Rupert Sheldrake and scientific controversy

Closer look on scientific controversies points at the limits of contemporary thinking and scientific understanding of the world. It places knowledge into a historical context and opens up the question of dominant paradigms. This text discusses the social and historical conditions of scientific controversy aroused by Rupert Sheldrake's hypothesis of morphic resonance. In the first part we summarize relevant findings of sociology of science, opinions of a character of controversies and consensus in science. Next follows analysis of the controversy. Hypothesis itself is introduced, along with reactions it generated among collegues. In these texts we focus on statements referring to paradigm or more generally to discourse. Then we trace origins of this discourse to elucidate its historical conditionality, its "weight" and power, but also changes it has gone through. In the final part we discuss the difficulties related to overstepping a paradigm/discourse, linked with socially constructed concepts of space, time, matter and causality inherent in paradigms and discourses