Editing Rupert Sheldrake (section)

=== ''The Presence of the Past'' (1988)===
In ''The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature'' (1988), Sheldrake expands on his morphic resonance hypothesis and marshals experimental evidence that he says supports it.<ref name=presencepast/> The book was reviewed favourably in ''[[New Scientist]]'' by historian [[Theodore Roszak (scholar)|Theodore Roszak]], who called it "engaging, provocative" and "a tour de force."<ref name="Roszak"/> When it was reissued in 2011 with those quotes on the front cover, ''New Scientist'' remarked, "Back then, Roszak gave Sheldrake the benefit of the doubt. Today, attitudes have hardened and Sheldrake is seen as standing firmly on the wilder shores of science," adding that if ''New Scientist'' were to review the reissue, the book's publisher "wouldn't be mining it for promotional purposes."<ref name=newscientist>{{cite journal |journal=New Scientist |url=https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/06/did-we-really-say-that.html |last=Lawton|first=Graham |date=14 June 2011 |title=Sheldrake book: Did we really say that?}}</ref>

In a 1988 review of the book in ''[[The Times]]'', [[David E. H. Jones]] criticised the hypothesis as magical thinking and pseudoscience, saying that morphic resonance "is so vast and formless that it could easily be made to explain anything, or to dodge round any opposing argument ... Sheldrake has sadly aligned himself with those fantasists who, from the depths of their armchairs, dream up whole new grandiose theories of space and time to revolutionize all science, drape their woolly generalizations over every phenomenon they can think of, and then start looking round for whatever scraps of evidence that seem to them to be in their favour." Jones argued that without confirmatory experimental evidence, "the whole unwieldy and redundant structure of [Sheldrake's] theory falls to [[Occam's Razor]]."<ref name="Jones"/>