tilgovi's review against another edition
2.0
I made a real attempt to make it through "Morphic Resonance" but after arriving at the end of chapter five I'm abandoning it.
The biggest problem with it is that it seems entirely unmotivated. The motivation seems to stem from the fact that predictions of forms of relatively simple materials using first principles of physics have not been achieved. Sheldrake takes this as a reasonable motivation for searching out other explanations for forms and arrangements of matter, but I think he makes a grave error. Since such predictions have been achieved for very simple materials and the complexity of the problem explodes as the number of atoms in a molecule increase to make this motivation sound he would have to first have evidence that more complex materials are fundamentally different in the way their forms precipitate but he seems to have none.
Instead of evidence for complex forms being fundamentally different, he seems to start from the premise that there is a heretofore unknown principle at work in order to explain forms that we have not yet calculated ex nihilo. However, reaching for alternative explanations seems unmotivated given that we have made continual advances in such calculations and he presents no justifications for a claim that we should not continue doing so.
Such as there is any motivational evidence it seems to come from the strange cases of "disappearing" polymorphs in crystallography. I don't find these cases to be sufficiently strange given the delicacy of obtaining particular crystallizations. I found a paper citing the Woodward letter that Sheldrake references discussing this issue. The conclusion seems useful to quote:
"In any case, we believe that once a particular polymorph has been obtained, it is always possible to obtain it again; it is only a matter of finding the right experimental conditions." Dunitz and Bernstein, 1995, "Disappearing Polymorphs", http://www.researchgate.net/…/…/0f31753b4ec5c91a6b000000.pdf
Sheldrake seems to start from an irrational belief and offer no convincing evidence for his explanation, all in the service of explaining phenomena that have alternative, rational explanations grounded in well accepted principles.
The biggest problem with it is that it seems entirely unmotivated. The motivation seems to stem from the fact that predictions of forms of relatively simple materials using first principles of physics have not been achieved. Sheldrake takes this as a reasonable motivation for searching out other explanations for forms and arrangements of matter, but I think he makes a grave error. Since such predictions have been achieved for very simple materials and the complexity of the problem explodes as the number of atoms in a molecule increase to make this motivation sound he would have to first have evidence that more complex materials are fundamentally different in the way their forms precipitate but he seems to have none.
Instead of evidence for complex forms being fundamentally different, he seems to start from the premise that there is a heretofore unknown principle at work in order to explain forms that we have not yet calculated ex nihilo. However, reaching for alternative explanations seems unmotivated given that we have made continual advances in such calculations and he presents no justifications for a claim that we should not continue doing so.
Such as there is any motivational evidence it seems to come from the strange cases of "disappearing" polymorphs in crystallography. I don't find these cases to be sufficiently strange given the delicacy of obtaining particular crystallizations. I found a paper citing the Woodward letter that Sheldrake references discussing this issue. The conclusion seems useful to quote:
"In any case, we believe that once a particular polymorph has been obtained, it is always possible to obtain it again; it is only a matter of finding the right experimental conditions." Dunitz and Bernstein, 1995, "Disappearing Polymorphs", http://www.researchgate.net/…/…/0f31753b4ec5c91a6b000000.pdf
Sheldrake seems to start from an irrational belief and offer no convincing evidence for his explanation, all in the service of explaining phenomena that have alternative, rational explanations grounded in well accepted principles.
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