Talk:Morphogenetic field
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EntmootsOfTrolls would have liked this article to be part of User:EntmootsOfTrolls/WikiProject Body, Cognition and Senses, which provides guidelines for articles on those topics, and seeks stronger cross-linkage and cross-cultural treatment of all of these topics.
Someone care to outline the philosophy of science challenges opened up by this work?
- there are none. the issue is that if you propose a theory and offer nothing of substance to back it up, it must be "mainstream science" that's wrong to complain. Maury 23:49, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)
good article! stays pretty non-judgemental until the last paragraph.
I agree although it seems to be a bit biographical - couldn't some of the later paragraphs be moved to the page about the person rather than the theory? User:Btljs
This article could do with some headings. Ben Finn 12:10, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- His fundamentalist approach to the scientific method, based on Darwin's careful observations, took him further away from molecular biology and the focus on gene, enzyme, protein and cell functions.
What is this "fundamentalist approach to the scientific method", how is it based on "Darwin's careful observations", and how did it lead him anywhere ? Taw 00:36, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Contents |
[edit] Hrm...
I forgot when it was... but I searched Wikipedia for "Morphic Resonance" and got nothing of Rupert Sheldrake. But just today I found out yall put him in T_T. So nice. Anyway, back when I came to study up on Rupert's ish on his site, www.sheldrake.org, the essays, research papers, even some wordy confrontations with skeptics... I soon found myself applying my whole search for the conscious and subconscious part of the mind. I mean, yes, I already had theories and my own homemade explanations of the brain as extensions from some of Rupert's concepts; I just applied Da Vinci's diagram, http://www.rec.uba.ar/Imagenes/da%20vinci.jpg, and also fields created by electricity because of the brain in its physical self uses electricity via synaptic firing and whatnot. Anyway, with both of those half ish concepts and Rupert's, I mapped out where the fields of conscious/subconsciousness are in this diagram. http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b387/yourHEROICA/art/DIAGRAMFUFU.jpg. BUT, it is outdated.
Anyway. Yes yes, wanted to say I'm glad Rupert is on Wikipedia... kind of irked he's under pseudoscience >_<.
[edit] Statement of opinion vs. NPOV
"Sheldrake first published his ideas in 1973, offering a selection of seemingly disconnected bits of evidence in support."
This is my first attempt at participating in the article editing process, so I apologize in advance to the original editors of this article if I've misunderstood Wikipedia standards. I just wanted to point out that it seems to me that the phrase "seemingly disconnected" is a biased way of making this statement and implies that Sheldrake's theories were poorly presented/supported. This strikes me as the article taking a viewpoint regarding the scholarship of Sheldrake's work instead of merely discussing the theory and presenting others' opinions of it. From my understanding of Wikipedia standards, whether or not Sheldrake's theories truly were poorly presented/supported is irrelevant. To imply that they were in fact (as opposed to just the fact that the mainstream scientific community thought they were) would be departing from NPOV (or would be a violation of the prohibition against Original Research, possibly, in that others need to have published this conclusion regarding this evidence, rather than the analysis being original to Wikipedia) unless citations were included in which others have previously discussed the disconnection of the evidence Sheldrake supplied. It could be that the references sited include such discussions, but I cannot be sure as none of the article has been footnoted, or Harvard cited, or individually cited in other ways as to inform the reader as to what parts of the article are drawn from what portions of the references.
I realize, as I have seen tags on other articles that indicate citation needed, that there are ways of tagging the article itself to indicate that the statement in question needs a citation, or needs a NPOV correction, but I am not yet aware of how to insert such tags in the main article, nor am I sufficiently confident of my understanding of Wikipedia policies to make a definite claim visible to all readers that the article has a flaw. So instead I have created this Talk Page entry hoping for comments by other editors, and, if warranted, the insertion of appropriate tags into the main article and/or the actual making of necessary changes to the article to remove this possible problem.
Cadrac 00:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] headline of article Morphogenetic field is not correct
Morphogenetic field is not morphic field. Concept of morphic field was introduced by Sheldrake, whereas concept of morphogenetic field is much older and is used in developmental biology. See paper: Gilbert Scott, Opitz John, and Raff (1995 in Dev Biology
- Yes, Google Scholar would appear to back that up: "Morphogenetic field" gets real hits (compare "morphic field" which gets fewer hits, not all of them relevant, and some obvious fruitcake journals, but nothing mainstream. — Dunc|☺ 13:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
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- Move the content to morphic fields then? The Shelldrake stuff is clearly garbage, but it does appear that the name is being used for an entirely different purpose in developemental biology. Jefffire 18:21, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
I guess so. What intrigues me is that there are also relatively few hits for "morphogenetic field" and those hits that do exist are fairly old, which would seem to indicate that it's not a term used widely in developmental biology. So the next question is what to do with it. — Dunc|☺ 10:35, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
- According to Sheldrake's definition, morphogenetic fields are a subset of morphic fields.
- From Sheldrake's book The Presence of the Past:
- "The term [morphic field] is more general in its meaning than morphogenetic fields, and includes other kinds of organizing fields in addition to those of morphogenesis; the organizing fields of animal and human behaviour, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity can all be regarded as morphic fields which contain an inherent memory."
- Morphogenetic fields is a term used in developmental biology.
- In 1950 Needham defined morphogenetic fields to explain embryonic phenomena.
- (see http://7e.devbio.com/article.php?ch=3&id=18)
- What is very confusing about this article is that it contains information about morphic fields in general (but uses the term morphogenetic), some biography of Sheldrake, Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields, and some bits about morphogenetic fields as viewed from the perspective of biology.
- The article should be clarified (and parts moved to morphic fields) to properly use the terms morphic fields or morphogenetic fields.
- At the very least, this article should be updated to specify the perspective of biology vs Sheldrake with regards to the definition and extent of use of the term morphogenetic fields. As it is now, it appears as though morphogenetic fields were invented by Sheldrake, and only exist within Sheldrake's domain.
- HeatherFields 16:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Sources
This page is somewhat POV, but it looks generally well written and informative. It really, really needs sources though. If no one objects, I plan to do some editing, which may seem rather severe. A large part of that will be to make it NPOV, but an even larger part will be because there are far too few sources. I think there is also a problem with two headings for notes and references. So, I'd like to invite the authors to object here, or to find some refs. Sheldrake deserves them. See Wikipedia:Footnotes and Wikipedia:Citing_sources.
Martinphi 00:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Bias
There's currently a slight but noticeable bias towards Sheldrake/against the scientific community in this article; it doesn't seem to acknowledge the pseudoscience nature of this article in such a way as I'd expect from an article in the category (indeed, referring to pseudoscientific methods as Darwin-based methods seems rather misleading). The frequent use of skeptic as opposed to the less perjorative critic is also troubling. 90.192.138.75 22:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
- Sheldrake is part of the scientific community. This page is not in the pseudoscience category because it is necessarily pseudoscience, but because it is called that by some. If you want to see the reason they're called Skeptics instead of critics, read this transcript [1]. If you have objections to the science, why don't you write them up? Anyway, I may delete most of this for lack of sources. Martinphi 00:27, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
