- Sheldrake, Rupert.
Science Set Free.
New York: Random House, 2011.
ISBN 978-0-7704-3672-8.
-
In this book, the author argues that science, as it is practiced
today, has become prisoner to a collection of dogmas which
constrain what should be free inquiry into the phenomena it
investigates. These dogmas are not the principal theories of
modern science such as the standard models of particle physics
and cosmology, quantum mechanics, general relativity, or evolution
(scientists work on a broad front to falsify these theories,
knowing that any evidence to the contrary will win a ticket to
Stockholm), but rather higher-level beliefs, often with
remarkably little experimental foundation, which few people
are working to test. It isn't so much that questioning these
dogmas will result in excommunication from science, but rather
that few working scientists ever think seriously about whether
they might be wrong.
Suppose an astrophysicist in the 1960s started raving that
everything we could see through our telescopes or had
experimented with in our laboratories made up less than 5%
of the mass of the universe, and the balance was around 27%
invisible matter whose composition we knew nothing about at
all and that the balance was invisible energy which was causing
the expansion of the universe to accelerate, defying the universal
attraction of gravity. Now, this theorist might not be dragged
off in a straitjacket, but he would probably find it very
difficult to publish his papers in respectable journals and,
if he espoused these notions before obtaining tenure, might
find them career-limiting. And yet, this is precisely
what most present-day cosmologists consider the “standard
model”, and it has been supported by experiments to a high
degree of precision.
But even this revolution in our view of the universe and
our place within it (95% of everything in the universe is
unobserved and unknown!) does not challenge the most fundamental
dogmas, ten of which are discussed in this book.
1. Is nature mechanical?
Are there self-organising principles of systems which
explain the appearance of order and complexity from
simpler systems? Do these same principles apply at levels
ranging from formation of superclusters of galaxies to the
origin of life and its evolution into ever more complex
beings? Is the universe better modelled as a mechanism
or an organism?
2. Is the total amount of matter and energy always the same?
Conservation of energy is taken almost as an axiom in physics
but is now rarely tested. And what about that dark energy?
Most cosmologists now believe that it increases without bound
as the universe expands. Where does it come from? If we could
somehow convert it to useful energy what does this do to the
conservation of energy?
3. Are the laws of nature fixed?
If these laws be fixed, where did they come from? Why do
the “fundamental constants” have the values
they do? Are they, in fact, constants? These constants
have varied in published handbooks over the last 50 years
by amounts far greater than the error bars published in
those handbooks—why? Are the laws simply habits
established by the universe as it is tested? Is this why
novel experiments produce results all over the map at the start
and then settle down on a stable value as they are repeated? Why
do crystallographers find it so difficult to initially
crystallise a new compound but then find it increasingly
easy thereafter?
4. Is matter unconscious?
If you are conscious, and you believe your brain to be purely
a material system, then how can matter be unconscious? Is
there something apart from the brain in which consciousness
is embodied? If so, what is it? If the matter of your brain
is conscious, what other matter could be conscious? The Sun
is much larger than your brain and pulses with electromagnetic
signals. Is it conscious? What does the Sun think about?
5. Is nature purposeless?
Is it plausible that the universe is the product of randomness
devoid of purpose? How did a glowing plasma of subatomic
particles organise itself into galaxies, solar systems, planets,
life, and eventually scientists who would ask how it all came
to be? Why does complexity appear to inexorably increase in
systems through which energy flows? Why do patterns assert
themselves in nature and persist even in the presence of
disruptions? Are there limits to reductionism? Is more different?
6. Is all biological inheritance material?
The softer the science, the harder the dogma. Many physical
scientists may take the previous questions as legitimate,
albeit eccentric, questions amenable to research, but to question
part of the dogma of biology is to whack the wasp nest with
the mashie niblick. Our astounding success in
sequencing the genomes of numerous organisms and understanding
how these genomes are translated (including gene regulation)
into the proteins which are assembled into those organisms has
been enlightening but has explained much less than many
enthusiasts expected. Is there something more going on?
Is that “junk DNA” really junk, or is it
significant? Is genetic transfer between parents and offspring
the only means of information transfer?
7. Are memories stored as material traces?
Try to find a neuroscientist who takes seriously the idea that
memories are not encoded somehow in the connections and weights
of synapses within the brain. And yet, for half a century,
every attempt to determine precisely how and where memories are
stored has failed. Could there be something more going on?
Recent experiments have indicated that Carolina Sphinx moths
(Manduca sexta)
remember aversions which they have
learned as caterpillars, despite their nervous system being
mostly dissolved and reconstituted during metamorphosis. How
does this work?
8. Are minds confined to brains?
Somewhere between 70 and 97% of people surveyed in Europe and
North America report having experienced the sense of being
stared at or of having another person they were staring at
from behind react to their stare. In experimental tests,
involving tens of thousands of trials, some performed over
closed circuit television without a direct visual link, 55%
of people could detect when they were being stared at, while
50% would be expected by chance. Although the effect size was
small, with the number of trials the result was highly
significant.
9. Are psychic phenomena illusory?
More than a century of psychical research has produced ever-better
controlled experiments which have converged upon results whose
significance, while small, is greater than that which has caused
clinical drug trials to have approved or rejected pharmaceuticals.
Should we reject this evidence because we can't figure out the
mechanism by which it works?
10. Is mechanistic medicine the only kind that really works?
We are the descendants of billions of generations of organisms
who survived and reproduced before the advent of doctors.
Evidently, we have been well-equipped by the ruthless process of
evolution to heal ourselves, at least until we've reproduced and
raised our offspring. Understanding of the causes of
communicable diseases, public health measures, hygiene in
hospitals, and surgical and pharmaceutical interventions
have dramatically lengthened our lifespans and increased
the years in which we are healthy and active. But does this
explain everything? Since 2009 in the United States, response
to placebos has been increasing: why? Why do we spend more and
more on interventions for the gravely ill and little or nothing
on research into complementary therapies which have been
shown, in the few formal clinical tests performed, to reduce
the incidence of these diseases?
This is a challenging book which asks many more questions than the
few I've summarised above and provides extensive information,
including citations to original sources, on research which challenges
these dogmas. The author is not advocating abolishing our
current enterprise of scientific investigation. Instead, he
suggests, we might allocate a small fraction of the budget (say,
between 1% and 5%) to look at wild-card alternatives. Allowing
these to be chosen by the public from a list of proposals through
a mechanism like crowd-funding Web sites would raise the public
profile of science and engage the public (who are, after all, footing
the bill) in the endeavour. (Note that “mainstream”
research projects, for example extending the mission of a
spacecraft, would be welcome to compete.)
May 2014 