Introduction

The habits of nature

They say that habit is second nature. Who knows but nature is only first habit?

Blaise Pascal (1623–62), Pensées

This book explores the possibility that memory is inherent in nature. It suggests that natural systems, such as termite colonies, or pigeons, or orchid plants, or insulin molecules, inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind, however far away they were and however long ago they existed. Because of this cumulative memory, through repetition the nature of things becomes increasingly habitual. Things are as they are because they were as they were.

Habits may be inherent in the nature of all living organisms, in crystals, molecules and atoms, and indeed in the entire cosmos. A beech seedling, for example, as it grows into a tree takes up the characteristic shape, structure, and habits of a beech. It is able to do so because it inherits its nature from previous beeches; but this inheritance is not just a matter of chemical genes. It depends also on the transmission of habits of growth and development from countless beech trees that existed in the past.

Likewise, as a swallow grows up it flies, feeds, preens, migrates, mates, and nests as swallows habitually do. It inherits the instincts of its species through invisible influences that make the behaviour of past swallows in some sense present within it. It draws on and is shaped by the collective memory of its species.

All humans too draw upon a collective memory, to which all in turn contribute.

If this view of nature is even approximately correct, it should be possible to observe the progressive establishment of new habits as they spread within a species. For example, when people learn something new, such as wind-surfing, then as more people learn to do it, it should tend to become progressively easier to learn, just because so many other people have learned to do it already. When crystals of a newly synthesized chemical substance, for example a new kind of drug, arise for the first time they have no exact precedent; but as the same compound is crystallized again and again, the crystals should tend to form more readily all over the world, just because they have already formed somewhere else.

In the same way that this inheritance of habits may depend on direct influences from previous similar things in the past, so the memory of individual organisms may depend on direct influences from their own past. If memory is inherent in the nature of things, then the inheritance of collective habits and the development of individual habits can be seen as different aspects of the same fundamental process; the process whereby the past becomes present on the basis of similarity.

Thus, our own personal habits may depend on cumulative influences from our past behaviour to which we ‘tune in’. If so, there is no need for them to be stored in a material form within our nervous systems. The same applies to our conscious memories – of a song we know, or of something that happened last year. The past may become present to us directly. Our memories may not be stored inside our brains, as we usually assume they are.

All these possibilities can be conceived of in the framework of the hypothesis of formative causation. According to this hypothesis, the nature of things depends on fields, called morphic fields. Each kind of natural system has its own kind of field: there is an insulin field, a beech field, a swallow field and so on. Such fields shape all the different kinds of atoms, molecules, crystals, living organisms, societies, customs and habits of mind.

Morphic fields, like the known fields of physics, are non-material regions of influence extending in space and continuing in time. They are localized within and around the systems they organize. When any particular organized system ceases to exist – as when an atom splits, a snowflake melts, an animal dies – its organizing field disappears from that place. But in another sense, morphic fields do not disappear: they are potential organizing patterns of influence, and can appear again physically in other times and places, wherever and whenever the physical conditions are appropriate. When they do so they contain within themselves a memory of their previous physical existences.

The process by which the past becomes present within morphic fields is called morphic resonance. Morphic resonance involves the transmission of formative causal influences through both space and time. The memory within the morphic fields is cumulative, and that is why all sorts of things become increasingly habitual through repetition. When such repetition has occurred on an astronomical scale over billions of years, as it has in the case of many kinds of atoms, molecules and crystals, the nature of these things has become so deeply habitual that it is effectively changeless, or seemingly eternal.

All this obviously contrasts with currently orthodox theories. There is no such thing in contemporary physics, chemistry or biology as morphic resonance; and the known fields of physics are assumed to be governed by eternal laws of nature. By contrast, morphic fields arise and evolve in time and space, and are influenced by what has actually happened. Morphic fields are conceived of in an evolutionary spirit, but the known fields of physics are not. Or at least, until quite recently they were not.

Until the 1960s, the universe was generally believed by physicists to be eternal; so were the properties of matter and of fields; so were the laws of nature. They always had been and always would be the same. But the universe is now thought to have been born in a primordial explosion some 14 billion years ago and to have been growing and evolving ever since.

Theoretical physics is in ferment. Theories are reaching back into the first moments of creation. Entirely new, evolutionary conceptions of matter and of fields are coming into being. The cosmos now seems more like a developing organism than an eternal machine. In this context, habits may be more natural than immutable laws.

This is the possibility that this book explores. But before beginning this exploration, it is helpful to consider in more detail the habitual assumptions we make about the nature of things. The hypothesis of formative causation conflicts with a number of scientific theories that have been orthodox for decades, or even for centuries, so it is important to be aware of what these theories are and how they have developed, and to take account of their successes and limitations.

At various stages throughout this book, the interpretations of phenomena in terms of the orthodox theories are compared with the hypothesis of formative causation. This comparison enables the alternative approaches to be understood more clearly, and it also enables us to see where they make different predictions that can be tested by experiment. By means of such tests, it should be possible to find out which approach is in better accordance with the world we live in.

The plan of this book

Any new way of thinking has to come into being in the context of existing habits of thought. The realm of science is no exception. At any given time, the generally accepted models of reality, often called paradigms, embody assumptions that are more or less taken for granted and which easily become habitual.

In the first three chapters, I examine the two predominant models of reality in contemporary science: the idea that physical reality is constant and entirely governed by eternal laws, and the idea that nature is evolutionary. In Chapter 1, I consider the way in which these two models of reality have coexisted for over a century, and how they are now in conflict as a result of the recent revolution in cosmology. All nature is now thought to be evolutionary, and consequently the assumption of eternal laws of nature is thrown into question. Rather than being governed by eternal laws, the nature of things may be habitual. This possibility was already being considered by philosophers and biologists towards the end of the nineteenth century, but it was ruled out by the orthodox assumption of an eternal physical reality.

In Chapter 2, I examine the history of the idea of the eternity of nature. It is rooted in mystical intuition, and came down to modern science through traditions of thought inherited from classical Greece. The theoretical eternities of physics have evolved from ancient, pre-evolutionary conceptions of reality, and are now at variance with evolutionary cosmology.

In Chapter 3, I look at the evolution of the idea of evolution. Its historical roots can be found in the Christian faith in the idea of the progressive movement of human history towards the fulfilment of God’s purposes. From this belief, in seventeenth-century Europe a new vision of human progress began to develop: a faith in the transformation of the world for the benefit of humanity through progress in science and technology. This conviction was continually reinforced by the advances of science, industry, medicine and agriculture, and has by now become predominant on a global scale. In the course of the nineteenth century, the progress of humanity came to be seen in a much wider context: it became one aspect of a great evolutionary process that had given rise to all forms of life on Earth. Finally, in the new cosmology the idea of evolution has been taken to its ultimate limits: the view that the whole universe is evolutionary.

As a result, we can no longer take the eternal laws of nature for granted. But if we think of them as habitual, we find ourselves in conflict with the conventional assumptions of physics, chemistry and biology, which were formulated in the context of an eternal mechanistic universe. In Chapter 4, I consider the nature of atoms, molecules, crystals, plants and animals. They are all complex structures of activity that come into being spontaneously. Why do they have the structures they do? How are they organized? How do complex living organisms such as trees develop from much simpler structures such as seeds? I look at the orthodox answers to these questions and at the assumptions they embody, and in Chapter 5 I discuss how the coming into being of living organisms – the growth of a chicken, for example, from a fertilized egg – still remains mysterious, despite the many impressive discoveries of modern biology. In contemporary biology, one of the most promising ways of thinking about the development of living organisms is in terms of organizing fields, called morphogenetic fields. However, the nature of these fields has itself remained mysterious.

In Chapter 6 I discuss the nature of these fields, and the interpretation of them provided by the hypothesis of formative causation; and in Chapter 7 I show how this hypothesis applies to the development of molecules and crystals as well as living organisms. The morphic fields of all these systems can be thought of as containing an inherent memory, due to morphic resonance from all previous similar systems.

In Chapter 8 I consider the new interpretation of biological heredity that this hypothesis provides and look at ways in which it could be tested experimentally.

Chapters 9 to 12 are concerned with memory, learning and habit in animals and human beings. The idea of morphic resonance enables memory to be understood in terms of direct causal influences from an organism’s own past. This therefore provides a radical alternative to the conventional theory that habits and memories are somehow stored as material ‘traces’ within the nervous system. This way of looking at the phenomena is unfamiliar, but it is more consistent with the available evidence than the conventional theory. It leads to a range of empirically testable predictions, and I describe some experiments that have already been done to test it.

In Chapter 13 the concept of morphic fields is extended to the organized societies of social animals, such as termite colonies and flocks of birds, and Chapter 14 considers the structures of human societies and cultures in the light of this idea. In Chapter 15, 1 suggest that the concept of morphic resonance could provide a new interpretation of rituals, customs and traditions, including the traditions of science.

The evolution of morphic fields by natural selection and the role of morphic resonance in the evolutionary process are discussed in Chapter 16, and in Chapter 17 the nature of morphic fields is considered in relation to evolutionary cosmology. Chapter 18 addresses the question of evolutionary creativity: What are the possible sources of new patterns of organization? How do new morphic fields arise in the first place?

I have tried to keep technical terminology to a minimum, but the use of some specialized scientific and philosophical terms is unavoidable. These terms are explained as the book goes along, and I hope their meanings will become clear even if they are unfamiliar to start with. There is also a glossary at the end of the book that summarizes what these words and phrases mean.