Rebirth of Nature, The - Softcover

Penicillin crystallizes the way it does, not because of timeless mathematical laws, but because it "crystallized that way before . . . following habits established through repetition," claims British biochemist Sheldrake. His controversial theory of "morphic resonance" holds that self-organizing systems--molecules, crystals, cells, organisms, societies--respond to invisible regions of influence. He ransacks ideas from Greek animism to pagan polytheism to Darwin's embrace of the concept of Mother Nature as a vast, spontaneous creative process as counterweight to classical physics, which sees the world as a cause-and-effect machine. Sheldrake believes that the mechanistic outlook, coupled with the technological conquest of nature, is killing humankind and the planet. Extending the ideas he advanced in The Presence of the Past , he boldly argues that even the laws of nature may themselves be evolving, and that God might be "a living, evolutionary cosmos." This frontal asault on conventional science embodies a radical rethinking of humanity's place in the scheme of things. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author of A New Science of Life ( LJ 5/15/82) and The Presence of the Past ( LJ 3/1/88) rediscusses and extends concepts introduced in those titles, including the idea of "morphic fields," which supposedly can account for aspects of evolution. This new work is even more unorthodox--some might say outrageous--as Sheldrake attempts to combine scientific, religious, and even mystical views. He firmly believes that nature is alive and bills his book as a rebuttal to Bill McKibben's The End of Nature ( LJ 10/1/89). However, the latter has a more solid scientific basis, while Sheldrake's ideas are on the fringe.
- Joseph Hannibal, Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.