Seven experiments that could change the world [Paperback]

Rupert Sheldrake (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1996

How does your pet know when you're coming home? Can people really tell when they're being stared at? Can science explain the unexplainable? Celebrated biologist Rupert Sheldrake explores such questions in this compelling, intelligent book--and with simple, inexpensive experiments, the curious and the skeptical are invited to join him on this journey of discovery in the true spirit of science.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

I consider myself an open-minded person, but I tend to become itchy and skeptical when I encounter most books about the "unexplained"--there are just too many secret Soviet laboratories, mysterious disappearances (of the phenomena, and the investigators and data for that matter). And, I must admit, I've was somewhat skeptical of Sheldrake's previous books on "morphic resonance".

But being an open-minded person, I am glad when I can change my mind, and I am glad to report that this is a worthy book--because of its practicality. Sheldrake confronts some of the outstanding questions facing "PSIence"--and proposes level-headed experiments that readers themselves can become engaged in. Science has often made its greatest advances not when areas of the unknown were summarily dismissed--but when a proper balance between paradigm shifts and experimentation fell into place. It is conceivable that books such as this may help with the evolution of PSI to science.

From Publishers Weekly

A specialist in biochemistry and cell biology formerly at Cambridge University, Sheldrake questions many tenets of the mechanistic-materialistic orthodoxy governing most science today and proposes certain practical experiments to raise further doubts about it. He presents experiments by which we can determine how some pets know when their owners are coming home, how homing pigeons find their way, how insect colonies operate, how people know that they are being stared at from behind and how phantom limbs sometimes seem to amputees to be still attached. Then he turns to the more abstract area of the philosophy of science, pointing out that the fundamental "constants" of nature are not really constant and that the so-called experimenter expectancy effect may skew the results of any test. Finally, he offers details of experiments by which even those who are not trained scientists can measure some of these possibly paranormal phenomena. A well-reasoned, accessible and provocative book. Illustrations.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; Riverhead Trade Pbk. Ed edition (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573225649
• ISBN-13: 978-1573225649
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,169,156 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sheldrake is a genius, December 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Seven experiments that could change the world (Paperback)

Okay, I do not have much time to respond but I just had to voice some opposition to the single reader review this book has posted. Sure, the experiments outlined are a bit more involved than your run of the mill fourth grade level chemical mixing but they are that much more involved. Sheldrake does not provide many answers but the ones he does provide are exceptionally enlightening. He does something even more important though; he demonstrates that nobody out their in the scientific community really has all the answers they claim to. Steven Hawking may be really smart, but it is Sheldrake who future generations will recognize as the man of our time whose ideas were well beyong his time.

5.0 out of 5 stars EXPERIMENTS THAT MIGHT "PROVE" FORMATIVE CAUSATION? SEE FOR YOUSELF, June 27, 2011

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science (2nd Edition with Update on Results) (Paperback)

Rupert Sheldrake (born 1942) is an English biochemist and plant physiologist who has also written or co-written books such as A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance, The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: Fully Updated and Revised, The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet. Natural Grace: Dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science, etc.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1995 book, "The idea of writing the present book arose ... (when) I was asked what I would do if I ... wanted to support interesting and productive research with limited resources. My answer was to draw up a list of simple, low-cost experiments that could change the world, and then to encourage this research program... I finally selected the seven in this book. So, this is not just a book, but a broad-based research program, with an open invitation to participate."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"Committed Skeptics tend to equate the mechanistic worldview with reason itself and are passionate in its defense. They are scientific fundamentalists." (Pg. 24)
"So although the prospects for this line of research (Kirlian Auras) are not too hopeful, it might be worth a few more tries." (Pg. 157)
"Organized groups of Skeptics, such as CSICOP... are always ready to challenge results that do not fit into the mechanistic worldview, and try their best to discredit them. Parapsychologists are so accumstomed to these critical responses that they are unusually aware of the pitfalls of experimenter effects and other sources of bias. But conventional science is not subject to a similar degree of skeptical scrutiny." (Pg. 172-173)
"Many scientists carry out experiments with strong expectations about the outcome, and with deep-rooted assumptions about what is and what is not possible. Can their expectations influence their results? The answer is yes." (Pg. 210)
"I cannot foresee the outcome of the experiments proposed here, but I think there is a good chance that at least some of them will yield very interesting results. I would not have written this book otherwise." (Pg. 244)

11 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars He's ready to believe you..., December 5, 2007

By 

M. D. Brown "Parent Educator" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science (2nd Edition with Update on Results) (Paperback)

That the author is willing to entertain the possibility of something readily dismissed by the scientific establishment is neither uncommon nor a negative. That the author openly scorns the majority of solid evidence is favor of anecdotes, rumors and small studies of dubious quality is certainly a problem.
So your dog seems to have some sort of "sixth sense" that your partner is about to come home. Interesting. Let's study that. Our dog "knew" when I was coming home... until we got a new car, we think she might have heard our older car's transmission working on the hill at the bottom of our street. Sheldrake would embrace the first half as "data" and dismiss the later finding as "blind skepticism". That a perfectly reasonable explanation might exist should certainly be the first recourse, but our author prefers the "world changing" hypothesis that Rover had ESP.
Whether or not there is any real-world basis for psi is the topic and our author generally WANTS to believe it. My approach would involve:
- examining known phenomena (such as our dog's better-than-human hearing)
- finding them wanting (as would have been the case if she reacted to me coming home in the new car)
- examining other possible theories (did I get home around the same time each day? did my partner remember the apparent successes and forget the times Rover missed the boat?)
- then speculate
- then test the speculation...
The author STARTS with the speculation:
- assumes all apparently related phenomina will have ONE cause (Rover's behavior has the same source as Fifi and Fido's behavior)
- takes anecdotes as tests of the speculation
- finds individual cases that seem to challenge more conventional explanations (maybe finding Fido is deaf and therefore could not have heard a car's transmission and Fifi's owner came home at different times each day)
- assumes this destroys the conventional explanations (despite the possibility that Fido had a good sense of time AND Fifi had good hearing...)
- assumes the unsupported theory MUST be right.
Heck, we have as much evidence for my dog having ESP as we do for the CIA beaming information from sattelites into my dog's brain. Maybe fairies live in the bushes at the bottom of the hill and wisper the information to the Gnomes who send runners to tell Rover... Or the ghost of Rover's dead mother is telling her... Maybe aliens are deliberately corrupting our memories of Rover's behavior to convince us that science is all junk... Who knows?
Certainly not Sheldrake.