Rating: 
Summary: What are you doing, Rupert?
Review: A true scientist is not really a scientist: rather he/she is an a creative, artistic individual who is able to apply to this type of thinking in order to 'think outside of the box.' This is exactly what we have here: most scientists are not artists, they work within a paradigm. Sheldrake, however, is different. He is willing to ask questions deemed unanswerable, and he uses the scientific method to test them. His methodology is extremely elegant and without error I could spot.
Rating: 
Summary: A more useful endeavor?
Review: Dr. Sheldrake is no "paranormalist." He's a highly respected researcher and theorist, a retired professor of cell biology at Cambridge University, who investigates unexplained powers of the mind because they can tell us a great deal about the nature of mentality. He not only reveals irrefutable statistical evidence for the existence of telepathy, remote viewing, precognition, and the power of attention, but more importantly his explanation of these phenomena roots them firmly in the biological sciences. He refers to them collectively as the "7th sense," after the five senses and the lesser-known ability of certain animals to sense electromagnetic fields. The field concept, which began in physics and spread to biology in the 1920s, is essential to Sheldrake's theory. "Morphogenetic fields" are invoked by developmental biologists to account for the curious ability of cells in a given organism to perform different tasks even though they all have identical DNA. Why does one area of an embryo form into an arm, for instance, while another area forms into a heart? Because cells fall under the influence of different "form-giving" fields. Most biologists assume that these fields, which are essential in describing organic development, will one day be explained according to genes. Sheldrake is not the only theorist who disagrees and claims that these fields are as real as gravitational or magnetic fields. What we call the "mind" may simply be the morphogenetic field associated with the brain. According to this view, sense organs involve extended fields that embrace the object of perception. This is why people can tell when they're being stared at. While this book is not the first to provide overwhelming evidence of the 7th sense (see Dean Radin's The Conscious Universe), it is the first to place this material within the context of an explanatory hypothesis. The importance of this book cannot be overstated.
Rating:
Summary: No "Sense" In This Book
Review: I was pretty excited to see this book, and I grabbed it eagerly because no one else, to my knowledge, has written a book on what is widely known as "the sensing of presence" (oddly, Mr. Sheldrake does not know this nomenclature). However, soon I found myself to be highly disappointed as Mr. Sheldrake obviously has no real knowledge of and only a passing, shallow interest in the subject. This book really feels like a hastily collected jumble of lecture notes and letters. Obviously, it is only his impressive educational background and standing in British academia that allowed this book to even make it through a publisher's door. If Mr. Sheldrake wants to write a scientific treatise on a metaphysical topic, he would do well to emulate Dr. Susan Blackmore, who always has her science in place before she puts forth an idea and who does not engage in rambling and guessing. Finally, the idea that waking up before your alarm clock goes off is some form of "precognition" (as Mr. Sheldrake postulates) is ludicrous. Don't waste your time. If you really do have an interest in this topic, try reading Robert Monroe's books instead.
Rating:
Summary: No "Sense" In This Book
Review: I was pretty excited to see this book, and I grabbed it eagerly because no one else, to my knowledge, has written a book on what is widely known as "the sensing of presence" (oddly, Mr. Sheldrake does not know this nomenclature). However, soon I found myself to be highly disappointed as Mr. Sheldrake obviously has no real knowledge of and only a passing, shallow interest in the subject. This book really feels like a hastily collected jumble of lecture notes and letters. Obviously, it is only his impressive educational background and standing in British academia that allowed this book to even make it through a publisher's door. If Mr. Sheldrake wants to write a scientific treatise on a metaphysical topic, he would do well to emulate Dr. Susan Blackmore, who always has her science in place before she puts forth an idea and who does not engage in rambling and guessing. Finally, the idea that waking up before your alarm clock goes off is some form of "precognition" (as Mr. Sheldrake postulates) is ludicrous. Don't waste your time. If you really do have an interest in this topic, try reading Robert Monroe's books instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Sheldrake Presses On
Review: In The Sense Of Being Stared At Rupert Sheldrake publishes more results of investigations announced in Seven Experiments That Could Change The World (1994). His New Science of Life (1981), in which "morphogenetic fields" function as the organizing primal material principle in a novel theory of evolution, promotes the idea of an oak seed developing into an oak tree (rather than into something completely different) out of mere habit. Thus Sheldrake endows the material world with an intelligence that keeps alive by projecting memories of itself into the future, claiming by the same token that the laws of nature are neither eternal nor immutable but rather acquired and in constant process of adaptation.
Sheldrake's tenets hit the world of the hard sciences like a bombshell, and he has been busy providing proof for his thesis of interwoven memory fields ever since. Thus he became involved with pets and others animals, subjects he is particularly fond of since their perceptions are incorruptible. Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (1998) lead him to a series of other applications, where a projection of the senses into the future was involved. The mental sensor seemingly responsible for these feats he calls the "seventh sense" or "extended mind". The result of his latest research does not only encompass a discussion of telepathy but also of the human eye and its unchartered perceptions. Analogous to Albert Hofmann?s sender-receptor conception of reality, the exchange of energy and information reaching and leaving the eye are paramount to visual activity. Or why would most of us feel when we are being stared at?
Some further questions are: do you know who it is when your phone rings? Do you wake up before your alarm clock sounds? Are you or your pets prone to forebodings? Are you a woman who starts lactating when her baby is about to cry for milk? What is a mental field? How does the mind send and receive mental impressions? There is no doubt that the traditional sciences fail to explain these experiences in a satisfactory manner.
"Clues lie disregarded all around us," Sheldrake announces. Entertaining as always, he leads us to a telepathic parrot, introduces us to dogs, cats, horses and their owners as well as showing us many humans whose emotional bonds have unexpected side effects.
The good news in all this: the phenomena discussed by the author are universal, and he makes good headway in demonstrating that Darwinists inhabit a racist victorian suburb rather than living on the 8 Mile of quantum reality. The bad news: it takes a long trip across the land of statistical probability for you and I to get there!
Rating:
Summary: Sheldrake Presses On
Review: In The Sense Of Being Stared At Rupert Sheldrake publishes more results of investigations announced in Seven Experiments That Could Change The World (1994). His New Science of Life (1981), in which "morphogenetic fields" function as the organizing primal material principle in a novel theory of evolution, promotes the idea of an oak seed developing into an oak tree (rather than into something completely different) out of mere habit. Thus Sheldrake endows the material world with an intelligence that keeps alive by projecting memories of itself into the future, claiming by the same token that the laws of nature are neither eternal nor immutable but rather acquired and in constant process of adaptation.
Sheldrake's tenets hit the world of the hard sciences like a bombshell, and he has been busy providing proof for his thesis of interwoven memory fields ever since. Thus he became involved with pets and others animals, subjects he is particularly fond of since their perceptions are incorruptible. Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (1998) lead him to a series of other applications, where a projection of the senses into the future was involved. The mental sensor seemingly responsible for these feats he calls the "seventh sense" or "extended mind". The result of his latest research does not only encompass a discussion of telepathy but also of the human eye and its unchartered perceptions. Analogous to Albert Hofmann?s sender-receptor conception of reality, the exchange of energy and information reaching and leaving the eye are paramount to visual activity. Or why would most of us feel when we are being stared at?
Some further questions are: do you know who it is when your phone rings? Do you wake up before your alarm clock sounds? Are you or your pets prone to forebodings? Are you a woman who starts lactating when her baby is about to cry for milk? What is a mental field? How does the mind send and receive mental impressions? There is no doubt that the traditional sciences fail to explain these experiences in a satisfactory manner.
"Clues lie disregarded all around us," Sheldrake announces. Entertaining as always, he leads us to a telepathic parrot, introduces us to dogs, cats, horses and their owners as well as showing us many humans whose emotional bonds have unexpected side effects.
The good news in all this: the phenomena discussed by the author are universal, and he makes good headway in demonstrating that Darwinists inhabit a racist victorian suburb rather than living on the 8 Mile of quantum reality. The bad news: it takes a long trip across the land of statistical probability for you and I to get there!
Rating:
Summary: shoddy science part 2
Review: Like his book DOGS THAT KNOW WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE COMING HOME, Sheldrake fails to completely exclude variables that may contaminate his results. Were he a psychologist and not a biologist, he might have a better understanding of the many psychological factors that could affect his research. Why he chose this aspect of parapsychology as a subject of study I can't imagine, because as proof it is much less convincing than anything done by Rhine and other researchers. Until someone can identify the area of the brain which deals with psychic powers and the medium through which it travels, parapsychology will always remain the unwanted stepchild of science.
Rating:
Summary: shoddy science part 2
Review: Like his book DOGS THAT KNOW WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE COMING HOME, Sheldrake fails to completely exclude variables that may contaminate his results. Were he a psychologist and not a biologist, he might have a better understanding of the many psychological factors that could affect his research. Why he chose this aspect of parapsychology as a subject of study I can't imagine, because as proof it is much less convincing than anything done by Rhine and other researchers. Until someone can identify the area of the brain which deals with psychic powers and the medium through which it travels, parapsychology will always remain the unwanted stepchild of science.
Rating:
Summary: the so-called 'skeptics' look silly again
Review: Renegade biologist Rupert Sheldrake analyzes in depth an experience that many of us have had at some point - a strange compulsion to look up or behind, only to see someone staring intently at us. In his latest installment Sheldrake discusses a variety of anecdotal and experimental evidence that establishes the reality of the phenomenon, and attempts to explain it with his theory of the 'extended mind' - the idea that our minds are not confined to our brains, but may extend into our environment. Needless to say, Sheldrake's work is a challenge to scientific orthodoxy, making Sheldrake the modern equivalent of a heretic. Shortly after publication of his first book, Nature magazine, one of Britain's leading scientific periodicals, called it "the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." In an interview broadcast on BBC television in 1994, John Maddox, the former editor of Nature, said: "Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned in exactly the language that the Pope used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reason. It is heresy." However, Sheldrake follows an impeccable scientific approach. The writing in this book is very clear, and the evidence for the reality of the phenomenon is very impressive. The empirical sections of the book are the most persuasive. His theoretical explanations will likely generate the most controversy among those scientists and philosophers who are willing to drop their prejudice and concede the reality of the sense of being stared at. Sheldrake combines his theory of the 'extended mind' with his idea of morphic fields - regions of influence not currently recognized by mainstream physics, but (it is argued) necessary to explain the growth and regeneration of organisms. Those readers interested in this will want to read Sheldrake's best and most important work, The Presence of the Past. Where this explanation of ESP in terms of fields may falter is that all of the other fields recognized by physics decline with distance. Parapsychology experiments have demonstrated that ESP is not affected by distance, or by shielding of any sort. Explanations of ESP in terms of electromagnetic fields, for example, have been convincingly falsified by such experiments. Morphic fields, if they exist, must have very different properties from the known fields if they are to explain ESP. Some physicists feel that the non-local quantum mechanical effects that have been corroborated in physics experiments may more plausibly explain ESP. If there is any shortcoming to this book, it is that related profound issues - such as the mind/body problem or the implications of quantum mechanics - are dealt with only briefly. Again, this is not true of Sheldrake's masterwork, The Presence of the Past. So, readers who wish to delve more deeply into Sheldrake's theories know where to look. Sheldrake is a bold scientist, one who never lets convention or dogma interfere with his explorations. As Sheldrake writes in the Introduction, "I believe it is more scientific to explore phenomena we do not understand than to pretend they do not exist. I also believe it is less frightening to recognize that the seventh sense is part of our biological nature, shared with many other animal species, than to treat it as weird or supernatural." Sheldrake is a daring and imaginative theorist, and his ideas deserve to be taken seriously. This is an important work, well-worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Science at its very best
Review: Sheldrake's genius is taking commonly reported tales of human and animal abilities that challenge accepted scientific wisdom and developing simple ways of testing those claims under scientifically valid conditions. As with any series of experiments, especially those investigating controversial topics, they gradually evolve into ever-more sophisticated designs to eliminate possible flaws. Sheldrake has done this for the "feeling of being stared at," and the evidence he and others have amassed is persuasive, if reviewed without prejudice. I do not agree with his theoretical explanation for the "staring effect." In Sheldrake's view it suggests a mind that literally extends through space. I think there may be other explanations that better fit the data. But I heartily applaud his proposal of such a theory. Great advancements in science always encounter initial hosility and knee-jerk dismissals because they run counter to accepted wisdom. But without scientific mavericks unsettling the dogma of existing theories, science would rapidly congeal into religion. Indeed, for some hyper-rationalists, "scientism" is already such a religion, with its own set of doctrines, saints, and blasphemers. Sheldrake is a living reminder that by applying conventional scientific methods to unconventional ideas one can sometimes seriously challenge prevailing dogmas. Sheldrake's research and books, including this one, is science at its cutting-edge best.
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