Rupert Sheldrake - Morphic Resonance, Memory and the Habits of Na...

Episode 1
Introduction to Morphic Resonance

Morphic resonance is a hypothesis about memory in nature. When similar patterns of activity are repeated, they become more likely to happen again; they become increasingly habitual. The context for this hypothesis is a clash of two of the most fundamental paradigms that have shaped western thought. The Greek paradigm of eternity, as articulated by Plato, saw changeless principles underlying all reality. By contrast, Jewish people thought in terms of historical development. The idea of changeless laws of nature was built into the foundations of modern science, but the Big Bang theory and evolutionary cosmology throw these into question. The universe is continually developing and may be governed by evolving habits rather than eternal laws.

Episode 2
Testing Morphic Resonance

As a scientific hypothesis, morphic resonance has enormous implications, and can be tested in the realms of physics, chemistry, biology and psychology. In this session I cover the best empirical tests of morphic resonance, including behaviour observed in the crystallization of novel chemical compounds, the tendency for the melting points of newly synthesized chemicals to increase, rats learning puzzles quicker after other rats have learned them, chicks becoming averse to stimuli that previous chicks associated with feeling sick, and people doing crossword puzzles more easily after many other people have already done them. All these and other examples show new habits becoming more habitual through repetition.

Episode 3
The Nature of Inheritance: Genes, Epigenetics and Morphic Resonance

The nature of inheritance was, until recently, treated as synonymous with genetics. If people wanted to say something was inherited or hereditary, they would say ‘it's genetic’. Yet genes only code for the sequence of amino acids in proteins, or affect the activity of other genes; they do not code for the shape of an organism, or its behaviour. To assume that all these organize themselves on the basis of making the right proteins is like expecting a pile of building material to assemble themselves into a house. Morphogenetic fields provide the plans and morphic resonance guides the development of these plans over time. Inheritance involves not only genes and epigenetic changes in gene expression, but also morphic resonance, which underlies the inheritance of form and instinct.

Episode 4
The Fields of Social Groups and the Inheritance of Behaviour-Patterns by Morphic Resonance

From the amazingly coordinated movements in flocks of birds, to telepathic communication between wolves separated by hundreds of miles, to the co-ordination of termite colonies, many aspects of social behaviour observed in nature imply that the behaviour of the group is coordinated through fields that include and link together the individual animals. These social fields are kinds of morphic fields, and contain a memory given by morphic resoance. Human groups are also infl;uenced by collective morphic fields, including families. Family fields inherit patterns from previous generations by morphic resonance, affecting the behaviour of people within them, sometimes giving rise to dysfunctional patterns that are carried over unconsciously. The ancestors play a hidden role within present-day families, as many traditional cultures recognize, and as some people in modern cultures are coming to acknowledge through family constellation therapy.

Episode 5
Morphic Resonance, Collective Memory and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

Despite the taboo against Lamarckian inheritance in the West, there is increasing evidence that acquired characteristics can indeed be inherited Recent research on epigenetics has shown that characteristics that organisms acquire in response to their environment can be passed on to their descendents. For example, in a study with mice, the fears of the fathers were passed on to their children and grandchildren. Morphic resonance goes further than standard epigenetics: animals can acquire behaviours or physical attributes not only from their direct ancestors, but from other members of their species, as if a collective memory is at work. We need a new evolutionary synthesis that takes into account these other forms of inheritance, over and above the narrowly genetic approach of neo-Darwinism. Morphic resonance also provides a new way of thinking about Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of a collective unconscious on which all individuals draw and to which they contribute.

Episode 6
Morphic Resonance in Myths and Rituals

Myths are stories of origin. Contemporary science has its own stories of origin: eg the Big Bang hypothesis. We cannot escape myths; they give structure and meaning to our lives. Morphic resonance is in tune with a mythic view of the world. As the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss put it, rituals express the ‘disjointed’ past through biological and seasonal periodicity, they unite the generations of the living and the dead. Examples of different rituals: Jewish Passover, Christian Last Supper, mantras in Hinduism and Buddhism. Sacrificial archetypes, such as those of Abraham and Isaac and the Lamb of God have deep biological and evolutionary roots. Myths exert power over us even when we are unconscious of them.

Episode 7
Individual Memory works by Morphic Resonance rather than by Material Traces in Brains

Habitual patterns of behaviour are tuned into by the self-resonance. According to orthodox neuroscience our memories depend on material memory traces stored in our brains, but the empirical evidence for material traces has always been very tenuous, and still is. The American neurophysiologist Karl Lashley found that he could remove over 50 percent of rats’ brains without affecting their ability to perform freshly learned tricks. Lashley’s student Karl Pribram suggested that memory is stored as a holographic interference pattern throughout the brain. The philosopher Henri Bergson argued against the theory of material memory traces, and morphic resonance provides a testable hypothesis for memory without the need for memories to be stored in brains. You tune into your own memories because you are more like yourself in the past than like anyone else, but we are also similar to other people and thus, less specifically, tune into collective memories.

Episode 8
Evolution: An Interplay Between Habit and Creativity

The universe is inherently unstable, and continuously creative. Cosmic evolution, biological and cultural evolution and our own development work on the same principles, with an interplay between the fundamental principles of habit and creativity. Morphic resonance accounts for the habits of nature but leaves open the question of creativity. To the extent that creativity involves the appearance of patterns that have not existed before, it goes beyond the purview of science. According to the Platonic view, all possible forms have always existed as timeless Forms in the eternal laws of nature. In his book Creative Evolution Henri Bergson argued against Platonic theory of creativity in favour of a continuously creative universe that is made up as it goes along. Creativity remains a profound mystery, and theories about the sources of creativity depend on wider worldviews.

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