Morphic Resonance

by Sheldrake, Rupert

• ISBN13: 9781594773174
• ISBN10: 1594773173
• Edition: 4th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-09
• Publisher: Park Street Pr

Summary

When A New Science of Life was first published the British journal Nature called it "the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." The book called into question the prevailing mechanistic theory of life when its author, Rupert Sheldrake, a former research fellow of the Royal Society, proposed that morphogenetic fields are responsible for the characteristic form and organization of systems in biology, chemistry, and physics--and that they have measurable physical effects. Using his theory of morphic resonance, Sheldrake was able to reinterpret the regularities of nature as being more like habits than immutable laws, offering a new understanding of life and consciousness.In the years since its first publication, Sheldrake has continued his research to demonstrate that the past forms and behavior of organisms influence present organisms through direct immaterial connections across time and space. This can explain why new chemicals become easier to crystallize all over the world the more often their crystals have already formed, and why when laboratory rats have learned how to navigate a maze in one place, rats elsewhere appear to learn it more easily. With more than two decades of new research and data, Rupert Sheldrake makes an even stronger case for the validity of the theory of formative causation that can radically transform how we see our world and our future.

Author Biography

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., is a former research fellow of the Royal Society and former director of studies in biochemistry and cell biology at Clare College, Cambridge University. He is the author of more than 80 technical papers and articles appearing in peer-reviewed scientific journals and 10 books, including The Presence of the Past, The Rebirth of Nature, and Seven Experiments That Could Change the World.

Table of Contents

Preface to the 2009 Edition	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xxxiii
Introduction	p. 1
The Unsolved Problems of Biology	p. 5
The background of success	p. 5
The problems of morphogenesis	p. 8
Behavior	p. 11
Evolution	p. 13
The origin of life	p. 14
Minds	p. 15
Parapsychology	p. 17
Conclusions	p. 19
Three Theories of Morphogenesis	p. 20
Descriptive and experimental research	p. 20
Mechanism	p. 22
Vitalism	p. 32
Organicism	p. 38
The Causes of Form	p. 43
The problem of form	p. 43
Form and energy	p. 48
The structures of crystals	p. 53
The structures of proreins	p. 59
Formative causation	p. 62
Morphogenetic Fields	p. 65
Morphogeneric germs	p. 65
Chemical morphogenesis	p. 68
Morphogeneric fields as ôprobability structuresö	p. 72
Probabilistic processes in biological morphogenesis	p. 75
Morphogeneric germs in biological sysrems	p. 78
The Influence of Past Forms	p. 81
The constancy and repetition of forms	p. 81
The general possibility of trans-temporal causal connections	p. 83
Morphic resonance	p. 84
The influence of the post	p. 86
Implications of an attenuated morphic resonance	p. 92
An experimental test with crystals	p. 93
Formative Causation and Morphogenesis	p. 99
Sequential morphogeneses	p. 99
The polarity of morphogenetic fields	p. 100
The size of morphogenetic fields	p. 102
The increasing specificity of morphic resonance during morphogenesis	p. 103
The maintenance and stability of forms	p. 104
A note on physical ôdualismö	p. 105
A summary of the hypothesis of formative causation	p. 106
The Inheritance of Form	p. 110
Genetics and heredity	p. 110
Alrered morphogenetic germs	p. 112
Altered pathways of morphogenesis	p. 116
Dominance	p. 117
Family resemblances	p. 121
Environmental influences and morphic resonance	p. 121
The inheritance of acquired characteristics	p. 123
Epigeneric inheritance	p. 124
Experiments with phenocopies	p. 127
The Evolution of Biological Forms	p. 131
The neo-Darwinian theory of evoiution	p. 131
Mutations	p. 133
The divergence of chreodes	p. 134
The suppression of chreodes	p. 137
The repetition of chreodes	p. 138
The influence of other species	p. 140
The origin of new forms	p. 142
Movements and behavioral fields	p. 144
Introduction	p. 144
The movements of plants	p. 145
Amoeboid movement	p. 148
The repetitive morphogenesis of specialized structures	p. 150
Nervous systems	p. 151
Morphogenetic fields, motor fields, and behavioral fields	p. 154
Behavioral fields and the senses	p. 159
Regulation and regeneration	p. 160
Morphic fields	p. 162
Instinct And Learning	p. 163
The influence of past actions	p. 163
Instinct	p. 166
Sign stimuli	p. 167
Learning	p. 170
Innate tendencies to learn	p. 174
The Inheritance and Evolution of Behavior	p. 176
The inheritance of behavior	p. 176
Morphic resonance and behavior: on experimental test	p. 178
The evolution of behavior	p. 185
Human behavior	p. 188
Four Possible Conclusions	p. 192
The hypothesis of formative causation	p. 192
Modified material ism	p. 193
The conscious self	p. 194
The creative universe	p. 198
Transcendenr reality	p. 199
New Tests for Morphic Resonance	p. 200
Bose-Einstein condensates	p. 201
Melting poinrs	p. 202
Crystal transformations	p. 208
Adaptations in cell cultures	p. 210
Heat tolerance in plants	p. 215
The transmission of aversion	p. 218
The evolution of animal behavior	p. 222
Collective human memory	p. 226
Improving human performance	p. 233
Resonant computers	p. 243
Morphic Fields and the Implicate Order-A Dialogue with David Bohm	p. 249
Notes	p. 266
Bibliography	p. 292
Index of Names	p. 307
Index of Subjects	p. 31
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.