The Presence of the Past

This book develops the revolutionary theory that behaviour and social systems are not only governed by immutable and mechanistic laws, which is the traditional viewpoint, but also by habits transmitted by nature's inherent memory. Rupert Sheldrake's hypothesis is that all natural systems from crystals to man inherit a collective memory of their kind. Thus, rabbits are rabbit-shaped not only because their DNA encodes their proteins, but also because nature has a "morphic field", in their case, a rabbit-habit, that informs their growth and instinctive behaviour. This inherent memory depends on "morphic resonance", a process that involves action at a distance in both space and time. The author also wrote "A New Science of Life".