Rupert Sheldrake’s theories

Part 1: Morphic Fields and the Memory of Nature

• Most biologists take it for granted that living organisms are nothing but complex machines, governed only by the known laws of physics and chemistry. I myself used to share this point of view. But over a period of several years I came to see that such an assumption is difficult to justify. For when so little is actually understood, there is an open possibility that at least some of the phenomena of life depend on laws or factors as yet unrecognized by the physical sciences. 
• With these words biologist Rupert Sheldrake introduced his first book, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation, published in 1981. It met with a mixed response: while welcomed as "challenging and stimulating" by some, the journal Nature dismissed it as an "infuriating tract . . . the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." Sheldrake developed his ideas further in The Presence of the Past. Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1988) and The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God (1991). 
• His basic argument is that natural systems, or morphic units, at all levels of complexity -- atoms, molecules, crystals, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, and societies of organisms -- are animated, organized, and coordinated by morphic fields, which contain an inherent memory. Natural systems inherit this collective memory from all previous things of their kind by a process called morphic resonance, with the result that patterns of development and behavior become increasingly habitual through repetition. Sheldrake suggests that there is a continuous spectrum of morphic fields, including morphogenetic fields, behavioral fields, mental fields, and social and cultural fields. 
• Morphogenesis -- literally, the "coming into being" (genesis) of "form" (morphe) -- is something of a mystery. How do complex living organisms arise from much simpler structures such as seeds or eggs? How does an acorn manage to grow into an oak tree, or a fertilized human egg into an adult human being? A striking characteristic of living organisms is the capacity to regenerate, ranging from the healing of wounds to the replacement of lost limbs or tails. Organisms are clearly more than just complex machines: no machine has ever been known to grow spontaneously from a machine egg or to regenerate after damage! Unlike machines, organisms are more than the sum of their parts; there is something within them that is holistic and purposive, directing their development toward certain goals. 
• The role of genes is vastly overrated by mechanistic biologists. The genetic code in the DNA molecules determines the sequence of amino acids in proteins; it does not specify the way the proteins are arranged in cells, cells in tissues, tissues in organs, and organs in organisms. 
• The fact that all the cells of an organism have the same genetic code yet somehow behave differently and form tissues and organs of different structures clearly indicates that some formative influence other than DNA must be shaping the developing organs and limbs. Developmental biologists acknowledge this, but their mechanistic explanations peter out into vague statements about "complex spatio-temporal patterns of physico-chemical interaction not yet fully understood."

• According to Sheldrake, the development and maintenance of the bodies of organisms are guided by morphogenetic fields. The concept of morphogenetic fields has been widely adopted in developmental biology, but the nature of these fields has remained obscure, and they are often conceived of in conventional physical and chemical terms. According to Sheldrake, they are a new kind of field so far unknown to physics. They are localized within and around the systems they organize, and contain a kind of collective memory on which each member of the species draws and to which it in turn contributes. The fields themselves therefore evolve. Each morphic unit has its own characteristic morphogenetic field, nested in that of a higher-level morphic unit which helps to coordinate the arrangement of its parts.
• Before considering other types of morphic fields, it is worth examining exactly what a morphic field is supposed to be. Sheldrake describes them as "fields of information," saying that they are neither a type of matter nor of energy and are detectable only by their effects on material systems. However, if morphic fields were completely nonmaterial, that would imply that they were pure nothingness, and it is hard to see how fields of nothingness could possibly have any effect on the material world! 
• In a discussion with David Bohm, Sheldrake does in fact concede that morphic fields may have a subtle energy, but not in any "normal" (physical) sense of the term, since morphic fields can propagate across space and time and do not fade out noticeably over distance (A New Science of Life, p. 245). In this sense morphic fields would be a subtler form of energy-substance, too ethereal to be detectable by scientific instruments. Sheldrake also suggests that morphic fields may be very closely connected with quantum matter fields (The Presence of the Past, p. 120). According to science, the universal quantum field forms the substratum of the physical world and is pulsating with energy and vitality; it amounts to the resurrection of the concept of ether, a medium of subtle matter pervading all of space.

• Memory poses a thorny problem for materialists. Attempts to locate memory-traces within the brain have so far proved unsuccessful. Experiments have shown that memory is both everywhere and nowhere in particular. Sheldrake suggests that the reason for the recurrent failure to find memory-traces in brains is very simple: they do not exist there. It is true that damage to specific areas of the brain can impair memory in certain ways, but this does not prove that the relevant memories were stored in the damaged tissues. 
• Sheldrake suggests that memories are associated with morphic fields and that remembering depends on morphic resonance with these fields. He says that individual memory is due to the fact that organisms resonate most strongly with their own past, but that organisms are also influenced by morphic resonance from others of their kind through a sort of pooled memory, similar to the concept of the collective unconscious put forward by Jung and other depth psychologists. 
• According to Sheldrake, morphic resonance involves the transfer of information but not of energy. But it is difficult to see how the one can take place without the other, though the type of energy involved may well be supraphysical. In theosophical terms, the physical world is interpenetrated by a series of increasingly ethereal worlds or planes, composed of energy-substances beyond our range of perception, sometimes called the akasa. Its lower levels are referred to as the astral light. An impression of every thought, deed, and event is imprinted on the akasa, which therefore forms a sort of memory of nature. Likewise, within and around the physical body there is a series of subtler "bodies" composed of these more ethereal states of matter.

Memories, then, are impressed on the etheric substance of supraphysical planes, and we gain access to these records by vibrational synchrony, these vibrations being transmitted through the astral light. Sheldrake, however, rejects the idea of morphic resonance being transmitted through a "morphogenetic aether," saying that "a more satisfactory approach may be to think of the past as pressed up, as it were, against the present, and as potentially present everywhere" (The Presence of the Past, p. 112). But it is hard to see why such a hazy notion is more satisfactory than that of nonphysical energies being transmitted through an etheric medium.

• Social organization is also impossible to understand in reductionist and mechanistic terms. Societies of termites, ants, wasps, and bees can contain thousands or even millions of individual insects. They can build large elaborate nests, exhibit a complex division of labor, and reproduce themselves. Such societies have often been compared to organisms at a higher level of organization, or superorganisms. 
• Sheldrake suggests that such colonies are organized by social fields, embracing all the individuals within them. This would also help to explain the behavior of shoals of fish, flocks of birds, and herds or packs of animals, whose coordination has so far also defied explanation. Social morphic fields can be thought of as coordinating all patterns of social behavior, including human societies. This would throw light on such things as crowd behavior, panics, fashions, crazes, and cults. Social fields are closely allied with cultural fields, which govern the inheritance and transmission of cultural traditions. 
• According to Sheldrake, then, human beings consist of a physical body, whose shape and structure are organized by a hierarchy of morphogenetic fields, one for every atom, molecule, cell, and organ up to the body as a whole. Our habitual activities are organized by behavioral fields, one for each pattern of behavior, and our mental activity by mental fields, one for each thought or idea. Sheldrake also suggests that our conscious self may be regarded either as the subjective aspect of the morphic fields that organize the brain, or as a higher level of our being which interacts with the lower fields and serves as the creative ground through which new fields arise (Presence of the Past, p. 213). 
• According to Sheldrake we are also influenced by social and cultural fields contained within the overall field of the earth. In theosophy we are said to contribute thoughts and ideas to the pooled memory of the astral light and attract from it those ideas and thoughts with which we resonate most strongly. The astral light may be considered to be the astral body of the earth, and plays a role similar to what Sheldrake calls the morphic field of Gaia. 
• Sheldrake admits that his terminology of morphic fields could be replaced by occult terms such as akasa and subtle bodies (The Presence of the Past, p. 307). Whatever the limitations of his ideas, however, Sheldrake has dealt a significant blow to materialistic science with his forceful arguments exposing the inadequacy of physical factors alone to account for the phenomena of life, mind, and evolution, and in support of the idea that memory is intrinsic in nature.

Based on:
Rupert Sheldrake: A Theosophical Appraisal
Wikipedia materials