--- title: "Morphic Resonance & Formative Causation" --- Morphic resonance is 's name for what he proposes is a basic feature of the universe: the patterns of nature have a **memory**. He set it out in 1981 as the heart of his **hypothesis of formative causation** — the idea that self-organising systems, from molecules and crystals to plants, animals, minds and societies, are shaped not only by genes and physical forces but by fields that carry the influence of every similar system that has come before. Once something has taken form, he argues, it becomes easier for that same form to arise again, anywhere; and the more often it happens, the easier it gets. ## The hypothesis Formative causation, in Sheldrake's own words, is "the hypothesis that organisms or morphic units at all levels of complexity are organized by morphic fields." Those fields are not fixed, pre-existing templates: they are themselves built up by morphic resonance — "the influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity." Behind the technical language lies a single intuition, at once simple and radical: "memory is inherent in nature," and "most of the so-called laws of nature are more like habits." ## The influence of like on like Morphic resonance is the influence of like on like, passing across space and time from past to present. Two features set it apart from any force in ordinary physics. First, it is **non-local**: in Sheldrake's words, "these influences do not fall off with distance in space or time. The greater the degree of similarity, the greater the influence of morphic resonance." Second, it is **non-energetic** — it transfers form and pattern, an ordering influence, rather than a flow of energy. A developing embryo, a forming crystal, a learning animal "tunes in" across time to all the previous members of its kind, and is shaped by them. ## A collective memory Because each morphic system both draws on and adds to the pool, every kind of thing accumulates a **collective memory**. "Any given morphic system, say a squirrel," Sheldrake writes, "'tunes in' to previous similar systems, in this case previous squirrels of its species. Through this process each individual squirrel draws on, and in turn contributes to, a collective or pooled memory of its kind." In the human realm he identifies this with what Jung called the **collective unconscious**. Every species, every type of crystal, every molecule and custom thus carries a memory built up by all that came before it. ## What it explains — and what it doesn't A single mechanism is offered for three problems usually kept apart. It guides **morphogenesis** — developing organisms are drawn toward the form of their kind through their . It underlies **instinct** — behaviour inherited as the habit of a species. And it reframes **memory**: an individual's memories may be a resonance with their own past states rather than traces stored in the tissue of the brain — "the brain is more like a television receiver than a video recorder." Sheldrake is candid about the boundary of his own idea. The hypothesis, he writes, "helps explain how patterns of organization are repeated; but it does not explain how they come into being in the first place. It leaves open the question of evolutionary creativity." He marks the edge of what his theory can claim, and leaves it open. ## A testable idea Above all, he insists, "the hypothesis of morphic fields is a scientific hypothesis, and as such is experimentally testable." Its predictions differ from those of orthodox genetics, of Lamarckism, and of epigenetics: newly made compounds should crystallise more readily everywhere once they have crystallised once; animals should learn an established task faster all over the world; people should find already-familiar material easier to learn; and separated members of a social group should be able to share information at a distance. Those predictions are pursued across these pages — in and in the work on telepathy and the . ## Sources & talks A recent long-form conversation on the theory in his own words: **Primary sources:** Rupert Sheldrake, ["Morphic Fields," ](https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Morphic-Fields.pdf)[*World Futures*](https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Morphic-Fields.pdf)[ 62 (2006): 31–41](https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Morphic-Fields.pdf) (the clearest short statement of the theory) · *A New Science of Life* (1981; revised as *Morphic Resonance*, 2009) · *The Presence of the Past* (1988; rev. 2011) · and his [introduction to morphic resonance](https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction) and [glossary](https://www.sheldrake.org/research/glossary) at sheldrake.org.