Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science

Rupert Sheldrake

ISBN 10: 1857021673 / ISBN 13: 9781857021677

Edité par Fourth Estate, 1994. 1st edition. 269 pp., 1995

Original cloth with dustjacket, a very good copy. Please see description or ask for photos. N° de réf. du vendeur 214434530

Synopsis :

Seven experiments are proposed in this book that the author believes, if any are successful, will alter how the reader perceives the world. The purpose of the book is to draw attention to areas of research neglected as a result of conventional habits of thought. The descriptions of the experiments are intended to focus the topics under discussion. One of the experiments in the book aims to test the hypothesis that many dogs and cats know that their owners are coming home before they actually arrive. Rupert Sheldrake has also written "The Presence of the Past" and "The Rebirth of Nature".

Extrait: Page xiii-xv
Because institutional science has become so conservative, so limited by the conventional paradigms, some of the most fundamental problems are either ignored, treated as taboo, or put at the bottom of the scientific agenda. They are anomalies; they don't fit in. For example, the direction-finding abilities of migratory and homing animals, such as monarch butterflies and homing pigeons, are very mysterious. They have not yet been explained in terms of orthodox science, and perhaps they cannot be. But direction-finding by animals is a low-status field of research, compared with, say, molecular biology, and very few scientists work on it. Nevertheless, relatively simple investigations of homing behaviour could transform our under understanding of animal nature, and at the same time lead to the discovery of forces, fields, or influences at preset unknown to physics. And such experiments need cost very little, as I show in this book. They are well within the capacity of many people who are not professional scientists. Indeed those best qualities to do this research would be pigeon fanciers, of whom there are more than five million worldwide.
In the past, most scientific research was carried out by amateurs; and amateurs, by definition, are people who do something because they love it. Charles Darwin, for example, never held any institutional post; he worked independently at his home in Kent, studying barnacles, writing, keeping pigeons, and doing experiments in the garden with his son Francis. Nut from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards, science has been increasingly professionalized. And since the 1950s, there has been a vast expansion of institutional research. There are now only a handful of independent scientists, the best known being James Lovelock, the leading proponent of the Gaia hypothesis, which is based on the idea that the Earth is a living organism. And although amateur naturalists and freelance inventors still exist, they have been marginalized. . . I envisage a complementary relationship between non-professional and professional researchers, the former having a greater freedom to pioneer new areas of research, and the latter a more rigorous approach, enabling new discoveries to be confirmed and incorporated into the growing body of science.

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Seven Experiments That Could Change the ...
Éditeur : Fourth Estate, 1994. 1st edition. 269 pp.
Date d'édition : 1995
Reliure : Couverture rigide
Etat de la jaquette : Jaquette