For the past three decades, British biologist Rupert Sheldrake has been asking questions that most scientists either haven't thought of asking, or may be discouraged from asking by the unwritten codes that often prevail in our scientific and academic institutions. He thinks there are many other scientists “... who have spiritual interests, psychic experiences and so forth, that don't or can't talk about them to their colleagues. If they do so, they'll find that many of their colleagues share these interests and that the conversation in the laboratory tea room would become so much more interesting than it is at present." Join us for this talk, sponsored by the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco in 2012, in which Dr. Sheldrake introduces his book, Science Set Free, and addresses some of the constricting dogmas and assumptions of modern science, turning them into open questions that can be tested scientifically, rather than being accepted on faith alone. (hosted by Daniel Drasin)

Rupert Sheldrake studied natural sciences at Cambridge and philosophy at Harvard, took a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cambridge and is the author of more than eighty scientific papers. Dr. Sheldrake is perhaps best known for his morphic field theory, which takes a fresh look at memory, habit, instinct and heredity as well as phenomena such as telepathy - aspects of human experience that are unexplained in terms of current physics. He is the author of several books including A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (J.P. Tarcher 1995), Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (Three Rivers Press 2001) and Science Set Free (Deepak Chopra Books, 2012), also published in the UK as The Science Delusion (Coronet 2012)

Date of Presentation: 9/7/2012 Tags: Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., morphic fields, morphic resonance, morphogenetic fields, brain, science, Social Change/Politics, Philosophy