I have been following Sheldrake’s work for about 10 years.

I think that proving “extra sensory abilities” in animals, such as telepathy, precognition, etc. completely undermines the mechanistic view of the world given to us by “science”.

I have read a lot about so-called “emergent” properties in animals and nature - ie individually dumb ants acting intelligently in groups, the intelligence supposedly emerging from the combination. I think this whole line of thought is a scrambled attempt to subdue the conclusion that intelligence is found in all life.

This is threatening to “science”, because behavior is explained as a function of brains, which, from my interpretation of Sheldrake’s work, is just not true. .Intelligence, communication, and our experience of life seems to happen largely outside of our brains. Behaviors seem to have more to do with “morphic fields” than our own conscious participation.

“Science” continues to turn to smaller and more mysterious “quantum” explanations of the world. Presumably this would take it away from mechanistic, reductionist thinking. I think it’s only a matter of time before quantum understanding leads to an entirely new world view, completely opposite of mechanistic.

In our personal lives, the difference between understanding life in terms of its parts, and in terms of morphic fields, is as big a difference as atheism and faith. It really will affect everything, from the way we interact with each other, to the way we design social programs and systems.