I first came across Rupert Sheldrake, a controversial scientist, when I learned about his “banned” Ted talk. Of course, anything banned immediately gets my attention… something about forbidden fruit…
So I watch the video and it immediately piques my curiosity. The video shares a short summary of Rupert’s “10 Scientific Dogmas” he believes are holding back scientific inquiry, exploration and discovery.
While I’m not going to dive into the merits or accuracy of each (I’m not the right person to fact check them anyways) I would like to dive into how a specific dogma (and dogmatic beliefs in general) could be related to the well-documented stagnation that the scientific community has been battling since the 1970s.
There have been many unrealized promises over the last 50 years of where science and technology can take us. Extended lifespans, flying vehicles, cures for cancer, clean power, and the ultimate understanding of the physical Universe are always ‘X’ years away. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund summarizes this stagnation beautifully, “We wanted flying cars; instead we got 140 characters.”
So, what is causing the stagnation of discovery and innovation? Let’s look and see what Sheldrake sees as the dogmatic beliefs holding back scientific exploration.
The first dogma of the scientific community that Sheldrake reveals is the fundamental belief that the Universe is ‘mechanistic’. Mechanistic meaning that it operates as a machine or robot does. A series of processes, rules and operations are hard-coded into the fabric of the Universe and dictate how everything works.
Everything from the Big Bang to human consciousness can be explained through some mechanistic process of physical matter interacting with itself.
So how is it that everything in the known Universe is made out of quarks (the smallest known physical particle)… but we can’t figure out how the human brain works, why dark matter and energy exist, nuclear fusion or the cure for cancer?
If you would ask a mainstream scientist today, they would argue that it’s because we don’t know enough about the particles, molecules, elements, and all of the other materials our natural world is made of. If we only understood more what everything is made of and how it interacts we can know all of the Universe’s secrets.
The mechanistic view of the Universe is, as Sheldrake argues, one of the biggest flaws in scientific thinking today. Shedrake believes that reducing everything down to its parts will yield ever-increasing scientific discoveries is a fallacy holding back scientific innovation.
Is it true that we’re seeing the effects of this dogmatic belief in the stagnation of scientific discovery and falling trust in the scientific process today? Maybe… as I said, I am not a PhD biochemist with many honors and awards such as Sheldrake. I am a humble citizen of the internet who appreciates controversial ideas and believes there’s elements of truth in what Sheldrake is saying.
So what does Sheldrake think? I recommend starting with the TedX talk linked above or reading his book “Science Set Free” to get a more clear picture.
What I’m illustrating with this article is how dogmatic beliefs can create illusions by limiting how much creativity can be used to solve hard problems.
Science and innovation have been stagnant for 50 years. Maybe the reason we’re seeing so much stagnation is we’re not questioning some of the major foundational beliefs in science that have launched our world to where we are today. Instead, we’re pulling on the threads of the Universe, hoping to see if that next thread will explain the mysteries we keep discovering.
Here’s a metaphor for how I like to look at it. What if humanity is standing on the shore of a lake and we’re looking at this new island in the middle of the water. It looks so beautiful and we want to know if it will be a good place to throw a big party.
At first, we look with our eyes and we can see a good lay of the land. But it’s still too far away to get all of the details.
In time, we find binoculars and get an even clearer view of the island. We keep learning more about it but are still not sure if we can party there. So we develop even more high powered tools to look even closer at the island. But we still can’t see if it’s a good place to party. Then we keep investing all of our time and energy to get a closer look at this damn island. All of our time and energy is focused on getting a better look. And while this happens, years and years pass. All the sudden we’re 250 years in the future examining the leaves on the trees of this island and we’ve forgotten why we’re looking at the island in the first place.
But what if, instead of trying to develop better technology to look at the same part of the island even closer, we decided to walk around the lake to the other side. Now we’re going to get a new look at the island in the middle. We’re still looking at the same island, but now I can see a new group of trees, an interesting cave, and a perfect cove where I can park our boat!
It’s the same island, but changing our perspective allows us to see more of what’s possible.
That’s the power of questioning our dogmatic beliefs and what I believe needs to happen in the scientific community. Looking into the dogmas held in the major fields of science will open up a new world of possibility for innovation and growth. But only if we can be open to questioning everything. Nothing in science is proven, but most scientific inquiry is done today with the belief that certain “laws” are foundational.
Exploring Sheldrake’s work can help reinvigorate and breathe new life into areas of science that have been stagnant for 50 plus years. And, the best part is, Sheldrake’s beliefs do not even need to be correct. All he is doing is opening himself to being wrong and asking powerful questions.
We can all learn something by doing that. That’s what science is about. Asking powerful questions and designing experiments to determine their accuracy. True science is the pursuit of being less wrong. It is not the pursuit of absolute truth.
I’ll end this article with a bold claim. I believe that in 100 years some of Sheldrake’s controversial questions and beliefs will become mainstream views in the scientific world.