The idea is that there is a kind of memory in nature. Each kind of thing has a collective memory. So, take a squirrel living in New York now. That squirrel is being influenced by all past squirrels.

Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942) is an English biochemist and author. Sheldrake's publications include A New Science of Life (1981) Seven Experiments That Could Change the World (1994) Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (1999) The Sense of Being Stared At (2003) and The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry (2012). He is known for having proposed a non-standard account of morphogenesis and for his research into parapsychology.