British scientist, a holistic biologist and philosopher of science; the author of numerous books such as “Dogs that Know When their Owners are Coming Home” and “Other Unexplained Powers of Animals,” 1999, “The Evolutionary Mind,” 1998, “The Presence of the Past,” 1988, and “A New Science of Life,” 1981.
Sheldrake was a pioneer in setting up revolutionary experiments that studied and could statically prove the unconscious or paranormal telepathic communication between pet animals and their human bosses. Using videotapes he could “statically prove” that dogs somehow knew when their bosses intended to come home. And what was most astonishing to him, was that in the video’s the dogs went to the door, at the moment that their bosses had the intention to go home. Even if that decision was made far away.
Sheldrake also tried to explain the by science unexplained (and thus easily ignored) coordinated movements of common starlings and herring in schools. Sheldrake introduced the concept of “morphic fields” to explain this. It implied a kind of intuitive consciousness being situated in (or born with) both inside and outside the observer. As just observing the facts and responding to it would yield a too long reaction time. To fly together a school of fishes or flights of birds needed an extraneous, a them guiding source. To explain this, Sheldarke postulated the existence of cosmic energies called “morphic fields”. Though he did not mention astrology, his postulated “morphic fields” energies, do remember astrologists to the supposed energies of our born with planets. And “synastrically” responding schools of in the same year born fishes tend to show the behaviour of fishes born in the same year.
Born into a family of devout Methodists, Sheldrake was educated in an Anglican boarding school. For much of his childhood, he felt torn between the traditions of his Protestant family and the trappings of Catholicism, but he eventually deemed himself an atheist. His interest in living things – plants and animals – was evident from an early age, and his father, an amateur naturalist himself, encouraged his son’s interest. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cambridge in 1967, and was a Director of Studies in biochemistry at Clare College until 1973. He attended Harvard where he studied philosophy.
Sheldrake took a position as Principal Plant Physiologist for a firm in India where he worked from 1974-78. His job involved the physiology of tropical legume crops, and he stayed on with the company as a consultant until 1985. For one and one-half years during this period, he lived at the ashram of Fr Bede Griffiths where he wrote his first book and spent much time studying Eastern religions, a study that eventually led him back to the Christian tradition he formerly had rejected.
Sheldrake married the Buddhist Jill Purce (born 1947), who was also a voice teacher, Family Constellations therapist, and author and who shares many of his interests They got two sons.
Link to Wikipedia biography