[45] Sheldrake left ICRISAT to focus on writing A New Science of Life, during which time he spent a year and a half in the Saccidananda Ashram of Bede Griffiths,[16][46] a Benedictine monk active in interfaith dialogue with Hinduism.
[61] In 2023, Sheldrake debated the existence of consciousness outside of brains at the University Aula in Bergen, Norway, alongside anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann and neuroscientist Anil Seth.
He generalises this approach to assert that it explains many aspects of science, from evolution to the laws of nature, which, in Sheldrake's formulation, are merely mutable habits that have been evolving and changing since the Big Bang.
Today, attitudes have hardened and Sheldrake is seen as standing firmly on the wilder shores of science," adding that if New Scientist were to review the reissue, the book's publisher "wouldn't be mining it for promotional purposes.
"[73] In a 1988 review of the book in The Times, David E. H. Jones criticised the hypothesis as magical thinking and pseudoscience, saying that morphic resonance "is so vast and formless that it could easily be made to explain anything, or to dodge round any opposing argument ... Sheldrake has sadly aligned himself with those fantasists who, from the depths of their armchairs, dream up whole new grandiose theories of space and time to revolutionize all science, drape their woolly generalizations over every phenomenon they can think of, and then start looking round for whatever scraps of evidence that seem to them to be in their favour."
"[76] The book was reviewed by James Lovelock in Nature, who argued that "the theory of formative causation makes testable predictions," noting that "nothing has yet been reported which would divert the mainstream of science.
[78] Music critic of The Sunday Times Mark Edwards reviewed the book positively, arguing that Sheldrake "challenges the complacent certainty of scientists," and that his ideas "sounded ridiculous ... as long as your thinking is constrained by the current scientific orthodoxy.
"[79] David Sharp, writing in The Lancet, said that the experiments testing paranormal phenomena carried the "risk of positive publication bias," and that the scientific community "would have to think again if some of these suggestions were convincingly confirmed."
[82] Before the publication of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, Sheldrake invited Richard Wiseman, Matthew Smith, and Julie Milton to conduct an independent experimental study with Jaytee.
"[90] Several independent experimenters were unable to find evidence beyond statistical randomness that people could tell they were being stared at, with some saying that there were design flaws in Sheldrake's experiments,[11][26][91] such as using test sequences with "relatively few long runs and many alternations" instead of truly randomised patterns.
[94] David Jay Brown, who conducted some of the experiments for Sheldrake, states that one of the subjects who was reported as having the highest hit rates was under the influence of the drug MDMA (Ecstasy) during the trials.
[96] In the book, Sheldrake proposes a number of questions as the theme of each chapter that seek to elaborate on his central premise that science is predicated on the belief that the nature of reality is fully understood, with only minor details needing to be filled in.
Anti-reductionist philosopher Mary Midgley, writing in The Guardian, welcomed it as "a new mind-body paradigm" to address what she called "the unlucky fact that our current form of mechanistic materialism rests on muddled, outdated notions of matter.
New Scientist's deputy editor Graham Lawton characterised Science Set Free as "woolly credulousness" and chided Sheldrake for "uncritically embracing all kinds of fringe ideas.
"[102] A review in Philosophy Now called the book "disturbingly eccentric," combining "a disorderly collage of scientific fact and opinion with an intrusive yet disjunctive metaphysical programme.
[104] Adam Ford, reviewing the book for the Church Times, describes it as a "useful and very clear introduction to the practice of meditation" combined with a how-to guide on the "healing and happiness-creating power of gratitude".
[105] Publishers Weekly reviewed the book as having "accessible suggestions" and "clear arguments", while noting that "a few fuzzy moments, including reliance on many...overly speculative accounts" do not prevent the work from being "otherwise convincing" and "a good case for reincorporating bygone spiritual habits.
[108] Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, anthropologist Jonathan Benthall called the book "an affable, erudite manual to show how life need not be boring", and Sheldrake's arguments "soft at the edges, sometimes presenting his hypotheses as facts".
[3][7][20][25] Some have accused Sheldrake of self-promotion,[25] with Steven Rose commenting, "for the inventors of such hypotheses the rewards include a degree of instant fame which is harder to achieve by the humdrum pursuit of more conventional science.
[26] For this issue, the editor could not follow the journal's standard peer-review process because "making successful blind peer review a condition of publication would in this case have killed the project at the outset.
"[2][7] Written by the journal's senior editor, John Maddox, the editorial commented: Sheldrake's book is a splendid illustration of the widespread public misconception of what science is about.
[114][25][27] In a subsequent issue, Nature published several letters expressing disapproval of the editorial,[115][116][117][118] including one from physicist Brian Josephson, who criticised Maddox for "a failure to admit even the possibility that genuine physical facts may exist which lie outside the scope of current scientific descriptions.
"[122] This provoked a response by Steven Rose, a neuroscientist from the Open University, who criticised Sheldrake for being "a researcher trained in another discipline" (botany) for not "respect[ing] the data collected by neuroscientists before begin[ning] to offer us alternative explanations," and accused Sheldrake of "ignoring or denying" "massive evidence," and arguing that "neuroscience over the past two decades has shown that memories are stored in specific changes in brain cells."
Giving an example of experiments on chicks, Rose asserted "egregious errors that Sheldrake makes to bolster his case that demands a new vague but all-embracing theory to resolve.
"[20] He also made further criticisms of morphic resonance, and stated that "the experience of this collaboration has convinced me in practice, Sheldrake is so committed to his hypothesis that it is very hard to envisage the circumstances in which he would accept its disconfirmation.
[133] An experiment involving measuring the time for subjects to recognise hidden images, with morphic resonance being posited to aid in recognition, was conducted in 1984 by the BBC popular science programme Tomorrow's World.
"[134] In 2006, Sheldrake spoke at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science about experimental results on telepathy replicated by "a 1980s girl band," drawing criticism from Peter Atkins, Lord Winston, and Richard Wiseman.
[142] Between 1989 and 1999, Sheldrake, ethnobotanist Terence McKenna and mathematician Ralph Abraham recorded a series of discussions exploring diverse topics relating to the "world soul" and evolution.
Sokal later said that he had suggested in the hoax paper that 'morphogenetic fields' constituted a cutting-edge theory of quantum gravity, adding that "This connection [was] pure invention; even Sheldrake makes no such claim.
[15] But whereas Jung assumed that archetypal forms were transmitted through physical inheritance, Sheldrake attributes collective memories to morphic resonance, and rejects any explanation of them involving what he terms "mechanistic biology."