Morphic resonance is a hypothesis proposing that similar vibratory systems influence each other across space and time, suggesting that the laws of nature are evolving habits and that memory is not solely stored in the brain but exists as a collective, natural phenomenon.
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I'm speaking about morphic resonance
and the memory of nature.
Morphic resonance is a hypothesis that
similar vibratory systems influence
subsequent similar systems across space
and time from the past to the present.
And it leads to a lot of way new ways of
thinking about the nature of physics,
chemistry, biology, psychology, and
social organization.
It suggests that the laws of nature, the
so-called laws of nature are more like
habits uh that evolve within the uh uh
developing universe. It suggests that
each species has a kind of collective
memory on which each individual draws
and to which it contributes. A bit like
Jung's idea of the collective unconscious.
unconscious.
It suggests that in inheritance, it's
not just genetics that's important, but
there's an inheritance of acquired characteristics.
characteristics.
um that adaptations acquired by plants,
animals or microbes uh can be passed on
to their descendants uh without changes
in the DNA.
This used to be intensely controversial
within biology, but since the
inheritance of acquired characteristics
was rebranded epigenetic inheritance
around the year 2000, it's now pretty
mainstream. And I think that many cases
of epigenetic inheritance actually
depend on morphic resonance. I'll come
back to this. The hypothesis also
suggests there's a memory in social
groups like human families and that
patterns within families can be
inherited from generation to generation
uh affecting the way that people
interact with each other. And this is uh
amply borne out by u work in family
constellation therapy uh which shows
remarkable uh memory effects within families.
families.
And perhaps most surprisingly, this
hypothesis suggests that memory is not
stored in the brain as physical or
material traces, but rather depends on a
resonance uh with uh oneself in the past.
So, um this is a hypothesis
um and it's a proposal about the way
things might be.
It is of course controversial.
Um, and so we have to ask then why is it
so controversial? It gets some people
very very angry. The very idea of
morphic resonance. Why?
Well, one reason is that it goes against
a fundamental assumption that's been
baked into contemporary science for a
long time. It was actually baked in in
the 17th century uh in the very
foundations of modern science when the
mechanistic revolution occurred
and that was the idea that nature is
governed by fixed laws and the idea that
there are fixed laws of nature that
don't change uh in fact goes way back to
the ancient Greeks. Its roots are in the
work of Pythagoras who thought that
there was an eternal reality beyond
space and time that was essentially
mathematical and this world was a
temporary changing reflection of that
eternal mathematical reality.
Plato generalized Pythagoras's idea to
his well-known idea of Platonic forms or
ideas beyond space and time transcending
all change uh with everything in the
universe reflecting that eternal world.
And in the 17th century, the founding
fathers of modern science um
had the idea that the laws of nature
were mathematical regularities that were
ideas in the mind of a mathematical god.
They thought of God as a mathematician.
And uh mathematicians particularly like
that idea up to the present day because
it it means that they are the closest to
God in their nature and the most able to
interpret uh how God moves in mysterious
ways uh which have closed to the rest of
us who are not mathematicians but
mathematicians then and mathematical
physicists then become the kind of high
priests of science.
So the idea that memories uh that that
memories in nature that the laws evolve
is completely contrary to that idea and
it's also contrary to one of the working
assumptions of science which most
scientists completely take for granted
which is that any experiment should
repeatable anywhere and at any time. Uh
this is a basic requirement in science.
Why should experiments be repeatable at
least in principle? because the laws of
nature are the same at all times and in
all places. And this is simply baked
into science and taken for completely
taken for granted.
So you see this idea that
there could be an evolution of the laws
of nature that the laws are more like
habits goes against these very
accepted assumptions and seems
preposterous to some people. It doesn't
seem preposterous in the east. I spent
seven years living in India and um this
was after I thought of the idea of
morphic resonance which came to me when
I was working in Cambridge. Um but when
I mentioned it to people in India um I
had almost the opposite reaction from
the reaction I had uh from academic
friends in Cambridge some of whom
thought this was outrageous. The the
reaction of many of my Hindu friends and
colleagues was very different. They just
said, "Oh, this is an ancient idea known
to the rishies long ago." Um, there is,
you know, the idea of a memory in nature
is completely normal in the Hindu
worldview and in the Buddhist worldview.
Um, it's only in the uh west with this
strong influence of Plato and Pythagoras
And the idea that laws of nature are
fixed at the moment of the big bang um
has led to all sorts of speculation
within physics.
If the laws are all fixed and all the
constants of nature are fixed, why are
they fixed in exactly the way that
enables life to evolve and us to exist?
It's called the cosmological anthropic principle.
principle.
And there are two main answers to this.
One is that there's a kind of designer
god outside the universe that fine-tunes
the laws and constants and makes them
exactly right. Or that there are
innumerable uh universes besides our own
which have different laws and constants
and by chance we happen to be in the
only one that's right for us. The
multiverse hypothesis.
Many leading astronomers and physicists
support the multiverse hypothesis. And I
I have one of them who's a close friend.
Um and I said to him, you know, why do
you believe in the the idea of billions
quadrillions of unobserved universes uh
which go with for which there's no shred
of evidence? And he said, well, he said
that way we can get rid of God. So
I said, "But isn't this the ultimate
violation of Okam's razor? The principle
that uh you shouldn't multiply entities
unnecessarily. I mean, you've got
quadrillions of universes in your
hypothesis. So I agree that's a bit of a
Um but the whole of this debate about
the the multiverse or the external
designer God just melts away like the
morning mist uh if the laws of nature
aren't all fixed at the beginning in the
big bang. And this is one of the least
credible aspects I think of modern
science. My friend Terren McKenna used
to say that modern science is based on
the principle give us one free miracle
and we'll explain the rest. And one free
miracle was the appearance of all the
laws of nature and all the matter and
energy in the universe in a single
instant from nothing. Um now that is the
usual assumption. Um but you don't need
that assumption with morphic resonance.
Now obviously such a hypothes such a
controversial hypothesis needs to be
tested and we need to find out does it
actually correspond to what happens
and one area uh where it can be tested
is in the realm of chemistry. This is
not just about consciousness. This is a
theory about order. uh order in any
level of order in the universe, atoms,
molecules, crystals, cells, tissues,
organisms, um galaxies, uh solar systems
at all levels of nature, there's order.
And the hypothesis is actually called
the hypothesis of formative causation.
It's about form and order in nature. And
I use the word form rather than
information because form is what we
actually see, what's actually there.
information is the idea that you code it
and transmit it and send it somewhere
else. It's not about that. It's about
form itself and I think it's easier to
use the word form than the word information.
information.
Uh which I think muddies the water
because it brings in you know telephone
Well, crystals are forms. Um each
crystal has a definite kind of form.
Each kind of chemical forms crystals
with a particular latis structure.
And the idea of morphic resonance would
suggest that when you make a new
chemical or purify something that's
never crystallized before, it might be a
while before the new crystals form. Um
but once they've started forming in one
place, they should form more easily
everywhere else. And this is actually
something chemists have often observed.
For example, the sugar alcohol xylitol
was first isolated in 1891
and it was a liquid and people thought
it was just a liquid. But then um in 1942
1942
it crystallized in one lab with crystals
that had a melting point of 61°
centigrade and suddenly xylitol
crystallized all over the world.
Then about 20 years later it started
crystallizing in a different form with a
melting point of 94° and the original 61
degree crystals didn't appear again. Uh
now all of this you see is completely
baffling from the point of view of
regular science. Regular science says
that in principle you should be able to
calculate the form of the crystal
structure of a crystal from first
principles quantum mechanics
thermodynamics electromagnetism and so
on um before it's ever made in the first
place. And the way it forms the first
time, the millionth time or the
billionth time should be exactly the
same because these laws remain the same
everywhere all the time.
So you wouldn't expect uh it suddenly to
appear and then to appear everywhere and
then for the fashion to change and it to
appear in a different form. Uh when
crystals have different forms they're
called polymorphs uh different forms and
these are actually of industrial
importance. Ratonavir, which is an AIDS
drug made by Abbott Laboratories, uh was
very successfully launched and it made
them hundreds of millions of dollars in
profits. And after it had been in
production for about 2 years, suddenly
on the production lines and all around
the world, uh the crystal forms changed
and a a new kind of raton crystal
appeared which had a different
solubility. it didn't dissolve like the
old ones and they had to pull the drug
from the market cuz the tap capsu the
tablets didn't work anymore uh with this
different form of crystal and
reformulate it cost them $250 million.
So there's a lot of interest in crystal
polymorphs u within uh the ke technical
world of chemistry
and this phenomenon of disappearing
polymorphs is something that's much
discussed in the technical literature.
For example um here's a quote from a
book by Joel Bernstein, one of the
experts in the field from his Oxford
University Press book called
Polymorphism in Molecular Crystals. It's
never been on the bestseller lists. Uh
but it's fascinating if you're
interested in this kind of thing. And he
says, "Many difficult questions arise
when a disappearing polymorph is
encountered. Why did the new polymorph
appear at all after years of no hint of
his existence? Why does a previously
robust process no longer yield the
crystal form that had been obtained
prior to the appearance of the new one?"
Unintentional seeding is often invoked
as an explanation of crystallization
phenomena such as disappearing
polymorphs which otherwise are difficult
to interpret. This is the idea that the
new crystals start appearing because
fragments of previous crystals that act
as seeds nucleate them all over the
world having been blown all over the
world in the in the wind. Um however he
says there is no consensus about the
size and range of activity of such seeds
which have never actually been observed.
Well that's the official explanation and
it's not resting on huge amounts of
evidence. It's a speculative interpretation.
interpretation.
So what's needed really is a systematic
study. I haven't succeeded in persuading
any chemist to do it so far but in
principle it wouldn't be difficult to
do. It's an open question.
And another open question in relation to
crystals concerns melting points. If new
crystals uh become more stable by
morphic resonance, the more resonance,
the deeper the habit, the deeper the
grooves of habit, the more stable the
chemical, the harder it will be to break
it up. And how you break chem crystals
up is heating them up until they reach a
melting point and then the crystal melts.
melts.
So morphic resonance predicts that when
you have new crystals uh that as time
goes on the melting points will
increase. Well, they're not meant to
increase because when you look them up
in handbooks in chemistry libraries, uh
they come in handbooks of physical
constants. They're defined as physical
constants. So obviously they ought not
to change. Uh but if you actually look
at the history of melting points, they
do change. In a study of uh synthetic
chemicals carried out by a Canadian
chemistlaus or he studied 200 no 149
different synthetic chemicals human-made
chemicals that don't occur in nature um
and looked at the history of their
melting points over the 20th century.
Out of 149 eight had stayed the same or
gone down.
141 had gone up. If it was just a matter
of random errors in measuring melting
points, you'd expect the same number to
go up and down, more or less, but
there's obviously a major trend for them
to go up. Now, when chemists are
confronted with these data, what they
say is perfectly reasonable. They say,
"Well, we know that impurities lower the
melting point. Therefore, the better
people get at doing this research, uh,
the better they get at making the
chemicals. They make purer samples.
Therefore, the melting points go up. You
say, "Well, how do you know they're
actually purer?" And they say, "Well,
they must be purer because the melting
points have gone up." Uh
so um um again uh this is something
where detailed research is needed to
tease apart the two hypotheses that it's
nothing but purity or uh there's a real
change. One way of looking at existing
data uh that I've tried is to look at
chemicals that occur in nature that have
crystallized in nature for millions of
years. You wouldn't expect to see any
change if they've been crystallizing for
millions of years.
uh whereas ones that are made in the
19th or 20th century for the first time
you would see a change.
Well, it turns out that u the some
chemicals like salin uh is a chemical
that occurs in willow bark. It
crystallizes in nature in dried willow
bark and in dried leaves of plants. Um
that has shown no change over the 20th
century even though chemists may have
got better at purifying it and uh and so
on. Whereas aspirin acetile salicylic
acid first synthesized in the 19th
century does not occur in nature and the
data from the 20th century show that its
melting point up went up by about 9°. I
haven't got the data on the 19th
century. It may well have gone up more
than that uh before the records that I
found began. And I found similar
patterns with other chemicals. Cocaine,
for example, which occurs in dried cocoa
leaves, um, has shown no change in
melting point since the beginning of the
20th century. Whereas cocaine
hydrochloride made by extracting cocaine
leaves with hydrochloric acid to make
the cocaine of commerce has gone up over
the 20th century by about 14°.
So we're talking quite big changes. And
in class or data, some of the changes
were 20 or 30°. So these aren't tiny
fractions of a degree. These are big effects.
effects.
In developmental biology, u morphic
resonance suggests that if an unusual
pattern of behavior, a pattern of
development occurs, the more often it
happens, the easier it should happen
again, the more readily it should occur.
And there's some detailed data for
development of fruit flies uh research
by Maywan Hoe at the Open University in
Britain that shows exactly these
effects. I discuss this with all the
data and references in my book the
presence of the past and I'm not going
to go through the detailed data here.
I'm just summarizing the results of it. Um
Um
by the way I'm not showing these slides
as you may have noticed. uh uh but
anyone who wants references data uh
papers all my own papers are on my
website free uh and open access all the
references to this historical work I'm
talking about are in my book the
presence of the past which is my main uh
theoretical book on morphic resonance um
and an update on recent research is
found in the third edition of my first
book on morphic resonance called a new
science of life retitled morphic
resonance in the United States.
So, um, the same should apply to animal
behavior. If animals learn a new trick,
animals should be able to learn the same
trick, the same kinds of animals quicker
as time goes on. And this has been
noticed anecdotally by animal trainers
for a long time. Um, one of the first
set of quantitative studies was by the
famous Russian physiologist Pavlov, who
studied how mice would run to a feeding
place when they heard a bell ring. His
classic conditioned reflex uh work. In
the first generation of mice, it took
about 300 trials before they learned.
The second generation, it was 100. The
third generation, it was 30. The fourth
generation, it was 10. there was a huge
increase in the rate of learning and um
over the generations much more detailed
data come from a long series of
experiments on rats uh learning to
escape from a water maze where there was
a tremendous increase in over the
generations in the speed at which they
learned this and it first done at
Harvard later replicated in Edinburgh uh
and in Melbourne Australia and the
Scottish and the Australian rats of the
same breed started more or less where
the Harvard rats had left off. And
moreover, not only did they go on
getting better when their parents had
been trained, but control rats that had
never been uh had parents that had been
trained got better, too. So, it wasn't
just an inheritance who acquired
characters through modified genes or uh
or epigenetic modifications of the DNA
or gene expression. uh it happened even
to ones that hadn't been uh whose
parents hadn't been trained.
There's now within uh the modern phase
of research on epigenetic inheritance
other experiments showing changes in
transmitted behavior.
One well-known one concerns mice and was
published uh a paper on this was
published in nature entitled inheriting
the fears of fathers.
Uh, white mice were trained to be
averse. Male mice were trained to be
averse to a chemical called acettophenone.
acettophenone.
Uh, smells vaguely like cherries. Um,
when they smelt it, they got an electric
shock in their pores. It was one of
those old style negative conditioning
type experiments. And they very soon
learned whenever they smelt acetto
phenone uh that it was scary. They froze
with fear. That's what mice do when
they're frightened. Um
they then bred from these male mice with
females that had never been exposed to
acettophenone and the children and the
grandchildren were petrified when they
smelt acettophenone.
It even worked with artificial
insemination. So it wasn't the male mice
whispering in the ear of the mothers,
you know, beware of acettophenown.
Um it was a something else. Now the
official interpretation of epigenetic
experiment results like this is not
morphic resonance. It's that the uh
chemical changes in the um DNA
methylation of the DNA or of histones or
other proteins that bind to DNA are
supposed to uh explain it. But actually,
it's very hard to see how these changes
could explain a fear of a particular
chemical smell uh just by switching on
or off genes in the sperm.
And I think morphic resonance is much
more likely interpretation of these results.
results.
At present, there are some experiments
going on to try and disentangle the
effects of chemical epigenetic
inheritance and morphic resonance
effects. um and these are happening with
bacteria currently in experiments going
on in England.
Well, the same principle
should apply in human learning. Um
there's a lot of evidence to suggest
that we're subject to a kind of
collective memory and there are habits
that we inherit. One interesting example
is in the design of typewriters and
computer keyboards. In the 19th century
when typewriters were invented um there
was a problem with the moving mechanical
type things sticking getting stuck but
jammed next to each other. And so um
engineers at Remington in the United
States found that if they had a
particular arrangement of letters on the
keyboard they could reduce jamming of
typewriters and they came up with the
querty design QWER
ty the first row of letters on the keyboard.
keyboard.
It was there for purely mechanical
reasons. When electronic typewriters and
computers came in word processors, there
was absolutely no reason to have querty
as the design and engineers at places
like IBM tried to make rational type
designs for keyboards that would be
easier to learn.
And they thought of work study
principles. They tried purely
alphabetical ones A B C D. They tried
ones based on principles of
understanding psychology and what would
work best for people. They tried various
designs and of course they had to try
them out on people who'd not yet learned
typing because they'd already had the
habit of the querty keyboard. So with
naive people who using children and
younger people and people who' not typed
before as subjects, they tried to show
that these improved ergonomic designs
would be superior to the querty design,
but they weren't. People learned the
querty design much more easily. Why?
Well, I think because of morphic
resonance, a collective memory from all
those who'd learned it before. And so
next time you look at your computer or
your smartphone, when you look at the
keyboard layout on on the computer and
look at the querty uh you realize this
is not a rational design at all. It's a
19th century mechanical design that's
got sort of frozen in through habit. Uh
because of this deep-seated collective habit,
it should be easier to learn things that
other people have learned. Uh should be
easier to do today's Times crossword
puzzle tomorrow than it was this
morning. Uh because so many people have
solved it. And there's already evidence
that crossword puzzles do get easier as
the day goes on. It should be easier to
solve the New York Times fiveletter
wordle puzzle as the day goes on. uh
some recent research uh in Britain has
shown that this does seem to happen
especially for the first two attempts.
The first when people are just guessing
and the second attempt um where which
the Wordle bot um which is put out by
the New York Times classifies as luck. I
think the luck when people are
succeeding in Wordle through luck as
opposed to some rational puzzle solving
strategy. Uh that luck which increases
during the day throughout the world um I
think is probably a morphic resonance
effect. Anyway, we're looking into that
at the moment.
Um it should be getting easier to do IQ
tests because so many millions of people
have done them. And in fact uh the data
show that over the 20th century uh IQ
tests got about 30% easier for people to
do all over the world. Uh not because
they were 30% smarter. No other measures
suggested they were 30% smarter uh but
um that they uh were the tests were
simply getting easier especially on the
components of the IQ test that involve
puzzle solving as opposed to general knowledge.
knowledge.
This is now called the Flynn effect um
after James Flynn, a psychologist who
discovered it and uh is now uh a big
puzzle as to why this should happen.
Well, again, I think morphic resonance
would help to explain it.
When we come to biological heredity, as
I already mentioned, the idea that all
heredity is in the genes was the
dominant view in the 20th century and
it's what led to the human genome
project and many other genome projects.
If it's all there in the genes at a
molecular level, you can understand
everything just by reading out the
genome. And there was a huge hype about
this. It was going to solve everything.
uh molecular medicine was going to be
totally personalized, risks of cancer
would be easy to predict. None of this
has come true. Instead, it turns out
that uh even for simple things like
height, about 80% or no, it's about 60%
of 60 to 65% of the inheritance of
height is not explained by genes. uh
studying the genomes of tens of
thousands of people and running
correlations um what are called
genomewide association studies has
revealed what's called the missing
heritability problem and companies that
were going to revolutionize medicine
like 23 and me uh have simply not been
able to do that. In fact, it filed to
bankruptcy last month. So um the
promises of the human genome project and
the explanation in terms simply of genes
has simply not come true and I think the
reason for that is that most of the
inheritance is not in the genes. The
genes enable us to inherit protein
structure u but not other details of
form and behavior.
The importance of epigenetics is now
recognized widely in the new theory of
evolution. Neodyarwinism was based
exclusively on genes and gene
frequencies. The new evolutionary
synthesis which is now replacing it is a
much broader view of evolution that
takes into account epigenetic
inheritance, learning, selection of
environments by organisms and so on.
It's actually much closer to Darwin
himself who was a much broader and more
holistic thinker than the
neodyarwinians. Neodyarwinism is called
neodyarwinism because it's a much
narrower theory than Darwin because it
focused on genes. Darwin didn't know
about genes. Um but but he and he
certainly believed in the inheritance to
acquired characters, Lumakian
inheritance. Uh which I think as I say a
lot of it I think may depend on morphic resonance.
When you come to the question of how
does it work then as I said earlier it
works on similarity. The more similar,
the greater the resonance. So when you
look at people, the most similar people
should be twins, identical twins. They
should be very similar, even if they're
separated soon after birth. And studies
on twins separated soon after birth show
extraordinary similarities in their
lives, far more than you'd actually
expect on the basis of genetics. And
this evidence is usually taken to
support an extreme form of genetic determinism.
determinism.
Identical twins are remarkably similar
in all sorts of ways uh even though they
had different environments. Therefore,
it must be the genes. But actually,
they're so similar that they be very the
perfect case for morphic resonance. Um
so, actually, I think the similarities
between identical twins are very much
more to do with morphic resonance than
the genes. The genes help tune them into
each other. They're an important very
important part of it. But a lot of the
actual similarity I think is because of
morphic resonance. And in the usual
debate, environment versus genes,
heredit nature versus nurture, uh people
simply don't have morphic resonance as
one of the options. They jump to the
conclusions that if twins separated soon
after birth are very similar in later
life, it must be the genes. It isn't.
And that's one reason the missing
heritability problem was such a shock
because the twin studies had given an
very inflated view of the importance of
Um when we come to the question of who
in the past was most similar to me or to
you then the answer is me or you. We're
more similar to ourselves in the past
than we are to anyone else. And that
means we have a specific resonance from
the past acting upon us. And I think
that is the basis of memory. Um I think
collective memory and individual memory
differ in degree and not in kind. And
the reason we have our own memories is
because we're so similar to ourselves in
the past. Now of course the conventional
view is that memories are stored in the
brain as memory traces. People have been
trying to find these for a very long
time. In 1950, Carl Lashley, an American
neuroscientist, wrote a very influential
review called In Search of the Engram,
the Memory Trace, uh, showing that years
of research and cutting out bits of rat
rat brains after they'd learned things
and so on, had failed to reveal where
the memory traces were. Similar research
on octopuses led to the view that memory
seems to be both everywhere and nowhere
in particular within the brain. And Carl Priram
Priram
uh took this to mean that the memory
should be stored holographically within
the brain rather than in specific
traces. Many attempts have been made to
find traces since then including very
sophisticated optogenetic research um
which involves labeling uh active nerves
so they glow green uh in mice. Um again
I haven't time to go into all that
research but what that research has
shown is that yes you can identify
particular nerves involved when mice
learn something and you can identify
which nerms are nerves are involved when
they remember it. Are they the same? No,
they're not actually. Uh only about 10%
of the nerves are the same ones. Other
ones seem to be involved in remembering
it. Well, that's a shock. It shouldn't
work like that. They should be the same
ones. And the most recent setback to the
um memory trace theory has been study on
um wave patterns in brains when uh they
learn something. Now very very
sophisticated electrodes enable wave
patterns to be identified in detail um
in mice when they're learning something
when they remember it. There's a very
similar wave pattern complex wave
pattern in the brain but it's not
necessarily in the same place. And this
is now called representational drift.
And um representational drift is a major
problem for the trace theory of memory
which supposes that these dynamic
patterns of vibrating waves are somehow
frozen and kept for very long periods uh
in frozen into molecules or into nerve
endings in a way that's chemically improbable.
improbable.
uh my maternal grand paternal
grandmother lived to 104 and when she
was 100 years old I talked to her a lot
about her childhood and she gave very
vivid memories things she probably
hadn't talked about much before they've
been preserved for like 95 years and uh
proteins turn over with a quite quick
half-life sinapses are continually
remodeled um the trace theory is
challenged even from within orthodox
biology For example, Randy Galistell uh
argues that the trace theory is so
unconvincing in its present forms. It
must be uh stored the memories must be
stored as molecules in modified DNA or
RNA. Um well, most people don't follow
his theory, but the very fact that a
respected neuroscientist can put forward
such a radical theory shows there's a
real problem with memory research. And I
think the reason for the problem uh uh
the reason why people can't find these
memory traces is that they're not there.
And uh it's rather like trying to find a
memory in your TV set of the programs
you watched last night. Uh you wouldn't
find a memory in the wires and
transistors because that's not how TV
works. You would find traces in a video
recorder, but you wouldn't find them in
a TV set. And I think our brains tune
into the memories. brain damage can
affect the tuning. Uh but uh uh it but
the loss of uh brain uh memories after
brain damage doesn't prove that the
memories are in the damaged brain. Um I
could damage your TV set. So you don't
get the sound or the pictures. It
wouldn't prove all the people you see is
stored inside the set. Um and the fact
that terminal lucidity occurs is another
interesting uh aspect of this. People
who've had Alzheimer's for years uh
shortly before they die can suddenly
remember who people are, what's going on
even though they're dying. That's why
it's called terminal lucidity. The
memories haven't actually been
abolished. The ability to retrieve them
had been lost. No one knows why it
should recover just before death. But um
it this is now a wellocumented phenomenon.
Morphic resonance also occurs in um
social fields. As I mentioned, the
groups can build up memories. And all
social animals by definition have
groups. Flocks of birds, schools of
fish, um packs of wolves, herds of
animals, and so on. And I think there's
a lot of evidence now that there can be
memory within these social groups. And
it's of practical importance as I
mentioned at the beginning in family
constellation therapy uh which my wife
Jill Pur practices and u I've had the ex
many opportunities to see in action and
it's very remarkable how hidden memories
in the family field of which people are
unconscious uh can influence the
behavior of people in a way that
individual psychotherapy could never
address because it's not dealing with
Well, um
there's a great deal of need there's a
great need for more experimental tests
of morphic resonance and there haven't
been enough. It's partly because this
has been so controversial that people
within universities have not felt able
to do it. They wouldn't have got the
grants. They're worried about their
career. Things are loosening up a bit
now. But um this is these are basically
open questions. I'm not making a claim
that all these things are true and uh
inviting the skeptics to knock down the
claim or debunk it. I'm putting forward
a scientific hypothesis that needs to be
tested and evaluated on the basis of
evidence. And that's how I think science
is supposed to work. Um, in my book, uh,
uh, the third edition of a new science
of life, I describe 10 new tests for
morphic resonance and summarize the
evidence for those done so far in human
learning, in low temperature physics, in
crystallization, in melting points, in
animal behavior, um, and even in analog computing.
computing.
Morphic resonance applies only to
self-organizing systems. It doesn't
apply to chairs, tables, computers,
bicycles, things that are not
self-organizing. They're made in
factories. Um, it applies only to
self-organizing systems. So, we won't
wouldn't expect to see it in digital
computers. Uh, and therefore, I wouldn't
expect artificial intelligence to have
uh this kind of memory. However, analog
computers or possibly quantum computers
might be able to create something like
morphic fields with it self-organizing
fields in which case uh they'd have a
kind of global memory bank for free. The
point about morphic resonance is that as
uh the way in which forms are organized
in nature through this memory, memory
comes for free. You don't need to have
special systems for capturing memory,
storing it and retrieving it. It's built
in to the whole of nature, to the whole
universe, to everything in all
self-organizing systems in the universe.
And it automatically gives a cumulative
memory uh which enables things to uh
develop and change.
Morphic resonance only explains
repetitions. It doesn't explain
creativity. And evolution must involve
both. It must involve both habits and
creativity. Um, and creativity is
another question. It probably works
through consciousness primarily. Uh,
maybe sometimes through chance, but
that's a whole other subject I don't
have time to discuss this morning. And I
think if I end here, there might be time
for one or two questions.
Um,
>> Thank you very much, uh, Rupert. Um,
wonderful explanation of the hypothesis.
But something caught me just at the end
that I' um I'd like to ask.
You mentioned that it's only for
self-organizing systems, but at the same
time you were um a little critical of
the issue of the finetuning constants
and ratios etc and parameters of the
beginning of the universe. So at what
point do you think morphic resonance
comes into effect?
Well, of course, none of us can observe
the early universe, and any theory of
the early universe has to be
speculative. Um, but I would have
thought that as soon as well, electrons,
uh, fundamental particles, um, and the
the electromagnetic and the
gravitational fields, they're all
self-organizing systems. Um, the whole
universe is a self-organizing system. So
I would assume that the whole universe
has been a self-organizing system
undergoing self-ress resonance right
from the very beginning and so I would
think the memory has been built in from
the start that's that that would be the
most logical way of thinking of it from
this point of view and bearing in mind
your discussions with Hindu friends that
went in India uh one of the concepts of
Indian kind of cosmology is that prior
to this universe there have been
previous universes and the memories of
the consciousnesses there entering this
one are baked in at the beginning. So
would you see there might be a connection?
connection?
I just don't know if there I mean there
are in modern cosmology there are
bouncing universe models where the
universe expands contracts to a big
crunch then expands to the next big bang
and so through the next big bang and so
on. Whether the slate is wiped clean uh
or not from universe to universe is um
to pile speculation on speculation I I
just don't know. Um but if you didn't
have some kind of obliteration of memory
um then uh you'd have a kind of niche
and eternal recurrence because there's
no limit to the number of possible
universes. But there because it depends
on similarity. If there are if there is
a another universe following this one,
it would only have strong resonance from
this one if it was similar in every
respect. And it it's very unlikely that
would be the case. So I just don't know
and it's not something one can test. So
I actually spend much time thinking
about much more mundane questions of
what we can test. Um but I agree it's an
very important metaphysical question.
>> Um it was an absolute privilege to hear
you talk in person. question.
>> Really loved your paper on is the sun
conscious and all the work that you are
doing to um dismantle dogmatism in
science. So my question is about AI not
about whether it's conscious or not.
That's hack night and clearly it's not
self-organizing. My question really is
what do you think uh what are your
contemplations on the impact of AI on
collective consciousness both anthropoid
in general in in terms of morphic
resonance as well and on um scientific
inquiry because in one sense it seems to
uh deviate us away from anthrop
anthropocentric perspectives but in
another way it's chipping away a lot of
uh cognitive work that we do do
ourselves We're outsourcing it. So what
are your contemplations? Thanks.
>> Well, I've been forced to think about AI
quite a lot recently because it's now
possible for people to put into AI, you
know, what is the nature of the
universe? You know, what is the nature
of consciousness, quantum physics,
morphic resonance, they just put these
ingredients in and AI comes up with the
theory of everything. And once they've
come up with the theory of everything,
what do they do with it? Um, well,
unfortunately, they send it to me. Um, and
and
and and to Dean Raiden, I mean, I claim
no special privilege. And to David
Lurimemer at the scientific and medical
network, my inbox now has about 10
theories of thing a week. Most of them
involve morphic resonance. And um, I
sometimes get four a day and they're
mostly generated by AI.
And I so unfortunately it's the bane of
my life at the moment because I try to
reply to emails that I get but I simply
can't read 10 theories of everything
each running over 10 15 pages often with
obscure equations mathematical equations
also generated by AI. Um it's I I so
personally I I find it a nuisance. Um so
rather than finding it exciting um
because I don't think most of these
theories are very testable. I reply to
people saying you know it's great to
have theories and look at things in a
new way but in the end what matters is
the empirical tests. And what AI's made
me long for is more old style empirical
research in laboratories because that's
one thing AI hasn't done yet. Somebody
did say to me that when I said can you
use it to generate more empirical data
like a study of chemical melting points.
They said they'd do that and um maybe it
would be a very good way of looking at
the history of melting points uh getting
more data than has yet been examined but
they haven't come back to me with that
yet. So, I I just don't know. Um, and
when I've used it myself, I've often
found it hallucinates horribly. So,
rather than being afraid of it or
feeling it's going to take over the
world or that it's about to leap into
general intelligence and and so on, I'm
afraid I have a rather limited view of
AI and not a very exciting one or an
excited one. Um, but that's just me. I
mean, I I'm accused of technophobia by
some. Um, and um, so I'm sorry not to be
able to say anything more illuminating.
I think it's this obviously changing
human consciousness. It's changing the
employment of young people. Graduates,
young graduates in British universities,
probably elsewhere, are finding the job
market incredibly hard because many of
the jobs they would have been doing are
now being done by AI. So we're going to
have one effect of it on human
consciousness is going to be very large
numbers of disaffected graduates with
political repercussions which we can't
foresee. So I I I won't speculate any further
Deepak good to see you again and Jill.
Um, I recently met a transplant surgeon
at NYU. He's the head of transplant
surgery in kidney transplants
and he had a cardiomyopathy which
resulted in six cardiac arrests before
he finally had his last cardiac arrest
which was the seventh and then he had a
heart transplant and he's fine and he's
a transplant surgeon himself. So the
last time he had this cardiac arrest, he
was in Patagonia
and he went into a coma and he had to be
airlifted to Buunosirus,
then airlifted to NYU where he's a
professor and he was in the ICU for a
month. Finally got out of his coma.
During that one month, he found himself
doing surgery in a hospital in England.
He's he's in New York in the 19th
century after anesthesia had been
discovered. And he had the finest
details of whatever happened. And when I
asked him how he explained it, he said,
"I can't." So I asked him uh if he had
heard about the block universe of
Einstein and general theory of
relativity and now the fact that the
universe has memory that he might have
actually tapped into a slice of time
um from a century ago. Any comments?
Well, I think that some people can tap
into memories of people who are now
dead. And I think the evidence for um
that of children who remember previous
lives, usually interpreted in terms of reincarnation,
reincarnation,
uh what that shows is a transfer of
memory. And I think savant cases where
people acquire skills they couldn't
possibly have learned in a normal way
also involve some kind of transfer of
memory of a more collective kind.
So I think that these examples of memory
transfer from the past fit quite well
with the view of morphic resonance. It
doesn't explain why a cardiac surgeon
should tune into a 19th century surgeon
in London. Um uh obviously they have
cardiac surgery and surgery in general
in common. Um but if there's anything
that's similar enough to provide a link
then there could be a transfer of
memory. So in to take the broader
question and obviously it's a vast
question of cases of the reincarnation
type. Uh I think what they prove is
there's a transfer of memory. The
question as to whether the transfer of
memory equals a transfer of the entire
person or not is a big question.
Buddhists and Hindus have been debating
this with different points of view for
millennia. Um, so I think this opens up
a whole new area of discussion, Deeppac,
and I I'm I'm very glad you brought that
up because I think there are many seem
very anomalous looking cases from the
point of view of standard science that
might make sense in the light of memory
transfer by morphic resonance.
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