http://www.gaianxaos.com/notes/morphogenetic_fields.htm
Sheldrake on Morphogenetic Fields
"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. And how that influence
moves across time, the collective squirrel-memory both for form and for
instincts, is given by the process I call morphic resonance. It's a theory
of collective memory throughout nature. What the memory is expressed through
are the morphic fields, the fields within and around each organ ism. The
memory processes are due to morphic resonance."
"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. M ost of our culture is habitual, I mean, most of our personal life,
and most of our cultural life is habitual.
"The whole idea of morphic resonance is evolutionary, but morphic resonance
only gives the repetitions. It doesn't give the creativity. So evolution
must involve an interplay of creativity and repetition. 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, in the human realm, or in the realm of biological evolution, or of
cosmic evolution.
"I think their movements are coordinated in the same way as the movements of
iron filings around a magnet. When you move the whole magnet, the whole
pattern of the filings changes because they're all responding to the field
of which they are a part. This is as true for birds in a flock as it is for
human members of social groups."
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