Beyond the Science Delusion

DNA: Shutterstock Beyond the Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake The “scientific worldview” is im- Yet in the second decade of the mensely influential because the twenty-first century, when science sciences have been so success- and technology seem to be at the ful. No one can fail to be awed by peak of their power, when their in- their achievements, which touch all fluence has spread all over the world our lives through technologies and and when their triumph seems indis- through modern medicine. Our intel- putable, unexpected problems are lectual world has been transformed disrupting the sciences from within. through an immense expansion Most scientists take it for granted of our knowledge, down into the that these problems will eventually most microscopic particles of matter be solved by more research along and out into the vastness of space, established lines, but some, in- with hundreds of billions of galax- cluding myself, think that they are ies in an ever-expanding universe. symptoms of a deeper malaise. Sci- 12 ence is being held back by centuries- bering robots”, in Richard Dawkins’ old assumptions that have hardened vivid phrase, with brains that are into dogmas. The sciences would be like genetically programmed com- better off without them: freer, more puters. interesting, and more fun. 2. All matter is unconscious. It has The biggest scientific delusion no inner life or subjectivity or point of all is that science already knows of view. Even human consciousness the answers. The details still need is an illusion produced by the mate- working out, but the fundamental rial activities of brains. questions are settled, in principle. 3. The total amount of matter and Contemporary science is based on energy is always the same (with the the claim that all reality is material exception of the Big Bang, when or physical. There is no reality but all the matter and energy of the material reality. Consciousness is universe suddenly appeared). a by-product of the physical activ- 4. The laws of nature are fixed. ity of the brain. Matter is uncon- They are the same today as they scious. Evolution is purposeless. were at the beginning, and they God exists only as an idea in human will stay the same forever. minds, and hence in human heads. 5. Nature is purposeless, and evo- These beliefs are powerful not lution has no goal or direction. because most scientists think about 6. All biological inheritance is ma- them critically, but because they terial, carried in the genetic mate- don’t. The facts of science are real rial, DNA, and in other material enough, and so are the techniques structures. that scientists use, and so are 7. Minds are inside heads and are the technologies based on them. nothing but the activities of brains. But the belief system that gov- When you look at a tree, the image erns conventional scientific think- of the tree you are seeing is not ing is an act of faith, grounded in “out there”, where it seems to be, a nineteenth century ideology. but inside your brain. 8. Memories are stored as material The scientific creed traces in brains and are wiped out Here are the ten core beliefs that at death. most scientists take for granted: 9. Unexplained phenomena like 1. Everything is essentially mechani- telepathy are illusory. cal. Dogs, for example, are complex 10. Mechanistic medicine is the mechanisms, rather than living only kind that really works. organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lum- Together, these beliefs make up the 13 philosophy or ideology of material- mechanical?” The assumption that ism, whose central assumption is matter is unconscious becomes “Is that everything is essentially mate- matter unconscious?” And so on. rial or physical, even minds. This belief-system became dominant The credibility crunch for the within science in the late nineteenth “scientific worldview” century, and is now taken for grant- For more than 200 years, materi- ed. Many scientists are unaware alists have promised that science that materialism is an assumption; will eventually explain everything they simply think of it as science, or in terms of physics and chemistry. the scientific view of reality, or the Science will prove that living organ- scientific worldview. They are not isms are complex machines, minds actually taught about it, or given are nothing but brain activity and a chance to discuss it. They absorb nature is purposeless. Believers are it by a kind of intellectual osmosis. sustained by the faith that scientific In everyday usage, materialism discoveries will justify their beliefs. refers to a way of life devoted en- The philosopher of science Karl Pop- tirely to material interests, a preoc- per called this stance “promissory cupation with wealth, possessions materialism” because it depends and luxury. These attitudes are no on issuing promissory notes for dis- doubt encouraged by the materi- coveries not yet made.2 Despite all alist philosophy, which denies the the achievements of science and existence of any spiritual realities technology, materialism is now fac- or non-material goals, but in this ing a credibility crunch that was un- article I am concerned with materi- imaginable in the twentieth century. alism’s scientific claims, rather than In 1963, when I was studying its effects on lifestyles. In the spirit biochemistry at Cambridge Univer- of radical scepticism, each of these sity, I was invited to a series of pri- ten doctrines can be turned into vate meetings with Francis Crick and a question, as I show in my book Sydney Brenner in Brenner's rooms The Science Delusion1 (called Sci- in King's College, along with a few ence Set Free in the US). Entirely of my classmates. Crick and Brenner new vistas open up when a widely had recently helped to “crack” the accepted assumption is taken as genetic code. Both were ardent ma- the beginning of an enquiry, rather terialists and Crick was also a mili- than as an unquestionable truth. tant atheist. They explained there For example, the assumption that were two major unsolved prob- nature is machine-like or mechani- lems in biology: development and cal becomes a question: “Is nature consciousness. They had not been 14 solved because the people who or it is just another way of talk- worked on them were not molecu- ing about brain activity. However, lar biologists—nor very bright. Crick among contemporary researchers and Brenner were going to find the in neuroscience and consciousness answers within 10 years, or maybe studies there is no consensus about 20. Brenner would take develop- the nature of minds. Leading jour- mental biology, and Crick conscious- nals such as Behavioural and Brain ness. They invited us to join them. Sciences and the Journal of Con- Both tried their best. Brenner was sciousness Studies publish many awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 for articles that reveal deep problems his work on the development of a with the materialist doctrine. The tiny worm, Caenorhabdytis elegans. philosopher David Chalmers has Crick corrected the manuscript of called the very existence of subjec- his final paper on the brain the day tive experience the “hard problem”. before he died in 2004. At his fu- It is hard because it defies explana- neral, his son Michael said that what tion in terms of mechanisms. Even if made him tick was not the desire to we understand how eyes and brains be famous, wealthy or popular, but respond to red light, the experience “to knock the final nail into the cof- of redness is not accounted for. fin of vitalism.” (Vitalism is the the- In biology and psychology the ory that living organisms are truly credibility rating of materialism alive, and not explicable in terms is falling. Can physics ride to the of physics and chemistry alone.) rescue? Some materialists pre- Crick and Brenner failed. The fer to call themselves physical- problems of development and ists, to emphasize that their hopes consciousness remain unsolved. depend on modern physics, not Many details have been discovered, nineteenth-century theories of mat- dozens of genomes have been se- ter. But physicalism’s own cred- quenced, and brain scans are ever ibility rating has been reduced by more precise. But there is still no physics itself, for four reasons: proof that life and minds can be First, some physicists insist that explained by physics and chem- quantum mechanics cannot be istry alone (Chapters 2, 5 and 9). formulated without taking into ac- The fundamental proposition count the minds of observers. They of materialism is that matter is the argue that minds cannot be reduced only reality. Therefore conscious- to physics because physics presup- ness is nothing but brain activity. poses the minds of physicists.3 It is either like a shadow, an “epi- Second, the most ambitious phenomenon”, that does nothing, unified theories of physical reality, 15 string and M-theories, with ten and parent laws of our universe as eleven dimensions respectively, take the unique possible consequence science into completely new terri- of a few simple assumptions tory. Strangely, as Stephen Hawk- may have to be abandoned.5 ing tells us in his book The Grand Some physicists are deeply scepti- Design (2010), “No one seems to cal about this entire approach, as know what the ‘M’ stands for, but the theoretical physicist Lee Smo- it may be ‘master’, ‘miracle’ or ‘mys- lin shows in his book The Trouble tery’”. According to what Hawk- With Physics: The Rise of String ing calls “model-dependent real- Theory, the Fall of a Science and ism”, different theories may have What Comes Next (2008).6 String to be applied in different situations.

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