Alfred Rupert Sheldrake was born on June 28, 1942. He is an English writer and researcher who studies parapsychology. He created a theory called morphic resonance. This idea is not widely accepted by most scientists and has been called pseudoscience. He has worked as a biochemist at Cambridge University, a scholar at Harvard University, a researcher at the Royal Society, and a plant physiologist in India for ICRISAT.
Sheldrake has written about paranormal topics like precognition, studied telepathy, and researched the psychic staring effect. He is sometimes called a New Age author. His theory suggests that memory is part of nature and that natural systems share a collective memory from similar things in the past. He believes this theory explains how organisms might communicate telepathically. He uses this theory to explain biological topics like development, inheritance, and memory in ways that differ from traditional science.
Critics say there is no strong evidence for morphic resonance. They point out that the theory conflicts with findings in genetics, embryology, neuroscience, and biochemistry. They also worry that Sheldrake's books and public talks might confuse people about real science.
Early life and education
Rupert Sheldrake was born on June 28, 1942, in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire, to Reginald Sheldrake and Doris (née Tebbutt). His father was a pharmacist who had studied at the University of Nottingham and owned a chemist’s shop near where Rupert’s grandparents operated a wallpaper shop. Sheldrake says his father, who studied nature and tiny organisms in his free time, helped him develop an interest in the study of animals and plants.
Although Sheldrake’s parents were Methodists, they enrolled him at Worksop College, an Anglican boarding school. He once said:
“I went through a time when I believed science meant not believing in God, around the age of 14. I was the only student at my school who refused to participate in a religious ceremony called confirmation.”
Before starting college, Sheldrake worked for nine months at the Parke-Davis pharmacology research lab in London. He described this experience as important because it required harming lab animals, which made him feel very uncomfortable. At Clare College, Cambridge, he studied biology and biochemistry. In 1964, he received a special opportunity to study the philosophy and history of science at Harvard University. After one year at Harvard, he returned to Cambridge, where he earned a PhD in biochemistry in 1968 for his research on plant growth and plant hormones.
Career
After earning his PhD, Sheldrake became a fellow at Clare College. He worked in biochemistry and cell biology, supported by a research grant from the Royal Society Rosenheim Research Fellowship. He studied auxins, a type of plant hormone involved in how plant cells develop into vascular tissues. Sheldrake and Philip Rubery created a model to explain how auxins move in plants.
Sheldrake said he stopped this research after realizing the system was circular and did not explain how differentiation begins. He concluded that nine years of study showed biochemistry could not answer why things have their basic shapes.
From 1968 to 1969, Sheldrake worked at the University of Malaya. Interested in Indian philosophy, Hinduism, and transcendental meditation, he left his position at Clare College to study the physiology of tropical crops in Hyderabad, India. From 1974 to 1978, he worked as a principal plant physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). There, he wrote about crop physiology and co-authored a book on the anatomy of the pigeonpea.
Sheldrake left ICRISAT to write A New Science of Life. During this time, he spent 1.5 years at the Saccidananda Ashram of Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk who worked with Hinduism. Published in 1981, the book introduced his idea of morphic resonance. He described the idea as a sudden insight that interested some colleagues but was met with skepticism by others in science labs.
After writing A New Science of Life, Sheldrake worked part-time as a consultant physiologist at ICRISAT until 1985. In 1988, he published his second book, The Presence of the Past. In the 1990s and 2000s, he wrote more books, including collaborations with Ralph Abraham, a mathematician, and Terence McKenna, an ethnobotanist and philosopher. He also wrote two books with Matthew Fox, a priest and theologian.
In 1993, Sheldrake was one of six people, including Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould, featured in a documentary series called A Glorious Accident by filmmaker Wim Kayzer. The series explored questions about consciousness and ended with a discussion among the participants. The documentary was shown on Dutch public television in 1993 and on a U.S. PBS station in 1994. A book based on the series was published in Dutch and English.
Since 2004, Sheldrake has been a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in Bethany, Connecticut. He also led the Holistic Learning and Thinking Program until 2012. From 2005 to 2010, he directed the Perrott–Warrick Project for psychical research, funded by Trinity College, Cambridge. As of 2014, he was a fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California, Schumacher College in Devon, England, and the Temenos Academy in London.
In 2017, Sheldrake published a book titled Arguing Science: A Dialogue on the Future of Science and Spirit, written with Michael Shermer, a science writer and skeptic. In 2023, he debated Shermer at the How The Light Gets In festival in Hay-on-Wye, UK. He also debated the existence of consciousness outside the brain at the University Aula in Bergen, Norway, alongside anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann and neuroscientist Anil Seth.
Sheldrake described his spiritual practices in two books: Science and Spiritual Practices (2017) and Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work (2019).
Selected books
Reviews of Sheldrake's books have sometimes been very negative about their scientific content, but some reviews have been positive. In 2009, Adam Rutherford, a geneticist and deputy editor of Nature, criticized Sheldrake's books for including research that was not reviewed by other scientists, as is standard in scientific work. He suggested that the books should be "ignored."
Sheldrake's A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance (1981) argues that through morphic resonance, certain events, especially biological ones, become more likely to happen again if they have occurred before. He claims that this process helps guide biological growth and behavior based on patterns from past events. This idea suggests that new behaviors could be passed to future generations, similar to a theory called Lamarckian inheritance. Sheldrake also claims that this concept explains many areas of science, including evolution and the laws of nature, which he says are not fixed but have changed over time since the Big Bang.
John Davy, writing in The Observer, said the ideas in A New Science of Life were "fascinating and far-reaching" and could "turn upside down a lot of orthodox science." He added that the book "would merit attention if some of its predictions are supported by experiment."
In later books, Sheldrake continued to promote the idea of morphic resonance. However, many critics reject the hypothesis, calling it pseudoscience and magical thinking. They argue that there is no strong evidence to support it and that it conflicts with established scientific theories. Some say the idea is too vague and cannot be tested or proven wrong. Sheldrake's experiments have also been criticized for poor design and possible bias in how results were interpreted.
Alex Gomez-Marin disagrees that Sheldrake's idea is unfalsifiable, but no conclusive experiments have been conducted because most scientists are not interested in testing it.
In The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1988), Sheldrake expanded on his theory and presented what he called experimental evidence supporting it. The book received a favorable review in New Scientist by historian Theodore Roszak, who called it "engaging, provocative" and "a tour de force." When the book was reissued in 2011, New Scientist noted that opinions about Sheldrake had become more negative, and the publisher would not use the quotes for promotion.
In a 1988 review in The Times, David E. H. Jones criticized the hypothesis as pseudoscience and magical thinking. He said morphic resonance is "so vast and formless that it could explain anything" and accused Sheldrake of creating "grandiose theories" without strong evidence. Jones argued that without experimental confirmation, Sheldrake's theory "falls to Occam's Razor."
Sheldrake's The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God (1991) discusses New Age ideas about consciousness and nature. A Guardian column said the book "seeks to restore the pre-Enlightenment notion that nature is 'alive.'" James Lovelock, reviewing the book in Nature, noted that the theory of formative causation makes testable predictions but said "nothing has yet been reported" to change mainstream science.
In 1994, Sheldrake proposed a list of Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, encouraging laypeople to conduct research. The Sunday Times music critic Mark Edwards praised the book for challenging scientific certainty, while The Lancet’s David Sharp warned of the risks of biased reporting in experiments on paranormal phenomena. He encouraged scientists to "read Sheldrake" and "pay close attention to methods" if they tried his experiments.
In The Times, science journalist Nigel Hawkes wrote that Sheldrake was "trying to bridge the gap between phenomenalism and science" and suggested that dogs might appear to have psychic abilities due to conventional senses. He concluded that whether scientists take Sheldrake seriously is a question for scientists, not most readers.
Sheldrake's Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home explores his research on proposed telepathy between humans and animals, particularly dogs. The book is divided into three sections: telepathy, sense of direction (including animal migration and pigeon homing), and animal precognition (including earthquake and tsunami premonitions). Sheldrake studied over 1,000 cases of dogs and cats that seemed to anticipate their owners’ return. He conducted experiments with a dog named Jaytee, filming the dog continuously during the owner's absence. In 100 tests, Jaytee spent significantly more time at the window when the owner was returning than when she was not. Sheldrake interpreted this as statistically significant. He repeated the tests with Jaytee's owner using unfamiliar vehicles to rule out the dog reacting to familiar sounds. Similar experiments with another dog, Kane, also showed positive results.
Public reception
Sheldrake's ideas have been discussed in academic journals and books. His work has also been covered in newspapers, radio, television, and speaking events. Some people worry that the attention Sheldrake receives might confuse how the public understands science. Others say he promotes himself for fame, as Steven Rose noted, "for the inventors of such hypotheses the rewards include a degree of instant fame which is harder to achieve by the humdrum pursuit of more conventional science."
Many responses to Sheldrake's ideas have been published in major scientific journals.
In 1982, Sheldrake and physicist David Bohm wrote a dialogue comparing Sheldrake's ideas to Bohm's concept of the implicate order. In 1997, physicist Hans-Peter Dürr discussed Sheldrake's work in relation to modern physics.
After the release of A New Science of Life, New Scientist organized a competition to design tests for morphic resonance. The winning idea involved learning Turkish nursery rhymes. Psychologist Sue Blackmore's entry, which focused on babies' behavior, came second. Blackmore found the results did not support morphic resonance.
In 2005, the Journal of Consciousness Studies published a special issue on Sheldrake's work about the sense of being stared at. The editor could not use the usual peer-review process because "making successful blind peer review a condition of publication would in this case have killed the project at the outset." The issue included several articles by Sheldrake, followed by open peer review. Sheldrake responded to the reviews. Michael Shermer noted in Scientific American that more supportive reviews came from people affiliated with less mainstream institutions.
Sheldrake denies that DNA contains a recipe for morphological development. He and biologist Lewis Wolpert made a scientific bet about DNA's role in development. Wolpert bet Sheldrake "a case of fine port" that "By 1 May 2029, given the genome of a fertilized egg of an animal or plant, we will be able to predict in at least one case all the details of the organism that develops from it, including any abnormalities." The Royal Society will decide the winner if the result is unclear.
In September 1981, Nature's senior editor, John Maddox, wrote an editorial titled "A book for burning?" about A New Science of Life. He said the book shows a common misunderstanding of what science is. He argued Sheldrake's ideas are not scientific but "pseudo-science" and that the book "may have been a part of the objective of writing such a book." Maddox said Sheldrake's hypothesis was not testable or "falsifiable in Popper's sense," referring to philosopher Karl Popper. He criticized Sheldrake's proposed tests as "time-consuming, inconclusive, and impractical." Maddox did not support burning the book, but the title caused widespread attention. Nature later published letters criticizing the editorial, including one from physicist Brian Josephson, who said Maddox failed to consider "genuine physical facts" beyond current scientific understanding.
In 1983, an editorial in The Guardian compared the criticism of Sheldrake to historical conflicts like the Galileo affair and Lysenkoism. Brian Charlesworth defended the scientific community, stating that "the ultimate test of a scientific theory is its conformity with the observations and experiments" and that "vitalistic and Lamarckian ideas have repeatedly failed this test."
In 1988, a scientist from Glasgow University said the title "A book for burning?" was used to attract attention and criticized the idea that Maddox ever supported burning the book. In 1999, Maddox called his 1981 editorial "injudicious," saying it concluded the book "should not be burned … but put firmly in its place among the literature of intellectual aberration." He noted that Sheldrake's publishers used the editorial to suggest the scientific community was suppressing new ideas.
A Nature editor said in 2009 that Maddox's reference to book burning backfired.
In 2012, Sheldrake described the reaction to Maddox's review as "exactly like a papal excommunication. From that moment on, I became a very dangerous person to know for scientists."
Between 1987 and 1988, Sheldrake wrote several articles for The Guardian's "Body and Soul" column. In one, he said the idea that "memories were stored in our brains" was "only a theory" and that "despite decades of research, the phenomenon of memory remains mysterious." Neuroscientist Steven Rose criticized Sheldrake for not respecting neuroscience research and for ignoring evidence that "memories are stored in specific changes in brain cells." Rose used experiments on chicks to show "egregious errors" in Sheldrake's arguments.
Sheldrake responded by saying there was evidence that "memories can survive the destruction of the putative memory traces." Rose asked Sheldrake to "get his facts straight," explaining the research and concluding that "there is no way that this straightforward and impressive body of evidence can be taken to imply that memories are not in the brain."
In a later column, Sheldrake criticized Rose for following "materialism" and argued that quantum physics had "overturned" materialism, suggesting "memories may turn out to depend on morphic resonance rather than memory traces." Philosopher Alan Malachowski of the University of East Anglia called Sheldrake's response a "muddled diatribe," defended materialism, and said quantum physics is compatible with materialism. He argued that materialists are "far more open-minded" than Sheldrake acknowledges.
In 1990, Sheldrake and Rose agreed to test the morphic resonance hypothesis using chicks. They could not agree on a joint research paper, so they published separate and conflicting interpretations. Sheldrake claimed the results supported his hypothesis, stating, "From the point of view of the hypothesis of formative causation, the results of this experiment are encouraging," and called for further research.
Origin and philosophy of morphic resonance
Sheldrake was influenced early in his life by Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). He said this book helped him see modern scientific ideas about life as a way of thinking, which he called "the mechanistic theory of life." Reading Kuhn's work made Sheldrake focus on how scientific ways of thinking can change over time.
Sheldrake notes that while his idea of morphic resonance shares some similarities with Hindu ideas called "akashic records," he first thought of the concept while studying at Cambridge University, before traveling to India. He says the idea came from two sources: his studies of biology's holistic traditions and a book by French philosopher Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (1896). He took Bergson's idea that memories are not physically stored in the brain and expanded it to morphic resonance, where memories are not only nonphysical but also shaped by the shared memories of similar living things. While his colleagues at Cambridge did not support the idea, he found that people in India were more open to it. Indian colleagues told him, "This idea is not new; ancient scholars called rishis knew it long ago." Sheldrake describes morphic resonance as a meeting of Western and Eastern ideas, though he says he discovered it first in Western philosophy.
Sheldrake also points out that morphic resonance has some similarities to Carl Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, which involves shared memories and repeated behaviors called archetypes. However, Jung believed these patterns were passed down through physical inheritance, while Sheldrake attributes them to morphic resonance and rejects explanations based on "mechanistic biology," which is the traditional view of life as purely physical.
Lewis Wolpert, a critic of Sheldrake, has called morphic resonance a modern version of a theory called Drieschian vitalism.
Personal life
Sheldrake is married to Jill Purce, who is a therapist, voice teacher, and author. They have two sons: Merlin Sheldrake, a biologist, and Cosmo Sheldrake, a musician. Merlin Sheldrake is a mycologist and wrote the book Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures.
Sheldrake follows the Anglican faith. He has said that he studied with a Sufi teacher and practiced Sufism while he was in India. During his time in India, he reported "being drawn back to a Christian path."