‘Habitude’, as used here, is the name of a philosophical concept, in Deleuze’s sense, in that it is a multiplicity, it totalizes its components, it has a history involving problems needing to be solved, and a present relevant to our time, our becomings. (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. by Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson (London: Verso, 1994, first published 1991), pp.15-34)

A major component of the history of habitude is the work of Rupert Sheldrake, specifically his ‘hypothesis of formative causation’ (Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation, new edition (London: Grafton, 1987, first published 1981) and The Presence of the Past (London: Collins, 1988)). Sheldrake’s hypothesis is neatly summarised in the blurb of the later book.

According to Deleuze, philosophy is the creation of concepts, and is quite different from science, which involves the creation of functions or propositions (Deleuze, p.117). Sheldrake is a scientist, and so by Deleuze’s terminology, the hypothesis of formative causation must be a scientific notion, and not a philosophy and not a concept. In any case ‘the hypothesis of formative causation’ is rather a mouthful, and it was originally for practical reasons, in order to have a convenient handle, that I suggested it be called ‘habitude’, a word I think of as borrowed from the French. n1

Sheldrake’s ideas do not lack philosophy, or philosophers inspiring them, and one name stands out, that of Henri Bergson, whose élan vital or ‘current of life’ was crucial to Sheldrake’s challenges to Darwinian evolution and the mechanistic model of the world:

By contrast, Henri Bergson saw the purposive organizing principles of the evolutionary process as internal to the evolving forms of life. He compared the evolutionary process to the development of mind through the onward movement of the current of life, the élan vital.

This current of life, traversing the bodies it has organized one after another, passing from generation to generation, has become divided among species and distributed amongst individuals without losing any of its force, rather intensifying in proportion to its advance. … Now, the more we fix our attention on this continuity of life, the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness, in which the past presses against the present and causes the upspringing of a new form of consciousness, incommensurable with its antecedents. (Bergson, Creative Evolution, 1911, pp.27-9)

Bergson did not, however, believe that this process of creative evolution had any ultimate, external purpose. If there was a God of the evolutionary process, he was not an external God, but a god who created himself in the very process of evolution. (Sheldrake, 1988, p.53)

However, in his striving to prove some aspects of his science experimentally, Sheldrake has, I believe, lost sight of the philosophy underlying his theories. I am not entirely persuaded by Deleuze’s insistence on the separation of philosophy from science, rather I see philosophy rather as Ernst Cassirer did, as ‘the atmosphere in which [science, history, jurisprudence, and politics] can exist and be effective … it presents the totality of intellect in its true function, in the specific character of its investigations and inquiries, its methods and essential cognitive process.’ (Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 1968, first published in German, 1932), p.vii)

Deleuze begins his book by saying: ‘The question what is philosophy? can perhaps be posed only late in life, with the arrival of old age and the time for speaking concretely.’ (Deleuze, p.1) Old age had not arrived for Deleuze (1925-1995) when he wrote this; he was only 66. I gave myself this web site for my 65th birthday, and 65 is not old age these days; however, maybe it’s old enough. I intend to develop this site gradually to see where it leads, patchily at first, probably then to redraft it in more coherent form.

Having pointed to the Sheldrake component of the history of habitude as a philosophical concept, another crucial element must be mentioned, my desire or mission to draw up a design for revolutionary world change. Having explored this for three years, I still believe two components of such a change need to be brought together: a land use revolution (possibly permaculture as ‘permanent agriculture’) and a social revolution (just possibly permaculture as ‘permanent culture’, but more likely socialism/communism/anarchism). Both these elements have adherents and activist groups with a tendency towards sectarianism and fixed ideas. The socialist element is wedded to materialism, and that is a mind set I am inclined to challenge. Having offered a taster on Sheldrake, I also have something here on socialist ‘metaphysical materialism’.

n1 habitude [abityd] nf habit; avoir l’~ de faire to be in the habit of doing; avoir l’~ des enfants to be used to children; prendre l’~ de faire qch to get into the habit of doing sth; perdre une ~ to get out of a habit; d’~ usually; comme d’~ as usual; par ~ out of habit. (Collins French Dictionary Plus Grammar, 2000)

It was a little later that I discovered that the word is in the English dictionary, with a more narrow definition:

habitude n. 1 a mental or bodily disposition. 2 a custom or tendency (The Concise Oxford Dictionary Ninth Edition, 1995)

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