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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging stuff!, July 13, 2005
This review is from: The Sense of Being Stared At: And Other Unexplained Powers of the Human Mind (Paperback)
As ever with topics of this sort, opinions tend to be polarised. Sheldrake's supporters tend to be 'up-beat' about his ideas, the sceptics - well, they'll just have to remain sceptical. If you haven't read this book - it is certainly worth looking at. For his own part, Sheldrake claims nothing - that is not already there, waiting to be acknowledged.He would be the happiest of all, if you discovered the basic truth of what he is saying, in your own experience, without pre-meditation.
It strikes me that many people are predisposed to recognise or experience - what Sheldrake is getting at. In common parlance, it used to be called 'sixth sense' - with a kind of tacit understanding that it is more marked, in some people. The title of this book (The Sense of Being Stared At) - was selected because it is a sensation which almost all of us have felt, at some time. For any perceptive person, it is probably a daily occurrence (not to be confounded with paranoia, owing to a sense of shyness). Needless to say, the obvious way to 'test' the theory - is to tackle it in the active, rather than passive sense. Try staring at someone's back on the tube or bus, and see how long it takes before they turn their heads, in the direction of the gaze. Eight times out of ten, it 'works' within 90 seconds. The strange thing, is that it also works, if you focus on a person's image reflected in a train/bus window, the curious thing being that they look in the direction of the gaze, as mediated by the reflection. It is as if they pick up a node of energy.
Of course, the whole point here, is that if minds operates with 'fields' - that there is kind of 'extended mind,' it has all sorts of dimensions, ramifications and implications. It was nice to hear one reviewer saying that Sheldrake's book had changed him, and that he'd decided to be kinder to other people. The 'sense of being stared at' is simply a test case.
Sheldrake has extended his experiments to the animal kingdom, especially the inter-action or rapport between pets and owners. There may be limitations to the 'biological' bases that Sheldrake uses to justify his experiments, not least because the powers or energies he is dealing with seem to be psychic, or psycho-physical, rather than physical. Still, I object to the remarks of certain reviewers, who suggest that there is an element of academic posing in Sheldrake's work. Luckly, I had a chance to meet Sheldrake last year - at the British Library. He struck me as a modest man, unpretentious, genuinely curious about life and its mysteries. He shew videos in the lecture theatre at the B.L., giving ample illustration to his theories -about pets who know when their owners are returning home, even when separated by hundreds of miles.
An Australian friend of mine, who had once endeavoured to educate Aborigines in the ways of the white man, returned from Ayer's Rock, totally changed in outlook, after discovering that the Aborigines invariably knew - days in advance, when someone was coming - and even the day of their arrival, without the use of a telephone or any other visible means. For them, it was a matter of fact that they could discern such things.
During my brief encounter with Sheldrake, I mentioned J.W. Dunne's book - 'An Experiment with Time' - in which Dunne related details of dreams, which concerned future events. It led Dunne to postulate his own theory of the 'extended mind' and minds as fields. Moving out of the fixed 'spatial' boundary i.e. the idea of consciousness as 'in here' - is one step. Moving beyond temporal boundaries - the idea of time as strictly 'linear' - is another.
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48 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Science at its very best, August 24, 2003
Sheldrake's genius is taking commonly reported tales of human and animal abilities that challenge accepted scientific wisdom and developing simple ways of testing those claims under scientifically valid conditions. As with any series of experiments, especially those investigating controversial topics, they gradually evolve into ever-more sophisticated designs to eliminate possible flaws. Sheldrake has done this for the "feeling of being stared at," and the evidence he and others have amassed is persuasive, if reviewed without prejudice. I do not agree with his theoretical explanation for the "staring effect." In Sheldrake's view it suggests a mind that literally extends through space. I think there may be other explanations that better fit the data. But I heartily applaud his proposal of such a theory. Great advancements in science always encounter initial hosility and knee-jerk dismissals because they run counter to accepted wisdom. But without scientific mavericks unsettling the dogma of existing theories, science would rapidly congeal into religion. Indeed, for some hyper-rationalists, "scientism" is already such a religion, with its own set of doctrines, saints, and blasphemers. Sheldrake is a living reminder that by applying conventional scientific methods to unconventional ideas one can sometimes seriously challenge prevailing dogmas. Sheldrake's research and books, including this one, is science at its cutting-edge best.
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52 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the so-called 'skeptics' look silly again, June 24, 2003
Renegade biologist Rupert Sheldrake analyzes in depth an experience that many of us have had at some point - a strange compulsion to look up or behind, only to see someone staring intently at us. In his latest installment Sheldrake discusses a variety of anecdotal and experimental evidence that establishes the reality of the phenomenon, and attempts to explain it with his theory of the 'extended mind' - the idea that our minds are not confined to our brains, but may extend into our environment. Needless to say, Sheldrake's work is a challenge to scientific orthodoxy, making Sheldrake the modern equivalent of a heretic. Shortly after publication of his first book, Nature magazine, one of Britain's leading scientific periodicals, called it "the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." In an interview broadcast on BBC television in 1994, John Maddox, the former editor of Nature, said: "Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned in exactly the language that the Pope used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reason. It is heresy." However, Sheldrake follows an impeccable scientific approach. The writing in this book is very clear, and the evidence for the reality of the phenomenon is very impressive. The empirical sections of the book are the most persuasive. His theoretical explanations will likely generate the most controversy among those scientists and philosophers who are willing to drop their prejudice and concede the reality of the sense of being stared at. Sheldrake combines his theory of the 'extended mind' with his idea of morphic fields - regions of influence not currently recognized by mainstream physics, but (it is argued) necessary to explain the growth and regeneration of organisms. Those readers interested in this will want to read Sheldrake's best and most important work, The Presence of the Past. Where this explanation of ESP in terms of fields may falter is that all of the other fields recognized by physics decline with distance. Parapsychology experiments have demonstrated that ESP is not affected by distance, or by shielding of any sort. Explanations of ESP in terms of electromagnetic fields, for example, have been convincingly falsified by such experiments. Morphic fields, if they exist, must have very different properties from the known fields if they are to explain ESP. Some physicists feel that the non-local quantum mechanical effects that have been corroborated in physics experiments may more plausibly explain ESP. If there is any shortcoming to this book, it is that related profound issues - such as the mind/body problem or the implications of quantum mechanics - are dealt with only briefly. Again, this is not true of Sheldrake's masterwork, The Presence of the Past. So, readers who wish to delve more deeply into Sheldrake's theories know where to look. Sheldrake is a bold scientist, one who never lets convention or dogma interfere with his explorations. As Sheldrake writes in the Introduction, "I believe it is more scientific to explore phenomena we do not understand than to pretend they do not exist. I also believe it is less frightening to recognize that the seventh sense is part of our biological nature, shared with many other animal species, than to treat it as weird or supernatural." Sheldrake is a daring and imaginative theorist, and his ideas deserve to be taken seriously. This is an important work, well-worth reading.
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