In a recent post I mentioned that English has no good word for the process reverse to that of abstraction. Writing that reminded me of a long and fascinating conversation in about 2002 on this very issue with my former colleague, Trevor Bench-Capon, who sadly passed on this past week (on Monday 20 May 2024).
Monthly Archives: May 2024
Music performance and morphic resonance
Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance posits the existence (in some metaphysical or conceptual sense) of morphic forms which arise when living beings act in the world. In this theory, these forms are strengthened with each repetition of the action, and create a force field (a morphic field) which can be drawn upon by subsequent beings repeating the same act. The theory predicts that doing the same thing should become easier over time, even when the entities doing the acting are different, in different locations or not not even alive at the same time. Morphic resonance, if it exists (whatever that may mean) is a form of action at a distance and action through time. I have been fascinated by this theory since first reading Sheldrake’s book about it 36 years ago.