Relevant, because of the popularity in recent years of evolutionary psychology, especially amongst those who study the nature of human attraction and relationships. It is worth reminding oneself that Darwinism is one of several possible metaphysical frameworks, that may be helpful in generating ideas (including ones that are themselves testable), but one shouldn’t think by dictat that this is the only scientifically feasible framework.
Link to work by Popper here:-
Popper on Darwinism
I really dislike it when people (including Karl Popper) call an entire field of biology “Darwinism”. Do you hear anyone referring to the entire field of microbiology as “Pasteurism”? Quantum physics as "Bohrism? Historical geology as “Lyellism”? No.
Darwin is famous because he had an idea that changed the entire trajectory of biology. He was amazing, but he was just one person. And he was sometimes wrong about things, and many evolutionary biologists have published many papers about things Darwin was wrong about. His writings are not gospel.
In terms of Popper’s article, well, he wrote it like 30 or 40 years ago. Alot has happened in the field of evolutionary biology since then. Plus, Popper had some very narrow ideas about science that not every scientist agrees with. I’m not trying to slam the field of philosophy, but my experiences with philosophers is that most are fairly clueless about how science is actually done. As an aside, I’ll point out that Popper never conducted a scientific study. He wasn’t a biologist. At all. Moreover, he was basing much of his opinion on the state of knowledge about evolution in the 1970’s. Good grief, that was before techniques like pcr in the 1980’s became catalysts that launched evolutionary biology from being a mostly-descriptive, story-telling field of science to the much, much more experimental field that it is today. Today’s evolutionary biology isn’t Popper’s “darwinism”
The real issue is how this excerpt of his writing really takes his views completely out of context. One of his main points was that natural selection (which is what he meant by “darwinism”, not evolution at large) was not the only process by which evolution happens.
Which was (duh) already known by evolutionary biologists, and had been since the 1950’s, when Sewell Wright wrote about random genetic drift and its role in the adaptive landscape. For that matter, Darwin himself alluded vaguely to the possibility that random events could cause species to change.
But today, when people dredge up quotes like that from Popper, it is usually to try to cast doubt on the evolution side of the evolution-creationism debate. These same people generally think that scientists see Darwin as a god-like figure and his writings as gospel-like words that, if any are proven false, somehow undermines the entire idea of evolution. But that isn’t how science works and that isn’t how scientists see Darwin.
So what are some of these non-darwinian metaphysical frameworks that you think provide alternative explanations for human behavior?
evolution, pheromones and morphic resonance
Well, I am of course cherry picking the quote, because it strikes me that many of those who are indelicately enthusiastic proponents of the view that an evolutionary approach to biology (including to psychology) is really the only scientifically tenable approach tend also to favour a philosophy of science that - if not identical with - is rather close to that of Popper’s.
Now it is cherry-picking not because I think it is unrepresentative of Popper’s stance, but because, as you say, I don’t generally think Popper described how science really gets done (science at its best, or science in today’s fallen state), and I don’t think his approach is of much use in a prescriptive sense either. But in this respect (as in several others) I think he may be right. People such as Bruce Charlton (reader in evolutionary psychology at Newcastle) and Rupert Sheldrake (currently at Trinity College, Cambridge) have expressed similar opinions that are more convincing to me, but likely will be less so to others given their relative lack of prestige and more controversial research programmes.
No real comment about names. I suppose Popper earned the right to call things whatever he reasonably felt like. He was writing in his adopted homeland of England. By long tradition, Darwinism is a more popular label in England than the US, and, for example, Richard Dawkins has called himself a Darwinist. (I am aware that Creationists in the US today use Darwinist as a slightly pejorative label, but that is really neither here nor there). So the question of names seems interesting but tangential. It wouldn’t really have changed your objection had he said “the modern evolutionary synthesis” rather than “Darwinism”, would it? And actually he went on to define more specifically what he meant by Darwinism to mean something rather like that.
Of course Popper was not a biologist. Had he been one, how would he have found the time and attention to grapple with the philosophy in order to figure out how to think about the status of Darwinism? We are speaking of the standing of a certain theoretical framework from the perspective of the philosophy of science, not various results that have emerged from within that framework. If we are speaking of Popper’s competence, the only question is whether he was a solid philosopher of science and whilst he may have been wrong about some topics I don’t think his basic expertise in this domain is in question.
These developments you mention are all very interesting, but do they constitute a demonstration that Darwinism (or the modern evolutionary synthesis) is something more than “a metaphysical research programme—a possible framework for testable scientific theories”. In other words do these constitute results that require a radical reconceptualisation of the role of Darwinism? Were Popper alive, would you expect him to say “Gosh, I never thought this sort of experiment and result might be possible. This changes everything. The modern evolutionary synthesis is in fact in itself a testable theory rather than a metaphysical research programme”. I think you would be hard-pressed to argue that (although if you do press forward your claim, I should like to know which results/insights you would use to justify it).
Does he then go on to say somewhere else that Darwinism actually is a testable theory ? Unless that is so, I don’t see how the context is misleading.
I do not have access to my books from this period, but I do not recall that being the essence of his point. His point was more that, although it was a very productive research framework, natural selection was either close to tautological, or when formulated more specifically had some exceptions. And also he had a more teleological view of life than the Blind Watchmaker view of things.
Somebody reading your words might think that you suggest that I personally think scientists see Darwin as a god-like figure whose writings are gospel. I presume that you are not actually suggesting that.
If I may draw an analogy. Most pheromone products are scams. What’s more, over history until a few years ago the preponderance of those who bought and talked about pheromones have been the naive and the gullible. Until very recently, it was more or less the established view that ‘science tells us that human pheromones don’t work. you are just wasting your money’. The thing is that the scientists were wrong, and the evidence of one’s own eyes and intuition was right. (I discovered the existence of pheromones for myself via observing the influence of certain dietary supplements on how women responded to me, and then doing lots of reading and thinking and exploring).
Most people who question the dominance of and consensus understanding of the role of the evolutionary framework are of low status, low educational prestige, and probably writing from a perspective heavily shaped by their religious beliefs. It might however be closed-minded to presume therefore that everyone who questions this is - motivated by religion - trying to find self-justifying answers.
Why does all of this matter? There are implications for all kinds of bigger-picture questions that ultimately are very important, but which I do not wish to discuss in great detail here for now. But I shall say that suspending one’s commitment to the Darwinian framework, and exploring in a playful manner the possibility that some other ideas (such as morphic resonance) may have some truth, opens one’s eyes to various stranger possibilities about the nature of the social world that one may stumble across in one’s phero-enhanced explorations.
Jasmin spoke once about the energetic aspects of pheromone use. It is possible that MHarris might have said similar things. There have been little hints of such questions when it comes to the debate about how 'mones could influence people from seemingly-impossible distances (and how it was that after a while one seems to get hits even phero-naked). And Tacitus’s comments about pheromones as tools for personal growth make a great deal more sense if viewed through this kind of morphic resonance framework. I really struggled to make sense of what was going on with A314 from a theoretical perspective. I mean it made some sense, but I didn’t feel like my theory based on a spiral upward of status and courage was complete. So in the end I had to junk my prevailing model of the world, and the constructive discomfort caused by this anomaly (think ‘mother of pearl’) has been one of the things that spurred me on a search for a better understanding of reality. And for me morphic resonance is part of that understanding.
But if one Believes in the Darwinian model and has a very rationalistically-oriented view of the world, one may not be receptive to this model of morphic resonance and as a result miss out on some tremendously-useful insights.
If there is one further thing I would say on the topic of the implications of morphic resonance for pheromone use, it is that one really ought to focus on the concept of archetypes and on considering how one may develop certain archetypal qualities in one’s own life. Not being bound by the instructions of Science, actors do this, and we should learn from their approach. If one acts, or allows oneself to think a certain way one should ask oneself whether one wants to become the kind of person that is associated with this action, thought, or possible new habit. And then one can consider ways to connect with old traditions, belief systems and research programmes. Ritual, sacred keepsakes and maintaining copies of images around one may have more powerful impacts on our life than we might ever have imagined. I really cannot overemphasize the importance of this way of looking at the world in order to get the most out of pheromone use. It’s not anything that isn’t in a thousand other New Agey kinds of books, but Sheldrake has set it forth in a rational and grounded manner that makes the connection to pheromone use rather more obvious.
morphic resonance and crazy hits
BTW one prediction one might make using a naive application of the theory of morphic resonance to pheromone use would be that over the years the crazy hits of pheromone use diminish as womankind becomes accustomed to such unnaturally strong signals. (You’ll need to have actually read one of his books to understand why this should happen).
I have personally noticed this trend over the years for myself (falling off rather quickly). One can always explain away this kind of change - one might attribute this to personal aging, to a decline in the overall social mood, to a decline in the bar scene. But I notice similar with the old archives on lovescent - many of the insane hits documented there I myself experienced quite regularly (although not dependably). People don’t seem to get these kind of hits these days. thomaslavoie’s reports stand out by the rarity of the extreme reactions he seems to get.
So what explains the change? Were early reporters fibbing, and was I hallucinating? I don’t think so…
I think the whole field of molecular biology may have done just that. We are now in an age where we can do more than look at characters of organisms and infer how they may have evolved. And we are now in an age where we can do more with DNA sequences than just use them as additional characters to infer evolution (where we were more or less when Popper died.). We are now in an age where we can really understand the genetic changes that underlie things like morphological changes that we can see. An age where we can detect evolution happening in real populations in what used to be considered ecological time (and therefore conduct experiments, not just describe).
Would all this have changed Popper’s mind? I don’t know, but I think it would have at least made his arguments more difficult. I think even in the 1990’s, population genetics was a much more easily dismissed field than it is today. (I know because I was a graduate student doing some easily-dismissed population genetics work in the 90’s.)
It was the “had some exceptions” part I was thinking of. He used Darwinism to mean natural selection, which is not the only avenue to evoutionary change. There was (and is) knowledge of those exceptions then and now. You don’t have to step outside of the field of evolutionary biology to find them.
I had no idea where you were going with your post. That is why I asked.
Well, you have me pegged. I’m not very open to Sheldrake’s ideas. Except that at least some of his concepts are being explained by science without any magical energy fields being involved (the now burgeoning field of epigenetics).
I do have one of his books and have read parts of it. I think morphic resonance is just another kind of magical fluff that gets stuffed into the gaps in our scientific knowledge. Personally I am comfortable with gaps being empty gaps waiting to be filled, but most people are extremely uncomfortable with that kind of uncertaintly.
Thanks for the reply. I think there has been impressive progress, but this being said, I am not sure it is of the kind that might allow one to think of the modern evolutionary synthesis as more than a fertile research programme. I understand that you do not share my view.
I will be most interested to see if Sheldrake wins his bet with Wolpert. (For the benefit of others:-
Genome wager between Lewis Wolpert and Rupert Sheldrake - Boing Boing
It is funny how human nature tends to lead one to see cognitive errors in the thought processes of the other side, but less frequently in oneself. It is certainly possible that people such as Sheldrake may be simply making stuff up because they are not willing to sit with the discomfort of incomplete knowledge and certain anomalies. But that is not the only possibility.
I had a similar reaction to you when I first read Sheldrake’s work. But various intellectual realizations on other fronts meant that when I returned to it, it suddenly seemed much more convincing.
I think that the question relates to whether one thinks materialism and nominalism are correct. In practice this is more a question of habitual modes of consciousness and not something where one’s mind can easily be changed by ‘evidence’ as conventionally understood.
Well, first of all, I don’t understand how he is using the term “morphogenetic fields”. This is an embryological term, but I suspect he’s using it differently, and I would say in a way that refers to something I would call supernatural forces.
Pheroquirk, you seemed rather offended when you thought I might be implying that you might be some kind of young earth creationist.
But my question to you is, how are those ideas (which you seemed to associate with “low status”, lack of education, and heavily influenced by religion) any different than believing all the unproven stuff that Sheldrake propounds? What compels you to believe in Sheldrake’s morphic ressonance as opposed to say, angels, fairies, gods, goddesses, wizards, ESP, astral projection, astrology, Santa Claus, or the Judeo-Christian God?
Maybe magical cats are messing with the pheromone reactions of the general public. Maybe magical cats have been on the increase in recent decades, thus explaining the decline in your success in getting hits over the last few decades.
(I use this example only because I recently noticed that a local new age shop that hold classes on various paranormal subjects was offering, for around $80 tuition I think, a class on cat magic.)
Browser ate my first reply, so this will be a little more abbreviated.
If there is one author one might want to read before forming a firm opinion, it might be Sheldrake. He does explain the origin of the term, what he intends to mean by it, and his reason for using this term in a different context. In an age when we can sit in the comfort of our offices talking to people over the world about invisible ‘fields’ derived from hormones that can make people find you attractive, make them more talkative, and the like - well I am not so sure what in an enduring sense supernatural means. In his description of phenomena that may be shaped by morphic fields, Sheldrake includes things that are by no means supernatural (the growth of institutions, the adoption of new technologies, the amazing proliferation of people to repeat an athletic record once it has been achieved for the first time), things that can not currently by explained by science (the feeling of being stared at) and things that might never be explained by science.
I have a very sensitive nervous system. but fortunately I do not take offence easily. But I wanted to call out the situation from an anthropological perspective.
Well, these are not associations originated by me - I am just making articulate what everyone is aware of at some level. The beautiful thing when one studies prestige is that it is not static. So if one has intelligence and the ability to discriminate one is often best off ignoring the prestige in which ideas are held and focusing on their intrinsic merits and should one’s own assessment of things be at variance, then one might consider that there may be something there.
It is a funny place to be concerned about the ‘unproven’ nature of Sheldrake’s ideas. We are after all on a pheromone forum where people hold all kinds of beliefs about the ability of chemicals to influence individuals and social groups and where many of the significant beliefs held by the experienced and talented members are not even present in the scientific literature. Our objective in considering morphic resonance is not whether it should be taught in the curriculum, but whether it might be an interesting framework personally to explore when one thinks about the world. I find an intriguing tension between believing things about pheromones that are entirely speculative, anecdotal, unproven, propounded by people of unknown training, dubious affiliation and no publishing record and refusing to consider the ideas of a reasonably published biologist who has trained with people of high ability, who has done recognized work earlier in his career on, for example, auxin, and who is currently at Trinity College, Cambridge.
On what basis do you make the tremendous presumption, Madam, that I do not believe in Father Christmas?
Light-heartedness aside, I have a keen nervous sensitivity to cognitive dissonance and am quite comfortable keeping such discomfort alive - for decades if necessary - until I have stumbled upon some kind of resolution to it (such stumbling probably not being entirely the consequence of random diffusion!) Morphic resonance explains some problems with my view of the world that observations from long pheromone use have made evident. (And it fits with discussions about these I have had with others who are both very experienced and longstanding users of such products and also keen students of social behaviour more generally - I mean tacitus, but also some others who I do not know if I should name). And beyond that I am also an investor and student of society, and this one simple idea also clears up some longstanding problems that have been puzzling me.
I don’t suppose I would be helping my case, if I mentioned that the Federal Reserve (academically solid, whatever their recent decline in prestige might lead one to think) has published papers on the relationship between the lunar cycle and equity market returns, and between geogmagnetic storms and equity market crashes. Fortunately, I am not trying to make a case, just to explore the world.
Now, dear lady, I fear you are just engaging in dominance games as per the longstanding habit of professional scientists in the era of state-funded science. Note that when science was an amateur activity (in the era of its greatest breakthroughs), people didn’t argue this way. This was not the spirit of the Royal Society until it became a virtual arm of the government. This kind of dominance game is effective in shutting people up and preventing the conversation exploring an unwelcome topic when put forward by a senior scientist in a venue where the power of such credentials reigns supreme. It is less effective in an internet forum where people assess the credibility of posters via other means (than credentials), and where the basis for the growth of knowledge is observation, even when it creates awkward problems for the existing theoretical framework.
A very low-status venue, and way of describing things. I do not know what might be meant by cat magic and although I grew up with a cat have not keenly studied animals and human relationships to them. But I commend the discussion between tacitus and Steve a while back that touched on I think human-bird connection (maybe a raven or eagle?).
To sum up, I don’t think reason is capable of changing peoples’ minds on this topic because it relates to prevailing modes of consciousness. You might as well try to explain the modern evolutionary synthesis to an exceptionally bright medieval peasant. (Nothing wrong with being a medieval peasant, I might add). I introduce Sheldrake and some of the unconsidered aspects of our wholesale adoption of the modern evolutionary synthesis into the discussion here, because I think it might ultimately lead to greater discoveries with regards to pheromone use and our understanding of social learning.
I see that dbot has already picked up on this in a posting to his blog. He seems to be one of the more astute and creative experimenters here, so perhaps there has been some positive result from bringing up this topic. I do not think there is much to be gained from arguing about it. (Metaphysical discussions have a certain … ‘reputation’ for good reason!)
I had a similar experience with pheromones. That experience shifted my paradigm and allowed me to be much more open to esoteric experiences that experts say cannot possibly be real, even though they have never even tried them.
tacitus believed in some kind of fields, too
and credit to Steve (formerly SteveO) for initiating this discussion:
You know, if I get a chance, I just might do that. And if I do I’ll pick up on this conversation again.
Oh come on, this is more silly than my magic cat example. By this same logic, believing in oxygen, water vapor, radioactive isotopes, atoms and molecules, and DNA is all equally bordering on supernatural beliefs, because all are invisible to the naked eye.
Maybe. For what it is worth, I don’t think that anywhere close to all the “hits” and effects that are reported here are really due to pheromones. Some are. But there is also placebo effects, wishful thinking, correlation without cause, bragging, lying, etc. going on.
I don’t even know how much of my own perceived pheromone effects or self-effects are real. I’m pretty sure some are, but no one is immune to placebo effects and I’m just an n=1, so it is impossible for me to filter out what is real.
Now you are making an argument to authority.
I know (and know of) numerous scientists who have done some good science and have degrees from good schools who are fairly bat sh*t crazy about certain topics. Examples:
Peter Duesberg, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and tenured professor at Berkeley. He believes/thinks that AIDS is not caused by HIV. When he first came up with this idea, it COULD have been true, because no one had really figured out how HIV could crash the human immune system, and some of his reasoning actually sounded kind of interesting, but then our collective knowledge of HIV and how it evolves, mutates, and causes AIDS exploded, and his ideas were left in the dust despite his credentials. He still believes it.
Frank Salisbury, department chair and professor of plant physiologist at Utah State University who was also obsessed with UFOs and wrote several books about them.
An emeritus professor at my current institution, who i’ll not name because he recently passed away, who’s pet hypothesis was that life was seeded onto Earth from Mars. This is not even a bat sh*t crazy idea, really, it could be true, but there’s not much evidence one way or another. Yet, he didn’t just think it might be true, he believed it, and would get into a knock down drag out argument with anyone who criticized the idea.
The point is that these people’s degrees and other achievements don’t (to me) and shouldn’t validate their crazier ideas. (neither should their crazy ideas invalidate their other scientific work.)
LOL. My apologies, sir.
What I don’t understand is why consider morphic resonance seriously when there are so many other more mundane variables that might explain something like your perception of how pheromone effects are different now than at some point in the past?
Just off the top of my head, the world is more polluted now than it was several decades ago. This could be having any number of effects on our physiology, including olfaction.
But perhaps you have already considered and rejected this and other explanations, I don’t know.
Absolutely not, it was intended as a real question, though I will admit I’m not always the best at communicating intent to people. I don’t use questions as rhetoric when I’m talking about science, but I do have a friend who has a doctoral degree in rhetoric who always assumes that I do, when in fact I ask questions because I want to know the answer.
I don’t think scientists, in general, play dominance games very much, at least not about science and ideas. In fact, I think many of us are rather bad at such games, or just not interested. I think our mode of argument comes from the way we think about everything, which is offputting to some people.
Scientists as a whole are very bad at communicating their ideas to non-scientists (something that worries me deeply for many reasons). I just don’t think it’s because of dominance games or desires to ridicule other people.
Anyway I’m not a dominant personality. At all. IS/b girl all the way 
I’d be curious to know your thoughts. When I first came across his ideas ages ago (possibly as far back as a couple of decades - I am not sure exactly when), they seemed nonsensical. Of course in those days I believed financial markets were efficient too. It was only after some years of thinking and observing that I was in a state more receptive to his ideas, and then I was drawn to them by the powerfully parsimonious nature of his framework in explaining many observations that created problems with my previous framework.
Supernatural is defined relative to shared ideas about theory and natural history. These ideas and accepted observations are not static but develop over time. (It is not the invisibility I was talking about). I was rereading recently the story of Semmelweis and the Establishment reaction to his ideas. It ought to be a little sobering for those who insist that certain phenomena are supernatural or that some frameworks are unscientific. At the time, what could have seemed more absurd, unproven and unscientific than surgeons spreading invisible corpse particles from the dissection table to their unfortunate patients!
Ignaz Semmelweis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for the non-scientists reading.
Of course. But if one is discerning (a rather rare quality in 2011) and experienced one can tell who is a reliable observer and who is just making stuff up in order to garner attention. People like MHarris and tacitus have been playing with pheromones for a very long time, and as a result built up quite a level of expertise. MHarris has done quite some work on natural history in this area - experimenting for example by recruiting store clerks and misleading them about exactly what the nature of the experiment was to avoid corrupting the results. Obviously he cannot publish the full extent of his knowledge here, for all kinds of reasons.
Every age makes different kinds of errors. In ours, I do believe that amongst scientifically-socialized people, nihilism and radical doubt are errors made much more frequently than seeing phantom shadows in the noise. Tesla and Faraday could not have made their discoveries had they been socialized according to the modern fashion. I am sorry that you find it impossible to filter out what is real. I suspect that if one were to ask people like nbully, Gone with the Wind, tacitus, MHarris, Steveo, Jasmin,dbot etc (not intended to be a comprehensive list) they would tend to think that this problem is much less of a challenge in practice than one might think it would be ex ante. Ie just because one cannot oneself tell what is real and what is an exaggerated or made-up hit in a forum report does not mean that others cannot rather skilfully do the same.
An argument from authority, would be something like “Look - you really ought to listen to Plato regarding the nature of democracy, because he was much smarter than anyone that is around these days and the level of culture and thought was higher then than it is now and the best thing we can do is to follow the opinion of the ancients on this matter because it is clear that for now we don’t really know what we are talking about”. (A position, by the way, that surely made sense for several centuries after the emergence from the Dark Ages).
I am not saying you should accept Sheldrake’s views because he is at the University of Cambridge and therefore smarter and more enlightened than either of us. I am saying that at the margin you should be even less inclined to dismiss his ideas out of hand as ‘unproven’ and ‘unscientific’ because he is clearly a smart guy, brought up in a strong scientific tradition and who has an affiliation that recognizes this. I hope you can see the difference between a true argument from authority, and what I am saying. But, as I said, we live in an age that has forgotten how to make fine distinctions, so maybe you cannot.
He might be wrong, or half-wrong. But we are not now deciding what will be taught to future generations of science students - just trying to decide which frameworks might be helpful for generating ideas about how to make sense of and learn more about pheromones. So the question isn’t whether his ideas are proven or scientific but whether they might be true and at least somewhat useful. This field of knowledge is still more or less primarily in the natural history stage, more than it is ready for the construction of grand theory.
Actually now that you bring it up, I will make an argument from authority and put it to you that of experienced, exceptionally intelligent and discerning users, a significant proportion of those believe in something like a field theory. Unfortunately not everyone of those is around - MHarris and Jasmin don’t post any more, tacitus is not on this earth, and some other users have drifted from the forum for one reason or other. But there has been some discussion over fields in general even before I brought up Sheldrake.
For me the primary question is not whether somebody’s ideas are crazy necessarily, but first of all whether they are trustworthy. If somebody is not even trying to be honest (as has been spectacularly demonstrated by the recent release of emails in a certain controversial area of ‘science’), one cannot really trust a thing they do. If somebody has poor judgement about selecting between different hypotheses, but is a careful and conscientious experimental scientist, well then at least one can somewhat trust their practical work. Nothing I have seen justifies a putative allegation that Sheldrake is either dishonest or ‘batshit crazy’.
With regards to the other scientists you mention, I think it is far too early to see their work in context. For example, who is to say definitively at this stage whether life on earth was seeded by alien life, or not. I also don’t really see the particular application to the topic at hand - ‘some very good scientists can have strange ideas and feel more strongly about them than can reasonably be justified based purely upon the empirical evidence’. Well, okay, but it’s also true that the majority of scientists are very attached to the prevailing framework and unreasonably resistant to ideas that seem strange - which is why Kuhn pointed out that science only progresses when the old guys die off!
Aha - this is exactly a point Bruce Charlton makes in another context. There are many phenomena one can explain away in particular contexts by ad hoc local and partial explanations. But a single and simple theory that powerfully explains in a unified way anomalies observed across a range of different domains (that might nonetheless considered individually each be the consequence of the action of blind chance) - well this is something I personally will pay some attention to.
With regard to this particular theory, I don’t think so. Pollution didn’t change all that dramatically in London over the past decade (true all the more so of the relevant period, which is a much shorter window), and there has been no attenuation of the implausibly long distance at which reactions to pheromones can be seen. But as I said, I sit up and pay attention when one elegant and simple theory powerfully explains effects I see across a variety of domains, including those not even considered by its author.
Consciously-known intent and the actual function of a behavioural pattern are different things, as one knows rather well if one studies human action carefully. In a different context, women will almost always deny going to a club to meet men. And maybe consciously that is right. But if you go up to a group of girls you will tend to find that the one who dragged everyone out is ovulating, whether or not she is aware of it.
And I can say that the effect - deliberate or otherwise - of suggesting “maybe magical cats have been on the increase” is not really to draw out what might be useful, but to ridicule and shut down a discussion that one finds uncongenial for whatever reasons. It’s a tactic from a velvet-gloved dominance game. This way of speaking is very much an artefact of science as it developed in the age of state funding and bureaucracy - Feynman didn’t talk like this, and neither did other leading scientists pre-1940.
Ah, but you are at least socialized into the modern-scientific culture. And beyond that I am not sure that TAL vs TAH necessarily has to do with one’s inclination to harness social power towards one’s ends. If one has a drive for dominance and is a TAH personality, she might just express that drive via a different channel than head-on confrontation.
In any case, it has been entertaining chatting, and it isn’t my intention to convince you. But perhaps others will be tempted to explore Sheldrake’s ideas with regards to their applicability to understanding pheromone use.
unaccountability of high-status scientists
This is slightly at a tangent, but still somewhat relevant to our discussion.
Medical Hypotheses: Figureheads, ghost-writers and quant bloggers