Any Rupert Sheldrake fans here?

[Velocity_Boy]

Hey all.....new guy here. thanks for having me!

 

I am a post grad Biology student currently working in my Master's here in Texas.

 

One of my earliest Biology "heroes" and indeed one of the figures who got me interested in entering the field was Rupert Sheldrake. He of the infamous Morphic Resonance theories. Well, I reckon they are actually hypotheses. As none of them have been proven. Most are very controversial. If not incendiary and considered by some of the more staid of his colleagues to be downright heretical.

 

But yet, they have always fascinated me. I still work on them. Trying to find evidence of them. Nature's Memory. It Learns and communicates with others of its species. And we are talking about flora here, not just animals. And the animals who DO communicate do so by means of a sort of telepathic field. they need not ever come into contact with each other. This is his Morphic Resonance.

 

So I was wondering if we had any fans or even believers of his work here? I also welcome comments negative to his work and ideas. All comments are welcome. I am just curious to what sort of Sheldrakian Opinions we have here?

 

For those not familiar with Dr. Sheldrake's work, here you will find a brief primer...........

 

http://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction

 

 

 

Thanks.

Edited April 28, 2016 by Velocity_Boy

[Strange]

Ummm ... what's the opposite of a fan ?

[Velocity_Boy]

Ummm ... what's the opposite of a fan ?

 

Gee, I dunno.

 

A closed minded reactionary?

 

LOL

[fiveworlds]

A hater?? I have heard of some of his work, some of his Ted talks are on youtube. He talked about how the speed of light wasn't a constant etc.

[Velocity_Boy]

Indeed.

 

And I am sure that one day we will discover that the sol is NOT a constant.

 

As we will find morphic resonance to be true as well.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks.

[fiveworlds]

Of course sol isn't a constant and it wasn't measured in a vacuum either. Still the speed of light in air is 1 foot per nanosecond approx. The speed of light in a vacuum might be a constant but it'll be a figure faster than the speed of light in air because the speed of light changes based on the density of the medium it is in. I would not be surprised if the speed of light in our air had changed because the mixture of gases in our atmosphere has changed as a result of pollution. Since polluted air is more dense than normal air light should move through it marginally slower. (though maybe it is dark matter)

Edited April 29, 2016 by fiveworlds

[iNow]

I was fascinated by his ideas and read many of his books almost two decades ago. Fun to think about, but after digging deeper and closely looking at his methods, poor expire mental design, and attempts to conflate anecdote with evidence, I decided there's no "there" there.

 

Perhaps there are indeed biological, neuro, and ecological systems that feed elevated intuition and enhance unconscious processing in various ways, and perhaps there is more to our senses than is currently accepted by the mainstream, but one doesn't need to be closed minded to feel that Sheldrake's work is largely tangential to the actual science underlying these topics.

[Strange]

Gee, I dunno.

 

A closed minded reactionary?

 

LOL

 

Ouch. I was going to go for "critical thinker who expects a higher level of evidence."

[Velocity_Boy]

Ouch. I was going to go for "critical thinker who expects a higher level of evidence."

Well, of course you are right. I was giving you the Sheldrake answer.

 

In fact hi last book was pretty much of an open letter to the scientific community pleading for it to broaden their horizons and to be more tolerant and open minded on views like his which have not as yet been proven.

 

Or even evidenced.

 

 

He was quite fond of bringing up the recent discovery of Dark Energy. And saying..rightfully so...that Cosmologists now realize that they don't know what comprises some 90% of the known universe.

 

So....maybe his whole Morphic Resonance thing is something along those lines. A quite real entity that hasd yet to be proven, or detected by clinical experiments.

[Bignose]

Well, of course you are right. I was giving you the Sheldrake answer.

 

In fact hi last book was pretty much of an open letter to the scientific community pleading for it to broaden their horizons and to be more tolerant and open minded on views like his which have not as yet been proven.

 

Or even evidenced.

So. you're telling us right here that there is no evidence, but people are supposed to believe it? Seriously?

 

It is ok to have ideas. It is ok to have ideas that don't have evidence. But it is not ok to jut stop there. Surely, given the ideas, there is someway, somehow to make predictions and then take measurements that will uniquely confirm or reject those ideas. This is how science works. Just stopping at the idea part is story telling and fiction writing. We have a section on this forum to discuss books, fiction and non fiction. But this section is supposed to be about science. You're flat out telling us, right there in that quote, that there is no science.