Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations with Terence McKenna, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Laura Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and others… (31 page)

DJB: Just so that everyone is familiar with your theoretical work, can you briefly define for us the basic intention behind, and the basic elements of, the theory of formative causation?

RUPERT: The theory of formative causation is concerned with how things take up their forms, or patterns, or organization. So it covers the formation of galaxies, atoms, crystals, molecules, plants, animals, cells, societies. It covers all kinds of things that have forms, patterns, structures, or selforganizing properties.

You see, all these things organize themselves. An atom doesn't have to be put together by some external agency. It organizes itself. A molecule and a crystal are not assembled by human beings bit by bit, they spontaneously crystalize. Animals spontaneously grow. All these things are different from machines, which are artificially put together by human beings.

So, what my theory is concerned with is self-organizing natural systems, and it deals with the cause of form. And the cause of all these forms I take to be organizing fields, form-shaping fields, which I call morphic fields, from the Greek word for form. The original feature of what I'm saying is that the forms of societies, ideas, crystals and molecules depend on the way that previous ones of that kind have been organized. There's a kind of built-in memory in the morphic fields of each kind of thing. So the regularities of nature I think of as more like habits, than as things governed by eternal mathematical laws that somehow exist outside nature.

RMN: Could you give a specific example of, and describe the morphogenetic process in terms of, the development of a well-established species, like a potato, for example?

RUPERT: Well, the idea is that each species, each member of a species draws on the collective memory of the species, and tunes in to past members of the species, and in turn contributes to the further development of the species. So in the case of a potato, you'd have a whole background resonance from past species of potatoes, most of which grow wild in the Andes. And then in that particular case, because it's a cultivated plant, there's been a development of a whole lot of varieties of potatoes, which are cultivated, and as it so happens potatoes are propagated vegetatively, so they're clones.

So each clone of potatoes, each variety, each member of the clone will resonate with all previous members of the clone, and that resonance is against a background of resonance with other members of the potato species, and then that's related to related potato species, wild ones that still grow in the Andes. So, there's a whole kind of background resonance, but what's most important is the resonance from the most similar ones, which is the past members of that variety. And this is what makes the potatoes of that variety develop the way they do, following the habits of their kind.

Usually these things are ascribed to genes. Most people assume that inheritance depends on chemical genes and DNA, and say there's no problem, it's all just programmed in the DNA. What I'm saying is that that view of biological development is inadequate. The DNA is the same in all the cells of the potato, in the shoots, in the roots, in the leaves, and the flowers. The DNA is exactly the same, yet these organs develop differently. So something more than DNA must be giving rise to the form of the potato, and that is what I call the morphic field, the organizing field.

An example of how you'd test the theory would depend on looking at some change in the species that hadn't happened before, a new phenomenon, and seeing how it spreads through the species. So, for example, if you train rats to learn a new trick in one place, then rats of that breed should learn it more quickly everywhere in the world, just because the first ones have learned it. The more that learn it, the easier it should get.

RMN: What about how the morphic field develops in a new system, like a newly synthesized chemical, or a drug? How would the field evolve around that?

RUPERT: Well, the first time the chemical is crystallized, there won't be a morphic field for the crystals, because they would not have existed before. As time goes on, it should get easier to crystallize, because of morphic resonance from previous crystals. So, however the first pattern is taken --this is a question of creativity, but assume, for example, it's random--whenever the first lot of crystals crystallize that way, out of the other possible ways they could have crystallized, then that pattern will be stabilized through morphic resonance, and the more often it happens, the more likely it will be to happen again, through this kind of invisible memory connecting up crystals throughout the world. There's already evidence that new crystals, new compounds, do get easier to crystallize as time goes on.

DJB: What are morphic fields made of, and how is it that they can exist everywhere all at once? Do they work on a principle similar to Bell's Theorem?

RUPERT: Well, you could ask the question, what are any fields made of? You know, what is the electromagnetic field made of, or what is the gravitational field made of? Nobody knows, even in the case of the known fields of physics. It was thought in the nineteenth century that they were made of ether. But then Einstein showed that the concept of the ether was superfluous; he said the electromagnetic field isn't made out of ether, it's made out of itself. It just is. The magnetic field around a magnet, for example, is not made of air, and it's not made of matter. When you scatter iron fillings, you can reveal this field, but it's not made of anything except the field. And then if you say, well maybe all fields have some common substance, or common property, then that's the quest for a unified field theory.

Then if you say, "Well, what is it that all fields are made of?" the only answer that can be given is space-time, or space and time. The substance of fields is space; fields are modifications of space or of the vacuum. And according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, the gravitational field, the structure of space-time in the whole universe, is not in space and time; it is space-time. There's no space and time other than the structure of fields. So fields are patterns of space-time. And so the morphic field, like other fields, will be structures in space and time. They have their own kind of ontological status, the same kind of status as electromagnetic and gravitational fields.

DJB: Wait. But those are localized aren't they? I mean, you sprinkle iron fillings about a magnet, and you can see the field around it. How is it that a morphic field can exist everywhere all at once?

RUPERT: It doesn't. The morphic fields are localized. They're in and around the system they organize. So the morphic field of you is in and around your body. The morphic field around a tomato plant is in and around that plant. What I'm suggesting is that morphic fields in different tomato plants resonate with each other across space and time. I'm not suggesting that the field itself is delocalized over the whole of space and time. It's suggesting that one field influences another field through space and time. Now, the medium of transmission is obscure. I call it morphic resonance, this process of resonating. What this is replacing in conventional physics is the so-called "laws of nature," which are believed to be present in all places, and at all times.

So, what is the substance of a law of nature? And how are laws of nature present in all places and at all times? These are the alternative questions to the idea of morphic resonance. It's not as if ordinary physics has something that's more "common sense" than morphic resonance; it has something that's less common sense. It has the idea of invisible mathematical laws, which are not material or energetic, yet present everywhere and always, utterly mysterious. Morphic resonance is mysterious, but it involves not a pattern imposed from outside space and time everywhere, but rather a pattern that can spread through space and time, by the process I call morphic resonance.

RMN: You suggest that the hypothesis of formative causation does not refute orthodox theory but actually incorporates and complements it. How is this so?

RUPERT: The orthodox theory in biology and in chemistry, and indeed in science, is the mechanistic theory of nature that says all natural systems are like machines, and are made up of physical and chemical processes. What I'm saying is that you can, if you like, think of aspects of nature as being machine-like, but this doesn't explain them. Nature isn't a machine. You and I are not machines. We may be like machines in certain respects. Our hearts may be like pumps, and our brains, in some sense, like computers.

Mechanistic theory is providing machine analogies for nature, and it's true that you can look at some aspects of organisms in this machine-like way. But in other important respects, nature in general, and organisms in particular, are not machines or machine-like. So, what I'm suggesting is that the mechanistic theory is alright as far as it goes. Its positive content is alright when it tells us about the physics of nerve impulses, or the chemistry of enzymes; that's fine, this is useful information, and is part of the picture.

If it says that life is nothing but things that can be explained in terms of regular ordinary physics, that already exist in physics textbooks, if it says life is nothing but that--and this is what most mechanistic biologists do say--then I think it's wrong, because it's too limited. It's taking a part of the picture, and assuming it's the whole. It's a half-truth.

RMN: You've incorporated that into your theory, and just taken it to another level...?

RUPERT: Yes. There are still enzymes and nerve impulses in the kind of world I'm talking about; all the things that are in regular biochemistry and biophysics are still there. What isn't still there is the assumption that these aspects of the process are all there is. To take an analogy, it's like trying to understand a building. If you want to understand a building, one level of looking at it is to say, well it's made of wood and other things, metal and frames, and so on. And then you can say we can measure, we can analyze the wood and other components.

You can find out exactly what chemicals are in the wood, the exact molecular composition, the exact constituents of the whole building. But when you grind it up or break it down to analyze the parts, the form of the building, the structure of the room, the
plan
disappears when you're analyzing the constituents, especially if you have to knock it down to do that. And usually to analyze the chemical constituents within an organism, first you have to kill and destroy it. So the plan of the building is also part of the building, it's the formative aspect of the building, the form. And you’ll never understand the plan of a building, its form or its function for that matter, just by analyzing the constituents. Although without the constituents, the wood and stuff, you can't have a building.

DJB: What are the implications of the theory of formative causation? How do hypothetical morphic fields affect things like the sciences, the arts, technologies, and social structures?

RUPERT: Well, I've written an entire book on this subject--
The Presence of the Past
--so it's difficult to answer it extremely briefly. But, first of all, it gives a completely different understanding of formative processes in biology and in chemistry. It gives a new understanding of instincts and behavioral patterns, as being organized by morphic fields. It gives a new understanding of social structure, in terms of morphic fields, and cultural forms, and ideas. All of these I see as patterns organized by these fields with an inherent memory.

In the human realm, for example, it leads to the idea of a collective human memory on which we all draw, which is very like Jung's idea of the collective unconscious. In terms of social groups, it gives rise to the idea that the whole social group is organized by a field. And that that field is not just an organizing structure in the present, but also contains a memory of that social group in the past, a group memory---and also, through morphic resonance, a memory of other similar social groups that have existed before.

So, a football team, for example, will tune into its own field in the past. The individual players on the football team will be coordinated not just by observing each other, but by a kind of group mind that will be working when the game's going around. And this will in turn have as a kind of background resonance the morphic fields of other similar football teams.

RMN: On the one hand it is reassuring that a certain pattern or order is being maintained, and yet options must be available for change if that pattern ceases to function effectively. In what ways does nature supply the necessary conditions for this balance of repeatability and novelty?

RUPERT: Well, the universe is not in a steady state; there's an ongoing creative principle in nature, which is driving things onwards. Cosmologically speaking, this is the expansion of the universe. If the universe had been in a steady state at the moment of the Big Bang, it'd still be at billions of degrees centigrade. We wouldn't be here. The reason we're here is because the Big Bang involved a colossal explosion, an outward movement of expansion of the whole universe, such that it cooled down, and virtually created more space for new things to happen. And in the ongoing evolutionary process, there's a constant destabilization of what's there through the fact that the universe is not in equilibrium.