakes to stars. What is the evidence for morphic fields? That, Sheldrake says, is what is so exciting. Experiments, he avers, can be performed to demonstrate the workings of morphic fields. Indeed, contests have been held for both experiments and designs for experiments. They, too, are summarized in various chapters of this all-encompassing volume. For, in order to shore up the rationale for formative causation, Sheldrake lays out the historical tradition from Pythagorean, Platonic, Aristotelian, and nominalist positions and arrays these against reductionist-mechanistic paradigms, and various developments in contemporary particle physics, cosmology, psychology, and neuroscience. It is just too much. Too much explanatory power given to a truly amorphous hypothesis, too much collective memory in things, and all conflated with possibly misleading statements about ontogeny/philogeny or about dominance and other genetic concepts--while too little is said about environment. There is much truth in what Sheldrake has to say about historical models, and he is right in pointing out the inadequacies of the present understanding of morphogenesis. But, unfortunately, his solution only adds to the mystery.

Pub Date: Feb. 27, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Times Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION