## Metadata - Author: [[Rupert Sheldrake]] - Full Title: Science Set Free - Category: #books ## Highlights - Attempting to explain organisms in terms of their chemical constituents is rather like trying to understand a computer by grinding it up and analyzing its component elements, such as copper, germanium and silicon. Certainly it is possible to learn something about the computer in this way, namely what it is made of. But in this process of reduction, the structure and the programmed activity of the computer vanishes, and chemical analysis will never reveal the circuit diagrams; no amount of mathematical modelling of interactions between its atomic constituents will reveal the computer’s programs or the purposes they fulfilled. ([Location 797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=797)) - Quantum theory extended Platonism to the very heart of matter, which old-style atomists had regarded as hard, homogeneous stuff. In the words of Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics: [M]odern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word: they are forms, structures, or—in Plato’s sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics. ([Location 1463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=1463)) - Peirce considered that “the law of habit is the law of mind” and he saw the growing cosmos as alive. “Matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit to the point where the breaking up of these habits is very difficult.”37 ([Location 1629](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=1629)) - the contractive and expansive forces together sustain the universe. Expansive energy, pushing from the past, gives the universe an arrow of time, while through gravitation everything is pulled toward a future unity, at least a virtual unity, and maybe an actual unity as well. All organisms within the universe are like scaled-down versions of this cosmic process: unifying fields pull them toward attractors in the future, and energy flowing from the past propels them forward. All are embedded within larger wholes—atoms in molecules, organelles in cells, animals in ecosystems, the earth within the solar system, the solar system within the galaxy—and all have their own ends and attractors. ([Location 2464](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=2464)) - Platonists thought plants and animals were somehow shaped by the transcendent Idea or Form of their species. Modern Platonists, like René Thom, agree. They see the ideal Form of a species as a mathematical structure or model that is “reified” in physical plants or animals. The mathematical model for an acanthus plant is not embedded in the genes: it exists in a mathematical realm that transcends space and time. Human mathematical models are mere approximations to these ultimate mathematical archetypes. Aristotle, Plato’s student, disagreed. The forms of the species were not outside space and time, but inside space and time. They were immanent, meaning “dwelling in,” not transcendent, meaning “climbing beyond.” ([Location 2582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=2582)) - Francis Huxley summarized Darwin’s attitude: A structure to him meant a habit, and a habit implied not only an internal need but outer forces to which, for good or evil, the organism had to become habituated … In one sense, therefore, he might well have called his book The Origin of Habits rather than The Origin of Species.32 ([Location 2846](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=2846)) - According to Bohm, the observable or manifest world is the explicate or unfolded order, which emerges from the implicate or enfolded order.26 Bohm thought that the implicate order contains a kind of memory. What happens in one place is “introjected” or “injected” into the implicate order, which is potentially present everywhere; thereafter when the implicate order unfolds into the explicate order, this memory affects what happens, giving the process very similar properties to morphic resonance. In Bohm’s words, each moment will “contain a projection of the re-injection of the previous moments, which is a kind of memory; so that would result in a general replication of past forms.”27 ([Location 3236](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=3236)) - The trace theory says that memories are stored materially in brains, for example as chemicals in synapses. The alternative is the resonance theory: memories are transferred by resonance from similar patterns of activity in the past. We tune in to ourselves in the past; we do not carry our memories around inside our heads. ([Location 3246](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=3246)) - A debate about the nature of vision was going on in ancient Greece 2,500 years ago. It was taken up in the Roman Empire and in the Islamic world, and continued in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The debate played an important part in the birth of modern science, and is still alive today. There were three main theories of how we see. The first was that vision involves an outward projection of invisible rays through the eyes. This is often called the “extramission” theory, which literally means “sending out.” Second was the idea of a “sending in” of images through light into the eyes, the “intromission” theory. The third theory, a combination of the other two, states that there is both an inward movement of light and an outward movement of attention. ([Location 3476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=3476)) - Since the early seventeenth century the intromission theory has been scientifically orthodox, largely thanks to the work of Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), best known for his discoveries in astronomy. Kepler realized that light entering the eye through the pupil was focused by the lens, and produced an inverted image on the retina. He published his theory of the retinal image in 1604. ([Location 3492](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=3492)) - Kepler’s contemporary, Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), likewise withdrew perceptions from the external world and squeezed them into the brain. He made a distinction between what he called primary and secondary qualities of objects. The primary qualities were those that could be measured and treated mathematically, such as size, weight and shape. These were the concern of objective science. The secondary qualities, such as color, taste, texture and smell, were not within matter itself. They were subjective rather than objective. And subjective meant within the brain. Thus our direct experience of the world was split into two separate poles, the objective, out there, and the subjective, within the brain. ([Location 3505](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=3505)) - Most contemporary metaphors for the activity of the brain are derived from computers, and “internal representations” are commonly conceived of as “virtual reality” displays. As the psychologist Jeffrey Gray put it succinctly, “The ‘out there’ of conscious experience isn’t really out there at all; it’s inside the head.” Our visual perceptions are a “simulation” of the real world that is “made by, and exists within, the brain.” ([Location 3517](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=3517)) - Not all philosophers and psychologists believe the mind-in-the-brain theory, and over the years a minority has always recognized that our perceptions may be just where they seem to be, in the external world outside our heads, rather than representations inside our brains.18 In 1904, William James wrote: [T]he whole philosophy of perception from Democritus’ time downwards has been just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is evidently one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer space and in a person’s mind. “Representative” theories of perception avoid the logical paradox, but on the other hand they violate the reader’s sense of life which knows no intervening mental image but seems to see the room and the book immediately as they physically exist. ([Location 3544](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=3544)) - My own interpretation is that vision takes place through extended perceptual fields, which are both within the brain and stretch out beyond it.29 Vision is rooted in the activity of the brain, but is not confined to the inside of the head. Like Velmans, I suggest that the formation of these fields depends on changes in various regions of the brain as vision takes place, influenced by expectations, intentions and memories. These are a kind of morphic field and, like other morphic fields, connect together parts within wholes, and have an inherent memory given by morphic resonance from similar fields in the past (see Chapter 3). When I look at a person or an animal, my perceptual field interacts with the field of the person or animal I am looking at, enabling my gaze to be detected. Our experience certainly suggests that our minds are extended beyond our brains. We see and hear things in the space around us. But there is a strong taboo against anything that suggests that seeing and hearing might involve any kind of outward projection. ([Location 3591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=3591)) - According to the hypothesis of morphic resonance, all self-organizing systems, including protein molecules, Acetabularia cells, carrot plants, human embryos and flocks of birds, are shaped by memory from previous similar systems transmitted by morphic resonance and drawn toward attractors through chreodes. Their very being involves an invisible presence of both past and future. Minds are extended in time not because they are miraculously different from ordinary matter, but because they are self-organizing systems. All self-organizing systems are extended in time, shaped by morphic resonance from the past, and drawn toward attractors in the future. ([Location 3715](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0076PGG6Y&location=3715))