Everyday Miracles with Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.

Program Description

Have you ever wondered how your cat or dog seems to know when you’re coming home, or how you know when you’re being stared at from behind? These invisible links found in nature are some of the topics explored in this dialogue with Rupert Sheldrake, one of the most innovative scientists of our time. Sheldrake believes that all self-organizing systems (including human society) have invisible fields within and around them, which shape and mold their development. He calls them “morphic fields.” Sheldrake says, “these morphic fields have the shape they do because they have a memory built in, a kind of collective memory of the species, by the process I call ‘morphic resonance,’ the influence of the past on the present.” A former research fellow of The World Society and former director of studies in biochemistry and cell biology at Cambridge University,

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. studied natural sciences at Cambridge and philosophy at Harvard, took a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cambridge and is the author of more than fifty scientific papers. He’s the author of several books including The Presence of the Past (Times Books 1995), A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance (J.P. Tarcher 1995), The Rebirth of Nature; The Greening of Science and God (Bantam 1991), Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (Three Rivers Press 2001), Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science (2nd Edition with Update on Results) (Park Street Press 2002), The Sense of Being Stared At: And Other Aspects of The Extended Mind (Crown 2003), and co-authored with Matthew Fox Natural Grace: Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Spirituality and Science (Doubleday 1996) and The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet (HarperSanFrancisco 1996). To learn more about the work of Rupert Sheldrake go to www.sheldrake.org

Topics Explored in this Dialogue:

• What are experiments you can do at home (without a Ph.D.)
• Why your dog or cat knows when you’re coming home
• What are the unseen forces of nature in your life
• How invisible fields link the members of society together
• What is the relationship between the plant and animal kingdoms
• What are the surprising revelations about the homing pigeon
• What are the scientific illusions of objectivity

Program Number: 2594                   Host: Michael Toms                  Interview Date: 10/7/1996