Do habits die really hard?

In the continuing saga of re-reading books from my collection, yesterday I picked up The Presence of the Past by Rupert Sheldrake.

From the introduction:

This book explores the possibility that memory is inherent in nature. It suggests that natural systems, such as termite colonies, or pigeons, or orchid plants, or insulin molecules, inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind, however far away and however long ago they existed. Because of this cumulative memory, through repetition the nature of things becomes increasingly habitual. Things are as they are, because they were as they were.

... All these possibilities can be conceived in the framework of a scientific hypothesis, which I call the hypothesis of formative causation. According to the hypothesis, the nature of things depends on fields, called morphic fields. Each kind of natural system has its own kind of field: there is an insulin field, a beech field, a swallow field, and so on. Such fields shape all the different kinds of atoms, molecules, crystals, living organisms, societies, customs, and habits of mind.

Morphic fields, like the known fields of physics, are non-material regions of influence extending in space and continuing in time. They are localized within and around the systems they organize. When any particular organized system ceases to exist, as when an atom splits, a snowflake melts, an animal dies, its originating field disappears from that place. But in another sense, morphic fields do not disappear; they are potential organizing patterns of influence, and can appear again physically in other times and places, wherever and whenever the physical conditions are appropriate. Wheny they do so, they contain within themselves a memory of their previous physical existences.

The process by which the past becomes the present within morphic fields is called morphic resonance. Morphic resonance involves the transmission of formative causal influences through both space and time. The memory within the morphic fields is cumulative, and that is why all sorts of things become increasingly habitual through repetition. When such repetition has occurred on an astronomical scale over billions of years, as it has in the case of many kinds of atoms, molecules, and crystals, the nature of these things has become so deeply habitual that it is effectively changeless, or seemingly eternal.

This idea, if it pans out, matches quite nicely with my own ideas about the general self-consistency of the cosmos, the ways in which the cosmos evolves towards ever-increasingly efficient patterns, and so forth. More to come on this for certain.

(no subject)

It's all fun and games until someone dies in a clash with riot police.

Did you ever have one of those moments where you feel like you've woken up to realize that you're surrounded by barely-domesticated apes? I have such moments all the time, but this is particularly notable. Members of the "Red Sox Nation" tromped around last night, like a victorious army, their appointed surrogate predators victorious in the club-swinging contest with the neighboring rival tribe. What military victory, though, comes without pillaging and carnage? So it was necessary to create some.

Another instance of Republican hypocrisy

From an excellent editorial in today's Boston Globe: Who's insensitive to gays? Start with the Cheneys

LET ME SEE if I have this right. The Republicans are now accusing the Democrats of being insensitive to gay Americans? Or to one gay American at least?

After John Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney in the third debate, talk radio hosts finally found a lesbian they wanted to protect. Even the homophobic wing of cable TV rallied to the support of a family with a gay offspring.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney described himself as "a pretty angry father." And Lynne Cheney said of the senator: "This is not a good man."

What's wrong with this picture?

Remember way back in the 1980s, when Dick Cheney racked up one of the most antigay voting records in the House of Representatives? In 1988, he was one of 13 members who even voted against funding for AIDS testing and research when it was still called a "gay plague." Well, Cheney's come as far as many other Americans, and for the same essential reason. The more people in our families, workplaces, and communities come out of the closet, the harder it is to regard them as deviants who need to be cured or converted or jailed.

...As for Lynne Cheney, who called Kerry's comments "a cheap and tawdry political trick," what does she call the RNC mailing that warned evangelicals that if Kerry is elected, the Bible will be banned and gay marriage will be the law of the land? High-minded?

At the Republican convention, Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for Illinois senator, said homosexuality "is based simply on the premise of selfish hedonism." When asked if Mary Cheney was a selfish hedonist, he answered "of course she is." Did Lynne call Alan Keyes a bad man?

Cheney, for his part, said that this incident proves Kerry "will say and do anything in order to get elected." What about the anti-gay marriage amendments gracing the ballots of 11 states, including swing states like Ohio? Did he criticize the campaign's use of the gay issue to get evangelicals to the polls? Who will say and do anything to get elected?

(no subject)

There is no greater achievement of the modern age than that of the liberation of women. A country cannot stand when half of its people are not free. Feminism remains the only ideology capable of revolutionary impact and transformation of societies and the human condition. Regimes and countries that oppress women cannot hope to stand and prosper. They will be brought down by the powerful idea of human liberty.

--Shimon Peres, in comments last night at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government