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Rupert Sheldrake Explains Morphic Resonance (With a Galton Board) — Transcript

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0:00Well, that's why I'm interested in
0:02Faraday and the nature of fields. And
0:05you see, one of the interesting things
0:06about the nature of fields is that they
0:09can act without energy. You see, when
0:11the Earth's gravitational field
0:14stretches out into space, if a meteor
0:17comes near the Earth, the Earth, it's
0:19pulled by the Earth and it crashes into
0:21the Earth and makes a big bang when it
0:23hits the Earth and throws up lots of
0:25soil and stuff and rock. Um, now that's
0:30an energetic event, the crash of the
0:32meteor. But the Earth's gravitational
0:34field expends no energy at all in making
0:36that happen. And in fact, the meteor
0:39adds to the mass of the Earth and
0:40marginally increases its gravitational
0:42pull. And the same with a magnet. When a
0:45magnet on your fridge door holds a piece
0:48of paper on the door, that's not
0:50expending any energy. And yet it's doing
0:53something. And you see, we're used to
0:55the idea that causation is energetic.
0:57This is going back to the 17th century.
0:59Idea of causes are energetic with
1:02pushing and pulling involves measurable
1:04amounts of energy. And thermodynamics is
1:06all about work and energy and and so on.
1:10Um, but actually fields don't work
1:14energetically. They're not a for a kind
1:17of energy. They're a kind of form. Their
1:20role is formative, not energetic. And so
1:23there's a kind of causation in nature
1:25which I call formative causation. Uh
1:28which in the ancient world Aristotle in
1:32ancient Greece called formal causation.
1:35Uh that which causes form is not the
1:38same as energy or matter. And you
1:41probably know his famous four causes. I
1:44maybe I should I think they're very
1:47important for this discussion. Aristotle
1:49said to understand anything you have to
1:51understand four reasons or causes. So he
1:54gave the example of a sculptor making a
1:57sculpture to put in the marketplace.
2:00There's the material cause. That's the
2:02block of marble. You can't have the
2:04sculpture without that. There's the
2:06moving cause or what he called the
2:08efficient cause. That's the chisel. The
2:11sculptor's chisel chipping off bits of
2:13marble. And you can't have sculpture
2:15without that. Then there's the formal
2:18cause and that's the idea in the mind of
2:20the sculpture of the person he's making
2:22the statue of. Now that is not the same
2:26as the matter of the marble and not the
2:28same as the energy of the chips chipping
2:30chisel. And there's the final cause or
2:33the goal or the purpose. Why is he
2:35making it at all? He's had a commission.
2:37He's being paid a fee by the town
2:39council to make the statue. And what
2:43happened in the mechanistic revolution
2:45of the 17th century was that scientists
2:48said, "Oh, this is all old stuff. We
2:50don't need Aristotle. All the stuff
2:51taught in the universities. It's a
2:53revolution. We're going to reject all
2:55that. There's only two kinds of cause.
2:57Material causes, matter, and efficient
3:00causes, energy or force. And these
3:04explain everything. And they omitted
3:07formal causes and final causes. no
3:10purpose in nature, no purpose in
3:12anything. Things don't fall to earth
3:13because of a purpose. It's just
3:15mechanical causes. Um, and there's no
3:18formal causes. And so, ever since then,
3:21science has been incapable of explaining
3:24forms, which is why the problem of
3:26morphogenesis, the development of form
3:28in biology is so intractable within
3:31mechanistic terms. That's why Michael
3:34Levan and I and others think you have to
3:37have formal causes which are given by
3:40fields which are formal causes. Now I
3:44can actually illustrate this with I have
3:46the my favorite demonstration here if if
3:49I could show it to you please. Well I
3:53[clears throat] have to explain this a
3:54little bit. This is called a Golton
3:56board. This you see is a normal
3:58distribution curve. Can you see these
4:00small metal balls? I can. Is that after
4:03Sir Francis Golton?
4:04>> Yes, after Sir Francis Golton, the
4:06statistician, the founder of statistics.
4:09And what this does is you tip it over
4:10like this and all the balls roll down to
4:15this reservoir here of balls. Now, when
4:18I tip it over, they're going to roll
4:20down each one of the pegs. The ball can
4:22go left or right. And so, it's chance
4:26which way it goes.
4:31And so what as a result of that is you
4:34get the normal distribution curve and
4:36you can do it over and over again and
4:38it's slightly different each time
4:39because it's a chance exactly which way
4:42each one goes. So
4:48you see each of these pegs here it can
4:51go that way or that way. Very few of
4:53them go right every time.
4:55>> Very few go left every time. Most of
4:57them go sometimes right, sometimes left.
5:00And on average, they go about the same
5:01number of right and left. That's the
5:03middle of the curve. Now, this is
5:05straightforward. It's demonstrating
5:07using gravity as the motive force, how
5:10the balls fall. And that's randomness,
5:13and it illustrates randomness. Now, what
5:16I'm going to do now is I've got a pair
5:18of magnets here,
5:20>> regular magnets, which attract each
5:22other, of course,
5:23>> and I'm going to put them on this Golton
5:27board.
5:29So that there um
5:32between the magnets there's now an
5:34invisible magnetic field right between
5:36the magnets. They're steel balls. So um
5:39obviously the magnets going to affect
5:41the steel balls. Now I now run the
5:46>> Makes sense. Yeah. So you have a
5:47distribution.
5:48>> So you have a biased distribution that's
5:51no longer the normal distribution. I've
5:53biased the randomness by means of an
5:56invisible field.
5:58Now, you know, some people say, well, so
6:01what? You know, obviously it's a
6:02magnetic fields going to attract steel
6:04balls. You know, what's the big deal? I
6:06mean, that will is that's a simple
6:09response. But if you think about it a
6:11little bit more, it's it's really very
6:13interesting because this magnet has lost
6:16no energy in bringing about this
6:18distribution change in in otherwise
6:21random distribution. It's not expended
6:23any energy. You do it over and over and
6:25over and over again and it won't lose
6:27any energy. it won't get weaker as a
6:29result. And
6:30>> I think the implications of this are are
6:32are massive because you take something
6:35like Schroinger's equation which
6:36predicts all sort of subatomic particles
6:39and their you know position and you know
6:41you know where they're supposed to be at
6:43any given time. There could be some sort
6:46of you know implicate order above them
6:48sort of biasing you know what
6:50probability gets picked. It's not you
6:52know ultimately random. there's
6:53something ordered uh beyond the
6:56perceived randomness.
6:58>> Well, that's exactly how I think morphic
7:00fields work. You see, I think they bias
7:03the intrinsic randomness of quantum
7:05processes or of higher level process. I
7:08mean, the weather's basically random.
7:10You know, lots of chaotic dynamics
7:12systems are basically random. It's not
7:14just at the quantum level. And I think
7:16that these fields work by biasing
7:18randomness. And in order to bias it,
7:22they don't have to be a form of energy.
7:25This magnet is not a form of energy.
7:27It's the magnetic field has energetic
7:30consequences, but it's not doing it by
7:33expending energy. And so the magnet
7:36theorphic field can actually have causal
7:39effects but without working by you know
7:42brute force pushing or pulling something
7:44by contact. It's shaping otherwise
7:47random processes.
7:49And that's that's I think how I mean
7:52this is a very simple illustration of
7:53that principle. We have a random
7:55process. It's sh it's influenced by an
7:58invisible field and it hasn't expended
8:01any energy. If I put the magnets here
8:04where they're not going to immediately
8:06inter influence where the balls are
8:08falling,
8:09then
8:11you'll get back to your normal
8:13distribution curve. I mean, there might
8:15be a tiny influence from this, but the
8:18the the the
8:20position of the field affects what
8:22happens. And the field isn't itself
8:24doing it through energy. I mean it's the
8:28same amount of energy for me to put the
8:30magnets here or to put them there. And
8:33it's my choice where I put them. And
8:34again, my free will, I think, is working
8:37by biasing otherwise random processes in
8:41my brain and in the world around me um
8:44in because it's working through fields.
8:47M do you think there's a central
8:50repository of learned knowledge that
8:53when you do something new so we should
8:56probably go back to classic you know
8:58morphic field experiment uh do you want
9:00to explain like the rats on the
9:01riverbank and then I'll get in my
9:03followup question
9:04>> um well the idea of morphic resonance is
9:06that similar patterns repeat basically
9:09it's the theory that the so-called
9:11regularities of nature the laws of
9:12nature are habits not governed by
9:15eternal laws all fixed at the moment to
9:17the big bang that there's a kind of
9:19memory in nature and there's a memory in
9:22each species each kind of thing each
9:24kind of crystal each kind of animal uh
9:27each kind of plant each kind of planet
9:29or each kind of star and so when an oak
9:34tree is growing it's tuning in because
9:37it's similar got similar DNA and similar
9:40cell structure and so on to past oak
9:42trees and it's shaped by the forms of
9:44past oak trees there's a kind of um
9:48formative field, the morphic field uh
9:50with a memory of past form. And the same
9:53is true of behavior. When a baby spider
9:56starts spinning a web, it doesn't have
9:59to go to spider school or web spinning
10:02workshop or anything. It just does it
10:03instinctively. And I think it's tuning
10:06into the experience of countless spiders
10:08in the past. It's a habit of the
10:10species. So you can test this. And so
10:14the most famous experiment was one done
10:16not to test morphic resonance. It was
10:18done anyway to test a different theory,
10:21but it was the biggest and longest
10:23series of experiments done with rats.
10:26Starting at Harvard, uh they trained
10:28rats to escape from a water maze. They
10:30had to swim and get out of one exit or
10:33the other. And one exit was lit up and
10:36the other one wasn't. and they had to
10:38learn to go out of the dim exit uh or
10:41they guessed it got an electric shock
10:43and uh it alternated at random and the
10:47first generation of rats took about 250
10:50trials before they got it right every
10:52time before they learned. The next
10:55generation took about 200 trials. Next
10:58one about 150 until after 20 or 30
11:01generations they got down to about 25
11:03trials. And this was um an improvement
11:08in learning which now might be explained
11:11by epigenetics because the rats were
11:14descended from trained parents. Um and
11:17the experiment was actually set up to
11:20find out whether there was an
11:21inheritance of acquired characters,
11:23whether parents could pass on what
11:26they'd learned to their offspring. Um
11:29well um this was um very controversial
11:33at the time and so people tried
11:35replicating it at Edinburgh University
11:38and at Melbourne University in Australia
11:41and their rats with the same breed of
11:43rats, the same water maze, uh same kind
11:45of water maze started off making about
11:4825 errors, they took up where the
11:50Harvard rats had left off. But the
11:53Melbourne experiment involved a control
11:54group. In every generation they had rats
11:57that had descended from a control land
12:00whose parents had never been trained.
12:02They compared them with rats whose
12:04parents had been trained and they all
12:07got better more or less the same extent.
12:09So it was not passing on through the
12:11genes or epigenetically something else
12:14was happening that was making them get
12:15better and I think that was morphic
12:17resonance. So, learned behaviors that
12:19transcend genetics. And uh we've talked
12:22about this in the past, but you know,
12:24this seems like it flies in the face of
12:26Darwin, but you you actually talk about
12:28how Darwin wasn't as much of a modern
12:31Darwinist as people sort of think he
12:33was. And I believe in the descent of
12:35man, not, you know, on the origins of
12:36species, he sort of entertains ideas
12:39like this.
12:40>> Well, Darwin's very far from being a
12:42neodyarwinian, which put all their eggs
12:44in the genans basket. I mean, they all
12:47think it the whole point of Dawkins type
12:50neodyarwinian evolution is it's all in
12:52the genes. But Darwin didn't think that.
12:54He didn't know about genes for a start
12:56cuz they weren't discovered till or
12:58rediscovered till around 1900 after his
13:02death. Um, but Darwin was a strong
13:05believer in the inheritance of acquired
13:07characters. Um he even gave he wrote a
13:10letter to Nature, the International
13:12Scientific Journal, um about a dog that
13:16he'd heard about. It was an anecdotal
13:17story he thought it was worth repeating
13:19in nature. This dog was very afraid of
13:21butcher shops and every time it went
13:24past them, it was terrified. And it
13:27turned out his father had been terrified
13:29of butcher shops. Um, so Darwin
13:31speculated that maybe the grandfather
13:34had been mistreated by a butcher and
13:36this aversion to butchers had been
13:38inherited. Well, I mean that's very like
13:42a morphic resonance type effect. Um, so
13:45Darwin was would have been perfectly
13:47happy with morphic resonance I think.
13:49And some recent experiments on that were
13:52done with mice um which were when they
13:56were discussed in nature the headline
13:58was inheriting the fears of fathers u
14:02where where they trained mice um male
14:05mice to be averse to a chemical called
14:08acettophenone.
14:09It's a synthetic chemical smells a bit
14:11like cherries. So they smelt this. They
14:13gave them electric shock in their paws.
14:16this classic rather cruel Pavlovian type
14:19experiment, conditioned divers aversion.
14:21They um after this had happened a few
14:24times, they were petrified when they
14:26smelled acetto phenone. They then bred
14:29from these male mice with mothers who
14:31hadn't met them before um and they
14:34tested their offspring, their children
14:37and their grandchildren. And whenever
14:39they smelled acetto known, they froze
14:41with fear. So um this is a very recent
14:45experiment um and they try and explain
14:48it in terms of an epigenetic change in
14:50the sperm cells. Some chemical
14:52modification of the methylation of the
14:54DNA or small bits of RNA or something
14:57that have been included in the sperm. Um
15:00but I think it could well be a morphic
15:03resonance effect. Well, if you do it
15:04halfway across the world with you know
15:07unrelated uh you know animals you know
15:09rats again. Unfortunately, that's not
15:11what they did and um it's I haven't been
15:14able to persuade anyone to do that
15:16experiment, but um it should have worked
15:19around the world. Yes. Um so anyway the
15:22thing is that in in modern epigenetic
15:24research which as you know is research
15:27that shows that organisms can inherit
15:29characteristics acquired by their
15:31parents adaptations or for example in
15:35plants in tomato plants or in other
15:38plants if the plants are attacked by
15:40insects they make a chemical that um
15:45protects against insect attack. They
15:47make chemicals within them that are
15:48toxic to insects or repellents. Um, and
15:52if you do this and then grow seeds from
15:54those, their offspring uh automatically
15:58produce more of these repellent
15:59chemicals and they're more insect
16:01resistant as a result of their parents
16:03adapting to insects. This is called
16:05epigenetic inheritance. And under
16:08neodyarwinism, which was all about
16:10genetic inheritance, it was impossible.
16:12In fact, they had a big taboo against
16:14the inheritance of acquired characters.
16:17But this is now mainstream biology. It's
16:19now widely accepted this really happens.
16:22And this is getting very close to
16:24morphic resonance. You see, they assume
16:26that there's a molecular mechanism that
16:28can explain this. But I think they
16:30should include in these experiments a
16:32morphic resonance control uh where
16:35they're not descended from the parents.
16:37You're just seeing whether this would
16:39happen anyway. um because I think there
16:41could be a morphic resonance component
16:43to these epigenetic effects.
16:45>> Just to explain to the audience, you
16:47know, I think genes were seen as static
16:49for a long time. Now they're seen as
16:50turning on and off and that dictating
16:53which proteins get assembled and you
16:55can, you know, acetilation historically
16:57often, you know, turn turns the genes on
16:59and then methylation turns them off. I
17:01think there are exceptions to that, but
17:02that's the very high level crude version
17:04of it. Um, but if you're doing
17:06experiments that show learned behaviors,
17:09uh, moving between totally unrelated,
17:13you know, animals within the same
17:14species, that is, uh, really exciting.
17:17That shows that there's something more
17:18at play than even epigenetics, which is
17:20a new kind of burgeoning
17:22>> field. And and you do show that you show
17:24that with you know crossword puzzles
17:25where if you know a certain amount of
17:27people do a cross word puzzle today and
17:30tomorrow they do that you know new a new
17:32set of people do that cross word puzzle
17:33versus a control cross word puzzle that
17:35one is likely to get done a little bit
17:37quicker or crystal structures you know
17:39you grow a crystal structure and for the
17:42first time it takes longer and then
17:44subsequently it sort of takes shorter
17:46and a question I wanted to ask you is is
17:49it sort of like uh we are uploading
17:52knowledge to a central server or
17:54something. So I think of like a client
17:55server relationship in you know computer
17:57terms and upload times are always longer
18:01than download times. So if you have
18:05somebody like a Charles Lindberg flying
18:07across the Atlantic for the first time
18:09or you know uh somebody achieving some
18:12great feat of athleticism you know Roger
18:14Banister great example breaking the
18:164-minute mile in 1952
18:18and then it's called the banister effect
18:20because immediately you know I think 11
18:23people break it within the next two
18:24years. Is it really hard to upload that
18:28new feat or accomplishment and then the
18:31rest of us get to benefit from that
18:34thing that is now stored in some sort of
18:35central monad and we can do it that much
18:39quicker? And is that how is that could
18:40that roughly be like a a model for how
18:42this works? Well, I mean you explain it
18:46well and and I think that these
18:48examples, you know, suggest something's
18:51going on actually better than B with the
18:534-minute mile. You could argue that
18:55there's a psychological barrier. People
18:57will come up with alternative
18:58explanations. But there are lots of
19:00things. Skateboarding, for example,
19:03where when f people first did
19:05skateboarding, some tricks were really
19:06difficult. And now thousands, millions
19:09of kids can do them really easily.
19:11There's lots of examples like that.
19:12Yeah. It feels like athletic
19:14accomplishment feats are moving faster
19:18than just updates in nutrition and
19:21training and definitely a biological
19:23evolution which moves over you know
19:25thousands of years time scales.
19:28>> But you see I don't think I wouldn't
19:30take the idea of a centralized storage
19:33center. I mean even if you take the
19:35computer analogy there's not just one
19:36data center sort of storing things.
19:38There's thousands of them. It's a
19:40distributed system. um you know it's not
19:43as if there's one everything that I can
19:45get on my computer from Google or
19:47something is not in just in one place
19:49whole point of the internet it's a
19:51network and so I think that actually how
19:55morphic resonance works is by a
19:57resonance on the basis of similarity
19:59across space and time so I think that as
20:02an oak seedling grows it's tuning in
20:05direct to past oak trees wherever they
20:08are all over the world at a distance in
20:11space and time. It's not that they're
20:13going all of them are going up to some
20:15central storage thing and then coming
20:17down again. I'm suggesting they just do
20:18it direct. I mean, that's a hypothesis.
20:22You could argue, well, why not postulate
20:24some third or fourth or fifth or 10th
20:27dimension where they're stored in some
20:30offplanet storage system or aic record
20:34in another dimension and then they come
20:36down from that central store. I think
20:38that's an unnecessary theoretical
20:40complication. I think it's much simpler
20:42just to think of a direct resonance
20:44across space and time on the basis of
20:46similarity. But it may be that there's
20:49another dimension where there's a store.
20:51Who knows? Right now, I don't worry too
20:55much about how it might work. I'm just
20:57interested in trying to find out whether
20:59it does happen, you know, whether
21:01morphic resonance really happens. And if
21:04it does, there could be many theoretical
21:06explanations.
21:08Now, thanks to Claude and other forms of
21:10AI, I get about 10 theories of morphic
21:13resonance a week coming into my inbox.
21:16Uh that some people have
21:17hyperdimensions, some people have
21:20resonance space structures, some people
21:22have other prime number matrices. I mean
21:27I mean I had just this week I've had
21:30three or four different theories of
21:31morphic resonance and how it works. I
21:33mean it's it clogs my inbox and so
21:37basically that makes me even more
21:40determined that what really matters is
21:42empirical evidence because um you can
21:45have any number of theoretical
21:46structures. If there was convincing
21:48experimental evidence for morphic
21:50resonance, it's not yet there's not yet
21:53enough to be convince most people
21:55because there hasn't been that much
21:57research. It's a taboo subject. It's
21:59hard to do the research. Um but um say
22:03it was established that it was really
22:05happening. Say there was a paper in
22:07nature saying conclusive proof for
22:09morphic resonance. All sorts of people
22:11would go into overdrive on coming up
22:13with theories to explain it. M um but
22:17then that would be a matter of taste
22:18really that you know Faraday put forward
22:21magnetic fields and electric fields
22:23without knowing any theory except that
22:25just measured what happened how they
22:27interacted. Maxwell came up with a
22:29theory involving the ether. Einstein
22:32comes up with a theory not involving the
22:34ether. Quantum electronamics comes up
22:37with quantum theories of electromagnetic
22:40interactions with matter that are very
22:43accurate in their predictions. But
22:45they're quite different from Maxwell's
22:46theory. But nevertheless, electric
22:48motors go on working just fine. Uh,
22:51whatever the theory.
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24:43now.

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This page contains the full transcript of Rupert Sheldrake Explains Morphic Resonance (With a Galton Board) by Jesse Michels Clips, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 4,107 words across 617 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

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