October 22, 2026
SIG-MRG 2026-10-22
Participants: Kei 🗝, Sebastián Aristizábal, Jeremiasz Rzenno | CET, Mark Elder, Ben
The group read and discussed Sheldrake's hypothesis of morphic resonance — the idea that memory and form are not simply stored in material substrates but "tuned into" from fields that carry reference to the past. The conversation moved from an opening round on habit versus the unchanging, through silent reading, into a wide-ranging discussion of memory as relational and non-localized, the limits of mechanistic/computational metaphors, and connections to platonism, immanence, and the collective unconscious. The session closed with each participant naming where they most agreed or disagreed with the hypothesis.
- Sheldrake, originally a Cambridge plant biologist, developed morphic resonance while thinking about how plants develop from seeds. Kei asked the group to read with "creative projection," keeping an open mind while noting this is a contested hypothesis, not established science.
- The reading connects to the prior session on Levin's "Ingressing Minds," which posits a platonic-like realm whose forms ingress into material reality. Kei noted many biologists are "formalists in their professional lives and then secret platonists" — the unsettled, millennia-old question of how things come into being and how memory relates to that.
- Opening prompt: where is the line between a habit and something unchanging in your life, and where is the negotiation of agency between them? Kei's example: waking without an alarm (a programmable habit) versus the underlying cortisol mechanism (relatively unchanging biology). Opening-round reflections:
- Mark: Cited Anders Ericsson's view that genetics may not determine intelligence but may shape what we're interested in. Felt his own interests (e.g. his youthful anarchism, which his father proudly encouraged) often felt "more predetermined than a choice."
- Sebastián: Explored agency in reactions to conflict. Despite understanding the hormonal/chemical/psychosocial workings, that knowledge "doesn't fulfill this modern promise of control" — sometimes a habit cannot be broken, raising the question of whether it is a habit at all.
- Kei affirmed Sebastián's point, critiquing the inherited idea that social action is fully malleable through self-awareness, which can work against "allowing what arises to arise." Discussion of the text:
Session Recording Summary · 76m 12s · Full notes ↗
Reading: A short paper by Rupert Sheldrake on morphic resonance, written for a psychology journal in connection with the idea of the collective unconscious (described by Kei as a condensed form of Sheldrake's book The Presence of the Past). Kei distributed a PDF with some sections redacted to shorten reading time. The session built on prior readings, especially Michael Levin's "Ingressing Minds" paper.
The group read and discussed Sheldrake's hypothesis of morphic resonance — the idea that memory and form are not simply stored in material substrates but "tuned into" from fields that carry reference to the past. The conversation moved from an opening round on habit versus the unchanging, through silent reading, into a wide-ranging discussion of memory as relational and non-localized, the limits of mechanistic/computational metaphors, and connections to platonism, immanence, and the collective unconscious. The session closed with each participant naming where they most agreed or disagreed with the hypothesis.
- Sheldrake, originally a Cambridge plant biologist, developed morphic resonance while thinking about how plants develop from seeds. Kei asked the group to read with "creative projection," keeping an open mind while noting this is a contested hypothesis, not established science.
- The reading connects to the prior session on Levin's "Ingressing Minds," which posits a platonic-like realm whose forms ingress into material reality. Kei noted many biologists are "formalists in their professional lives and then secret platonists" — the unsettled, millennia-old question of how things come into being and how memory relates to that.
- Opening prompt: where is the line between a habit and something unchanging in your life, and where is the negotiation of agency between them? Kei's example: waking without an alarm (a programmable habit) versus the underlying cortisol mechanism (relatively unchanging biology). Opening-round reflections:
- Mark: Cited Anders Ericsson's view that genetics may not determine intelligence but may shape what we're interested in. Felt his own interests (e.g. his youthful anarchism, which his father proudly encouraged) often felt "more predetermined than a choice."
- Sebastián: Explored agency in reactions to conflict. Despite understanding the hormonal/chemical/psychosocial workings, that knowledge "doesn't fulfill this modern promise of control" — sometimes a habit cannot be broken, raising the question of whether it is a habit at all.
- Kei affirmed Sebastián's point, critiquing the inherited idea that social action is fully malleable through self-awareness, which can work against "allowing what arises to arise." Discussion of the text:
Questions & Disagreements: - Sebastián: Main disagreement — the paper argues well what memory is not but leaves what it could be intangible and "a bit wooey" without background in relational ontology. - Mark: Uncomfortable with the collective unconscious implying one could "tune into someone else's memories." - Jeremiasz: Expected the receiver to have more agency over input, rather than tuning into a …
Participants: Kei 🗝, Sebastián Aristizábal, Jeremiasz Rzenno | CET, Mark Elder, Ben