3.4 The energetic aspect of information: absent in R.Sheldrake's concept.
R.Sheldrake speaks of morphogenetic fields and motoric fields as having no material or energetic substance, and as exerting their influence regardless of distance. This is attractive to those who like magical thinking: they recognise a supporter of their belief. That may be a reason that his view has received a certain popularity, although there has as yet been no experimental support. Sheldrake's fields lack the essence of Goodwin's fields: a physical and chemical empirical reality. As discussed here, morphogenetic fields show gradients of active chemicals, in periodic pulsation. More important, these oscillations interact with other chemical oscillators. There is kinetic energy involved in the information exchange. Just as in a tone produced by a flute or a violin, the amount of energy is small. However no sound or signal can be produced without energy.
Do thoughts have an immaterial existence? Those who disconnect mind-power from the material world will answer affirmatively. For instance, because we can 'think' a tone without actually producing one, that tone is deemed to have an immaterial existence. Likewise, according to magical reasoning, all living things have some immaterial representation in the world, by which they can become morphogenetically active. This is, I think, an erroneous conclusion. Even the human thinking process requires energy supplied by a material process. There is no reason to believe that the Master of the Universe thinks without using energy. Why would he, he is all energy and information.
We have compared the complex chords, caused by many coupled oscillators in a developing organism, to sounds of music. Although there is a score, there is also room for free musical interpretation and even improvisation on the spur of challenges from the external world. If one thinks that the 'score' for a developing individual has an immaterial existence, one overlooks the fact that the relevant information in the score has to be 'read' by the substrate upon which it acts. For writing and reading of codes a minimum of energy is needed. Even quantum theory provides no escape. Therefore, it makes no sense to describe the musical score as an immaterial concept: a correction in the score cannot change a performance without intervening energy. Bringing about a correction in the score, changing the code, also demands the mobilisation of energy. In an exchange of information only a minute amount of energy is used. To some this amount may seem negligible, but it is on the contrary essential.
The exchange of minute amounts of energy during the transmission and reception of signals has consequences for our ideas about motivation and mind-power. Motivation for all activities in life such as growing, moving, fleeing or fighting, has its primary source in the genome. Primary drives differentiate into successive layers of secondary and tertiary motives, that meet environmental demands. Finer differentiation and more adjustment occur in the outer layers or shells that are most closely in contact with the environment. This concentrical model, which will be more closely discussed in Chapter 5, enables us to see morphogenesis and behavioural motivation as processes lying on a continuum. Most students need a large amount of mental practice before they can grasp the concept of mind and body being one. The following pages offer material for this practice.