Searching for words to describe
unexplained gut responses, inherent empathetic reactions, intrigues
me. I've been calling it tribal memory ..racial memory ..
subconscious cognition .. etc. Well hogtie me and take me to market;
a biologist has a scientific term for this: morphic resonance.
Yes. His
name is Rupert Sheldrake and being slightly sidelined from the
mainstream he is not exactly a household name like Darwin. “Sheldrake
has proposed that memory is inherent to all organically formed
structures and systems.”[1]
Sheldrake says, “...
memory is inherent in nature. Most of the so-called laws of nature
are more like habits. My interest in evolutionary habits arose when I
was engaged in research in developmental biology, and was reinforced
by reading Charles Darwin, for whom the habits of organisms were of
central importance. As Francis Huxley has pointed out, Darwin’s
most famous book could more appropriately have been entitled The
Origin of Habits.”[2]
“The fields
organizing the activity of the nervous system are likewise inherited
through morphic resonance, conveying a collective, instinctive
memory. Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the
collective memory of the species.”[3]
That last
sentence rings sinister: what are we (inadvertently?) contributing to
the universal life force in the family memory pool? Five hundred
years from now, will my descendants have an inexplicably irresistible
craving for buttered popcorn?
Much as I like his terminology, the man
seques into telepathic studies explaining why your dog knows you are
coming home before you get there. It's hard to say, from a decidedly
unscientific stance, if the test of time will prove his theories.
Maybe only his/our descendants will know. Thanks to Mark Rabideau for
bringing this to our attention.[4]
This sort of post more properly belongs on my other blog, away from the
immediately pressing world of ancestor research, and will be repeated
there.
I still maintain that instinctive
swooning to the bagpipes is morphic resonance. Cuidich!
[1]
“Rupert
Sheldrake,” Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
: accessed 20 August 2011).
[2]
“Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields,” Rupert
Sheldrake, Biologist and Author
(http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/morphic/morphic_intro.html
: accessed 20 August 2011).
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Mark F. Rabideau, “Morphic Resonance and Genealogy,” APG
Members Only List,
28 July 2011. Mark's website is Many
Roads,
http://many-roads.com.
3 comments:
I like it, and I'm pretty sure I experienced it during my recent trip to the UK. Certain places resonated with me immediately- Huddersfield, where my Kilner line comes from, and Dundee (the Anderson line) also evoked a strong feeling of familiarity. And don't even get me started about bagpipes.
I think this is the perfect post for a genealogy blog! Give at least a whiff of science to those experiences we've all had when walking on ancestral ground.
Thanks!
It's good to hear that other family historians get the same feelings. Hank Z. Jones' books about Psychic Roots explored some of that .. gee, I haven't looked at them for a long time!
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