A New Science of Life is an extraordinary and revolutionary new theory, which puts forward a radically new way of looking at life and nature.
Existinh science explains the regularities of nature in terms of laws assumed not to change through time. Dr Sheldrake suggests that these regularities are in fact more like habits, depending on what has happened before, and also on how often things have happened.
He calls this new type of causation across time and space 'formative causation', and argues that it is responsible for the shapes and instincts of all living things. Experimental evidence shows that when several rats have learned a new pattern of behaviour, subsequent rats all over the world tend to learn the same pattern more easily. In other words, living organisms tune in to the experience of the predecessors.
This is a serious and significant conjecture about the nature of life - it could herald a major scientific revolution.
Rupert Sheldrake read Natural Sciences an took a PhD in biochemistry in Cambridge. As the Rosenheim Research Fellow of the Royal Society he carried out research at Cambridge on the development of plants. He is now Consultant Plant Physiologist to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics at Hyderabad. He lived for a year and a half at a Christian ashram in South India, where the present book was completed.