Rupert Sheldrake: Morphic Resonance and Heresy

In September 1981 the journal Nature asked whether a new book by a Cambridge biochemist should be thrown on a bonfire. This episode follows the man who wrote it, Rupert Sheldrake, from respected plant biologist to one of science's most controversial heretics, and asks why his ideas struck such a deep nerve in the scientific establishment.Sheldrake co-developed a textbook model of auxin transport before abandoning conventional biochemistry, spending time in an Indian ashram, and proposing morphic resonance, the idea that nature has evolving habits and inherited memory rather than fixed laws. His grassroots experiments on dogs and the sense of being stared at drew both public fascination and sharp scientific rebuttal.Editor John Maddox attacked his 1981 book as pseudoscience and argued morphic resonance was unfalsifiableHis famous experiments filmed a terrier named JD to test whether it knew when its owner was coming homePsychologist Richard Wiseman replicated the dog study and attributed the behavior to rising anticipation over timeHis 2013 TEDx talk was flagged, labeled, and moved by TED, sparking a debate over integrity versus censorshipIn 2008 he was stabbed during a New Mexico lecture by a mentally ill man who believed he was a target of mind control experiments