The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry (NEW EDITION)

by Rupert Sheldrake

The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers. The details still need working out but, in principle, the fundamental questions are settled.

The phrase ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’ was the poet Tennyson’s rather than Darwin’s, but sounds very like Kali, or the destructive Greek goddess Nemesis, or the vengeful Furies.

A prize for the most effective ‘over unity’ energy device might change the situation in energy research dramatically. In fair tests, conducted in an open-minded spirit of enquiry, some devices may indeed produce more energy than is put into them from conventional sources. Or perhaps the contest will reveal that no such devices exist, and no one will win the prize, giving scientific conservatives the pleasure of saying, ‘I told you so.’

Scientists, like most other people, accept evidence that agrees with their beliefs much more readily than evidence that contradicts them. This is one reason why established orthodoxies in science remain established.

The brain may be more like a television set than a hard-drive recorder. What you see on TV depends on the resonant tuning of the set to invisible fields. No one can find out what programmes you watched yesterday by analysing the wires and transistors in your TV set for traces of them. For the same reason, the fact that injury and brain degeneration, as in Alzheimer’s disease, lead to loss of memory does not prove that memories are stored in the damaged tissue. If I snipped a wire or removed some components from the sound circuits of your TV set, I could render it speechless. But this would not mean that all the sounds were stored in the damaged components.

Recognising is easier than recalling. It is usually easier to recognise people than remember their names.

Sixteen-year-old Carole Davies was about to leave a games arcade in London with some friends when it began to rain heavily. The entrance became crowded as people came in from the street to shelter. Carole said: While standing there looking out into the night, I had a sense of danger. Then I saw what looked like a picture in front of me showing people on the floor and with tiles and metal girders on them. I looked round and up and realised this was to happen here. I began to shout at people to get out. No one listened. I ran through the rain, with my friends following, to a nearby café. After a while we heard sirens that stopped outside the arcade building. We all ran down the road to find out what had happened. It was just as I had seen. A man I had shouted at was being pulled from under the debris.

Citation needed

Obviously it is in the interests of pharmaceutical companies to sell as many drugs as possible, even though the interests of patients and those who pay for their healthcare are different. This conflict of interest needs to be mediated by governments, independent regulatory agencies and independent researchers. Unfortunately, the lobbying of governments, financial control of regulatory agencies and the funding of medical researchers by the industry means that pharmaceutical corporations have a huge influence on the entire medical system, and reinforce its reliance on drugs.

This isn't the fault of the scientists or due to flaws in the Scientific Method: it is a consequence of capitalism!

In a study in which doctors and patients were asked to say whether they had received the real drug or the placebo, 80 per cent of the patients and 87 per cent of the doctors were right, as opposed to the 50 per cent that would be expected by random guessing.

This seems a better "hit rate" than some of the cited evidence for the existence of psychic powers, which don't seem able to break the blind in double-blind trials!

What questions capable of being answered by scientific research are of public interest? The simplest way to find out would be to ask for suggestions. They could come from membership organisations like the National Trust, the British Beekeepers’ Association, the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners, Oxfam, the Consumers’ Association, the Women’s Institute, as well as local authorities and trade unions. Potential subjects for research would be discussed in these organisations’ newsletters, in specialist magazines and in online forums. Their research suggestions would be submitted to the body that administers the 1 per cent fund, which could be called the Open Research Centre.

That way madness lies. You'd end up with requests for time with the Hubble Telescope to search the moon for Apollo descent stages, searches on Mount Ararat for remains of Noah's Ark and expeditions to the ice wall at the edge of the Earth!

The sciences evolve, and so do religions. No religion is the same today as it was at the time of its founder. Instead of the bitter conflicts and mutual distrust caused by the materialist worldview, we are entering an era in which sciences and religions may enrich each other through shared explorations.