Rupert Sheldrake is a plant physiologist and a biochemist. He graduated in biochemistry with double-first-class honours from Cambridge University and won a fellowship to study philosophy and history at Harward University after which he returned to Cambridge where he obtained his Ph.D. in biochemistry.
While researching plants Sheldrake concluded that "after nine years of intensive study, it became clear to me that biochemistry would not solve the problem of why things have the basic shape they do". He began to develop his own theory of morphic fields which act as information fields to organize the structure of matter.
In this lecture conducted in February of 2012 at the Temenos Academy, Rupert talks about the key messages of his new book "The Science Delusion" in which he questions the dogmas of modern science. This lecture provide a lot of interesting information about the foundations of science and might get you thinking. Even though Rupert is a Ph.D. scientist himself he does not hesitate to ask a lot of inconvenient questions leading to at least a few even more inconvenient answers...
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake's website : http://www.sheldrake.org
Time stamps for this lecture :
0:00:00 Introduction to Rupert Sheldrake by Chairman Ian Skelly
0:04:05 Start of lecture, scientism, implicit materialistic assumptions
0:10:50 The mechanistic revolution, René Descartes and his mechanistic theology
0:14:35 The universe as an organism, David Hume, Big Bang Theory
0:17:45 Is all matter unconscious ? How come we are conscious ?
0:23:45 The Panpsychism view of Alfred North Whitehead
0:27:50 The law of conservation of matter and energy, galaxies and dark matter
0:34:50 Free energy technology, Andrea Rossi, vital energy in living organisms
0:41:30 Changes in the constants of nature (speed of light & gravity)
0:47:50 Is there purpose in nature ? Evolution a random process ?
0:50:00 Genetic determinism versus epigenetics, memory storage in the brain
0:53:10 Is the mind inside the brain ?
0:55:55 Psychic phenomena - Are they all illusion ? Telepathy experiments
0:59:20 Mechanistic medicine versus alternative medicine, the Placebo Effect
1:00:45 The dogmas of materialistic science are questionable
1:02:10 End of lecture, begin of questions and answers session
1:03:05 - Why is there so little questioning of the scientific dogmas
1:05:40 - Are you considered a heretic ?
1:08:00 - Is there a scientific explanation to the resistance to new scientific ideas ?
1:12:05 - Difference of DNA in humans and apes is only 1%, human genome project
1:16:00 - Will it ever be possible for scientists to understand human consciousness ?
1:18:20 End of Q&A session
Additional information :
In the Resource section two more lectures by Rupert about the "morphogenetic universe" are available.
Additionally Rupert gave an interesting and pretty spacy interview about his scientific research into paranormal phenomena. In it he also talks about his personal experiences with paranormal phenomena.
Update from April 2013 regarding the TEDx controversy :
Rupert Sheldrake has given a similar presentation on January 12th 2013 at a TEDx Conference in London :
The conference had the motto "Challenging existing paradigms" and Rupert was delighted when he was invited to speak at the confernence because it was right along the topics he usually covers in his talks. After his lecture was online at the TEDx website as well as on Youtube for several weeks, a group of atheists compained about his lecture being unscientific. A secret board of scientist was established which agreed with this compaint and Rupert's lecture was deleted. Rupert only had the opportunity to talk to the organizer of the TEDx Talks about this but the board of scientists which decided his claims are unscientific could not be contacted by Rupert as its members have to remain anonymous. Due to this secrecy Rupert has no possibility to discuss his claims with this secret board and provide additional scientific evidence for what he said. The entire incident caused quite a stirr amongst the viewers of the talk as many did not consider it to be unscientific at all.
Rupert's provided a public written response to the accusations since he had no way to address the secret board of anonymous scientists. After receiving this statement the TED organizers striked out the text accusing Rupert of being unscientific. The Youtube video remains deleted on the TEDx account but a copy of it has been put on a seperate "naughty corner" of the TED blog together with one other video that is also considered unscientific. This blog page has received over 1700 comments within a few days and is one of the most commented pages of the entire TED website.
In order to avoid such discussions in the future TED has now begun to cancel events on new paradigms in advance : A TEDx group in Hollywood had been preparing for a TEDx event in April 2013 for over 1 year. The title of this TEDx conference was "Brother, Can You Spare a Paradigm?". Only weeks before the event TED suddenly withdrew the TED licence granted one year ago because several invited speakers do not fit with the TEDx guidelines because their claims were "unscientific" and the event could damage the credibility of other TEDx events. The speakers for this event included Russell Targ who wanted to report on his research into Remote Viewing financed by the CIA, which he conducted at the University of Stanford over a period of 23 years (project budget : $25 million). Dr. Targ has posted a short written statement regarding the withdrawl of the TED licence due to his planned lecture. (Check the update on this event from April 19th below the interview)
In a short interview from April 2013 - conducted by Alex Tsakiris from the Skeptiko Podcast - Rupert talks about the described incident in more detail :
Download: http://media.blubrry.com/skeptiko/p/content.blubrry.com/skeptiko/skeptiko-184-rupert-sheldrake.mp3
This interview was conducted by Alex Tsakiris for the Skeptiko Podcast (http://www.skeptiko.com).
If you want to follow up on the further development if this event including the one year anniversary protest in New York on April 2nd 2014 then check out this website of a global alliance of rational scientist and academics: http://setsciencefree.org/
Update from April 19th 2013 : The organizers of the mentioned TEDx event in Hollywood have decided to repackage the event under a new label. The entire event was streamed live on the internet and it is possible to view it for free at this link. The "scandal lecture" by physicist Dr. Russell Targ can be viewed in the Resource section.
