Hi Bob,
I've been on FW from its earliest months and this subject has never turned
up before. Sheldrake's ideas about morphic fields are very close to a
metaphorical interpretion of quantum physics which I call a 'deep
information field' in what I write below. This doesn't make me any sort of
expert but it's something I dwell on frequently and really underpins my own
personal philosophy.
(However, it's likely that some FWers will not be interested in quantum
physics or in philosophical interpretations of it so, as this is likely to
be longish, please read no further if that's the case!)
No-one understands quantum physics. At least this is what at least two of
the greatest contemporary minds on the subject, Richard Feynman and John
Wheeler, have said about it. Nevertheless, both of them have speculated
enormously about its implications, sometimes to verifiable effect, and they
both seem to give the go-ahead to the worthwhileness of lesser mortals such
as ourselves dwelling on the subject, even if only with awe.
To my mind the principal wonder of the universe as partially revealed by
quantum physics is that there is a deep field, and this is mainly
characterised by information content rather than by mechanical things or
qualities that we are normally able to measure or conceive of. For
example, if previously paired electrons with opposite spins (and thus a
relationship with each other) are separated and fired off in opposite
directions then a change of spin on one electron will be detected by the
other electron instantly -- or at least, with a reaction time that is
faster than the speed of light or any other transmission method -- no
matter how far distant it is from its former companion. This effect has
been demonstrated in a well-known series of experiments that were initiated
by Michael Aspect. So some sort of telepathy, morphic resonance or
information field seems to be involved here.
Another way of glimpsing this information field is given by Richard
Feynman. Imagine, he says, an electron moving in a particular direction.
Its progress cannot be measured in any way (say, by a photon) without
greatly disturbing it and the path of the electron is best conceived of as
appearing at a definite place at one instance, disappearing, and instantly
reappearing at another specific place. What we conceive of as a smoothly
unfolding reality, as previously described by classical physics, can only
exist as a huge stack of discontinuous "stationary states" -- of electrons,
photons, protons or what have you -- that is produced, or directed, by a
deep field of information. This is the fundamental postulate of quantum
physics as laid down by Bohr in 1913. In anthropomorphic terms, this deep
field obviously 'knows' what has been going on previously in the
superficial world in which we live.
Looking at reality in this way, the world that we see and touch is actually
subject to some sort of record that is being kept at a deep level and in
terms that we cannot comprehend because our sense organs are limited in
scope (and all scientific apparatus has to translate their performance into
sensual terms). And this applies to everything, even to the whole world,
the solar system, whole galaxies containing hundreds of thousands of suns,
and concatenations of galaxies that stretch to the furthest edge of the
universe -- far beyond the conceptions of most of us unless we happen to be
astronomers. And the reason why the projection of all this can be
'comfortably' held in total detail in a deep field of information is that
the 'inner layers' of reality (from mankind's position as somehow half way
between) is far deeper than the extent of the 'outer layers' as mentioned
above. (For example, the proportionate extent of space between an electron
and a nucleus within an atom is billions of time greater than the space
between the sun and the earth. And deeper still at the layers of smaller
particles, proportionate space is larger still.)
This 'all-knowingness' of an information field is very close to the notion
of the omniscient God at the heart of all mankind's religions. It's almost
identical, except that the different religions have different cultural
notions of God's other characteristics -- the Christian one being that of a
very anthropomorphic God with whom an individual can have a preferential
relationship, Allah being similar, though with a different personality, the
Buddhist one being so impersonal that it's almost no God, and so on and so on.
In my view, this cannot be taken further by science. Quantum physics has
re-interpreted the idea of an omniscient God in perfectly acceptable
scientific terms. It can only be taken further by faith. By this I mean
that even a deep field of information (or one of the Gods of the different
religions, if you like) doesn't totally determine what happens in all the
'higher' levels that we call reality. The universe can unfold in different
ways (also called Chaos Theory). Even we, by a mysterious process that we
rather crudely call 'freewill' and which is associated with that other
equally mysterious essence that we call 'consciousness' also has some input
into what actually unfolds. Even though our new inputs are infinitessimally
small compared with everything that has gone on before, and thus laid down
only as a sort of provisional overlay upon a template in the deep
information field, they are still important. We still have a degree of
significance. Not much! But some. No matter how small this is, it makes
all the difference.
I believe it is this feeling of significance which is the true source of
the survival instinct of all lifeforms, ourselves included, deeper even
than memes or genes and, at a conscious human level, the source of
creativity. Without it we would have no possible feeling of significance,
no curiosity, no art, no science, no religion, no speculation, no basis for
morality -- indeed, no reason for living. We would be no more than
automatic vehicles for chemical reactions with no responsibility for what
we do.
I am sure that quantum physics will come up with experiments in the future
that will further refine what I have vaguely called the deep information
field and make the notion more widely acceptable, but I am also sure that
what we sense as our freewill or consciousness or creativity will never be
explicable or demonstrated in scientific terms because it's an embedded
part of a larger universe that can never take a truly objective view of
itself, nor we of it.
Keith H
At 16:11 30/05/01 -0400, you wrote:
<<<<
Controversy follows Sheldrake at every turn, and little wonder. The
existence of
telepathy, a radical notion by itself, is just a subset of Sheldrake's
larger premises-- that invisible, but onetheless pervasive "morphic fields"
are responsible for both the shape and behavior of all hings, from atoms to
zebras, organizing them much as a magnetic field lines up iron filings.
Just as controversial is Sheldrake's hypothesis that these fields broadcast
across time and space, a phenomenon he calls morphic resonance. Result: A
carrot seed grows into the shape of a carrot because it is directed by the
cumulative morphic resonance of all previous carrots. A million blind
African termites build a 10-foot-tall nest, featuring top-to-bottom
ventilation shafts and ther complex architectures, because they are guided
by the morphic resonance of previous termite nests. A newspaper crossword
puzzle is easier to solve late in the day, because the morphic resonance
broadcast by thousands of successful solvers facilitates the task. A dog
anticipates its owner's return because the bond they forge through close
association is what Sheldrake terms a "social" morphic field, which
stretches, but does not break, when they are apart. Sheldrake contends the
same transcendental bonding explains how
pigeons home, fish school, and dogs and cats find owners who have moved
hundreds of miles away. Humans, Sheldrake says, retain only vestiges of
morphic-resonance telepathy, possibly because telephones and mass media
make the ability less necessary for survival. In animals, he contends, it
remains robust.
>>>>
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
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