Customer Reviews

Presence of the Past

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I felt compulsed to write a 5-star review after seeing only 3 reviews, all of them giving 3 or 4 stars to this classic masterpiece. Hey, don't get it wrong! this is a superb book you can't put down once you've started. I have read it twice and intend to translate it into Estonian.
Although, yes, only maybe a quarter of orthodox biologists can stand Sheldrake's name, the implications of his theory - if correct - are enormous. It would thoroughly change our present understanding of the concept of memory, which means that we need new fields of science - physical semiotics, for example. It would push the "borders" of semiotics to include the very first particles after the BB. Followers of C.S.Peirce would drink lots of champagne and would celebrate the victory. It would also require a radical revision of the ideas of evolution.
So - yes, yes, this IS a popular half-science-fiction book, easily dismissed by orthodox scientists. However, several of Sheldrake's examples are convincing and his theoretizing makes sense. So, I prefer to keep Sheldrake's ideas in "Interesting unsolved cases" drawer. Sheldrake is very much like Ken Wilber. "Serious" philosophers don't call Wilber a philosopher, but an "interesting individual". I would take it as a compliment.

I read this book some years ago and find the ideas in it have stayed with me, as they go a long way toward filling some holes in our understanding of reality. Sheldrake's Morphic Fields mean living things communicate even when they are not in physical proximity. This explains some of his other research, such as psychic connections between human and animal. Read Sheldrake's book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home, a fascinating look at the human-animal bond.

But the idea that once a new technique is learned by part of the population, it is more easily learned by the rest is startling. Can it explain the rapid spread of computer literacy? Like the old joke in school, can we actually learn "by osmosis?" Sheldrake's examples of group behavior and generational learning in the animal world points exactly in that direction. What one generation learns can be passed to the next. What I learn can make it easier for you to learn. This is a radical idea!

I've recently read astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell's book, The Way of the Explorer, in which he presents his view of reality, based on years of research into psychic and spiritual pehonomenon. His view incorporates Sheldrake's ideas in that he accounts for knowledge that does not come from standard learning methods. Knowledge received from spiritual insight or received psychically is part of the natural but unseen web underlying our universe, according to Mitchell. All knowledge of past and present is available, but is not sought by most people, since they do not know or practice the techniques for tapping into that source and there are no currently accepted scientific theories to explain how it works. Sheldrake's Morphic Fields are one such explanation.

The Presence of the Past is an influential book that will continue to be consulted and discussed. Since reading it, I've had more reason to think Sheldrake is right and I've read nothing elsewhere that disproves his fascinating conclusions.

Legendary managment guru W. Edwards Deming spoke frequently of "profound knowledge." Basically, this is knowledge that profoundly changes the way you think and releases new creative energies. See his book The New Economics.

Rupert Sheldrake's ideas about "morphogenetic fields" and "morphic resonance" must surely be that kind of knowledge. He begins with a fairly simple scientific concept and brings it into another creative universe. Many of us are familiar with "fields". For example, there are electomagnetic fields, gravitational fields, and quantum matter fields.

We know from Science that we are immersed in a sea of electromagnetic fields of numerous frequencies. Waves of energy pass through each other without interfering with each other. Matter is condensed energy. We can see that form of energy, however there is a lot of energy we cannot see.

Based on mathematical calculations, we also know that an infinite spectrum of energy waves is theoretically possible. Waves in infinite variety might be passing through each other continuously without noticeably interacting. Perhaps, the world we know is just one spectrum connected to many other spectrums we haven't seen yet.

We'd have worlds have within worlds, in other words: "baby universes", ten dimensions in "space time", "superstrings", "universe splits", and so forth and so on.

Author and physcist David Bohn famously explained it this way. "Everything material is also mental, and everything mental is also material. But, there may be more infinitely subtle levels of matter than we are aware of." This is where Sheldrake's morphogentic fields come into the picture, or big picture, it seems to me. The forms and physical properties that we see resonating throughout existence are developed by some kind of know-how or knowledge. Could it be that there are fields in Biology and Chemistry like the fields we recognize in Physics?

If I've got it right, Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields are mental or maybe spiritual fields that spread know-how and knowledge throughout creation. Maybe I've skipped a rung of the inner and outer worlds of existence, but I feel like I'm getting pretty warm here.

Sheldrake doesn't want us to just take his word for this, however. Theories in Science need to be tested. And, Sheldrake's already working on that. He proposes several experiments in the last few chapters of the book. Browsing Amazon, I see there's another book or two in publication about these experiments.

You might want to read this book with Out of Control by Kevin Kelly and/or Living Systems by James Grier Miller, which is what I did. Several reviewers of this book have mentioned "metaphysics". If you'd like to go in that direction as well, you might enjoy What is Process Theology by Robert B. Mellert or Process Theology: A Basic Introduction by Robert Mesle.

Sheldrake's original idea expounded in his earlier : "A New Science of Life" is further investigated here, I say investigated rather than developed because he seems to have taken a step back towards the view of the science he purports to have surpassed. The idea of morphic resonance is very interesting indeed, however the use of the field concept is much the same as the fields proposed in physics. One feels Sheldrake is making use of such devices because a new idea is not at hand whereas a truly new approach would revitalise this idea of morphic resonance and perhaps consider the whole rather than a piecemeal approach such as fields which act like pieces, the common use prevalent in physics with the possible exception of quantum theory.

In this aspect I agree with the previous reviewer but on the other hand there are some really fascinating ideas present, the basic one being morphic resonance, and the habits of nature. There certainly is a fair bit of experimental evidence to support at least a deeper investigation of these ideas rather than the usual "crank" reaction of mainstream science which of course considers it heresy. Crucial to such an investigation would be a device capable of measuring this "field" or at least the effect on the formation of structures such as crystals which Sheldrake notes should provide an interesting test of his ideas.

I believe Sheldrake does not take enough care to avoid a certain feeling of uncertainty and even at times a sense that there is something not quite solid about the reasoning. I also believe this was not his intention and that his ideas have great worth and deserve the most serious consideration.

Sheldrake's opus shakes the axioms of causality underlying experimental science. Not many books have done that. Not many books can address metaphysical topics, suggest alternatives to the standard Aristotelian underpinnings of science or "naturalism," and do so plausibly without recourse to superstition.

Sheldrake, a biologist, examines the many anomalous phenomena that seem to cut against some very basic beliefs about "how things work." The book integrates observations from many different fields of endeavor from physics to biology to psychology. The scope of this work as as wide as it is deep.

If you have ever read Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions," this book will resonate along the same lines for you. Well worth your time and money.

Sheldrake's ideas, while controverial are an excellent place to add to anyone's ongoing exploration of Metaphysics. I agree with a previous reviewer in that these ideas can be interpreted using old terminology. Instead I have found it better to synthesize Sheldrake's excellent works with David Bohm, and any other relevant source I can find. Where do these Morphic fields come from? That is the truly interesting question.

"Familiarity with concepts conceals a deep problem". Mr Sheldrake is right to point this out, but never quite gets to grips with the problem he is tackling because ironically, he is never quite able to escape the familiarity of his own field of expertise. Like every scientist who is trying to say something new, he struggles to keep it in the fold of accepted thinking and to that purpose does no more than invent a new language in his conception of morphogenetic fields which does little more than the old idea of psi-fields or holons. From a scientific point of view, it gives to the kind of information he is dealing with an acceptable image, but in the end it is the same as saying that there is a something-I-know-not-what going on. The fact that experiments he has performed or reported on suggests something extraordinary in the nature of reality amounts to no more than saying that there may be something in it. The book has a lengthy section analysing the notion of a law as it has come down to us from the Greeks, but he never actually challenges the familiarity of the basic concepts of science that are passed down the generations as immutable. Consequently, he picks on the notion of a "field" within whose boundaries he presents his case for the morphogenetic experience and causative formation, not noticing that this conception itself is designed to bolster the laws of inertia which are now some three hundred years old and still unrevoked. Consequently, he is blind to the role that death plays in the structure of reality and within morphogenesis itself, merely noting that dead languages or unfamiliar languages can be learnt faster than gobbledegook or invented languages never spoken before. Furthermore, it suffers from a flaw that was a criticism of the platonic Forms in that Mr Sheldrake thinks that new fields arise with the formation of new ideas. He does not consider that, in the event of a field existing, it is just as capable of being switched off! To try to demonstrate the drama of experience in a test-tube is to invite the drama to dissipate and leave only a husk of itself for eyes to pry. It was the same problem for those experiments exploring psychic phenomena: how can the interest of the phenomenon be sustained over long periods of cold examination? Usually the experiments are held up as evidence of disproof by the skeptical and the positivist. At the end of the day, given the narrow parameters of operation, and the desire to be scientific, the best one can say is that there may be something in it and that is the end of that. What is really needed are ideas that challenge the autocratic position of science which is self-assumed which demands that anything concerning the nature of reality must comply with the conditions laid down by etc.etc. Even so, it is an interesting read, as far as it is prepared to go.

Rupert Sheldrake's book on formative causation is quite interesting. His theory centers around the idea that biological organisms inherit a sort of collective memory, which then altars their development and form.

One of the questions that Sheldrake addresses is whether an organism can learn, or acquire, certain characteristics and if those characteristics can be inherited by future generations. He discusses the experimental research and theory that pertains to this question, including the studies at Harvard in 1920 (conducted by William McDougall), the fruit fly experiments conducted in Waddington's lab in the 1950's, and so on.

The theory of morphic resonance has some experimental weight behind it; hopefully more and more scientists will look into researching it.

Is the world an inanimate machine or a living organism? Does it obey eternal laws, or does it behave by long-established habits? Do living things achieve their actual form as instructed by DNA, or by some overarching field of form? Is memory stored within the brain (no good evidence for that) or somewhere else? All of these questions and many more are considered in this massive work. If they aren't exactly answered, at least they are studied.

Author Rupert Sheldrake writes in a dense scholarly way with extensive reference to the history of philosophy and sciece. Unfortunately he introduces too many terms that are not well explained--terms like morphic fields, morphic resonance, chreodes, and so on. He offers no real evidence for these concepts, and only a few rather weak experiments to support any part of his system. It took me several years to finish this book, and it was thought-provoking, but I still don't grasp, not really, the basic concepts.

Still, if you're open-minded and looking for the answers to everything, don't overlook this book. It's profound. It's deep. Too deep for this reader, but might be just what you're searching for. reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

I am fascinated with the writer of this book. Having lived my life as a Wiccan practitioner for over 40 years has allowed me to see what he sees. I am happy that someone is finally putting out into main stream culture the information that we have, for so long, lived with.

Kurlian photography has photographed the electrical maps of living systems for decades. And removing the physical aspect of the living organism does not diminish the electrical blueprint that remains behind as a whole, despite part of the living organism having been removed. Call it whatever you like: the aura is with us. Ready or not, enlightenment will come to unite all of mankind.

He speaks of dampening the process by thinking negative thoughts about the systems he explains. It is a natural thing for us to think the worst. Magic is no different. All texts ask that you simply accept magic as truth and then go about your life. We have always had the power to create our own realities. Now we see why.

THANK YOU, GOD!!! THANK YOU!!!