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Thoughts On Sheldrake

Jacothegreen

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Oct 19, 2016
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How do. In amongst all the exodus excitement I wondered if anyone had an opinion on the books/work of Rupert Sheldrake or if there were any threads about him?
Seeing as you need a purse of gold to even think about anything by Lethbridge these days (whats that all about) just thought I'd asksee if anybody's read any of his stuff before committing to freeing the moths from the confines of my purse.
Cheers.
 
I wondered if anyone had an opinion on the books/work of Rupert Sheldrake
I reckon the forum is overdue for a book-club (or better) chapter-based dissection of 'A New Science of Life'.

Always wanted to do that: perhaps the view from the window at CFI will act as a catalyst for me to do just that.

And Lyall Watson's 'Supernature', which I read from cover to cover in one day, the year it came out (I was 11yrs old).

All fascinating stuff. Note- I always accept nothing, and doubt even more.
 
Thanks for the link, I'll get my watching head on. And Ermintruder-Lyall Watson, I'll have to go and dig around in the dusty corners of the book shelf, its been a while since I've read any of his. Fascinating indeed. I think my introduction to him was a dog-eared copy of The Romeo Error which led me to the joys of Heavens Breath et al. Sad day when he shuffled off, the worlds a plainer place without him.
 
Yes, please.
Well, its absence really is the heirophant in the corner, one might say.

We all tend to be semi-studious types, and keen to extract the very-last iota of meaning from whatever we encounter (whether it's really there or not). I think having a tutorial-group style of book analysis section on the forum makes such a lot of sense.

Not to set orthodoxies, but to share and savour, fruitfully-analyse, and set challenges. It'll help a lot with the post-grad diploma stuff as well.
 
I love Rupert Sheldrake and have read several of his books. He came to Edinburgh a few months ago to give a talk and we went to see him. I think his ideas are really interesting. Science tends to be extremely dogmatic and needs someone like him who isn't beholden to grant holders to stand up and question things.
 
I reckon the forum is overdue for a book-club (or better) chapter-based dissection of 'A New Science of Life'.

Always wanted to do that: perhaps the view from the window at CFI will act as a catalyst for me to do just that.

And Lyall Watson's 'Supernature', which I read from cover to cover in one day, the year it came out (I was 11yrs old).

All fascinating stuff. Note- I always accept nothing, and doubt even more.

Count me in! I’ve read about Sheldrake and his theories, and I’m sure I’ve got the book but never read it. Would be a great way to get through it...
 
Sign me up for the Book Club Ermintruder. I am currently reading Eliphias Levi's "History of Magic" and "Lives of the Necromancers" by William Godwin.
 
I've just put 'The Sense of Being Stared at' (hardback) into my Amazon basket as it seems to be the only book I can find on the subject. I'm hoping Sheldrake has enough scientific discipline in his writings not to make me regret spending £2.11.
 
I like Sheldrake's ideas, but he constant drifts away from good science to bolster his theories. It's maddening really, you get along the road with an interesting notion or idea and then the 'data' is wildly anecdotal, or the experiment has no controls and so on.

It's easy to dismiss science as being dogmatic on it's insistence on such things, but without such dogmatic adherence to empirical method, planes wouldn't stay in the air and loads of us would be dead from measles. That must be annoying, but still.

Please Mr. Sheldrake, do one irrefutable peer-reviewed experiment that can be duplicated (or even has been). Just one. Any one.
 
I got the Sheldrake book on The Sense of Being Stared At this morning and haven't delved into it yet - wanted to keep an open mind in spite of Coal's lament. I did retrieve FT101 (August '97) which had an article by Allen Abel, who was blindfolded and tested as to whether he could say if the young women seated behind him was staring at him or at her shoes.

'Sheldrake claims that he has performed the staring test so many times that the odds against pure chance are 10 billion to one.'

That is quite a claim, in fact case proved if he could just show his workings-out.
 
I got the Sheldrake book on The Sense of Being Stared At this morning and haven't delved into it yet - wanted to keep an open mind in spite of Coal's lament. I did retrieve FT101 (August '97) which had an article by Allen Abel, who was blindfolded and tested as to whether he could say if the young women seated behind him was staring at him or at her shoes.

'Sheldrake claims that he has performed the staring test so many times that the odds against pure chance are 10 billion to one.'

That is quite a claim, in fact case proved if he could just show his workings-out.

The ability to detect unseen staring: A literature review and empirical tests

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1348/000712600161682

...which sadly concludes no such ability appears to exist. I suspect we consider we are being watched in certain conditions. For example, there may be survival value in being alert to the possibility in particular topologies, or the presence/absence of other criteria. For example, "It's too quiet...*", that sense that there ought to be some background noise, when there isn't.




* The utterance of this phrase generally results in someone getting an arrow in the chest.
 
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