Introducing Rupert Sheldrake (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, March 23, 2015, 12:33 (3325 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: A very long but very interesting and refreshing interview. I'm afraid I skipped a lot of the specialist stuff, but here are just a couple of other snippets that attracted my attention:
 
Re psychic phenomena:
“In my various encounters with skeptics like Richard Dawkins, James Randi, Daniel Dennett, and Michael Shermer, I have found that they have no interest in looking at the evidence because they know in advance it must be false. In other words, their position is one of prejudice rather than open-minded scientific enquiry. In that sense, I think they are deeply anti-scientific.” -An interesting observation, which I have no doubt applies to other spheres of study too!-DAVID: I should have included this snippet above (which I had enjoyed while reading the essay) when I introduced the article. Those mentioned are indeed anti-scientific.-Like you, I left out some other significant snippets that I meant to include:-"Many materialists believe that they know the truth, while other people, particularly those who belong to religious traditions, are simply motivated by religious dogma."-"The idea that animals and plants are machines is really Dogma Number One."
Good to see him joining Margulis, McClintock, Shapiro and the rest. He also dislikes the current use of the term "information", which I have moaned about so often:-"To talk of these forms as "patterns of information" adds nothing, but causes a fog of confusion and ambiguity." 
Ah, ain't it the truth!