Though we posted it in the news briefs last week, I wanted to bring attention to this profile of scientific ‘heretic’ Rupert Sheldrake in The Guardian. It is, I think, a nice little insight into the life and thinking of a particularly fascinating man, without getting too deeply into the arguments about his research and theories:
Sheldrake is the same age as Dawkins – 70 this year – and though their careers began in an almost identical biochemical place, they could hardly have ended up further apart. If Sheldrake’s ideas could be boiled down to a sentence, you might borrow one from Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Richard, than are dreamt of in your philosophy…”
“What we have in common,” Sheldrake says, “is that we are both certain that evolution is the central feature of nature. But I would say his theory of evolution stops at biology. When it comes to cosmology, for example, he has little to say. I would take the evolutionary principle there, too. I think that the ‘laws of nature’ are also prone to evolve; I think they are more like habits than laws. Much of what we are beginning to understand is that they clearly have evolved differently in different parts of the universe.”
The comments below the article are another matter. Which ironically perhaps illustrate Sheldrake’s criticisms of ‘scientific fundamentalism’ better than even he can.