Replies

>I met Sheldrake at the Kronia conference in Laughlin Nev. last summer; one of the brightest people I've ever come across.

Thanks for the note!

In general, "pop" scientists scare me because it's usually impossible to separate "fact" from social/political agenda. But Sheldrake is just so darn interesting and seems to steer clear of politics generally (although he certainly involves himself in unpleasant New Age stuff) that I've always enjoyed reading him.

For lurkers who might want to know more about Rupert Sheldrake, check out his website: the website of Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.

The site is no replacement for his books, but it does give you an overview of the guy. (Although he doesn't flat out give space to James Randi, he at least acknowledges Randi's views of his work (under the "Controversies" link), and provides excerpts from some of his e-mail exchanges with Randi.)

Mark W.

One of the things Sheldrake noted at the conference I attended, and this is simple enough for anybody to grasp, is that if you take human arms and legs and grind them up into hamburger, there is no technology which can tell the difference between the arm meat and the leg meat. That means that embrionic cells growing into arms and legs are doing so with some source of information which we have no clue about as of yet.

Sheldrake is a former director of studies in cellular biology at Cambridge who has taken to investigating things normally termed 'paranormal' using statistical methods and good experimental design. The Michael Shermers of the world and similar science vigilantes hate the guy because his methods are above reproach, his credentials are vastly better than theirs, and there is basically nothing they can do about him.

For lurkers who might want to know more about Rupert Sheldrake, check out his website: the website of Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.

Thanks for the link.

This guy is obviously a luddite retard. How dare he have a broad and expansive education and draw his own conclusions from the information he had acquired.

I had a wonderful time at Harvard. I soon discovered that in the United States, university students are treated like children - told exactly what to read and then tested to make sure they have read it. In England I hadn’t been treated like that since I was fifteen. I didn’t like that system at all. So I decided I didn’t need the master’s degree I was supposed to be getting. Anyway, I could simply buy one from Cambridge University. If you have a Cambridge B.A. you have to do only two things to get an M.A.: stay alive for three and a third years and save up five pounds, the price of the degree. The result was that I spent a wonderful year at Harvard freed from the tyranny of exams, tests, and so on. I could do exactly as I liked, go to any lectures in any subject, read anything. It was wonderful. Unfortunately, very few people have this experience at universities because they’re nearly always on treadmills.

I also hate treadmills.