The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry

Every once in a while, it’s good to read the work of people with whom you expect to disagree.  Such is The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry by Rupert Sheldrake.  Sheldrake’s world is not that of mainstream science.  He prefers places of untested theories and paranormal experiences to what traditional science has to offer.  He uses his perch outside of traditional science to criticize it – sometimes appropriately and sometimes less so.  With an introduction like this, one might appropriately wonder why they want to know more about what Sheldrake has to say, either translated through this review or directly.  However, if you ever enter discussions with people who have radically different views, learning to see into these views is helpful towards improving overall understanding and getting along with others.  For that reason, it’s appropriate to get curious and skeptical about science and what Sheldrake shares.

All Reality is Material or Physical

Sheldrake asserts, “Contemporary science is based on the claim that all reality is material or physical.”  This is an incorrectly narrow view of science.  Science seeks to understand and explain to the limits of what it can measure.  It’s the sense of measurement that challenges Sheldrake.  Certainly, today science acknowledges quantum entanglement.  It’s something that has been and continues to be measured.  It’s what Einstein famously called “spooky at a distance.”  Science acknowledges that there must be a mechanism for this behavior and is working to understand it.

Similarly, we’ve started to crack the code on how gravity works.  We’re a long way from answers, but science acknowledges a boson particle in a Higgs field.  It acknowledges the transmission of energy, light, vibrations, and the like.

The underlying assertion Sheldrake is making is that the current state of scientific knowledge isn’t complete.  He’s claiming that there are things are outside of knowledge today.  I don’t think any scientist could disagree.  However, he goes beyond this to imply there are things that science will never know.  Most scientists would struggle here.

The initial impetus for reading Sheldrake’s work was a confluence of things, not the last of which was a class on the relationship between science and religion.  I can’t say with certainty that science won’t ever be able to explain religion – but I also can’t rule it out.

Unconscious

Sheldrake says that science believes, “All matter is unconscious.”  He proposes that this belief is taken for granted.  However, consciousness is a funny and fickle thing.  The Mind Club explores how we ascribe consciousness to others and other things.  Others call into question the conception of consciousness that we have.  Jonathan Haidt explains how it might have evolved to provide a capacity for prediction, which had a survival advantage.  SuperCooperators, Does Altruism Exist?, and The Evolution of Cooperation share how complex patterns develop that have an impact on the seemingly simple premises, like Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene.

More recently, others have questioned whether free-will is real and if consciousness is just a delusion. Jonathan Haidt proposes that consciousness is a press secretary explaining our behaviors after we’ve already decided to do it.  (See The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind for more.)  Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit exposes some of the research that implies that Haidt may be right.  The tools we have today seem to imply we’ve made too much of consciousness and its power.

All of this is to say that the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness may lie on a degree of complexity – and that’s a weak argument for one side or the other.  How do you decide whether the color blue-green belongs in the categories of blue or green?  This is a class information architecture problem without a solution.  (See How to Make Sense of Any Mess.)

Probabilities

Sheldrake correctly points out that the more we learn, the more we realize that life is not about certainties but instead about probabilities.  As Lorenz pointed out with his work on weather predictions, many things are non-linear and inherently difficult to predict with precision.  A butterfly flapping wings in Brazil can – but isn’t likely to – set off a tornado in Texas.

This is an appropriate acknowledgement.  Humans want certainty, and science often offers answers that imply certainty when the truth is only probability should be stated.

Open Minded Seekers of Truth

In an ideal world – one we don’t live in – scientists would be open minded seekers of truth.  They’d be objective.  They’d not get wrapped up in the cycle of “publish or perish,” and they wouldn’t constantly be worried about whether their grant dollars would run out.  However, the evidence says that all these things are true.  We know that scientists are humans just like us who are affected by the same pressures.

When we read a journal article, we need to treat it with a fair amount of skepticism.  We have to recognize that the conflicts of interest section doesn’t fully explain all the ways that their work may be biased.

Whole Atoms

In many places, Sheldrake points out the misperceptions of the past.  He points out, for instance, that it was once thought that atoms were solid.  We, of course, know this isn’t the case, and that an atom is more space than solid.  More importantly, we now understand protons, neutrons, and electrons.  We further can see into the subatomic particles that we didn’t believe could exist.

Remnants of old thinking prevail in our language.  Database technology uses the language of atomic transactions to mean irreducible.  It must either be completed or fail.  There is no partial commit of the transaction.

Machines or Organisms

Sheldrake also rails against the prevailing mechanistic approach to describing phenomena, instead urging us to use a more organic model.  Images of the Organization points out there are many different ways to see an organization with different benefits and weaknesses.  So, too, would applying organic models to science.  Mechanistic approaches are simple.  They remove the details and odd cases.  They’re easier to work with than organic models of growth and enabling conditions.

So, like many things that Sheldrake says, there’s an element of truth, but it’s surrounded by overreach.

Perpetual Motion Machines

Sheldrake ponders why we shoot down perpetual motion machines.  He says, “But perhaps some of these devices really do work, and really can tap into new sources of energy.”  I’ll acknowledge the possibility without accepting any degree of probability.  The idea of being able to harness other kinds of energy is a very intriguing one, but it has fallen flat.

One intriguing thing, which he doesn’t cover, is the application of a Stirling Engine at nanoscopic scale.  A Stirling Engine isn’t magic, but it does convert differentials in temperature into motion (or electricity).  Recent developments still don’t violate the laws of thermodynamics but may be a way that we can take advantage of the extra heat we’ve been experiencing.

Epigenetics and Generations

While we were fascinated with the great work done on genetics and increased understanding of the genetic code, it falls flat in the face of the evidence that not everything is as fixed as we’d expect.  Thus epigenetics – which is the way that genes and gene sequences are enabled or disabled as a result of environment – is a richer concept.

This creates the possibility for generics making us susceptible to environmental triggers and allowing for the idea that they may never come.  This creates the richness of experience between genetics and the environment.

What’s interesting, and yet unexplained, is some of the research that seems to indicate that exposure to a toxin by a parent can have impacts through several generations.  Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers explains FOAD – fetal onset of adult disease.  We’ve also seen that the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) study showed long term health implications from events that happened in childhood.

Meeting Richard Dawkins

Sheldrake describes a meeting he had with Richard Dawkins.  “Dawkins began by saying that he thought we probably agreed about many things. ‘But what worries me about you is that you are prepared to believe almost anything. Science should be based on the minimum number of beliefs.’”

That’s the heart of my concern.  Sheldrake seems to have no skepticism whatsoever for any idea that might be interesting.  I think we must stay vigilant and look for new ideas, discoveries, and opportunities, but also consider what may make the discoveries questionable.  It’s not “either-or,” it’s “and.”  It’s knowing that we must remain open to the possibilities and be willing to investigate the realities.

In the end, I decided that there were more delusions than The Science Delusion.