Rupert Sheldrake is an intriguing biochemist with interests that encompass a variety of fields. He presents himself as a late-comer to the field of religion, after a seven-year immersion experience in India as a plant physiologist, one-and-one-half of which he spent on Bede Griffiths' ashram in Tamil Nadu. Sheldrake is perhaps best known for his philosophical inquiries into, and development of, theories of morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields, which he first outlined in his New Science of Life (1981)

The Rebirth of Nature is a simply written, quite readable historical overview of human philosophical conceptions of, and ways of interacting with, the earth. Sheldrake sees humanity as having "progressed" from an early and long-lasting stage where animistic beliefs prevailed, through three centuries of a Cartesian mechanistic view of the earth (Descartes "doctrine that plants and animals were machines furthered his explicit aim of making men 'lords and possessors of nature,'" [p. 52], and Francis Bacon's invitation to a "scientific priesthood" to make decisions regarding how the earth should be treated), through late-20th century attempts to reestablish a newly conceived animism, of sorts.

After introducing this progression in part I of his text (chapters titled "Mother Nature and the Desecration of the World," "The Conquest of Nature and the Scientific Priesthood," and "Returning to Nature"— the last of which deals primarily with the views of the 19th century Romantics) Sheldrake addresses "the rebirth of nature" in part II. As he outlines clarifications brought to the field by Newton and Einstein (fields and energy, and the relationship of energy to mass), Sheldrake gets to his position of preference in "The Nature of Life." He reviews three theories of life and nature: vitalism, as life being confined to biological organisms; the mechanistic approach, in which there is no essential difference between living organisms and dead organisms; and a "holistic or organismic" view, wherein organisms are seen as structures of activity, as patterns of energetic activity within fields. In a specific critique of the mechanistic theory, he points out that "the machine analogy breaks down when it comes to understanding the growth and development of organisms, their morphogenesis" (p. 103). This is where the theory of morphogenetic fields has a greater contribution to make than other systems. Sheldrake outlines current theories of morphogenetic fields, and explains his own "hypothesis of formative causation," involving collective memories on which each species draws and to which each, in turn, contributes." He includes a number of illustrative examples from the natural world. In the remainder of the text—while adding to his philosophical overview—Sheldrake points out a number of advantages of the formative causation hypothesis.

In chapter 6 ("Cosmic Evolution and the Habits of Nature") he summarizes two popular cosmological paradigms: there are fixed, eternal laws that govern the universe and its development, and everything is in the process of evolving, including the "laws" that govern the universe. He suggests that the evolutionary process as a whole involves the interplay of creativity and habit (pp. 144-145), and explains why one without the other insufficiently explains how we got to where we are today.

Part III of The Rebirth of Nature entails four chapters about the new animism that has developed over the past decades. Chapter 7, "The Earth Comes Back to Life," includes a short introduction to Lovelock's theory of Gaia. Chapter 8 ("Sacred Times and Places") recalls the power that times of the year, and geographical locations, have played in human life and activities over the centuries. In chapter 9, "The Greening of God," Sheldrake looks at certain animistic and shamanic roots in Christianity and Judaism, but spends the bulk of the chapter on evolutionary creativity (whether there is a Great Mother, a Great Father—as creative principles—or whether there is an interplay of the two) and the cumulative effect of the evolutionary process. He is clear, as the book ends ("Life in a Living World"), in his assertion that traditional humanism is unacceptable as a way to interact with the world. Thinking of nature as alive, rather than inanimate, both gives us a new sense of our real relationship to the natural world and makes possible the "resacralization of nature" he feels is so important.

Sheldrake's text is an excellent, quite readable resource for the secondary school teacher, especially those of us who may not been solidly prepared in certain philosophical concepts from the history of science.

review ©2003 by David Streight and RSiSS

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