Intellectual Phase-Locking: A condition that results when dogmatic assumptions inhibit inquiry.
I could listen to this guy, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, all day long. His classic British accent & professorial manner make listening to him almost a pleasure. It doesn’t hurt a bit that what he has to say makes so much sense. In this first video he puts to words many of the things about modern science that have bothered me for ages. I think he’s my new hero.
… modern science is based on the principal of ‘Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest.’ The one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, and all the laws that govern it from nothing in a single instant.
Sheldrake gave the talk in the video above in January, 2013. TED posted it on its website, but in subsequent months TED received some complaints about some of the things he had to say, and pulled the video off of its main site (or as Dr. Sheldrake put it, “put in the bad little boys section of the TED website.”) It’s still available, not really “banned” as some say, just more difficult to find. Reading through the complaints brought against him and his responses makes it look like he hit some tender nerves, and might be onto something. It’s easy to see why more traditional scientists would have a problem with what he says; if he’s right, then they are very wrong on a lot of fronts. (Makes me wonder what my old buddy TF would think of him… Pretty sure I don’t even have to ask!)
Some of what he talks about, like “morphic resonance” I’ve never heard of before, and I don’t know how much evidence there is behind it, but it sounds interesting. And if there’s any truth to it, the implications it would have on scientific thought would be profound. For many years I’ve questioned the belief that instinctive behaviors in the animal kingdom came about by trial and error with one line that tends to do something a little bit better than another line and passes that tendency on to its offspring. Behaviors seem to be far too complex for that to be plausible, no matter how many billions of years it might have taken.
Even if one dismisses the belief that animal behavior & physical traits came about through evolutionary selection, instead believes that those traits were designed by an outside intelligence (God), it’s still difficult to accept that the behaviors & traits are genetically encoded. A collective consciousness that spans space and time and does not exist at the genetic level starts to make sense.
And the possibility of thought happening somewhere outside of the physical brain lends credence to the idea of a soul living on after the body is dead and decayed. But of course, proving any of that to those who subscribe to a more classical view of science will be more than just a bit difficult, so I predict Sheldrake will continue to be a pariah. I’m not very familiar with Sheldrake’s work and thought, so I’m not sure whether he considers himself a Christian or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he is. (more…)