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From: inc@tc.fluke.COM (Gary Benson)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,sci.physics,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Question about Rupert Sheldrake
Message-ID: <1990Jun1.051632.5542@tc.fluke.COM>
Date: 1 Jun 90 05:16:32 GMT
References: <697@netmbx.UUCP> <30291@cup.portal.com>
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In article <30291@cup.portal.com> Murray_R_Pearce@cup.portal.com writes:

> Martin Gardner has an article about Rupert Sheldrake in his recent book,
> The New Age - Notes of a Fringe Watcher. I gather the article originally
> appeared in The Skeptical Inquirer. Gardner discusses Sheldrake's book
> A New Science of Life in which "morphogenetic fields" are discussed.

Do tell. I've been trying to learn more about morphogenetic field theory for
a long time. Ira Flato did a piece back about 10 years ago when he was
Science Correspondent for National Public Radio doing a regular piece on
"All Things Considered". This is an absolutely fascinating theory, and I
thank you for providing us references to books by the theory's architect as
well as by one of his skeptics.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that the theory takes issue
with the standard explanation for the answers to questions like "why do all
squirrels look the same when there are so many vast differences in thef
appearance of humans?" Sheldrake does not believe it can all be explained by
current genetics, DNA and all that. Instead, he says that each time (for
example) a squirrel is born, it sends out a field not unlike an
electromagnetic field, and that other squirrels-in-gestation are receptive
to this field and use the information it contains to control the genetic
process. The human morphogenetic field is much more complext, I presume, and
contains much more information, ergo, the likelihood that any given embryo
will decode the same parts of the field as some other embryo are remote.

At the time Ira Flato was interviewing him, he claimed to have had some
experimental results that were promising - I am really fuzzy on the details,
but it involved the growth of crystals, which he presented as being somehow
a "life-analogue" if you will. I can hardly wait to check out the two books
mentioned in this posting -- the whole concept just seems so absurd on the
surface, but what if he's right? How would wars affect the human mg field?
Violent highway accidents at one per minute? What are abortions doing? Or in
vitro fertilization?

No flames please from the crypto-skeptics. I am just as unbelieving as
anyone about all this, but if you just automatically discount something you
*personally* do not believe, you may be shutting your mind to a world of
possibilities. As the bumper sticker says, "Minds are like parachutes. They
only work when they are open".