What Do Magnets, Flatworms, And Willow Trees Have In Common?
—Adapted from an article by Rupert Sheldrake, first appearing in the Noetic Sciences Review, Summer 1989. In biology since the beginning of this century, it’s become clear to many people that embryological development can’t be understood just in terms of the material components of the organisms. Since the twenties, the idea that organisms are organized by fields, morphogenetic fields, has been quite widely discussed. These fields are supposed to be within and around these organisms that they organize. There are hierarchies of fields within fields. So in our bodies there is a liver field, a kidney field, an eye field, and so on. Within those fields are the fields for the tissues and fields of the cells—nested hierarchies of fields within fields. Morphogenetic fields have a holistic property that is not present in chunks of matter. You can understand this by analogy with magnetic fields. If, for example, you chop up a magnet into small pieces, what you get are not just lots of fragments
