Trailer
Course modules
In many ways, the sciences have been immensely successful. From jet engines to the internet, smartphones to modern dentistry, the way the sciences have developed in our modern world has transformed our lives. Yet, this prestige is so enormous that most people don’t question the foundations on which it rest...
Since the 17th century, the sciences have been based on the assumption that nature is machine-like; mechanical. It is made up of parts that work together mindlessly: the whole is not more than the sum of its parts. In this module, Rupert Sheldrake explores the machine model that science has been and contin...
It’s assumed within science that the laws of nature are fixed and changeless: that they’ve been the same since the very beginning of the universe in the Big Bang, and that they’ll remain the same forever, as eternal mathematical laws. But context matters. What is the long intellectual history that lies beh...
The conventional assumption is that in the Big Bang, all the matter and energy in the universe suddenly appeared from nowhere and that the total amount has remained the same ever since. Modern cosmology supposes that dark matter and dark energy now make up 96% of reality, and dark matter actually emerged a...
“All matter is unconscious: it has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view, and even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.” The “hard problem” of this materialist philosophy, fortunately, can be dissolved with panpsychism, a concept that was new to philoso...
One of the ten big questions in science, the answer from mechanistic materialism has been a no, since the 17th century. Accordingly, nature has no purpose: anything that happens within it, including evolution, involves no teleology. Processes are random. And yet evidence showing the opposite abound, from t...
In this module, Rupert Sheldrake opens up the question of the nature of inheritance, and the degree to which material inherited through genes and epigenetics can explain it. At the heart of contemporary biology is the unchanging principle that inheritance must be material, that there must be a material bas...
The materialist dogma is that matter is the only reality and that matter is unconscious, the whole universe is made of unconscious matter, our brains are made of matter, and, therefore, they ought to be unconscious like everything else. Unfortunately for the materialist theory, we're conscious. In this mod...
Nobody knows exactly how memory works. But within the materialist framework, there is no alternative conceivable aside from the fact that memories must be stored through modified nerve endings and phosphorylated proteins, and are wiped out at death. Philosophers have proposed that memory works by a direct ...
Whether or not telepathy is impossible or illusory is the best litmus test for dogmatic materialist worldviews. In this module, Rupert Sheldrake provides an overview of the scientific investigation of seemingly unexplained phenomena, and proposes his theory of what is the science behind telepathy within th...
According to the mechanistic materialist orthodoxy—the belief system or worldview we discuss in this series—the body is a machine, or a “lumbering robot” to use Richard Dawkins's phrase. Thus, the body can be treated by medicine, chemically or physically. This ideologically drives the funding of medical re...
Despite the fact that more is spent on science than ever before, the actual rate of innovation in science of true breakthroughs has decreased dramatically. What we have now is largely incremental improvements, overall leading to a crisis of conscience and confidence within the scientific world. In this con...
Rupert answers common questions related to the preceding modules.
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