Biochemist who proposed the hypothesis of formative causation. Sheldrake was educated at Harvard and Cambridge and then became a research fellow of the Royal Society, working on the development of plants and the aging of cells. From 1974 to 1978, he studied the physiology of legume crops at the International Crops Research Institute in Hyderabad, India.
Sheldrake first doubted but soon became convinced that the dominant mechanistic worldview was seriously deficient and helpless before a large range of observations without any satisfactory explanation. He proposed the hypothesis of formative causation, which, he says, applies to all nature, inorganic and organic. All things key into what he calls morphic fields, a sort of collective memory that connects us with others of our kind, past and present, and influences our shape and behavior, by a process of morphic resonance.