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On Learning from Animals

A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake

David Bentley Hart

Jul 3, 2021

I recently had a conversation with the infallibly gracious and always fascinating Rupert Sheldrake about animals, their spiritual natures, what we can learn from them, how much we need them, and—of course—all that Roland has taught me.

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Keri Ford

Jul 10, 2021

It was from Rupert that i first heard of DBH's work, yet once I started reading DBH I didn't much connect it with Rupert's but Roland as a book and this conversation show real connections. It was a delight to listen to the two of you with a great mixture of seriousness and humour talk about the the implications of animals on our theology and philosophy.

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David Armstrong

Writes A Perennial Digression

This was a fabulous talk to listen to while throwing the stick for my dog and picking tomatoes in my garden. I was curious what you thought of Sheldrake's suggestion of the interchangeability between "spirit" and the contemporary concept of "energy"; your insights on the history of πνεῦμα language in Christian thought were obviously pertinent, but I'm specifically interested in whether or not "energy" isn't the idea in our contemporary physics more directly parallel to the function that "breath" language played in ancient physics and biology. Any thoughts?

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