Introducing Rupert Sheldrake (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, March 21, 2015, 14:12 (3326 days ago) @ David Turell

A wide-ranging interview with Sheldrake who is quite the free-thinker. His ideas deserve thought. He is fiercely anti-reductionist:-http://www.thebestschools.org/features/rupert-sheldrake-interview/-"As I argue in my book Science Set Free, I am convinced that the sciences are being imprisoned by the outmoded ideology of materialism. I show how each of the 10 dogmas of materialism can be turned into a question, treated as a scientific hypothesis, and evaluated scientifically. None of these dogmas turns out to be valid or persuasive. In every case, new questions open up, along with new possibilities for scientific research.-"I would like to see these possibilities explored. There are already many open-minded scientists working within universities and other scientific institutions, but most of them are unable to follow unconventional lines of research because they're afraid these would not be funded. I would like to see a plurality of sources for funding in science that enable different approaches to be explored. This is unlikely to happen through government funding agencies, which are dominated by the science establishment, but there are many private foundations that could fund alternative scientific and medical research and I hope that some of them will do so.-"I also hope that non-materialist scientists will feel able to meet up with other like-minded professionals and work together to change the sciences from within. And I hope that these open questions will become more widely known to students at schools through the educational system."