Uploaded August 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
When A New Science of Life was first published in June 1981, it received many favourable reviews and reactions, particularly in the Guardian and New Scientist. These positive responses infuriated the late Sir John Maddox, editor of the journal Nature. He published an editorial denouncing this book in September 1981, entitled A Book for Burning?. In this highly polemical attack he sought to excommunicate Rupert from the world of institutional science and to brand the hypothesis of morphic resonance as heresy.
In 1993, BBC television produced this film about Rupert's work and this controversy.
_About the controversy_
sheldrake.org/reactions/morphic-resonance-heretical-or-visionary
_The Book_
A New Science of Life / Morphic Resonance
sheldrake.org/ansol
Dr Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and From 2005 to 2010 was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, Cambridge.
When A New Science of Life was first published in June 1981, it received many favourable reviews and reactions, particularly in the Guardian and New Scientist. These positive responses infuriated the late Sir John Maddox, editor of the journal Nature. He published an editorial denouncing this book in September 1981, entitled A Book for Burning?. In this highly polemical attack he sought to excommunicate Rupert from the world of institutional science and to brand the hypothesis of morphic resonance as heresy.
In 1993, BBC television produced this film about Rupert's work and this controversy.
_About the controversy_
sheldrake.org/reactions/morphic-resonance-heretical-or-visionary
_The Book_
A New Science of Life / Morphic Resonance
sheldrake.org/ansol
Dr Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and From 2005 to 2010 was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, Cambridge.
