The Sheldrake Vernon Dialogues
Biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake and psychotherapist Mark Vernon explore the frontiers where rigorous science meets life's deepest mysteries. Through original research and thoughtful dialogue, they investigate consciousness, memory, spiritual practices, and the nature of reality itself—questioning the materialist assumptions that have dominated science for centuries. Their conversations bridge empirical investigation with ancient wisdom, offering fresh perspectives on everything from prayer and dreams to the extended mind and humanity's role in nature.
The Sheldrake Vernon Dialogues
Does nature obey laws?
The conviction that the natural world is obedient, adhering to laws, is a widespread assumption of modern science. But where did this idea originate and what beliefs does it imply? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the impact on science of the Elizabethan lawyer, Francis Bacon. His New Instrument of Thought, or Novum Organum, put laws at the centre of science and was intended as an upgrade on assumptions developed by Aristotle. But does the existence of mind-like laws of nature, somehow acting on otherwise mindless matter, even make sense? What difference is made by insights subsequent to Baconian philosophy, such as the discovery of evolution or the sense that the natural world is not machine-like but behaves like an organism? Could the laws of nature be more like habits? And what about the existence of miracles, the purposes of organisms, and the extraordinary fecundity of creativity?