Giovanni may be close to correct in his criticism with Dawkins than Sheldrake.
With Sheldrake - it is more of a case of being on the cutting edge, and being read out of context. The bleeding edge, as the Brit's like to call it - is a place where many claims are by nature hard to substantiate . and even if correct, the proponent comes out looking bloody. Such is the "morphic field" which is further complicated by its ties to religion and ID not as competing but more as explanatory.. It is very easy to slip off of this edge, bloody or not - and RS provides his critics a large target. If he is remembered for nothing else then the morphic field paradigm . Sheldrake will be considered as one of the great thinkers in human history, along with this mirror image, or is that his evil twin - Richard Dawkins, the meme-man. The two want to have nothing to do with each other - which is a strange irony. They are a Janus-headed pair, good-cop, bad cop etc who together epitomize the two most important paradigms in modern PsySci (parapsychology combined with philosophy). IMO these two ought to be read together, since a morphic field is of little use in our day-to-day context without memes. Problem is - Sheldrake takes every opportunity to extend his insight to areas of lower-fit - such as with Pets - and many of those suggestions have even lower proof levels; whereas Dawkins takes every opportunity to espouse atheism as its own religion, which ironically is inherently best-explained by memes and holons as a necessary stage of societal development. For instance- even in the context of today's Science news, consider the 'bigger picture' in its PsySci context - by taking the meme of "hidden threat from outer space" which is embodied in the Tunguska event and recently came into focus with the news of a large meteorite approaching close earth contact - and then add in the surprise News of meteorites in Russia. Is there a religious/spiritual connotation, or is this merely random coincidental occurrence which our TV media wants to sensationalize? Had it been closer to Dec 22, 2012 you can imagine the headlines. Sheldrake might go further out on a limb to say that the worldwide focus on a latent meme will actually increase the probability field of it happening. There is no proof of that, but it is intriguing. Perhaps this meteorite is not the best example of "increasing the probability of a random event", but that would not deter RS from saying that it was. Strong Caveat: this is my strained example, and I do not know what, if anything RS has to anything to say about this particular incident. From: Giovanni Santostasi Sheldrake makes a lot of absurd claims that are unsubstantiated. And he doesn't understand how creation from nothing is the most natural thing of all. Giovanni Terry Blanton wrote: Rupert Sheldrake is sometimes annoying to conventional science. Published late last month this talk in two parts is amusing at times; but, always thought provoking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0waMBY3qEA4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRKvvxku5So
