News Release from Rupert Sheldrake
www.sheldrake.org
3 Jan 12
My new book The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry is due to be published on Thursday January 5 in the UK. In the US it is to be published by Random House in May 2012 under the title Science Set Free: Dispelling Dogma.
The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality, in principle. The fundamental questions are answered, leaving only the details to be filled in. The impressive achievements of science seem to support this confident attitude. But recent research has revealed unexpected problems at the heart of physics, cosmology, biology, medicine and psychology. In The Science Delusion, I show how the sciences are being constricted by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas. In the sceptical spirit of scientific enquiry, I turn the ten fundamental dogmas of science into questions, opening up startling new possibilities.
From a review –
The biologist Thomas Henry Huxley once said: “It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and end as superstitions.” This is where Sheldrake comes in. He traces the development of what he calls the 10 core beliefs of the current scientific creed: among them the belief that everything is essentially mechanical; that the total amount of matter and energy in the universe is always the same (apart from during the Big Bang, when it all started); that the laws of nature are fixed and always will be; that nature has no purpose and works only by chance; that all biological inheritance is material; that minds are nothing but the activities of brains; that such unexplained phenomena as telepathy are illusory; and that mechanistic medicine is the kind that really works.
From a lecture at the Scientific and Medical Network, UK, Jan 2012 –
Constants ... there is no proof that constants are constant - just an assumption ... and the evidence is quite different ... eg around the world measurements of the speed of light all fell in 1928 by some 40kph (?!) until 1945 when they rose again - any changes are averaged out, smoothed etc etc. Big G - the gravitaional constant of Newton varies regularly over a day by as much as 1% Uh? etc etc ... As Sheldrake says he is not syaing they are not constant he is just saying that science should be about examining the data not faith in a premise. In many cases this is getting more built in - eg the metre is now defined in terms of the speed of light ... so by definition we will get a constant!….
The heritability problem. R was lamenting the moeny spent on genes and how - as the Harvard Business Review and Wall St Journal had concluded - the genome project was the biggest waste of money, lowest RoI project ever [eg we have less genes than plants!]. One example of this he gave was about height. Turns out 50 genes are related to height. The problem is the best model using the genetic information for a child can only predict with 5% accuracy its height when an adult. As Sheldrake points out a tape measure - measure the parents heights, average and (I think) add an inch is 50% accurate!! This is a dramatic example of the general issue .. rather like in Physics re String Theory these Big Science projects which are sucking up billions of investments (aka taxpayers money) are just not delivering....
Thanks for the find to -- http://www.ttem.org/forum/index.php?topic=2585.0
