"Now the whole point about machines is they are designed not to be random. When you call up a word processing program on your computer, you don't want it to be different every time you call it up. You want it to stay the same"
About this Quote
Sheldrake is poking at a quiet assumption modern life runs on: that reliability is the same thing as truth. By starting with the blunt “whole point about machines,” he frames an argument that feels like common sense, then uses word processing - the most boring, everyday software imaginable - as his Trojan horse. Nothing mystical here, just the familiar relief that your tools behave.
The intent is less about computers than about expectation-setting. Machines are built to erase surprise; they’re engineered to be repeatable, testable, and stable under identical inputs. Sheldrake’s subtext, though, is a critique of how that engineering ideal bleeds into our picture of nature and mind. If you’re used to systems that “stay the same,” you start to treat randomness as failure rather than a feature of reality. That’s a philosophical pressure disguised as tech chatter: we’ve trained ourselves to prefer universes that act like software.
Context matters because Sheldrake’s career has revolved around challenging orthodox scientific boundaries (he’s best known for ideas like “morphic resonance,” received by many as speculative at best). This quote reads like a strategic setup for that larger project. He’s carving out rhetorical space to argue that living systems may not behave like machines, and that insisting they should is a category error.
It works because it flatters the reader’s daily experience while quietly repositioning the debate: not “Is nature random?” but “Who decided non-randomness was the gold standard?” The banality of the example is the point. If he can make you notice the ideology embedded in your word processor, he can ask you to notice it in your science.
The intent is less about computers than about expectation-setting. Machines are built to erase surprise; they’re engineered to be repeatable, testable, and stable under identical inputs. Sheldrake’s subtext, though, is a critique of how that engineering ideal bleeds into our picture of nature and mind. If you’re used to systems that “stay the same,” you start to treat randomness as failure rather than a feature of reality. That’s a philosophical pressure disguised as tech chatter: we’ve trained ourselves to prefer universes that act like software.
Context matters because Sheldrake’s career has revolved around challenging orthodox scientific boundaries (he’s best known for ideas like “morphic resonance,” received by many as speculative at best). This quote reads like a strategic setup for that larger project. He’s carving out rhetorical space to argue that living systems may not behave like machines, and that insisting they should is a category error.
It works because it flatters the reader’s daily experience while quietly repositioning the debate: not “Is nature random?” but “Who decided non-randomness was the gold standard?” The banality of the example is the point. If he can make you notice the ideology embedded in your word processor, he can ask you to notice it in your science.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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