31 Mar 2019
Executive Summary
Sheldrake’s The Science Delusion (2013) is an ambitious challenge to the materialistic mindset, deeply embedded in the current scientific worldview. The book itself comes as a provocative response to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, which made the case for science as an objective, all-knowing way to access the material reality. Sheldrake, a Christian himself, in turn, argues that such a materialistic view of science is restraining and dogmatic. One of the worst dogmas which underlies all others, a meta-dogma, if you will, is that science has everything figured out and we just need to work out the details.
Introduction: Science, Religion and Power
Since the 17th century, when science emerged with Newton and Bacon, it has been used to generate knowledge and, in turn, power, as evidenced by Bacon’s slogan “Knowledge is power”. This ‘scientific priesthood’ has now been achieved at a global scale. Scientists have always dreamt of a time where they understand all the science behind the world and to be able to predict it, which would grant them omniscience. However, perfect prediction is impossible as most things in our daily lives are based on chance – quantum mechanics, evolution, chaos theory, brainwaves etc. Further evidence for the impossibility of omniscience is that by the end of both 19th and 20th century we thought we had it all but both times we were wrong. Throughout the development of science, Christianity was to science as spiritual is to material – non-overlapping domains of inquiry (Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria). However, this was overridden in the 19th century by the rise of atheism. Atheism, coupled with mechanistic science, was thereafter seen as painting a very bleak picture of the human condition – one stripped of purpose in life or humanity. Hence, secular humanism arose, which replaced God with man. In an ideal world, science is a process, rather than a material worldview. However, scientists are still people who are biased by things like funds or prestige and are generally not ‘idealized truth-seekers’, which is the ultimate goal.
Sheldrake differentiates between the science as a way of knowing, which should be praised and embraced, and science as a worldview, endorsed by contemporary scientists. Science as worldview contains 10 implicit assumptions, akin to dogmas, that Sheldrakes examines carefully in the rest of the book.
Dogma 1: Nature is mechanical
With the rejection of vitalism (living organisms have a soul), the mechanistic theory of living organisms emerged. It explained all life using the metaphor of the machine. However, living organisms have different overlapping layers of complexity (or holarchies), where every subsequent level is more than the sum of its parts (as systems theory would predict for example). The machine metaphor itself is flawed and is a slippery road for contemporary neo-Darwinian, mechanistic explanations of life. For example, metaphors regularly imbue nature with purpose, despite rejecting it. Examples include selfish genes (Dawkins; can genes really be selfish), computer programs (which are designed by humans, unlike life as per the mechanistic theory) or even “Mother Nature” (Darwin himself). Even in light of the Big Bang theory, the universe looks more like a purposive organism (starting really small and then slowly cooling and developing new structures), rather than a machine.
Dogma 2: The total amount of matter and energy is the same
In light of modern cosmology, we now know that we have only explored 4% of the entire universe, hence 96% remain unknown. In those 96%, it is postulated that there are hypothetical forms of dark energy and dark matter. It is not known how these two interact with the forces and matter of the known universe, hence the conclusion that the total amount of matter and energy in the universe remain the same is premature. Furthermore, there are theoretical predictions that assert that the total amount of dark energy and dark matter is growing (e.g. ‘quintessence field’). Quantum processes are also considered to be mediated by a ‘zero-point field’, where virtual particles of matter pop in and out of existence.
Dogma 3: The laws of nature are fixed
The idea that laws of nature are fixed arose before evolutionary cosmology – instead, rather than following fixed laws, nature might be behaving according to habits. The constants of nature – G, c etc – may be varying even today. Meteorologists come up with different measurements and average across time which ignores any variations. Slight variations despite seemingly looking constancy may be evidence for an inherent memory in nature. Organisms show a similar kind of collective memory: newly found synthetic crystals, once found, in location A will make the same crystals crystalize quicker in location B, irrespective of distance. Same goes for mice – once mice learn to navigate maze at location A, other mice in location B will navigate the same maze quicker. Evolution may also be an interplay between these habits and creativity, rather than chance. Creativity is the pull towards the future from attractors. Via this creativity, new patterns emerge which are further subject to natural selection and can become habits of their own.
Dogma 4: All matter is unconscious
On the one hand, dualists are unable to explain the seeming duality of mind and matter, while, on the other hand, materialists reject this distinction. However, such a rejection quickly stumbles into problems. For example, materialists have tried to explain away consciousness and subjective experience as illusions. The problem is that an illusion is a mode of consciousness; it presupposes consciousness rather than explaining it. In response to these philosophical debates, some have argued that self-organising systems have aspects: a mental one (experiential) and a physical one (non-experiential). Self-organising systems are those that have goals or purposes but are not shaped by external forces. For instance, an atom, a cell or an animal is a self-organising system, and can, therefore, have experiences (regardless of how primitive), but tables or chairs are not such systems as they are made by humans for a specific purpose and do not have one in themselves. The minds of these self-organising systems relate them to their potential futures and their experience is shaped by the past: every past moment is the object for the present moment, which is the subjective experience. The way minds choose between potential futures might be through mental causation, which runs from virtual potential futures towards the past and is realized in the present moment (c.f. energetic causation). The choice might be facilitated by creativity.
Dogma 5: Nature is purposeless
All self-organising organisms have goals, or attractors, towards which they move. This is well-evident in plants or animals. For instance, if you disrupt the development of a plant, they still find a way to reach their end goal, above and beyond genetic code, as would the materialistic science predict. In mathematics or physics, this behaviour towards a future attract can be modelled and there are even theories that predict a backward influence of time – from the future towards the past. Examples are interpretations of Maxwell’s equations, Richard Feynman’s interpretation of QM, Yakir Aharanov’s interpretation of QM. Protein folding also evidences that chemical processes are drawn to ends, or goals (the folding is attracted towards a particular state of minimum energy). Reductionist explanations of these phenomena have failed thus far and hence holistic approaches are preferred. There are three of them: systems theory (systems have emergent properties when combined but still try to explain everything with physical fields and forces); Platonism (everything is explained by Forms and Ideas by mathematical equations); morphogenetic fields (Sheldrake; ‘attractors are causal factors with properties that go beyond the familiar forces and fields of physics. They have time within them; they contain a memory of previous similar systems and given by morphic resonance, and they attract organisms towards ends or goals through a kind of causation working ‘backwards’ in time’). Evolution and the universe can be interpreted in terms of attractors, or goals. For instance, in the universe gravitation exerts its contractive pull towards a future end, or goal, while dark energy (Penrose) exerts its expansive pull to push the current state away from the past (which gives the arrow of time).
Dogma 6: All biological inheritance is material
Before the 18th century, vitalism was the norm. Plato considered final purposes in terms of transcendental Forms or Ideas, Aristotle considered that the soul gave purpose to an organism and Thomas Aquinas talked about final causes in his theological arguments. Then, neo-Darwinian theorizing and molecular genetics pushed back against vitalism and substituted souls with the ‘genetic program’ metaphor, which, albeit unconscious, is brought to life by metaphors. However, as the scientific and financial failure of the Human Genome Project demonstrate genes are overrated – they simply code for a chain of amino acids. Another clear evidence for that is the ‘missing heritability problem’. This problem goes as follows. Height is 80-90% heritable, because we can use a tape measure to measure children’s and parents’ height and make predictions. However, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) tried to identify the genes for height. The found genes managed to account for about 5% of the height of the parents hence approximately 75% of the heritability was not accounted for – hence the ‘missing heritability’. “The inheritance of development and behaviour may depend on organising fields that have an inherent memory. In addition, characteristics acquired by plants and animals can be passed on to their descendants epigenetically, through modifications of gene expression rather than mutation. Habits of growth and behaviour can be inherited through a collective memory of the species, on which each individual draws, and to which it contributes: organisms inherit habits of form and behaviour that are not coded for in the genes by the process of morphic resonance. Morphic resonance may also underlie cultural inheritance, which differs in degree, but not in kind, from the inheritance of forms and instincts.”
Dogma 7: Memories are stored as material traces
Materialistic science has failed to locate our memories in our brains, as even a Nobel Prize-winning researcher in the field proposes. The morphic resonance hypothesis offers a better explanation of individual and collective memory – one that transcends the boundaries of space and time. For individual memory, a person resonates with their own past to a much higher degree than anything else. Collective memories also seem to be at play among animal and human learning. For example, once rats learn a trick at one place at one time, then rats at a subsequent time in a distant location would also learn the trick quicker. Humans also exhibit such learning as evidenced by the Flynn effect.
Dogma 8: Minds are confined to brains
Vision provides a great example of how minds work. There are three main theories of vision: 1) extramission – vision is the result of an outward projection from our eyes (was alive until 17th century; corresponds to our experiences) 2) intromission – vision involves sending the images in our brains through light for further processing (scientifically orthodox since 17th century – Kepler, Galileo) 3) combination of the two. When asked, the general public seems to believe in the extramission theory, despite intromission theory being the norm in science. Sheldrake also proposes that the intromission theory does not correspond to people’s experience and hence we should reject it. However, this is a non-sequitur – the fact that it does not correspond to experience is not a sufficient reason to reject it. But if we add to that the fact that we can’t find the representations (or the images) in our brain, then we can reasonably question the intromission theory. Sheldrake supports the 3rd theory of vision – a combination of the other two: what we see is in our minds but not in our brains. This explains the ubiquitous ‘sense of being stared at’. Many experimental tests support this (see Sheldrake’s other book The Sense of Being Stared at).
Dogma 9: Psychic phenomena are illusory
Many highly rigorous experiments have established the existence of psychic phenomena, such as telepathy, precognition, telekinesis and others. Examples of telepathic connection include that between (nursing) mothers and children, telephone telepathy or even dogs who can pick up intentions and emotions. Animals can anticipate natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. In research on human presentiments, the future emotional affect seems to exert its influence on the present through subtle, but detectable, physiological effects (e.g. Dean Radin’s experiments, some of which are described in his book Entangled Minds).
Dogma 10: Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works
Despite the many success of modern mechanistic medicine, it ignores the mental aspect. Many alternative forms of medicine utilize the power of hope and belief. This is well-evidenced: hypnosis, suppression of the immune system when depressed/anxious; better recovery from heart attacks when in the presence of a significant other; religious attendance is associated with better health and longevity; prayer or meditation is associated with better health etc. There is further an argument to be made for the effectiveness of alternative forms of medicine above and beyond the placebo response (i.e. hope/belief) and comparative effectiveness research (RCT comparing different treatment outcomes) could establish that, if the materialistic mindset did not discourage it.
