a philosophical critique of the 2020 book 'Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds & shape our futures'
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 14, 2025
Merlin Sheldrake's book "Entangled Life1" is full of unsupported metaphysical nods to the all-powerful nature of a strictly utilitarian-focused evolution. In the course of just a few pages, the author repeatedly doffs his cap to the unbridled powers of random changes in nature:
"Spores evolved to allow fungi to disperse themselves." (p. 30)
"Truffle fungi have evolved to make animals giddy because their lives depend on it. (p. 30)
"Some species of tropical rainforest orchid have evolved to mimic the smell, shape, and color of mushrooms to attract mushroom-loving flies. (p. 35)
If you say so, Merlin.
None of these claims comes with an annotation, of course. This is apparently because evolutionary metaphysics is considered non-debatable these days and so no longer in need of any proof. Everything came about for utilitarian purposes and there is no meaning or poetry or spirituality in life: case closed.
This is precisely how the metaphysical belief in God used to function in the scientific world: it was taken as a given that things came about purposefully, through a kind of teleology, and it was considered impious to attempt to dispute that metaphysical assumption. Today, the privileged metaphysics has changed, but it remains as dangerous as ever to question the status quo presumptions.
The proof of the metaphysical nature of Sheldrake's bald-faced assertions about the omnipotence and omnipresence of evolutionary powers can be seen by performing a thought experiment. Merely replace the phrase "had evolved" in the book with the phrase "was created by God" and the reader would be none the wiser. In either case we are told nothing concrete except that the author has a certain metaphysical belief when it comes to the origins of life, one that he believes in so completely that he does not feel the need to defend it. Such hat-doffing to materialist theory is what Michael Behe calls "the pretense of knowledge" in his 2019 book "Darwin Devolves: the new science about DNA that challenges evolution.2"
A sibling of mine once challenged me on this, asking me, "Yes, Brian, but how else COULD the world of plant, fungi and animal life have come about except by blind, meaningless evolution?" I did not miss a beat in responding to that challenge as follows: "That is the whole problem, my friend. A metaphysical view is not justified merely because our avowedly nihilistic and atheistic materialists can imagine no alternative theories with which they are comfortable. What we have here is a lack of imagination disguised as 'proof'."
Please note this important but nuanced distinction:
I am not saying that Sheldrake's metaphysics is wrong: merely that it IS metaphysics and it should be treated as such. It should be discussed in detail in a philosophically oriented tome, not mentioned repeatedly without references as an all-purpose and all-powerful explanation for every innovation on the biological front. In this annotation-free name-dropping on behalf of a presumably omnipotent metaphysics, Sheldrake is essentially telling his readers (over and over again, lest they fail to get the message): "Remember, reader: there is only one way to see all this diversity of nature about which I am writing here: namely, as something that could not have been other than it is, as the necessary utilitarian result of a mindless and fundamentally pointless process. In other words, we should ideally cease to marvel at Mother Nature entirely, knowing that it could not have been otherwise."
This might be a hard sell for indigenous people, but then the west has always approached their world with a cynical eye toward exploiting its riches in the name of that ruthless utilitarianism for which evolutionary theory stands.
Of course, suggesting that evolutionary theory is metaphysics is the ultimate sin in science, and well-heeled groups are doing all they can to outlaw that viewpoint and to defame its supporters as troglodytes. Yet no less a philosopher than Thomas Nagel pushed back against this dogmatic bullying of Darwinian critics in 2012 with his tellingly titled book: "Mind and Cosmos: why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false." In this gauntlet tossing Swan Song, Nagel reacts as follows to the scientific establishment's trashing of "intelligent design" researchers like Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and David Berlinski:
"Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair." --Thomas Nagel, from Mind and Cosmos: why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false, p. 103
This has obvious connections to the subject of drugs, by the way. We have placed mind and mood medicine in the hands of materialist science, a science that embraces passion-scorning behaviorism and sees the individual as a chemically determined widget under the influence of a mindless evolution. It is this world view that has turned me into a patient for life by denying me common-sense godsends that could cheer me up in a trice and instead shunted me off onto dependence-causing medicines whose use is "justified" by reductionist metaphysics, the same reductionist metaphysics embraced by evolution boosters.
This is a very fraught topic, however, philosophically speaking. Whenever I fail to declare my full unqualified faith in evolutionary theory, I seem to be lying in the same bed with my enemies on many other important subjects, as, for instance, Behe's books are championed by the agenda-driven Washington Times, which champions the insurrectionist mindset and the drug-war mentality of substance demonization. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that I am not saying that evolutionary theory does not have potential explanatory power -- merely that our state of ignorance about life is far too profound viz. ultimate causes for us to opine ex cathedra and annotation-free about how life came about, a hubris that Sheldrake evinces on every other page of his otherwise literally down-to earth analysis of the world of mycelium.
When it comes to theories like evolution, I share the view of David Bohm as put forth in his 1980 book "Wholeness and the Implicate Order":
"All theories are insights, which are neither true nor false but, rather, clear in certain domains, and unclear when extended beyond these domains.4"
If this makes me a heretic, then persecute at will! Fortunately, I am one of the few philosophers in the world who is in a position wherein he has nothing to lose by being honest.
The Drug War is the most important evil to protest, precisely because almost everybody is afraid to do so. That's a clear sign that it is a cancer on the body politic.
The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.
Two of the biggest promoters of the psychedelic renaissance shuffle their feet when you ask them about substance prohibition. Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman just don't get it: prohibition kills.
Brits have a right to die, but they do not have the right to use drugs that might make them want to live. Bad policy is indicated by absurd outcomes, and this is but one of the many absurd outcomes that the policy of prohibition foists upon the world.
Drug War censorship is supported by our "science" magazines, which pretend that outlawed drugs do not exist, and so write what amount to lies about the supposed intransigence of things like depression and anxiety.
What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
The war on drugs is has destroyed America's faith in the power of education. In fact, it has made us think of education as WRONG in and of itself. It has made us prefer censorship and fear-filled ignorance to education!
High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???
The Drug War brought guns to the "hoods," thereby incentivizing violence in the name of enormous profits. Any site featuring victims of gun violence should therefore be rebranded as a site featuring victims of the drug war.
The Drug War is the most important evil to protest, precisely because almost everybody is afraid to do so. That's a clear sign that it is a cancer on the body politic.