A theory concerning the origin and growth of forms and characteristics in nature that was originally proposed by biochemist Rupert Sheldrake. Generally, biologists speak of what is termed “morphogenetic fields” to indicate the as-yet poorly understood factors that influence the development of growth in plants and animals. These factors are assumed to operate through the chemistry of the DNA molecules. Sheldrake proposed a more literal understanding of the morphogenetic held as structures that exist independently of space and time.
To Sheldrake, genes define the parameters within which development of an individual organism occurs, but they do not determine form. This is determined by the morphogenetic fields. Each organism is influenced by all the previous forms assumed by the previous examples of the organism; all the past fields of a given type are available to the new organism. Various morphogenetic fields influence one another by a process that Sheldrake calls “morphic resonance.”