The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God

by Rupert Sheldrake

Overview

Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's preeminent biologists, has revolutionized scientific thinking with his vision of a living, developing universe—one with its own inherent memory. In The Rebirth of Nature, Sheldrake urges us to move beyond the centuries-old mechanistic view of nature, explaining why we can no longer regard the world as inanimate and purposeless. Sheldrake shows how recent developments in science itself have brought us to the threshold of a new synthesis in which traditional wisdom, intuitive experience, and scientific insight can be mutually enriching.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780892815104
Publisher:	Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Publication date:	04/01/1994
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist, a former research fellow of the Royal Society at Cambridge, a current fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences near San Francisco, and an academic director and visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cambridge University and was a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, where he carried out research on the development of plants and the ageing of cells. He is the author of more than eighty scientific papers and ten books, including Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home; Morphic Resonance; The Presence of the Past; Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness; The Rebirth of Nature; and Seven Experiences That Could Change the World. In 2019, Rupert Sheldrake was cited as one of the "100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in the World" according to Watkins Mind Body Spirit magazine.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: Historical Roots
1. Mother Nature and the Desecration of the World
2. The conquest of Nature and The Scientific Priesthood
3. Returning To Nature

Part 2: The Rebirth of Nature in Science
4. The Reanimation of the Physical World
5. The Nature of Life
6. Cosmic Evolution and the Habits of Nature

Part 3: The Revival of Animism
7. The Earth Comes Back to Life
8. Sacred Times and Places
9. The Greening of God
10. Life in a Living World

Notes

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This frontal assault on conventional science embodies a radical rethinking of humanity's place in the scheme of things."

“The Rebirth of Nature is a breakthrough book, beautifully written and spiritually oriented. It shows our intimate relationship with the universe—that we are a part of a breathing, living, thinking cosmos and that intelligence is a pervasive reality inseparably one with nature. This book will take everyone who reads it to new heights of understanding.”

"A beautifully written, deeply felt, and sinuously argued challenge to many habits of thought."

Editorial Reviews

The Rebirth of Nature is a breakthrough book, beautifully written and spiritually oriented. It shows our intimate relationship with the universe—that we are a part of a breathing, living, thinking cosmos and that intelligence is a pervasive reality inseparably one with nature. This book will take everyone who reads it to new heights of understanding.

Deepak Chopra

"A beautifully written, deeply felt, and sinuously argued challenge to many habits of thought."

Booklist

"A beautifully written, deeply felt, and sinuously argued challenge to many habits of thought."

Booklist

"A beautifully written, deeply felt, and sinuously argued challenge to many habits of thought."

“The Rebirth of Nature is a breakthrough book, beautifully written and spiritually oriented. It shows our intimate relationship with the universe—that we are a part of a breathing, living, thinking cosmos and that intelligence is a pervasive reality inseparably one with nature. This book will take everyone who reads it to new heights of understanding.”

"This frontal assault on conventional science embodies a radical rethinking of humanity's place in the scheme of things."

From the Publisher

Penicillin crystallizes the way it does, not because of timeless mathematical laws, but because it ``crystallized that way before . . . following habits established through repetition,'' claims British biochemist Sheldrake. His controversial theory of ``morphic resonance'' holds that self-organizing systems--molecules, crystals, cells, organisms, societies--respond to invisible regions of influence. He ransacks ideas from Greek animism to pagan polytheism to Darwin's embrace of the concept of Mother Nature as a vast, spontaneous creative process as counterweight to classical physics, which sees the world as a cause-and-effect machine. Sheldrake believes that the mechanistic outlook, coupled with the technological conquest of nature, is killing humankind and the planet. Extending the ideas he advanced in The Presence of the Past , he boldly argues that even the laws of nature may themselves be evolving, and that God might be ``a living, evolutionary cosmos.'' This frontal asault on conventional science embodies a radical rethinking of humanity's place in the scheme of things. Photos. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The author of A New Science of Life ( LJ 5/15/82) and The Presence of the Past ( LJ 3/1/88) rediscusses and extends concepts introduced in those titles, including the idea of ``morphic fields,'' which supposedly can account for aspects of evolution. This new work is even more unorthodox--some might say outrageous--as Sheldrake attempts to combine scientific, religious, and even mystical views. He firmly believes that nature is alive and bills his book as a rebuttal to Bill McKibben's The End of Nature ( LJ 10/1/89). However, the latter has a more solid scientific basis, while Sheldrake's ideas are on the fringe.-- Joseph Hannibal, Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Library Journal