A New Science of Life

About the book

What if nature followed not only fixed laws, but also habits acquired over time? In this provocative work, Rupert Sheldrake proposes that organisms, crystals, molecules and behaviours are shaped by a memory inherent in nature itself.

At the centre of this vision lies the hypothesis of formative causation: morphogenetic fields would organise living forms, while morphic resonance would allow earlier patterns to influence similar systems across space and time. Nature would cease to be a machine governed by immutable instructions and reveal itself as an evolving, cumulative and creative process.

Exploring the puzzles of morphogenesis, heredity, instinct, learning and evolution, Sheldrake confronts the limits of mechanistic biology and asks where the order comes from that turns matter into form, cells into organisms and experience into habit.

More than presenting a theory, A New Science of Life opens an investigation into reality’s invisible architecture. It is for those who suspect that life is built not only from matter and energy, but also from the deep memory of the forms that came before.