Sheldrake strikes me as a revival of the early modern scientist, someone who would have been at home in the early heyday of the Royal Society—an insatiably curious English gentleman who asks questions from fundamentals and wants to test everything for himself. Someone who sees no conflict between science and religion but is often attacked by dogmatists. Historically, this was an entirely mainstream position, though it hasn't been for a while now.

I find his curiosity charming, and his ability to consider questions from first principles remarkable. That he has been attacked so harshly ("A Book for Burning") yet always retains his good-humoured demeanour says a lot for him.

Have to agree, in some ways he helped drive the discussion to greater depth -- many questions aren't easy to answer and Gould didn't want to entertain them. I particularly liked Sacks vignette on patterns from migraines, revisited here:

https://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/patterns/

Sheldrake's discussion on magnetoreception was also of value; it wasn't perfectly accurate (nor as well understood then as it is today) but Gould was arbitrarily dismissive; see more on the really cool phenomena here:

https://www.sciencealert.com/birds-see-magnetic-fields-crypt...

Einstein said it well: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

haven't read the article and just here for the comments as one does, but I recommend Conscious by Annaka Harris. The Sun, while not necessarily alive, might be conscious. No woowoo.

you sold me with "no woowoo."

Slightly off topic, but Rupert Sheldrake's son Cosmo Sheldrake is a very unique and interesting composer/multi-instrumentalist. Much of his music can be found on his youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBFczwEgDaLeRWeyw0h7FfA

Sheldrake is the only one who gives Dyson a run for his money IMHO :-)