Quote

Because a truly skeptical position would be a very uncertain one.

Rupert Sheldrake

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rupert Sheldrake
Age: 54
Author
Biochemist
Biologist
Parapsychologist
Philosopher
Writer
Newark
Nottinghamshire
Alfred Rupert Sheldrake
Skeptical
Uncertain
Truly
Position
Would

More quotes by Rupert Sheldrake

Image
I still say the Lord's Prayer every day. It covers a lot of ground in our relation to the world.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
To describe the overwhelming life of a tropical forest just in terms of inert biochemistry and DNA didn't seem to give a very full picture of the world.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
I think that creativity depends on having sufficient indeterminacy around for a new pattern to arise up within it.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
The assumption that the laws of nature are eternal is a vestige of the Christian belief system that informed the early postulates of modern science in the seventeenth century. Perhaps the laws of nature have actually evolved along with nature itself, and perhaps they are still evolving. Or perhaps they are not laws at all, but more like habits.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
The Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock [and Lynn Margulis] puts forward a scientific view of the living Earth, which in one respect is modern, empherical, scientific, in another respect re-awakens an ancient archetype, which in fact is so clearly suggested by the very name of the hypothesis, Gaia, the Greek name for Mother Earth.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
The universe is not in a steady state there's an ongoing creative principle in nature, which is driving things onwards.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
In both religion and science, some people are dishonest, exploitative, incompetent and exhibit other human failings.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
I have been a scientist for more than 40 years, having studied at Cambridge and Harvard. I researched and taught at Cambridge University, was a research fellow of the Royal Society, and have more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I am strongly pro-science.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
Not every good idea survives. Not every new form of art is repeated. Not every new potential instinct is successful. Only the successful ones get repeated. By natural selection and then through repetition they become probable, more habitual.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
A lot of us have all sorts of ideas, and we select some rather than others and give expression to those... and some works of art are more successful than others. Some languish in obscurity and are never heard of again, while others form the foundation of a whole school of art.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
The idea is that there is a kind of memory in nature. Each kind of thing has a collective memory. So, take a squirrel living in New York now. That squirrel is being influenced by all past squirrels.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
Basically, morphic fields are fields of habit, and they've been set up through habits of thought, through habits of activity, and through habits of speech. Most of our culture is habitual.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
Of the seven experiments, the ones that have been most investigated so far have been the pets. The dogs who know when their masters for coming home, and the sense of being stared at.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
When people see one of these new forms of art for the first time, often they can't make sense of it. Then, if it's around long enough, a lot of people get used to it and it becomes assimilated into culture. So there's a morphic field both for the kind of art and for the appreciation of it.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
Creativity gives new forms, new patterns, new ideas, new art forms. And we don't know where creativity comes from. Is it inspired from above? Welling up from below? Picked up from the air? What? Creativity is a mystery wherever you encounter it.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
At the moment of insight, a potential pattern of organized behavior comes into being.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
The cumulative nature of the evolutionary process, the fact that memory is preserved, means that life grows not just through a random proliferation of new forms, but there's a kind of cumulative quality.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
There's a certain kind of scepticism that can't bear uncertainty.
Rupert Sheldrake
Image
Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth.
Rupert Sheldrake