Re: _Religion Explained_ by Pascal Boyer

From: Dace (edace@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon 09 Jun 2003 - 18:25:23 GMT

  • Next message: Dace: "Re: _Religion Explained_ by Pascal Boyer"

    > From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
    >
    > Please don't make the asociation between the developmental biological
    > concept of the morphogenetic field and Sheldrake's morphic mumbo jumbo.

    The "developmental biological concept of the morphogenetic field" is
    *exactly* what Sheldrake discusses in his hypothesis of formative causation. The only difference is that he regards form-giving fields as being irreducible to either atoms or equations.

    Since you already know this, why am I explaining it to you?

    > Sheldrake hijacked the concept from developmental biology and
    hyperextended
    > it to cover more than what it was intended, conceptualizing the four
    > dimensional (ie- spatiotemporal) aspects of form generation
    (morphogenesis).
    > Sheldrake has created way too much confusion on this topic with his psi
    > phenomenal abuse of the term "morphic field" that the knee jerk reaction
    to
    > someone talking about morphogenetic fields is that they believe in psychic
    > pets (ie- clever Hansian hamsters that know when their owners have just
    > pulled up in the driveway and are about to open the front door and get the
    > box of hamster treats out of the pantry).

    Stop whining.

    Ted

    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon 09 Jun 2003 - 18:34:24 GMT