Facing biology's open questions

Abstract

Despite the triumphant rhetoric of mechanistic materialism, current biology has no shortage of unsolved fundamental problems. In 1981, seeking a way forward, Rupert Sheldrake proposed the hypothesis of “formative causation” as a unifying organizing principle of life. Expanding the concept of morphogenetic fields, Sheldrake posited a spatio-temporal connection termed “morphic resonance” whereby the more often a self-organizing process takes place, the easier it will be for it to take place in the future. After initial acclaim, his project was quickly met with dogmatic skepticism, dismissed as scientific heresy, and ultimately ignored. Forty years later, the experimental implications of his ideas remain largely untested. Visionary or not, Sheldrake's case illustrates the conceptual resistance of the scientific enterprise to revise its own deepest theoretical commitments. Beyond career-building selection pressures, young researchers need to be presented with the major questions in their field and encouraged to entertain radically alternative points of view. Science is what scientists make of it.