Rupert Sheldrake

Rupert's Reply for the Reality Club - 2009:
WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?

Credit crunches happen because of too much credit and too many bad debts. Credit is literally belief, from the Latin credo, "I believe." Once confidence ebbs, the loss of trust is self-reinforcing. The game changes. Something similar is happening with materialism. Since the nineteenth century, its advocates have promised that science will explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry; science will show that there is no God and no purpose in the universe; it will reveal that God is a delusion inside human minds and hence in human brains; and it will prove that brains are nothing but complex machines.

Materialists are sustained by the faith that science will redeem their promises, turning their beliefs into facts. Meanwhile, they live on credit. The philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper described this faith as "promissory materialism" because it depends on promissory notes for discoveries not yet made. Despite all the achievements of science and technology, it is facing an unprecedented credit crunch.

In 1963, when I was studying biochemistry at Cambridge I was invited to a series of private meetings with Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner in Brenner's rooms in King's College, along with a few of my classmates. They had just cracked the genetic code. Both were ardent materialists. They explained there were two major unsolved problems in biology: development and consciousness. They had not been solved because the people who worked on them were not molecular biologists—nor very bright. Crick and Brenner were going to find the answers within 10 years, or maybe 20. Brenner would take development, and Crick consciousness. They invited us to join them.

Both tried their best. Brenner was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on the development of the nematode worm Caenorhabdytis. Crick corrected the manuscript of his final paper on the brain the day before he died in 2004. At his funeral, his son Michael said that what made him tick was not the desire to be famous, wealthy or popular, but "to knock the final nail into the coffin of vitalism."

He failed. So did Brenner. The problems of development and consciousness remain unsolved. Many details have been discovered, dozens of genomes have been sequenced, and brain scans are ever more precise. But there is still no proof that life and minds can be explained by physics and chemistry alone.

The fundamental proposition of materialism is that matter is the only reality. Therefore consciousness is nothing but brain activity. However, among researchers in neuroscience and consciousness studies there is no consensus. Leading journals such as Behavioural and Brain Sciences and the Journal of Consciousness Studies publish many articles that reveal deep problems with the materialist doctrine. For example, Steven Lehar argues that inside our heads there must be a miniaturized virtual-reality full-colour three-dimensional replica of the world. When we look at the sky, the sky is in our heads. Our skulls are beyond the sky. Others, like the psychologist Max Velmans, argue that virtual reality displays are not confined to our brains; they are life-sized, not miniaturized. Our visual perceptions are outside our skulls, just where they seem to be. The philosopher David Chalmers has called the very existence of subjective experience the "hard problem" of consciousness because it defies explanation in terms of mechanisms. Even if we understand how eyes and brains respond to red light, for example, the quality of redness is still unaccounted for.

In biology and psychology the credit-rating of materialism is falling fast. Can physics inject new capital? Some materialists prefer to call themselves physicalists, to emphasize that their hopes depend on modern physics, not nineteenth-century theories of matter. But physicalism's credit-rating has been reduced by physics itself, for four reasons.

First, some physicists argue that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into account the minds of observers; hence minds cannot be reduced to physics, because physics presupposes minds. Second, the most ambitious unified theories of physical reality, superstring and M theories, with 10 and 11 dimensions respectively, take science into completely new territory. They are a very shaky foundation for materialism, physicalism or any other pre-established belief system. They are pointing somewhere new. Third, the known kinds of matter and energy constitute only about 4% of the universe. The rest consists of dark matter and dark energy. The nature of 96% of reality is literally obscure.

Fourth, the cosmological anthropic principle asserts that if the laws and constants of nature had been slightly different at the moment of the Big Bang, biological life could never have emerged, and hence we would not be here to think about it. So did a divine mind fine-tune the laws and constants in the beginning? Some cosmologists prefer to believe that our universe is one of a vast, and perhaps infinite, number of parallel universes, all with different laws and constants. We just happen to exist in the one that has the right conditions for us.

In the eyes of skeptics, the multiverse theory is the ultimate violation of Occam's Razor, the principle that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. But even so, it does not succeed in getting rid of God. An infinite God could be the God of an infinite number of universes.

Here on Earth we are facing climate change, great economic uncertainty, and cuts in science funding. Confidence in materialism is draining away. Its leaders, like central bankers, keep printing promissory notes, but it has lost its credibility as the central dogma of science. Many scientists no longer want to be 100% invested in it.

Materialism's credit crunch changes everything. As science is liberated from this nineteenth-century ideology, new perspectives and possibilities will open up, not just for science, but for other areas of our culture that are dominated by materialism. And by giving up the pretence that the ultimate answers are already known, the sciences will be freer—and more fun.

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Rupert's Reply for the Reality Club - 2006:
MY DANGEROUS IDEA

No one knows how pigeons home, or how swallows migrate, or how green turtles find Ascension Island from thousands of miles away to lay their eggs. These kinds of navigation involve more than following familiar landmarks, or orientating in a particular compass direction; they involve an ability to move towards a goal.

Why is this idea dangerous? Don't we just need a bit more time to explain navigation in terms of standard physics, genes, nerve impulses and brain chemistry? Perhaps.

But there is a dangerous possibility that animal navigation may not be explicable in terms of present-day physics. Over and above the known senses, some species of animals may have a sense of direction that depends on their being attracted towards their goals through direct field-like connections. These spatial attractors are places with which the animals themselves are already familiar, or with which their ancestors were familiar.

What are the facts? We know more about pigeons than any other species. Everyone agrees that within familiar territory, especially within a few miles of their home, pigeons can use landmarks; for example, they can follow roads. But using familiar landmarks near home cannot explain how racing pigeons return across unfamiliar terrain from six hundred miles away, even flying over the sea, as English pigeons do when they are raced from Spain.

Charles Darwin, himself a pigeon fancier, was one of the first to suggest a scientific hypothesis for pigeon homing. He proposed that they might use a kind of dead reckoning, registering all the twists and turns of the outward journey. This idea was tested in the twentieth century by taking pigeons away from their loft in closed vans by devious routes. They still homed normally. So did birds transported on rotating turntables, and so did birds that had been completely anaesthetized during the outward journey.

What about celestial navigation? One problem for hypothetical solar or stellar navigation systems is that many animals still navigate in cloudy weather. Another problem is that celestial navigation depends on a precise time sense. To test the sun navigation theory, homing pigeons were clock-shifted by six or twelve hours and taken many miles from their lofts before being released. On sunny days, they set off in the wrong direction, as if a clock-dependent sun compass had been shifted. But in spite of their initial confusion, the pigeons soon corrected their courses and flew homewards normally.

Two main hypotheses remain: smell and magnetism. Smelling the home position from hundreds of miles away is generally agreed to be implausible. Even the most ardent defenders of the smell hypothesis (the Italian school of Floriano Papi and his colleagues) concede that smell navigation is unlikely to work at distances over 30 miles.

That leaves a magnetic sense. A range of animal species can detect magnetic fields, including termites, bees and migrating birds. But even if pigeons have a compass sense, this cannot by itself explain homing. Imagine that you are taken to an unfamiliar place and given a compass. You will know from the compass where north is, but not where home is.

The obvious way of dealing with this problem is to postulate complex interactions between known sensory modalities, with multiple back-up systems. The complex interaction theory is safe, sounds sophisticated, and is vague enough to be irrefutable. The idea of a sense of direction involving new scientific principles is dangerous, but it may be inevitable.

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Photo Sérgio Valle Duarte

New York Times, January 4th 2003

I believe that if 1 percent of the money now being distributed for science went to research that was of real interest to taxpayers, science would become more popular.

At present, money generally goes to research sought by the scientific establishment, corporations and government bureaucracies. The administration of science is neither democratically accountable, nor carried out in a democratic spirit.

My proposal is that 99 percent of the research funds continue to be allocated in the usual way. But I suggest that 1 percent be spent in a way that reflects the curiosity of lay people, who pay for all publicly financed research through taxes. It would be necessary to create a separate body. One possible name would be the National Discovery Center.

The center would be governed by a board representing a wide range of interests, including nongovernmental organizations, schools and voluntary associations. Individuals could send suggestions in over the Internet. Local and national organizations could lobby for projects. Potential subjects for research could be discussed in the news media.

This new venture would make science more attractive to young people, stimulate interest in scientific thinking and hypothesis-testing, and help break down the depressing alienation many people feel from science.

An excerpt from the New York Times special feature Today's Visions of the Science of Tomorrow.

Photo Sérgio Valle Duarte

Die Zeit July 11, 2002, page 28
Interview with Rupert Sheldrake

Rupert Sheldrake wants the public to share in decisions about allocation of research funds

Die Zeit:  Many surveys show that science is losing its trust with the public, be it food safety or the vaccination against measles and mumps in England. What is your suggestion on how to close this gap in confidence?

Rupert Sheldrake:   Mainstream science sees this as an image crisis that can be overcome by a better public understanding of science. But this crisis runs deeper. Citizens are alienated from scientific institutions that should actually serve them and who are paid by them.

Die Zeit:  Where does this alienation originate?

Sheldrake:  Science has developed into a bureaucratic, rigid system. Receiving research funds, publishing papers, being promoted and getting prestige - all this depends on the peer reviews of anonymous committees. This reinforces current opinions ...

Die Zeit:  ... but at the same time it serves to reject low-quality research and undesirable trends.

Sheldrake:  The established system may prevent stupid research but it also slows down originality and innovation, promotes timidness and conformity. Innovation, however, is absolutely necessary in science.

Die Zeit:  Was it any different in the past?

Sheldrake:  At least in the USA and in England science was less institutionalised in the 19th century. A scientist like Darwin, who held no academic position and received no public funds, would probably not have been able to do his research on evolution under today‘s circumstances. Important breakthroughs back then were mostly produced by researchers who were neither professional scientists nor part of a bureaucratic system.

Die Zeit:  Does only research suffer from this?

Sheldrake:  No, we all pay a high price for it. Research uses up large amounts of money but often serves neither the public interest nor does it produce innovation. For example 50 per cent of all the scientific papers are not read by anyone except the authors themselves.

Die Zeit:  How do new insights get lost this way?

Sheldrake:  This can be seen very clearly in the field of alternative medicine. What is supported are mainly conventional projects, like the genome project or molecular diagnosis. I do not mean to say that this is worthless. But in this way only a fraction of the medical problems is dealt with. At the same time millions of people seem to benefit from acupuncture, herbs and other therapies. These low-cost forms of therapy, however, are largely ignored by the official bodies because they do not fit the dominating paradigm of mechanistic biology.

Die Zeit:  How might things be done differently?

Sheldrake:  In the USA senators and congressmen have succeeded in establishing a Center for Alternative Medicine with an initial annual budget of one million dollars, against the fierce resistance of the scientific establishment that spoke of squandering and quackery. But the research results were so promising that the budget has now been increased to 100 million dollars. Even that is still minimal compared to the many billions spent on conventional research.

Die Zeit:  So you are asking for a more democratic decision-making?

Sheldrake:  Research should reflect the interests of the citizen and taxpayer. At the present the main part of the funds is distributed by the scientific establishment as it sees fit, controlled by politicians. But politicians trust their advisers, and these are from the establishment again. A little democratisation might serve as a corrective here.

Die Zeit:  And how would that work out in detail?

Sheldrake:  My suggestion is to use one per cent of all research funding on projects that public interest decides about. 99 per cent would be distributed as before, by means of small committees which I call the College of Cardinals. I do not suppose that the official bodies will give up their control of research budgets, which is only human and understandable.

Die Zeit:  What is your defintion of „public interest“?

Sheldrake:  It might be best to use techniques of opinion research, like polls or focus groups, to find out what people want.

Die Zeit:  Maybe they don‘t know what they want.

Sheldrake:  Most of them do have clear ideas. Alternative research in the USA only received more grants because there was a keen public interest, which politicians took up. Surveys also show that there is an urgent desire for more and independent research on food safety.

Die Zeit:  How about decision by lots?

Sheldrake:  No problem. It would be worth an empirical test. 80 per cent of the "alternative“ budget might be allocated democratically and the remaining 20 per cent might be subjected to the chance of dice. After five years the results might be assessed by an independent body. This would show whether chance or democracy lead to better results.

Die Zeit:  Which body would you want to make the decisons about research applications?

Sheldrake:  One possibility would be committees, another one would be representatives of NGOs. Some kind of democratic National Council for Science might be established, or some society, like the Royal Geographical Society, might get the mandate.

Die Zeit:  Who is to apply?

Sheldrake:  Certainly also amateur scientists. Our societies are much more educated and better trained than at Darwin‘s time.The internet allows access to information which in former days was accessible only to people with large libraries. There are ideal conditions for liberating scientific research from bureaucratic institutions.

Die Zeit:  People might accuse you of making this proposal just to serve your personal interests, like the studies of parapsychological phenomena, that are not funded publicly.

Sheldrake:  I do not get any public funds for my research, nor am I striving for any. I am fortunate enough to receive grants from private foundations.

Die Zeit:  Are there also mainstream scientists who are warming to your ideas?

Sheldrake:  Many colleagues are conscious of the pressure that the present system produces. Part of it goes back to the negative influence of the Citations Index. The allocation of research grants does not depend on the quality of the work but on how often it is quoted. This supports today‘s majority views and leads to an unhealthy narrowing. If someone works in a new field it is only natural that he is not quoted frequently, since there are few people who know the field of study well enough. Even representatives of the establishment are well aware of this danger, and many of my colleagues encourage me in private.

Die Zeit:   If the success of publicly supported projects had to be judged by their practical usefulness, your research on unusual abilities of dogs would not pass the test.

Sheldrake:  Materialistic criteria should not be the measure of all things. Public interest should also be a criterion. Many people are fascinated by research on animal behaviour, as the ratings of films about nature show all over the world. But funds are almost only available for the study of the genome of songbirds, not the study of their behaviour.

Die Zeit:  You have been working outside the institutions for 20 years. Why this concern about science now?

Sheldrake:  Because the crisis has become more fundamental. My suggestions might help to bring life into rigid conditions without turning them upside down. Interests and institutions would remain intact but there is a chance to open new fields to research.

Die Zeit:  How do you want to start the process?

Sheldrake:  First of all a wide debate is needed. Maybe others have better ideas.

Die Zeit:  Is there a lack of public debate in the field of science?

Sheldrake:   Very clearly so! Right now there is no forum for it. Anyone who has differing opinions has a hard time. Disputations in the middle ages always held a role for the advocatus diaboli. Thomas Aquinas, one of the great scholars, wrote works in the style of debates in which the arguments of both sides were developed. We can learn a lot from these classical formats. What we have instead is an infinite number of scientific papers carrying the stamp of being officially accepted.

Interview by Jürgen Krönig.

Translated by Helmut Lasarcyk