The Science Delusion
Rupert Sheldrake
Language: English
Pages: 308
ISBN: 144472794X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality. The fundamental questions are answered, leaving only the details to be filled in. In this book, Dr Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, shows that science is being constricted by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas. The sciences would be better off without them: freer, more interesting, and more fun.
According to the dogmas of science, all reality is material or physical. The world is a machine, made up of dead matter. Nature is purposeless. Consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain. Free will is an illusion. God exists only as an idea in human minds, imprisoned within our skulls.
But should science be a belief-system, or a method of enquiry? Sheldrake shows that the materialist ideology is moribund; under its sway, increasingly expensive research is reaping diminishing returns.
In the skeptical spirit of true science, Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of materialism into exciting questions, and shows how all of them open up startling new possibilities.
The Science Delusion will radically change your view of what is possible. and give you new hope for the world.
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Skeletal & Muscular Sys (Your Body) (Your Body: How It Works)
occur in a mutually interdependent web of cause and effect. The materialist philosophy and the primacy of physics go hand in hand. So do the interdependence of all realities and the plurality of the sciences. The sciences still need unifying principles, but they need not come exclusively from physics. Unifying principles As well as the familiar unifying principles of physics, like forces, fields, and flows of energy there is the principle of organisation in nested hierarchies. Systems, or
rather by ‘normal’ sense-based means, or by trial and error. They think that if shamans have discovered herbs that work, or visionary brews like ayahuasca, traditionally used in parts of the Amazon region, they have done so by trying out various plants at random. But shamans themselves say that this knowledge has come from ‘the plant teachers’.27 What if shamans really do have ways of learning about plants and animals that are completely unknown to scientists? What if they have explored the
by exploiting nature so that they can buy a place in the countryside to ‘get away from it all’. This division between public rationalism and private romanticism has been part of the Western way of life for generations, but is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Our economic activities are not separate from nature, but affect the entire planet. Our private and public lives are increasingly intertwined. This new consciousness is expressed through a revived public awareness of Gaia, Mother Earth.
conscious being capable of making choices, living among other beings with sensations, experiences and desires. Questions for materialists Do you believe that your own consciousness is merely an aspect or epiphenomenon of the activity of your brain? If consciousness does nothing, why has it evolved as an evolutionary adaptation? Do you agree with the materialist philosopher Galen Strawson that materialism implies panpsychism? Is your own belief in materialism determined by
depended more on nature than on nurture. Galton was a pioneering advocate of eugenics, a word he coined. He also realised that the question of nature and nurture could be studied with the help of identical twins. He argued that identical twins had a similar heredity constitution, while non-identical twins were no more similar than ordinary brothers and sisters. And, sure enough, he found remarkable similarities between identical twins in a wide range of characteristics including the onset of
