Morphic field
As a morphic field (Engl. "Morphic field"), originally as a morphogenetic field that designates British biologist Rupert Sheldrake a hypothetical field called "formative causation" for the development of structures in both the biology , physics , chemistry , but also should be responsible in society. The natural science classifies the hypothesis as pseudoscientific , but scientific testing of the hypothesis is required in individual cases. Representatives of the social sciences have also seriously discussed the hypothesis.
The term morphogenetic field used in developmental biology is not identical to the fields assumed by Sheldrake.
starting point
Sheldrake studied biochemistry at Clare College of Cambridge University and philosophy at Harvard University . He was interested in how plants and all other living things get their shape. A single cell splits into initially identical copies, which take on specific properties with each further cell division; some cells become leaves, others become stems. This change, called differentiation , is irreversible.
The development from a single cell to a complex organism is the subject of developmental biology . The most important mechanisms in the differentiation of organisms were elucidated by her. It has been discussed since the 1920s that the regulation of embryo development and limb regeneration implied the existence of unknown "morphogenetic fields". The discussion was replaced by the discovery of differential gene expression , which could at least largely explain the pattern formation . It was only in the 1990s that factors could be found that actually determine such “fields” - they are known as morphogens .
hypothesis
In the one developed by Sheldrake, the existence of a universal field is postulated which is supposed to encode the "basic pattern" of a biological system. He initially referred to the previously existing concept of the morphogenetic or developmental field, but reformulated it as part of his hypothesis.
In Sheldrake's view, it is easy for a form that already exists in one place to arise in any other place. According to this hypothesis, the morphic field affects not only biological systems, but also any form, for example the formation of crystal structures. In 1973 Sheldrake called this a morphic field , later also the memory of nature . He published his hypothesis in 1981 in his book A New Science of Life (German: "The creative universe. The theory of the morphogenetic field").
In his 1988 published work Presence of the Past: A Field Theory of Life. (German: "The memory of nature. The secret of the origin of forms in nature") he expanded his hypothesis to the effect that the morphic fields also capture the laws of nature themselves. From this point of view, nature might not consist of natural laws but rather of habits.
In contrast to the electromagnetic field as an “energetic type of causation”, this field should not provide any energy. The hypothesis of a morphic field serves as an explanatory model for the exact appearance of a living being (as part of its epigenetics ) and should be involved in the behavior and coordination with other beings. This morphic field is supposed to provide a force that controls the development of an organism so that it takes on a form that resembles other specimens of its species. A feedback mechanism called morphic resonance is said to lead to changes in this pattern as well as to explain why humans, for example, adopt the specific shape of their species during their development.
As early as 1958, the chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi had developed a very similar concept in his book Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (pp. 348–359), which he had also called morphogenetic fields. Other forerunners are the largely neglected theory of morphogenetic fields by the biologist Alexander Gurwitsch from the 1920s and the even older entelechy theory by the embryologist Hans Driesch , which was created around the turn of the century .
Justifications
One of Sheldrake's evidence was the work of researcher William McDougall from Harvard University to find out who had examined the ability of rats in the 1920s mazes. He had found that rats, having learned the labyrinth before others, found it faster. At first it took an average of 165 unsuccessful attempts for the rats to find their way through the maze without errors, but after a few generations there were only 20 unsuccessful attempts. The same labyrinth was always used for the experiments, traces of smell were ignored. McDougall believed that this was due to some sort of Lamarckian evolutionary process . Sheldrake, on the other hand, saw in it the proof of the existence of a morphic field. In his opinion, the first rats in the maze created a learning pattern within a “rat field” that the offspring of these rats could fall back on, even if they were not related.
Another example came from chemistry , in which another as yet unexplained “learning behavior” took place in the cultivation of crystals . When a new chemical compound is first made, the crystallization process is slow. As soon as other researchers repeat the experiment, they find that the process is faster. Chemists attribute this to the increased quality of later experiments, since the documented errors of earlier experiments were not committed again. Sheldrake, however, considered this to be another example of morphogenetic fields. The crystals grown first would have created a field that the crystals of the experiments carried out later would have used.
A number of other examples have been added since then. Both the behavior of monkeys in Japan when cleaning their food and the ability of European birds to learn to open milk bottles were offered as examples of a “non-local” force in behavior and learning.
Termite experiment
Morphic fields are postulated by Sheldrake in order to explain the holistic nature of self-organizing systems . He deduces from his observations that this cannot be explained solely by the sum of its components or their interactions. Sheldrake's thought model of the development of self-organizing systems through morphic fields accordingly arranges atoms, molecules, crystals, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, social communities, ecosystems, planetary systems, solar systems and galaxies. In other words, they order systems at all levels of complexity and are the basis of the observed wholeness of nature, which is greater than the sum of its parts. This can serve as a first, simplified definition for morphic fields.
As a popular scientific hook for his theories, Sheldrake often uses references to an experiment that the South African naturalist Eugène Marais allegedly carried out in the 1920s: A continuous, vertical gap several centimeters wide is cut into a termite den . Afterwards, a steel plate protruding beyond the edges is fixed in the middle, so that the two halves of the building are separated from one another, but the cut surfaces are still open. This could not prevent the termites from building similar arcs on both sides of the plate when the cut was repaired, which would meet exactly without the plate. Marais reports on this alleged observation in his book The Soul of the White Ant , but does not give any specific information about the width of the cut, etc. Detailed information on how exactly the constructions actually meet is also not available.
Another observation by Marais, to which Sheldrake makes frequent reference, namely the cessation of all activity of the termite colony upon the death of the queen, is indeed detectable. Today science usually ascribes this to the absence of pheromone excretions from the queen, which are difficult to measure due to the lowest concentrations.
Sheldrake's key message about the Marais ideas is that there must be an overarching plan for termites to construct and repair their den. Since this plan cannot be present in a small termite itself, it must be found outside. Critics argue that Marais like Sheldrake overlook the "principle of conditional probabilities ": Small changes that follow certain rules lead to a high level of complexity when added together, without an overall plan even having to be available.
More work
In 1994 Sheldrake published Seven Experiments That Could Change the World . In it, Sheldrake suggests seven experiments that could help confirm or refute his hypothesis:
- An experiment to test the reported ability of pets in some cases to sense the return of their owner before their arrival.
- An experiment on the ability of racing pigeons to find their way back to their loft. Normally this is attributed to a pigeon's sensory organ that is sensitive to magnetic fields .
- An experiment on the highly organized structure of termite populations.
- An experiment to feel that you are being stared at from behind.
- An experiment on perceptions in phantom limbs after amputation (see: Phantom Pain ).
- The criticism of the constancy of the universal gravitational constant . So far not scientifically investigated, as Sheldrake has not yet given a falsifiable hypothesis on this question.
- An experiment on the effect of the experimenter's expectations on the experiment. Usually this is explained in the context of the experimenter expectation effect or Rosenthal effect .
He published one of these experiments in the study The Seventh Sense of Animals (1999). The study is often rejected as being methodologically inadequate.
In 2003 he wrote in The Seventh Sense of Man about a perception that is reported by very many people. The book contained an experiment in which the test subjects had to decide, with the blindfold on, whether or not to be stared at by people sitting behind them. The decision as to whether the person sitting in the back was looking at the test person with the blindfold or looking elsewhere was made by chance (tossing a coin or table of random numbers). After a signal in the form of a loud clicking sound, the test subject had to decide whether they were being stared at. If subjects had guessed wrong and were told so, they were less likely to guess wrong in future experiments. After tens of thousands of individual attempts , the score was 60 percent if the test subject was stared at ( i.e. above the random result), but only 50 percent if they were not stared at (which corresponds to the random result). This result indicates a weak sense of being gazed at, and no sense of not being gazed at. Sheldrake claims that these experiments have been repeated very often and with consistent results in universities in Connecticut and Toronto, as well as in a science museum in Amsterdam .
From 2005 to 2010 Sheldrake was the director of the Perrott-Warrick Project , funded by a foundation donated to Trinity College , Cambridge . The project examined unexplained abilities of humans and animals.
Reception in the natural sciences
The hypothesis of formative causation presented in his first work ( A New Science of Life from 1981) was essentially ignored by the scientific community after initial interest.
A majority of the scientific community now view the hypothesis as pseudoscientific. But there are also dissenting voices who call for at least a review of the hypothesis, including David Bohm and Hans-Peter Dürr , who see Sheldrake's theories as a possible approach for bridging the gap between biology and the findings of modern physics.
In his later work ( The Presence of the Past, 1988) Sheldrake even regards the laws of nature themselves not as independent and immutable models, but as habits. The scientific usefulness of this hypothesis has been questioned because of its lack of falsifiability.
From the point of view of the philosophy of science, the existence of Sheldrake's fields can be described as a hypothesis from which no scientific theory has so far emerged due to lack of evidence. However, the hypothesis has attracted considerable popular science interest. Sheldrake's work has become particularly famous in the New Age scene. There they found it interesting because of its holistic worldview and saw in it an example of how a "real scientist" was belittled by the community of scientists.
Criticism of Sheldrake's experiments
Sheldrake's experiments are as controversial as his hypothesis. Recently he has been asking potential experimenters to expand his staring experiment by simply filling out a form on his website and submitting their results that way. In this way, Sheldrake claims to have obtained an excellent, broad study that includes people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Critics point out that Sheldrake is merely gathering useless information from people who have absolutely no idea how to conduct controlled experiments. In addition, it is practically guaranteed that only successful results are selected due to the experimenter-expectation effect , because it is unlikely that people who carry out this experiment will not believe that it will work.
Sheldrake insists that this skepticism does not stem from the nature of his work, but rather stems from preconceived notions that scientists have towards him. His approach to the scientific method is based on Darwin's careful observations and removes him from molecular biology and its focus on the functioning of genes , enzymes , proteins and cells . His approach is a challenge to the mechanistic paradigm, which sees biology as a function of chemistry and physics . The materialism of the 19th century had led in part to genetic engineering and biotechnology , but at the same time distanced itself from an understanding of the consciousness that his theory of fields strives for.
Critics interpret the lack of confidence in Sheldrake's theories as the result of a lack of convincing experimental evidence. Since the 1970s, when Sheldrake first proposed his theory, advances have also been made in understanding how a particular shape is made from genetic material. Other theories are therefore preferred to Sheldrakes in this area because they better describe the observed processes in pattern formation.
Reception in cultural studies
Without prejudice to the scientific criticism of Sheldrake's methodology, his theory of morphic fields was received by individual cultural scientists in the sense of a heuristic theory. They are not concerned with the question of scientific verifiability . Rather, they use the theory of morphic fields as a paradigm for the perception, description and interpretation of social and cultural phenomena which, in their opinion, could not be consistently captured in any other way.
The Göttingen practical theologian Manfred Josuttis , who works phenomenologically in religion , uses the theory of morphic fields to describe ritual-theoretical and poimenic phenomena:
“Religious practice has so much to do with repetition, because in this way one is more and more strongly not only, as a socio-psychological view would interpret, of the cohesiveness of a community, but because one is grasped by the formative power of a field. A mantra can be repeated, a confirmation saying should shape the future life. And the breadth and intensity of religious experience is also determined by cumulative aspects. The influence of morphogenetic fields is greater, the more the person's own resonance and the external resonance of past and present forms interact. That is why spatially and temporally distant experiences always flow into the individual experience. Against this background, the fact that sacred forms should be kept clean, the exact reproduction of individual gestures and the demarcation from other cult practices are called for in the religious exercises would not have a legal, but a legal meaning. "
Against this background, Josuttis can also describe pastoral care as work in the morphic field:
"Pastoral care would then consist of realizing the force field of the Holy Spirit through designed morphic resonance in such a way that damaging forces are eliminated and healing currents create new structures."
The Islamic psychologist Michaela M. Özelsel sees the theory of morphic resonance as a way of describing the difference between Western psychologies and the psychology of Sufism :
“Although Jung's concept of the 'collective unconscious' goes beyond Freud's individual approach, it is designed for the human realm of experience. The way of looking at Sufism ( Vahdet al-Vudschud ) is much more comprehensive: it includes Jung's concept, but goes beyond human experiences of the past, present and future. The unconscious forces also include those of the animal, vegetative and inorganic stages of being, in addition to human, spiritual and universal states. This approach is by no means limited to fantasies, dreams, illusions and early forms of thought processes, but also includes the organic and psycho-spiritual connections between humans and nature - and thus universal reality ( al haqq ). "
The theory of the morphic fields is also taken up in the context of spatial analysis of society ( rural sociology ) by the American sociologist Michael Mayerfeld Bell . It assumes that people who were permanently present in a place leave their “ghost of place” in the sense of an “ atmosphere ” or “ aura ” and thereby evoke actions, thoughts and intuitions of third parties, who later stay in this place.
literature
- Hans-Peter Dürr , Franz-Theo Gottwald (eds.): Rupert Sheldrake in discussion - the risk of a new science of life. Scherz Verlag, Bern - Munich - Vienna (1997) ISBN 3-502-15165-2
- Rupert Sheldrake: A New Science of Life (1981), German: Das Schöpferische Universum. The theory of the morphogenetic field. (1983) ISBN 3-548-35359-2 . (German new edition 2008)
- Rupert Sheldrake: The Presence of the Past (1988), German: Das Gedächtnis der Natur. The secret of the origin of forms in nature (1990) ISBN 3-502-19661-3
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Brad Lemley: Rupert Sheldrake . In: Discover . August 2000.
- ^ Anthony Freeman: The Sense of Being Glared At . In: Journal of Consciousness Studies , 12, No. 6, 2005, pp. 4-9. Online edition (PDF; 67 kB)
- ↑ a b Dürr, H.-P., Gottwald, F.-T. (1999) (ed.): Rupert Sheldrake in discussion. The risk of a new science of life., Scherz Verlag, Bern Munich Vienna
- ↑ http://homepage.mac.com/gerhardlang/AKP/Texte/Texte_ieS/ArtikelShel.doc ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c d Introduction ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Hans-Peter Dürr on the book "Rupert Sheldrake in Discussion"
- ^ Scott F. Gilbert: Developmental Biology . Edition: 8th rev. ed. (May 10, 2006) Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-0-87893-250-4 The “Re-discovery” of Morphogenic Fields ( Memento of the original from June 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Source is missing
- ^ Google Books - Michael Polanyi: Personal Knowledge
- ↑ Emergent Monism And Final Causality ( Memento of the original dated February 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 33 kB)
- ↑ Hans-Peter Dürr et al .: What is Life ?: Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions , World Scientific, 2002, ISBN 981-02-4740-0 , p. 10
- ↑ George C. Drew, McDougall's Experiments on the Inheritance of Acquired Habits , NATURE 143, 188-191 (1939).
- ↑ a b Rupert Sheldrake: The expanded consciousness. Extra-sensory abilities of humans and animals. In: Tattva Viveka , No. 21, 2004 ( [1] ).
- ↑ a b Article in The Times, September 7, 2006
- ^ Lewis Wolpert : Pseudoscience and antiscience (Book Review on: The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher by Martin Gardner ) . In: Nature . 334, No. 6178, July 14, 1988, p. 114. doi : 10.1038 / 334114a0 .
- ↑ John Maddox : A book for burning? (Editorial) . In: Nature . 293, No. 5830, September 24, 1981, pp. 245-246. doi : 10.1038 / 293245b0 .
- ^ Dennis Summerbell: Review . In: The Biologist . November 1981.
- ↑ Lois Wingerson: Review . In: World Medicine . July 1981.
- ^ L'Imposture Scientifique en Dix Lecons, "Pseudoscience in Ten Lessons.", By Michel de Pracontal. Editions La Decouverte, Paris, 2001. ISBN 2-7071-3293-4 .
- ↑ http://www.sheldrake.org/experiments/staring/
