Rupert Sheldrake’s “open” science

Rupert Sheldrake is a former biologist and the inventor of morphic resonance, which posits that memory is inherent in nature and natural systems, such as termite colonies or pigeons, inherit  a “collective memory” from all previous things of their kind. He proposes that morphic resonance is also responsible for telepathy between organisms. Sheldrake is a proponent of “open science,” in the sense that science should be open to all kinds of propositions. But can science be totally open? If you follow the history of science, you’ll find that,

because of the limitations imposed by observation, there is a well defined path that connects Archimedes to Galileo, and Galileo to all the other scientists that came after him.

This path has been discovered by many trials and errors (mostly errors) and the elimination of deviations from that path. As a result, science has certain rules and characteristics, the violation of which leads to non-science, pseudoscience, and anti-science. Rules are also present in other human endeavors such as art and literature. If we were allowed to have a totally open English literature, then “addm ewrg tyu olpi opet, qytr kryt betro” would have to be allowed as an English sentence! Sheldrake’s science is nothing but a “addm ewrg tyu olpi opet, qytr kryt betro”!