Sheldrake’s Morphic Fields

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake proposes “morphic fields” as a field of form or shape or organization, “such that every entity has its own field: each ant colony, each termite nest, a flock of birds, a pack of wolves and a herd of animals.” Social groups of people too, such as a family, a tribe, or a group, where “members of that group interact with each other within that [morphic] field. When they go apart, that field, as it were, stretches. It doesn't break. The members remain connected at a distance in a way analogous to quantum entanglement.” There is a huge diversity of morphic fields (Sheldrake, 2011). Each self-organizing pattern of activity has its own morphic field, and a kind of collective, inherent memory” (Sheldrake, 2007a, n.d.-a, n.d.-b).

Characteristics and Resonance of Morphic Fields

Morphic fields at all levels of complexity have the following characteristics: they are self-organizing wholes; they have both a spatial and a temporal aspect, and organize spatio-temporal patterns of vibratory or rhythmic activity; they attract the systems under their influence toward characteristic forms and patterns of activity; they are a nested hierarchy or holarchy; they are structures of probability, and their organizing activity is probabilistic; and they contain a built-in memory that is cumulative and reinforcing (Sheldrake, 2011; Sheldrake, n.d.-a).

Sheldrake's corollary concept of “morphic resonance” expresses this kind of collective memory inherent in nature, the inference of similar prior patterns of activity on subsequent similar patterns of activity—which, once they have occurred, can happen more easily anywhere. Morphic resonance is rhythmic in nature, patterns of vibration in space and time that give rise to this kind of memory. It is like a habit, he says, which depends on memory, usually unconscious memory.

Sheldrake posits that morphogenesis in biology depends on organizing fields. As a case in point, the fields organizing the activity of the nervous system are inherited “through morphic resonance, conveying a collective, instinctive memory. Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the collective memory of the species. This means that new patterns of behavior can spread more rapidly than would otherwise be possible.”

Controversy and Paranormal Claims

Unabashedly controversial, morphic fields, Sheldrake says, underlie our mental activity and our perceptions. He claims that the existence of these fields can be tested experimentally, such as the sense of being stared at (Sheldrake, 2013). He suggests that morphic fields of social groups “help provide an explanation for telepathy” and that “telepathy seems to be a normal means of animal communication” (as with dogs [Sheldrake, 2011)—ideas outside of mainstream science.

Sheldrake argues that “telepathy is normal not paranormal, natural not supernatural, and is also common between people, especially people who know each other well,” adding, “The morphic fields of mental activity are not confined to the insides of our heads. They extend far beyond our brain through intention and attention”^[1] (Sheldrake, 2013; Sheldrake, n.d.-a, n.d.-b).

Footnote

[1]. Sheldrake claims that controlled experiments on telepathic phone calls and emails support his hypothesis of morphic fields. For example, he says that his work on telephone telepathy has been independently replicated and that a recent meta-analysis shows an overall highly significant effect (Sheldrake, 2025). While other scientists critique his work, Sheldrake cites the technical papers on his website at https://www.sheldrake.org/research (Sheldrake, n.d.-b).