Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Alfred Rupert Sheldrake June 28, 1942 Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England |
| Residence | London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Clare College, Cambridge; Harvard University |
| Known for | Morphic resonance hypothesis |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry, Plant physiology, Parapsychology |
Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942) is a British biochemist, author and parapsychology researcher. He is best known for proposing the concept of "morphic resonance", the hypothesis that natural systems inherit a collective memory from previous systems of their kind. He is the author of more than 80 scientific papers and numerous books, including A New Science of Life (1981) and The Science Delusion (2012, published in the United States as Science Set Free). Morphic resonance is not accepted by the mainstream scientific community, which regards it as lacking empirical support.
Biography
Education
Sheldrake was born in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, England. He was educated at Worksop College, an Anglican boarding school, and went on to study natural sciences at Clare College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in biology and biochemistry. He then held a Frank Knox Fellowship at Harvard University in 1964, where he studied philosophy and the history of science, before returning to Cambridge to complete a PhD in biochemistry in 1968 with research on the development of plants.
Career
From 1967 Sheldrake was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and a Research Fellow of the Royal Society, holding the Rosenheim Research Fellowship in biochemistry and cell biology. Working with Philip Rubery, he helped develop the chemiosmotic model of polar auxin transport in plants. He carried out research at the University of Malaya (1968–1969) and from 1974 to 1978 was Principal Plant Physiologist at ICRISAT (the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) in Hyderabad, India.
From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of the Perrott–Warrick Project, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge, for research on unexplained human abilities. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and, since 2004, a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut. He lives in London.
Morphic resonance and later work
Sheldrake first set out his hypothesis of morphic resonance in A New Science of Life (1981). He proposes that "memory is inherent in nature" and that natural systems, such as developing organisms, inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind through "morphic fields". He later extended these ideas in The Presence of the Past (1988).
The hypothesis has not been accepted by the mainstream scientific community, which regards it as lacking supporting evidence. When A New Science of Life was published, Nature editor John Maddox wrote a 1981 editorial titled "A book for burning?", describing the argument as "in no sense a scientific argument but ... an exercise in pseudo-science."
Sheldrake has also conducted research in parapsychology, investigating topics such as dogs that appear to anticipate their owners' return home, the sense of being stared at, and telepathy. This work is likewise not accepted within mainstream science.
Books
- A New Science of Life (1981)
- The Presence of the Past (1988)
- The Rebirth of Nature (1991)
- Seven Experiments That Could Change the World (1994)
- Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (1999)
- The Sense of Being Stared At (2003)
- The Science Delusion / Science Set Free (2012)
- Science and Spiritual Practices (2017)
- Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work (2019)
Honors
- Frank Knox Fellowship, Harvard University (1964)
- Rosenheim Research Fellowship of the Royal Society
- Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge
- Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences
- Fellow of Schumacher College
- Fellow of the Temenos Academy, London