Posted: Feb 01, 2012 6:01 pm
Calilasseia wrote:Sheldrake is merely another one of a long line of crackpots, who engage in venting of steam of this sort, because they can't persuade the editors of Nature to give their assorted brands of lunacy the oxygen of publicity. That line about matter being "dead" and "unable to produce life" really does show the level of palsied ignorance of real science emanating from these quarters.
Sheldrake did win a retraction from Nature on at least one occasion though as I recall? And actually they have not always been that critical of his work - for example they have published a lot of his mainstream work ---
Effect of pH and Surface Charge on Cell Uptake of Auxin; Nature New Biology (1973) 244, 285-288
Polar Auxin Transport in Leaves of Monocotyledons: Nature (1972), 238, 352-353
The Ageing, Growth and Death of Cells: Nature, Vol. 250, No. 5465, pp. 381-385, August 2nd 1974
However as I say, I'm not a fan of Sheldrake's ideas, and disagree with him on much. However in this book he is really discussing stuff very close to Paul Feyerabend's critiques, and I'm a big fan of that, and the need to defend society against science.
j x