Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Introduction to Morphic Resonance






In the late 1970s and early 80s, Rupert Sheldrake synthesized and publicized a new theory on holism, usually labeled the theory of Morphic Resonance. Rupert's theory looks at how more and more complex wholes (holons) emerge in the universe through time in a kind of universal evolutionary process. This research paper on Rupert's website provides a brief overview of the theory, for more detail I recommend his book The Presence of the Past. Here are some excerpts from Rupert's introductory paper on morphic resonance:




In the hypothesis of formative causation, discussed in detail in my books A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE and THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST, I propose that memory is inherent in nature. Most of the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.

My interest in evolutionary habits arose when I was engaged in research in developmental biology, and was reinforced by reading Charles Darwin, for whom the habits of organisms were of central importance. As Francis Huxley has pointed out, Darwin’s most famous book could more appropriately have been entitled The Origin of Habits.



Morphic fields in biology

Over the course of fifteen years of research on plant development, I came to the conclusion that for understanding the development of plants, their morphogenesis, genes and gene products are not enough. Morphogenesis also depends on organizing fields. The same arguments apply to the development of animals. Since the 1920s many developmental biologists have proposed that biological organization depends on fields, variously called biological fields, or developmental fields, or positional fields, or morphogenetic fields.

All cells come from other cells, and all cells inherit fields of organization. Genes are part of this organization. They play an essential role. But they do not explain the organization itself. Why not?

Thanks to molecular biology, we know what genes do. They enable organisms to make particular proteins. Other genes are involved in the control of protein synthesis. Identifiable genes are switched on and particular proteins made at the beginning of new developmental processes. Some of these developmental switch genes, like the Hox genes in fruit flies, worms, fish and mammals, are very similar. In evolutionary terms, they are highly conserved. But switching on genes such as these cannot in itself determine form, otherwise fruit flies would not look different from us.

Many organisms live as free cells, including many yeasts, bacteria and amoebas. Some form complex mineral skeletons, as in diatoms and radiolarians, spectacularly pictured in the nineteenth century by Ernst Haeckel. Just making the right proteins at the right times cannot explain the complex skeletons of such structures without many other forces coming into play, including the organizing activity of cell membranes and microtubules. . .

I suggest that morphogenetic fields work by imposing patterns on otherwise random or indeterminate patterns of activity. For example they cause microtubules to crystallize in one part of the cell rather than another, even though the subunits from which they are made are present throughout the cell.

Morphogenetic fields are not fixed forever, but evolve. The fields of Afghan hounds and poodles have become different from those of their common ancestors, wolves. How are these fields inherited? I propose that that they are transmitted from past members of the species through a kind of non-local resonance, called morphic resonance.

The fields organizing the activity of the nervous system are likewise inherited through morphic resonance, conveying a collective, instinctive memory. Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the collective memory of the species. This means that new patterns of behaviour can spread more rapidly than would otherwise be possible. Foe example, if rats of a particular breed learn a new trick in Harvard, then rats of that breed should be able to learn the same trick faster all over the world, say in Edinburgh and Melbourne. There is already evidence from laboratory experiments (discussed in A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE) that this actually happens.

The resonance of a brain with its own past states also helps to explain the memories of individual animals and humans. There is no need for all memories to be “stored” inside the brain. . .



The memory of nature

From the point of view of the hypothesis of morphic resonance, there is no need to suppose that all the laws of nature sprang into being fully formed at the moment of the Big Bang, like a kind of cosmic Napoleonic code, or that they exist in a metaphysical realm beyond time and space.

Before the general acceptance of the Big Bang theory in the 1960s, eternal laws seemed to make sense. The universe itself was thought to be eternal and evolution was confined to the biological realm. But we now live in a radically evolutionary universe.

If we want to stick to the idea of natural laws, we could say that as nature itself evolves, the laws of nature also evolve, just as human laws evolve over time. But then how would natural laws be remembered or enforced? The law metaphor is embarrassingly anthropomorphic. Habits are less human-centred. Many kinds of organisms have habits, but only humans have laws. The habits of nature depend on non-local similarity reinforcement. Through morphic resonance, the patterns of activity in self-organizing systems are influenced by similar patterns in the past, giving each species and each kind of self-organizing system a collective memory. . .

Habits are subject to natural selection; and the more often they are repeated, the more probable they become, other things being equal. Animals inherit the successful habits of their species as instincts. We inherit bodily, emotional, mental and cultural habits, including the habits of our languages. . .

The morphic fields of social groups connect together members of the group even when they are many miles apart, and provide channels of communication through which organisms can stay in touch at a distance. They help provide an explanation for telepathy. There is now good evidence that many species of animals are telepathic, and telepathy seems to be a normal means of animal communication, as discussed in my book DOGS THAT KNOW WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE COMING HOME. Telepathy is normal not paranormal, natural not supernatural, and is also common between people, especially people who know each other well.


I believe that Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance sheds a great deal of light upon a holistic understanding of nature, and the kinds of correlations and information transfer that we label as "psi phenomena".

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I actually saw Sheldrake give a presentation on morphic fields at California Lutheran University in beautiful Thousand Oaks, California a few years ago. He showed a video of a parrot that was (sometimes) able to guess what images its owner was looking at in another room. I was amazed by the ostensible ability of this creature to read the mind of its owner!

Unfortunately, morphic resonance does not actually explain or predict anything. It is merely an ad hoc supposition to account for difficult phenomena. It is very similar to string theory in this respect. Until his theory is useful for something (e.g., making a prediction), I will remain sceptical.

M.C. said...

Unfortunately, morphic resonance does not actually explain or predict anything.

I'm not sure that science can actually explain things. It's more a description of correlations that allows some degree of prediction and control. It doesn't answer the "why" but rather the "how".

In the case of the theory of morphic resonance, the prediction is that nature creates new patterns of activity which are initially very flexible, but the more they are repeated the more rigid and "law-like" they become. In addition, the more a particular behavior, form, etc. is repeated, the more readily and easily it will be repeated in the future.

This creates some testable predictions that vary from conventional theory. For example, the more people that solve a puzzle, the easier it should be for people in the future to solve that same puzzle.

Sheldrake covers some of the research that provides evidence for this effect in his books, particularly The Presence of the Pase and the second edition of A New Science of Life.

Unknown said...

I'm not sure that science can actually explain things. It's more a description of correlations that allows some degree of prediction and control.

This is a very common and old misconception of science. Thomas Kuhn properly disposed of this model of science in his famous The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Science, we now know, is not merely descriptive, but it is actually abductive. That is, it makes wide ranging guesses about how nature ought to behave under specified circumstances and those guesses are vindicated on the basis of their ability to provide us with useful predictions about our area of interest (whether it be physics or biology, for example).

Regarding you suggested predictions for Sheldrake's theory, the theory of synapse memory in current neurobiology is far more plausible and happens to be very useful in making predictions regarding the hormone treatment that would be necessary to get someone to change their modes of behaviour. Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance, instead of giving us a clue about how we might change nature's memory, makes it impossible for us to do so by rendering the mechanism of that memory entirely beyond observation and therefore manipulation. It is simply unfalsifiable and impractical, and so it cannot even be properly called science yet.

M.C. said...

Actually the synapse theory of memory is in very bad shape with the empirical observations, which is many of its supporters have been forced to continuously modify it and some have abandoned it completely. For example, Karl Lashley who spent decades trying to localize "memory traces" in the brain and finally was forced to admit that memory is "everywhere and nowhere in particular".

There will be one or more longer posts on this topic of memory here at AMNAP in the future, but it is covered very thoroughly in Irreducible Mind, a book which quite frankly is utterly devastating to the materialist account of human consciousness.

Unknown said...

It is never productive to tell a scientist what they can't do. Tell us what we can do, and then prove that you know your stuff by doing it.

The whole psi phenomenon field seems to be a step backwards for the scientific community. A step back to a pre-Baconian age where mere assertions without works are somehow given the respectability of "truth".

M.C. said...

The whole psi phenomenon field seems to be a step backwards for the scientific community. A step back to a pre-Baconian age where mere assertions without works are somehow given the respectability of "truth".

I'm quite perplexed by your statement.

The parapsychologists are doing "works" -- that is, conducting controlled experiments and publishing them in peer-reviewed journals. I covered these experiments extensively on the old AMNAP, and plan on doing the same again here over time. . .

The "skeptics" -- save for one or two exceptions, are the ones making "assertions without works" by attacking the experimental results of the parapsychologists from the comfort of an armchair.

Unknown said...

The parapsychologists are doing "works" -- that is, conducting controlled experiments and publishing them in peer-reviewed journals.

To think that works are demonstrated by statistical significance is merely to conform to the old verificationist model of the scientific method, which was surely discredited by Karl Popper, not to mention Thomas Kuhn.

The factors affecting Sheldrake's experiments are intensely complex and it would take much careful analysis to see where he has gone wrong (if indeed he has). In order to make this analysis worth our while, we have to see some useful results from him and his compatriots in the field. If all he can produce is statistically significant results, then I'm sorry, but that is not going to be enough. Tell us how accepting his theory is importantly changing how we do medicine and curing diseases or making people live better (or is potentially able to do these things).

Works are not experiments. They are useful results that we can employ to do new and exciting things.