by Rupert Sheldrake

Without Prejudice

‘The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry’

by Rupert Sheldrake

Louise Mclean attended the Book Launch on 17^thJanuary 2012 and reports below

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist whose work with morphic fields, plants and telepathy is well known but not necessarily accepted by the more rigid minded members of the scientific community.  He has authored 80 scientific papers and written 10 books.  His biography can be found here

The book launch was an event put on by The Scientific and Medical Network and held at the Great Hall, Kings College London.  It was hugely popular with people who hadn’t booked, begging for seats and the first print run of the book sold out within four days of publication!

The Science Delusion exposes Established Science showing major problems in all areas, its theories being not only difficult to test with Constants not always constant!  By the time Rupert had finished his talk, one had to think that truly the Emperor has no clothes!

Rupert took us through the Ages of Science from the Middle Ages to the present day, saying that the materialistic aspect of science began in the early 19^th century with the denial of Spirit.  From that time on, science viewed man as a machine and believed that the human mind worked only through the mechanism of the brain.

His most fascinating insights relate to what he terms the ‘10 Dogmas of Science’ which he proceeded to demolish one by one!

1.  Everything is essentially mechanical. Rupert says this is not a testable hypothesis.  The beliefs that Nature is mechanical and that science is entirely based on evidence can be easily disproved.

2.  All matter is unconscious.  This Rupert did not agree with.

 3.  The total amount of matter & energy is always the same. A shaky theory that was disproven through the science of nutrition and calorific values.  When human metabolism was studied, it was found that rare individuals in India survived for weeks without food.

 4.  The Laws and Constants of Nature are Fixed. These were found to vary. Between 1928-1945 it was found that the speed of light dropped by 20 km per second and gravitational ‘constants’ measured around the world were found to fluctuate wildly!  In most cases, science tended to ignore these results in order to preserve the accepted theories.

5.  Nature is purposeless. Rupert quickly gave us examples disproving this including that of a male dog’s frenzied pull on the lead to reach a bitch on heat!

6.  All biological inheritance is material. Here Rupert discussed gene sequencing, giving the example of how, after the Human Genome Project, a child’s height could supposedly be determined.  50 genes are involved in determining height but in the end it was found that these gave only a 5% accuracy!  He said that even some top genetic scientists were openly saying that the Genome Project was a failure, though billions of dollars were sunk into it and the return on investment was negative.  Rupert then told us the amusing story of his own ‘Genome Wager’ with Professor Lewis Wolpert.  Read here.

 7.  Memories are stored as material traces in the brain.  Needless to say, these have been impossible to find and prove!

 8.  Our Minds are inside our heads. I couldn’t quite get my own head round this one but what I understood was that science says what we view outside ourselves is only in our heads and not necessarily real.  Scientists also say the brain creates consciousness, which is also contested.

 9.  Psychic Phenomena are illusory. Rupert has running experiments on his website for people who believe they are in touch telepathically with others, so that if they think about a person, that person might suddenly phone them.  He also says lots of people immediately know who is calling them and is doing an experiment to prove the accuracy of this.  He has written books about the telepathy of animals knowing when their owners are in trouble or walking down the street about to come home.

10.  Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works. This is discussed in detail in a chapter of his book and will be of great interest to natural health therapists.

Rupert said that the scientific worldview of the above dogmas has been exported to the rest of the world and propagated as truth.  In India last year 2.5 million students graduated in science and engineering, and 1.5 million in China.

He told us how he has had to regularly take on skeptics, though denialists is a better term, because he has found however much clear evidence he presents them, they rarely, if ever, read any of it.  He says that the skeptics’ belief system is in fact Dogma and what we are seeing nowadays is Science becoming as rigid as the Medieval Church.

At the end of the talk, people spoke up about the impossibility of ever getting their scientific discoveries or concepts accepted or even heard, as the scientific community is organised at a high level worldwide, keeping a very large number of breakthrough discoveries out in the cold.

Referring to his ‘Genome Wager’, Rupert speculated that perhaps it was not such a ridiculous idea to use betting as a way to evaluate scientific theories, rather than expensive trials with expert committees!

At the moment this appears to be downloadable to all:

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO RECORDING OF THE TALK (SMN members only)

Rupert Sheldrake’s website:

http://www.sheldrake.org/homepage.html