A lot of confusion
Why not be attracted by R. Sheldrake critics of the dogmas, personal rivalries, fraud, ambitions, fight for funding or race for social prestige and some other "inherent corruption" in the world of Science, as he answers to the interviewer Mark Leviton in the last issue of the magazine "SUN", number 446 ? And his ideas about morphogenic fields as well as his questioning about the genetic inheritance, are certainly worth considering. But the discussion slides against what Mark Leviton defines as materialists : "Materialists believe that the universe has no purpose, direction, or reason for existing". That leads R.Sheldrake to say that "In nature most things have goals and purposes.(..) The idea that there's no purpose in nature is a result of the machine metaphor"... et voila !
Instead of correcting the interviewer for his biased definition of materialists - and honestly state that the basic distinction between materialism and idealism, lays in the recognition by materialists that the outside world, nature, exists independtly of our perception, period - as anybody can even check in a simple Wikipedia article - R. Sheldrake poses himself as a knight against materialism once it is presented as a vulgar machinism, whatever that might mean but certainly not materialism. I don't know what is taught in the philosophy classes at Harvard University where R. Sheldrake has studied, but I am disappointed to see such a biased presentation of materialism in his interview, but it makes it easier to fight it, indeed.
