The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe
Lynne McTaggart
2001
http://www.livingthefield.com/
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Lynne McTaggart is an investigative journalist whose exploration of the scientific evidence for the efficacy of alternative medicine led her to found the British health journal What Doctors Don’t Tell You and the associated website http://www.wddty.com/. She reports that when she began seeing conclusive gold-standard scientific studies validating homeopathy and acupuncture, and studies of spiritual healing that were good enough to suggest that something unexplained was happening, she became curious about these “energy systems” that were based on a different paradigm of the human body from that of modern science. 

Confronted with the dilemma that one of the two, homeopathy or standard medical science, had to be wrong, she embarked on a quest to discover whether scientists anywhere in the world were studying what would amount to a new physics and a new biology that could comprehend these phenomena. 

Quantum physics had already overturned Newtonian physics at the beginning of the 20th century, but since quantum physics had not produced a coherent theory including everything, quantum effects remained for all practical purposes in the lab where they had been discovered, applicable only to non-living subatomic particles. Although the technological possibilities were exploited with huge advances in electronics, the deeper implications were ignored by standard physics, and only a small number of scientists, scattered around the world, were pursuing experiments of this nature.

McTaggart limited her research to “scientists with solid credentials operating according to rigorous scientific criteria.” The Field  is a result of many interviews with these scientists plus her reading of their major published work, and in many cases they gave her the necessary education her as well so she could understand the implications of their work. These include Jacques Benveniste, William Braud, Breda Dunne, Bernhard Haisch, Basil Hiley, Robert Jahn, Ed May, Peter Mercer, Edgar Mitchell, Roger Nelsen, Fritz-Albert Popp, Karl Pribram, Hall Puthoff, Dean Radin, Alfonso Rueda, Walter Schempp, Marilyn Schlitz, Helmut Schmidt, Elisabeth Targ, Russell Targ, Charles Tart and Mae Wan-Ho.

Rather than produce a dry accounting of the facts of what these scientists are in the process of discovering, she creates a reader-friendly biographical and scientific context which adds depth to the detailed descriptions of the of the experimental procedures and results and serves as a good introduction to quantum physics. They have produced evidence to show that an energy field —the Zero Point Field—connects everything in the universe, and that we ourselves are part of this vast dynamic network of energy exchange. This has implications that extend into every single area of life. Expect to read this more than once—the findings are so challenging to our fundamental concepts about how the world works that you may find it difficult to grasp it in one reading.

McTaggart herself has taken the implications of the science seriously enough to write a followup book, The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World, and to develop an associated website, http://intentionexperiment.com/, which runs experiments using human intention to try to produce scientifically valid results.

The Intention Experiment
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