New updated and expanded edition of the groundbreaking book that ignited a firestorm in the scientific world with its radical approach to evolution
• Explains how past forms and behaviors of organisms determine those of similar organisms in the present through morphic resonance
• Reveals the nonmaterial connections that allow direct communication across time and space
When A New Science of Life was first published the British journal Nature called it "the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." The book called into question the prevailing mechanistic theory of life when its author, Rupert Sheldrake, a former research fellow of the Royal Society, proposed that morphogenetic fields are responsible for the characteristic form and organization of systems in biology, chemistry, and physics--and that they have measurable physical effects. Using his theory of morphic resonance, Sheldrake was able to reinterpret the regularities of nature as being more like habits than immutable laws, offering a new understanding of life and consciousness.
In the years since its first publication, Sheldrake has continued his research to demonstrate that the past forms and behavior of organisms influence present organisms through direct immaterial connections across time and space. This can explain why new chemicals become easier to crystallize all over the world the more often their crystals have already formed, and why when laboratory rats have learned how to navigate a maze in one place, rats elsewhere appear to learn it more easily. With more than two decades of new research and data, Rupert Sheldrake makes an even stronger case for the validity of the theory of formative causation that can radically transform how we see our world and our future.
He aquí un libro revolucionario cuya importancia ha sido comparada a la de El origen de las especies de Darwin. El biólogo Rupert Sheldrake afirma que la probabilidad de ocurrencia de un fenómeno aumenta proporcionalmente a su ocurrencia pasada. Cuando los químicos, por ejemplo, consiguen que un determinado producto cristalice en una parte del mundo, por ejemplo, resulta más sencillo cristalizarlo en cualquier otro lugar. Después de que las ratas de un laboratorio de Harvard aprenden a escapar de un laberinto, las ratas de Melbourne (Australia) escapan mucho más rápidamente de un laberinto similar. ¿Por qué y cómo? El doctor Sheldrake denomina a este proceso «resonancia mórfica», una expresión con la que se refiere al modo en que formas y conductas de organismos pasados influyen sobre organismos presentes. Sheldrake reinterpreta las regularidades de la naturaleza como algo que se asemeja más a hábitos que a leyes inmutables. Calificado, por la revista Nature, en su primera edición, como «el mejor candidato a la hoguera que se ha visto en muchos años», esta edición completamente actualizada cuenta con un nuevo Prólogo a la segunda edición castellana y con Apéndices ampliados, que incluyen una discusión de nuevas pruebas experimentales. Se trata de un libro que, aunque moleste a algunos, inspirará a las mentes curiosas.
What are angels? Many people believe in angels, but few can define these enigmatic spirits. Now visionary theologian Matthew Fox and acclaimed biologist Rupert Sheldrake—pioneers in modern religious thinking and scientific theory—launch a groundbreaking exploration into the ancient concept of the angel and restore dignity, meaning, and joy to the time-honored belief in these heavenly beings.
Angels constitute one of the most fundamental themes in human spiritual and religious experience. All cultures acknowledge the existence of spirits at levels beyond the human. In the West we call them angels, but they go under different names in other traditions. (Native Americans, for example, call them “spirits.")
We are entering a new phase of both science and theology. Fox and Sheldrake explore many significant questions raised by both traditions about the existence and role of consciousness beyond the human level.
This dialog between Fox and Sheldrake concentrates on three giants of the Western tradition whose treatment of angels is particularly broad, deep, and influential. They are Dionysius the Areopagite, a Syrian monk whose classic work The Celestial Hierarchies was written in the sixth century; Hildegard of Bingen, a German abbess of the twelfth century; and St. Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher-theologian of the thirteenth century.
Fox and Sheldrake have selected their most important and relevant passages about angels, and each is followed by a discussion exploring their meaning from both a theological and a scientific perspective.
Also explored are the fascinating parallels between Thomas Aquinas speaking of angels in the Middle Ages and Albert Einstein speaking of photons in this century. Hence the title of this book, The Physics of Angels.
The exploration of angels in a living cosmos enlivens and enriches both religion and science and contributes to the deepening exploration of consciousness—on this planet and beyond.
The bestselling author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home offers an intriguing new assessment of modern day science that will radically change the way we view what is possible.
For many of the world's most powerful scientists, we live in a strictly material world, a machine made up of dead matter where nature is purposeless and consciousness is strictly a physical function of the brain. But for Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, these ideas are not reality but a series of dangerous delusions that are preventing the discipline of science from reaching new heights. In Science Set Free, Sheldrake blows holes in ten dead scientific dogmas and shows how a new perspective can redefine the way approach the challenges of the 21st century.
