Morphic field
"Morphic field" is a term introduced by Sheldrake. He proposes that there is a field within and around a morphic unit which organizes its characteristic structure and pattern of activity. According to this concept, the morphic field underlies the formation and behaviour of holons and morphic units, and can be set up by the repetition of similar acts or thoughts. The hypothesis is that a particular form belonging to a certain group which has already established its (collective) morphic field, will
tune into that morphic field. The particular form will
read the collective information through the process of morphic resonance, using it to guide its own development. This development of the particular form will then provide, again through morphic resonance, a feedback to the morphic field of that group, thus strengthening it with its own experience resulting in new information being added (i.e.
stored in the
database). Sheldrake regards the morphic fields as a universal database for both organic (living) and abstract (mental) forms.
That a mode of transmission of shared informational patterns and archetypes might exist did gain some tacit acceptance, when it was proposed as the theory of collective unconscious by renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung. According to Sheldrake, the theory of morphic fields might provide an explanation for Jung's concept as well. Also, he agrees that the concept of Akashic Records, term from Vedas representing the "library" of all the experiences and memories of human minds (souls) through their physical lifetime, can be related to morphic fields, since one's
past (an Akashic Record) is a mental form, consisting of
thoughts as simpler mental forms (all processed by the same brain), and a group of similar or related mental forms also have their associated (collective) morphic field. (Sheldrake’s view on memory-traces is that they are “non-local”, and not located in the brain.)
Sheldrake's concept has little support in the mainstream scientific community. Members of the scientific community consider Sheldrake's concept to be currently unfalsifiable and therefore outside of the scope of scientific experiment. The concept of the
Morphic field is believed by many to fall into the realm of pseudoscience.
Morphic resonance
Essential to Sheldrake's model is the hypothesis of
morphic resonance. This is a feedback mechanism between the field and the corresponding forms of
morphic units. The greater the degree of similarity, the greater the resonance, leading to habituation or persistence of particular forms. So, the existence of a morphic field makes the existence of a new similar form easier.
Sheldrake proposes that the process of morphic resonance leads to stable morphic fields, which are significantly easier to
tune into. He suggests that this is the means by which simpler organic forms synergetically self-organize into more complex ones, and that this model allows a different explanation for the process of evolution itself, as an addition to Darwin's evolutionary processes of selection and variation.
Morphogenetic field
- For the mainstream developmental biology concept, see Morphogenetic field.
Morphogenetic fields are defined by Sheldrake as the subset of morphic fields which influence, and are influenced by living things.
The term [morphic fields] is more general in its meaning than morphogenetic fields, and includes other kinds of organizing fields in addition to those of morphogenesis; the organizing fields of animal and human behaviour, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity can all be regarded as morphic fields which contain an inherent memory.—Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past (Chapter 6, page 112)
Morphogenetic fields are said to contain the information necessary to shape the exact form of a living thing and may also shape its behaviour and coordination with other beings. The term
morphogenetic field has also been used in a different sense by mainstream developmental biologists, as regions within a developing embryo that will subsequently develop into particular structures or organs. Since the 1920s, mainstream biology has used the term morphogenetic field to mean "that collection of cells by whose interactions a particular organ formed". This usage is distinct from Sheldrake's in that nothing external to the cells themselves is implicated. Sheldrake admits that biologists use the term "morphic field" as a heuristic device, which is conceptually distinct from his own use of the term. He says that most biologists regard morphogenetic fields as "a way of thinking about morphogenesis rather than something that really exists."
Books
A New Science of Life
In his first book,
A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance, Sheldrake proposed that phenomena – particularly biological ones – become more probable the more often they occur, and therefore biological growth and behaviour become guided into patterns laid down by previous similar events. As a result, newly acquired behaviors are subject to inheritance by subsequent generations — a form of Lamarckism. He suggested that this underlies many aspects of science, from evolution to laws of nature. Indeed, he suggested that the laws of nature are mutable habits that have evolved since the Big Bang.
Sheldrake's primary focus in this book is morphogenesis, which includes both embryonic cell differentiation and the development of the embryo as a whole. In chapter 2, "Three Theories of Morphogenesis," Sheldarke states that there are three historical approaches to morphogenesis: materialism (August Weismann), vitalism (Hans Driesch), and organicism (Alfred North Whitehead). Sheldrake describes his own hypothesis as fitting within the third tradition, which rejects a vitalistic principle exclusive to life but also denies that a strictly materialistic explanation will ever account for the holistic nature of organic forms. The next three chapters address form as a general topic, the traditional concept of morphogenetic fields, and the possibility that past forms directly influence current organic activity. He introduces his main idea in chapter 6, "Formative Causation and Morphogenesis" and devotes the remaining chapters to subsidiary topics such as inheritance, behavior, instinct and learning, and so on.
The book was discussed in a variety of scientific and religious publications, receiving mixed reviews. Then in September 1981,
Nature published an editorial written by John Maddox, the journal's senior editor, entitled "A book for burning?" In it, Maddox said:
Sheldrake's argument is an exercise in pseudo-science. Many readers will be left with the impression that Sheldrake has succeeded in finding a place for magic within scientific discussion — and this, indeed, may have been a part of the objective of writing such a book.
Maddox's comments raised what Anthony Freeman called "a storm of controversy". The
New Scientist inquired whether
Nature had abandoned the scientific method for "trial by editorial".
Maddox did not act concerned by the criticism his comments received, and according to Freeman, the "furore that grew out of the assault in
Nature put an end to [Sheldrake's] academic career and made him
persona non grata in the scientific community." In a 1994 BBC documentary on Sheldrake's theory, Maddox elaborated on his views:
Sheldrake's is not a scientific theory. Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned, in exactly the language that the Pope used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reasons: it is heresy.
The Presence of the Past
The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1988) puts forward morphic resonance, one aspect of the "formative causation" hypothesis Sheldrake introduced in
A New Science of Life, and presents evidence for it.
Sheldrake writes, "Since these past organisms are similar to each other rather than identical, when a subsequent organism comes under their collective influence, its morphogenetic fields are not sharply defined, but consist of a composite of previous similar forms. This process is analogous to composite photography, in which 'average' pictures are produced by superimposing a number of similar images. Morphogenetic fields are 'probability structures,' in which the influence of the most common past types combines to increase the probability that such types will occur again."
In support of his hypothesis, Sheldrake cites replications of William McDougall's experiment with rats in a water maze and Mae-Wan Ho's replication of CH Waddington's experiment with fruit flies, as well as several psychology experiments involving human learning (none of which have been replicated). Sheldrake contends that a number of biological anomalies are resolved by morphic resonance, including personal memory (which he contends would otherwise require the existence of an elaborate information-storage mechanism in the brain), atavism and parallel evolution. He argues that the existence of organizing fields — with or without inherent memory — would explain phenomena ranging from coordinated behavior among social insects, flocks of birds and schools of fish to the regeneration of severed limbs by salamanders or a sense of phantom limbs among amputees, as the organizing field of a limb would remain even after the limb itself had been lost.
Seven Experiments That Could Change the World
In 1994 Sheldrake proposed a list of
Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, which included, among other things, the seed of his study of
Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home (1999). In
Seven Experiments ... he encouraged lay people to contribute to scientific research, and argued that scientific experiments similar to his own could be conducted on a shoestring budget.
The Sense of Being Stared At
In 2003, Sheldrake published
The Sense of Being Stared At on the psychic staring effect, including an experiment where blindfolded subjects guessed whether persons were staring at them or at another target. He reported that, in tens of thousands of trials, 60% of subjects reported being stared at when being stared at; 50% of subjects reported being stared at when they were not being stared at. According to Sheldrake, this suggested a weak sense of being stared at but no sense of not being stared at. He also claimed that these experiments were widely repeated, in schools in Connecticut and Toronto and a science museum in Amsterdam, with consistent results.
Later work
In 2003 Sheldrake published research on human telepathy in an experiment where subjects guessed which of four people was going to telephone or send an email. Sheldrake reported that the subject guesses the person correctly about 40% of the time instead of the expected 25% (p=.05).
Sheldrake's work was the theme of a plenary session titled "Anomalies of Consciousness" of the 2008
Toward a Science of Consciousness conference. where he presented his work on telepathy in animals and humans, followed by three critiques of his work on the sense of being stared at.
Reception
Sheldrake's ideas have resonated with the general public and some physicists such as David Bohm. The idea that fields may influence cells has even received cautious support from biologists Janis Roze and Sue Ann Miller. However, Sheldrake's work has met with a hostile reception from other scientists. Neurophysiologist and consciousness researcher Christof Koch, for example, has stated that discussing Sheldrake's ideas is a "waste of time," given the absence of hard, physical evidence and Sheldrake's lack of understanding of modern neurobiology. Henry Bauer compared Sheldrake's ideas to Wilhelm Reich's generally discredited claims of orgone energies. In his Skeptic's Dictionary, Robert Todd Carroll stated, in an article highly critical of Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance, that "although Sheldrake commands some respect as a scientist because of his education and degree, he has clearly abandoned conventional science in favor of magical thinking."
Germano Resconi and Masoud Nikravesh are sympathetic to Sheldrake's ideas, and base their concept of
morphic computing directly upon Sheldrake's morphic fields and morphogenetic fields, but acknowledge that "Morphic fields and its subset morphogenetic fields have been at the center of controversy for many years in mainstream science and the hypothesis is not accepted by some scientists who consider it a pseudoscience."
Some quantum physicists have supported Sheldrake's hypothesis. The late David Bohm suggested that Sheldrake's hypothesis was in keeping with his own ideas on what he terms "implicate" and "explicate" order. Hans-Peter Dürr has called for further discussion of Sheldrake's hypothesis, describing it as one of the first to reconcile 20th-century breakthroughs in physics, which emphasize fields and the indivisible nature of matter, with biology, which he says for the most part remains rooted in 19th-century Newtonian concepts of particles and separateness. Others, like biologist Michael Klymkowsky, disagree, contending that "[w]e live in a macroscopic world. Quantum effects are essentially irrelevant".
For more details on this topic, see quantum biology.The concept has attracted speculation from neurolinguistic programming, as an explanation for action at a distance. Sheldrake's book
The Presence of the Past: A Field Theory of Life was positively reviewed by spiritually oriented philosophers, theoreticians, and the physicist Amit Goswami, who relates them to his own views.
Scientific reception
Morphic resonance predicts that memories of one generation are automatically passed on to the next generation or to other conspecifics. A neuroscientist and memory expert, Steven Rose, has been critical of this view. A major reason for the criticism is that Rose does not feel there to be any anomalous phenomena which require the theory of morphic resonance as an explanation. Rose suggested an experiment to resolve the matter. In Rose's opinion the resulting study, done in collaboration with Sheldrake, disproved morphic resonance, but Sheldrake has challenged this.
Testing formative causation
In 1990 neurobiologist Steven Rose experimented jointly with Sheldrake to test the hypothesis of morphic resonance. The experiment involved training day-old chicks to react negatively to a small yellow light when the light was followed 30 min later by an injection which caused temporary illness. Chicks become strongly averse to pecking the stimulus again. Sheldrake predicted that successive batches of day-old chicks would progressively become more averse to pecking the light
for the first time, because morphic resonance would cause them to "remember" the experience of previous generations of chicks. Rose predicted that no such effect would be observed.
Rose wrote that he and several scientists who reviewed the data were convinced that there was no evidence of morphic resonance. Sheldrake, however, said that the proportion of test chicks taking longer than 10 sec for the first peck, compared with control chicks, gradually increased in successive batches and believed therefore that the experiment supported his theory.
In a separate paper, Rose responded that there were several confounding details of the experiment which skewed the results, such as the experimenter improving his skills with practice over the course of the experiment. Rose said there was no trend for an increase in the latency, in fact a slight decrease, thus
disconfirming Sheldrake's prediction. In an independent analysis of the data, biologist Patrick Bateson agreed with Rose that the results ran counter to the prediction of morphic resonance.
Sheldrake responded that Rose's analysis omitted a significant portion of the data, thus skewing the results. Sheldrake contended that repeating Rose's analysis with the full set of data shows that the trends in aversion were in fact significantly different and morphic resonance was confirmed, not disconfirmed. Rose and other researchers in the field, however, rejected this interpretation of the results.
Tests of the staring effect
David Marks and John Colwell, writing in the Skeptical Inquirer (2000), criticized the experimental procedures Sheldrake had developed for tests designed to demonstrate the existence of the staring effect. Apart from the fact that Sheldrake had encouraged the involvement of lay members of the public in research of the effect, Marks and Colwell suggested that the sequences used in tests followed the same patterning that people who guess and gamble like to follow. These guessing patterns have relatively few long runs and many alternations. The non-randomness of test sequences could thus lead to implicit or explicit pattern learning when feedback is provided. When the patterns being guessed mirror naturally occurring guessing patterns, the results could go above or below chance levels even without feedback. Thus significant results could occur purely from non-random guessing. Non-randomization is one of seven flaws in parapsychological research identified by Marks.
Michael Shermer wrote in
Scientific American (2005) that there were a number of objections to Sheldrake's experiments on the sense of being stared at, reiterating Marks' and Colwell's points about non-randomization and the use of unsupervised laypeople, and adding confirmation bias and experimenter bias to the list of potential problems; he concluded that Sheldrake's claim was unfalsifiable.
Sheldrake (2004, 2005) responded to the criticisms by stating that the experiments had been widely replicated; the results from an independent meta-analysis, which had excluded all data from unsupervised tests, were shown to be highly significant; and the Marks-Colwell suggestion of non-randomization had been refuted by thousands of trials with different randomization methods, including coin-tossing, yielding positive and highly statistically significant results, whatever the randomization method.