For those of us who are suspicious of the claims of materialism it’s astonishing, and also heartening, to hear a scientist agree that it’s a hidebound ideology, dismiss the belief in determinism as a ‘delusion’ and call on the ‘high priests’ of science to abandon their ‘fantasy of omniscience’.

Reviews

Mind-Opening & Unifying
This is one of the most important books of our time. Rupert Sheldrake approaches this book the way science was meant to be approached, from a place of inquiry. Rather than exploring the ideas as if he has everything figured out, he shows, with endless evidence, how much more the sciences have to learn.
He investigates what he believes to be the top 10 scientific dogmas that are holding the sciences back, and poses them as questions. In a world where science has the final authority on many issues, he poses question after question about many things we all seem to take for granted. Ever since Descartes decided to focus on the physical world and the church decided to be in control of the soul, the observer has been removed from science and we are still operating from that split.

My favorite thing from the book is how many topics of discussion have been opened. We have looked to science to be the end-all in terms of answers about ourselves and the world. He shows how important it is for us to be aware of the limitations and biases that have shaped our understanding of who we are, and the nature of our world and universe.

About the author

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of more than 85 scientific papers and 9 books, and the co-author of 6 books. He was among the top 100 Global Thought Leaders for 2013, as ranked by the Duttweiler Institute, Zurich, Switzerland’s leading think tank. On ResearchGate, the largest scientific and academic online network, his RG score of 33.5 puts him among the top 7.5% of researchers, based on citations of his peer-reviewed publications.

He studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he was a Scholar of Clare College, took a double first class honours degree and was awarded the University Botany Prize (1963). He then studied philosophy and history of science at Harvard University, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow (1963-64), before returning to Cambridge, where he took a Ph.D. in biochemistry (1967). He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge (1967-73), where he was Director of Studies in biochemistry and cell biology. As the Rosenheim Research Fellow of the Royal Society (1970-73), he carried out research on the development of plants and the ageing of cells in the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge University. While at Cambridge, together with Philip Rubery, he discovered the mechanism of polar auxin transport, the process by which the plant hormone auxin is carried from the shoots towards the roots.

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