Greetings, friends.
<aside> 💠Every other Thursday, “Remember the Future” lights up your inbox with a free curated list of interesting finds to help you spark curiosity and feeling of connection to the many beautiful qualities of life.
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I’d like you to take a moment to pause. Check in with yourself. Why are you here?
Do you often find yourself asking big picture questions about...everything? Do you also notice yourself wanting to put things together that most of popular culture doesn’t think fit together–like science and spirituality, technology and art, conservatives and liberals? Are you willing to suspend your disbelief in what cannot be seen, heard, felt, touched or tasted?
If you’re like me, you’ve been told this instinct is too broad, unfocused, or irrelevant. Maybe you belief in miracles and magic only finds expression in moments of solitude. You love to analyze with your logical mind, but at the same time, enjoy the fantasy of story.
My friend, you’ve come to the right place. You and I may sometimes disagree on nuances, but in the spirit of focusing on what matters most, we will always agree on this: everything fits together.
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Can Science explain scopesthesia?
I recently discovered this study by Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance, which asks the question, “Can morphic fields help explain telepathy and the sense of being stared at?” What is morphic resonance, you might ask? Well, here’s a bit from the study’s abstract:
The morphic field hypothesis proposes that minds are systems of fields that are located inside brains but also extend far beyond them, just as the fields of magnets are both within magnets and extend invisibly beyond them. Morphic fields contain attractors (goals) and chreodes (habitual pathways towards those goals) that guide a system toward its end state. They effect all self-organizing systems, and systems within systems, in a nested hierarchy or holarchy of morphic units. Morphic fields of social groups may help to coordinate flocks of birds and schools of fish, which can rapidly change direction without individuals colliding.
Can-Morphic-Fields-Help-Explain-Telepathy-and-the-Sense-of-Being-Stared-At.pdf
Here’s a clip of Rupert answering the most fundamental question any scientist must ask: how does one gather experimental evidence for a theory (especially for territory not yet chartered by scientists).
If you skip to 27 minutes in, you’ll get to the heart of the video. One of the most striking points he makes here is that adjacent knowledge of this theory has existed for thousands of years, in various cultural and religious disciplines, but had never been considered in the context of fodder for a true scientific theory.
Now, consider the argument against a scientific understanding of telepathy. For example, in his critique of telepathy as “irrational” pseudoscience, notable scientist, Steven Pinker and others have formed an entire movement in response to claims that paranormal activity can be scientifically explained. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) organizes global campaigns to discredit “claims of the paranormal” in the serious media and the educational system.
What I find most interesting in this dichotomy between the creative and the rational is that it raises questions around the extent of which a cognitive bias, especially “myside bias,” can alter and limit our scientific understanding of human experience. In a nutshell, myside bias can be understood as:
“if something becomes an article of faith within your own coalition,
and if promoting it earns you status,
that is what you believe.”
<aside> đź’ˇ How do you unlock creativity in yourself? To look at the things you might see every day from new angles, constantly. To see the old as new again?
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Telepathy as technology?