The brilliantly curious author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and Morphic Resonance here offers an intriguing new assessment of modern day science that will radically change the way we view what is possible. This sharp analysis of “the ten core beliefs that most scientists take for granted” articulates a “credibility crunch for the ‘scientific worldview,’” while making a persuasive case for open-minded thinking.

In Science Set Free, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, shows the ways in which science is being constricted by assumptions that have, over the years, hardened into dogmas. Such dogmas are not only limiting, but dangerous for the future of humanity.

According to these principles, all of reality is material or physical; the world is a machine, made up of inanimate matter; nature is purposeless; consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain; free will is an illusion; God exists only as an idea in human minds, imprisoned within our skulls.

But should science be a belief-system, or a method of enquiry? Sheldrake shows that the materialist ideology is moribund; under its sway, increasingly expensive research is reaping diminishing returns while societies around the world are paying the price.

The materialist agenda was once liberating but is now depressing. Those who believe in it are alienated from their own experience; they are cut off from all religious traditions; and they are prone to suffer from a sense of disconnection and isolation. Meanwhile, the power unleashed by scientific knowledge is causing the mass extinction of other species, and endangering our own.

The realization that the sciences do not know the fundamental answers leads to humility rather than arrogance, and openness rather than dogmatism.

Much remains to be discovered and rediscovered, including wisdom.

In the skeptical spirit of true science, Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of materialism into exciting questions, and shows how all of them open up startling new possibilities for discovery.

The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers...