The Impossible Exists

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Discussions

Giuseppe Sermonti

The Impossible Exists

About the Seven Experiments Suggested by Rupert Sheldrake

Dear Rupert, I am sincerely convinced that the seven experiments you suggest may change the world or, better, our view of the world. They can endow it with an enchanted and magic aura that modernity hardly misses. The dog Watch (or Don) which goes and meets his master every day, even when he changes, without announcing it, the return hour, touches me. With carefully controlled observations, the circumstances of such mysterious resonances can be investigated, the trivial explanations ruled out, and the coincidences made significant. I am however reluctant to believe that one or more experiments can solve the enigmas, providing physical, although eccentric, explanations to the matters. Let us assume that one can conclude that the dogs experience some unknown Y radiation whose physical nature could eventually be ascertained. This would not add fascination to the strange communication at a distance between man and dog. On the contrary, it would be transferred from the enchanted to the foreseeable. Once the paranormal is transferred to the normal, with the placet of physics, the experience of the ultrasensitive dog would lose all its fascination (and sensitive dogs would be used by the army or the police). What kind of answer can you eventually expect from your (zooRivista di Biologia / Biology Forum 89 (1996), pp. 479-482.

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logical) experiments? Not a physical explanation, which would be reductive, nor one multiplying the sensorial or conceptual performances of the animals, which would be only quantitative. I think that you promote the experimentation with the secret hope that it verifies and substantiates the experiences, but eventually leaves them unexplained, since explaining something means to refer the unknown to the known. The true success of the experiments would be the demonstration that the surprising facts do actually occur, but they are not explainable, but, perhaps, in the context of a new paradigm, as that of morphic resonance. Thus the experiments would result in the raising of man towards metaphysics, or, using a less agreeable term, the paranormal. Your researches are of the same kind as the studies made by C.G. Jung on significant coincidences, wherefrom he deduced the concept of synchronicity and Kammerer that of seriality. For these Authors the key was to establish significant connections which could not be physical. Your predilection to stay at the edge of the problems is evident from your considerations on birds migrations. You quote the case of the little bird which orientates itself by looking at the circumpolar constellations. Such recognition (although physical and rational) increases the wonder of the phenomenon, since the mysterious ability to perceive home at a distance becomes an ability to organize systems of stars mentally, and that not by innate instinct, rather through the memorization of the circumpolar rotation, an ability that anthropologists have never granted to the primitive man. You object that birds migrate even with covered sky and leave aside their fascinating role of little geometers and astrologers, which is all but trivial. The world of the white ants (termites), which perform coordinate work, even when separated by a plate of steel, looks as the most convincing expression of your morphic resonance. However, you note, termites dont transmit each other their learnings, they rather share a general project, prefixed and centered over the queen. If she dies the project fades instantly. An organisative field exists, which does not proceed from insects, but such that they are embedded in it, therefore something differing from morphic resonance.

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Personally I think not so important to explain the world of termites, as much to ask termites to explain us our world. I agree with your project to invite lay-men to perform experiments. This is the real way to teach people reading the world. I would not worry however to look for explanations, because explanations only shift problems (although, admittedly, a shifted problem may become a sublime problem). It is a commonplace that reality is nothing but a chance in the vastness of the possible. I would not dare to state that also the impossible exists (and its detection requires the kind of experiments you suggest), and the possible is a limited area of the impossible. If this will turn to be the case, we would feel free from the boundaries of a conventional legislation and thus the world, actually, would change. It is impossible that the dog perceives the intentions of its owner at a long distance; it is impossible that the bird finds its nest with closed eyes after having travelled thousands of miles; it is impossible that the termite knows what her sister does beyond a steel plate. But all that takes place, and may be experimentally proved. The world is less trivial and much wider and wonderful than our reasonable expectations. Yours, Giuseppe
The Italian text of this letter is published in this issue after a short comment to the Italian edition of R. Sheldrakes Seven Experiments that could change the world. The English edition is published by Fourth Estate, London ( 6.99), the American edition by Riverhead Books, New York ($ 24.95).