The Hundredth Monkey and Morphic Resonance: How Knowledge May Spread Through Collective Fields

Language: en

The Story That Wouldn’t Die

In 1979, Lyall Watson — a South African biologist and author — published a book called Lifetide that contained a story so compelling, so perfectly aligned with the emerging paradigm of collective consciousness, that it became one of the most widely repeated anecdotes in New Age culture. The story, later elaborated in Ken Keyes Jr.’s 1982 book The Hundredth Monkey, went roughly like this:

On the Japanese island of Koshima, scientists had been studying a troop of macaque monkeys since 1952. The scientists provided the monkeys with sweet potatoes, dropping them in the sand. In 1953, a young female monkey named Imo began washing her sweet potatoes in a stream before eating them — removing the sand. Over the following years, other monkeys in Imo’s troop gradually learned the behavior through observation and imitation. Then, according to Watson’s account, when a critical mass of monkeys had learned the behavior — the “hundredth monkey” — something extraordinary happened: the behavior suddenly appeared spontaneously in monkey troops on other islands and on the mainland, far beyond the range of normal social transmission. It was as if the knowledge had “jumped” across space, transmitted not by observation or communication but by some kind of collective field.

The story was beautiful, the implications were profound, and the evidence was, unfortunately, fabricated. Or at least dramatically embellished.

Elaine Myers (1985, The Whole Earth Review) and Ron Amundson (1985, Skeptical Inquirer) investigated the original Japanese primatological research and found that Watson’s account did not match the actual data. The washing behavior spread gradually through the Koshima troop over years, following well-understood patterns of social learning (young monkeys learned from Imo, then from each other; older, dominant males were the slowest to adopt the behavior). There was no sudden, discontinuous “hundredth monkey” event. And while sweet potato washing did eventually appear in other monkey populations, the most likely explanation was transport of individuals between populations or independent invention — not non-local transmission.

Watson himself acknowledged the embellishment in a later interview, stating that he had “made up” some details to tell a better story.

The Hundredth Monkey story, as usually told, is a myth. But like many myths, it points toward a real question: Is there a mechanism by which learned behaviors, new knowledge, or novel patterns can spread non-locally — not through genetic inheritance, not through cultural transmission, not through any known physical channel — but through some kind of collective field or resonance?

Rupert Sheldrake has spent four decades arguing that there is.

Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance

The Hypothesis

Rupert Sheldrake — a Cambridge-educated plant physiologist who worked in developmental biology before turning to theoretical biology and consciousness research — proposed the hypothesis of “morphic resonance” in his 1981 book A New Science of Life.

The core claim: natural systems — from crystals to cells to organisms to social groups — are organized by “morphic fields” that contain a kind of collective memory. Once a pattern has been established anywhere in the world (a crystal structure, a behavioral habit, a learned skill), it becomes easier for the same pattern to arise elsewhere — not through any known physical mechanism, but through a resonance between similar systems across space and time.

The key concepts:

Morphic fields: Non-material organizing fields that shape the development and behavior of systems at all levels of complexity. Morphic fields are proposed as the principle of organization that determines the form, structure, and behavior of systems — from the shape of a protein molecule to the structure of a cell to the behavior patterns of an organism to the cultural habits of a society.

Morphic resonance: The process by which morphic fields transmit information across space and time. A system “resonates” with similar past systems — it is influenced by the collective memory of all previous systems of the same type. The more often a pattern has been established, the stronger the morphic resonance and the more easily the pattern arises in new systems.

Habit vs. law: Sheldrake proposes that what we call “laws of nature” are actually habits — patterns that have been repeated so many times that they appear fixed and universal. In the early universe, the “laws” of chemistry were not yet established — the first time a specific crystal formed, there was no morphic resonance to guide it. But once the crystal had formed, its morphic field made it slightly easier for the same crystal to form elsewhere. After billions of repetitions, the “habit” of crystallization became so strong that it appeared to be a fixed law.

The Chemical Evidence: Crystal Formation

One of the specific predictions of morphic resonance concerns new chemical compounds. When a novel compound is first synthesized, it should be difficult to crystallize (because there is no prior morphic resonance to guide the crystal formation). With repeated crystallization attempts worldwide, the compound should become progressively easier to crystallize — not because the chemistry has changed, but because the morphic field of the crystalline form has been strengthened by each previous crystallization.

This prediction aligns with a well-known (but poorly explained) phenomenon in chemistry: new compounds ARE frequently difficult to crystallize at first, and they DO tend to become easier to crystallize over time. The conventional explanation is “seeding” — trace crystals from previous crystallization attempts contaminate laboratory equipment, glassware, and even the air, providing nucleation sites for new crystal formation. Once a compound has been crystallized anywhere, microscopic seed crystals can travel (on equipment, in dust, on researchers’ clothing) and facilitate crystallization in other laboratories.

The seeding explanation is plausible and is the default explanation in chemistry. But it has not been rigorously tested against the morphic resonance explanation. Sheldrake (1988, The Presence of the Past) argues that seeding cannot account for all cases — particularly cases where a novel crystal form appears simultaneously in multiple laboratories that have had no contact and no opportunity for seed crystal transfer.

The Biological Evidence: Rat Learning

Sheldrake’s hypothesis predicts that if rats learn a new task in one laboratory, rats of the same strain in other laboratories — who have had no contact with the trained rats — should subsequently learn the same task faster. The morphic resonance from the first rats’ learning would make the pattern more accessible to subsequent rats of the same type.

This prediction aligns with a curious finding from the history of experimental psychology. William McDougall at Harvard (1920s-1930s) conducted a multi-generational experiment in which rats were trained to navigate a water maze. He found that successive generations of rats learned the maze faster — a finding he attributed to Lamarckian inheritance (the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which was already considered discredited by mainstream genetics).

However, the most interesting aspect of McDougall’s data was not the successive-generation improvement but the fact that control rats — rats from the same strain but different lineage, who had no genetic connection to the trained rats — also learned the maze faster over generations. This finding was inexplicable by Lamarckian inheritance (the control rats did not inherit any genes from the trained rats) but was consistent with morphic resonance (the morphic field of the learned behavior strengthened over time, making it easier for all rats of that strain to learn).

Agar et al. (1954) at the University of Melbourne attempted to replicate McDougall’s experiment over 20 years (1934-1954). Their results were mixed: they found that their first generation of rats already performed at the level McDougall’s later generations had achieved, and that subsequent generations showed no consistent improvement. Sheldrake interprets this as supporting morphic resonance — the Agar rats benefited from the morphic resonance of McDougall’s rats’ learning, which is why their baseline performance was already elevated.

The conventional interpretation is that the apparent improvement in McDougall’s experiment was due to uncontrolled variables — selective breeding, experimenter expectancy effects, or improvements in experimental technique over the decades of the study.

The Psychological Evidence: Pattern Recognition

Sheldrake and collaborators have tested morphic resonance in human pattern recognition experiments. The design: present subjects with hidden images (images that appear abstract or meaningless until the hidden pattern is revealed). Measure how long it takes subjects to find the hidden pattern. Then broadcast the solution (show the revealed image to millions of people via television). Then test new subjects (who did not see the broadcast) on the same images.

If morphic resonance operates, the new subjects should find the hidden pattern faster after the broadcast, because millions of people having seen the solution would strengthen the morphic field of the pattern.

Sheldrake reports mixed results from these experiments. Some show the predicted facilitation effect; others do not. The experiments are methodologically difficult to control (how do you ensure that subjects did not indirectly learn the solution through social channels?) and have not been widely replicated.

Collective Memory: Convergent Evidence

While Sheldrake’s specific mechanism (morphic fields and morphic resonance) remains unproven, the broader phenomenon he describes — that patterns, once established, become easier to establish elsewhere — has support from multiple independent research traditions:

Jung’s Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung (1875-1961) proposed the concept of the collective unconscious — a layer of the psyche that is shared by all humans and that contains archetypes (universal patterns of meaning and behavior) that are not learned but inherited. The archetypes — the Hero, the Mother, the Shadow, the Self — appear spontaneously across all cultures and all historical periods, in myths, dreams, and religious imagery.

Jung proposed that the collective unconscious is not transmitted genetically (the archetypes are not encoded in DNA) but exists as a psychic field or substrate that all human minds share. This is remarkably similar to Sheldrake’s morphic field — a non-material organizing principle that contains patterns accessible to all members of a species.

Cultural Convergence

Independent invention — the phenomenon in which the same discovery, invention, or cultural development appears independently in multiple, unconnected cultures — is a well-documented pattern in cultural anthropology and the history of science:

• Agriculture was independently developed in at least six separate locations (Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, Andes, Eastern North America, and New Guinea) within a relatively narrow time window (10,000-5,000 years ago)
• The pyramidal structure appeared independently in Egypt, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, and Southeast Asia
• The concept of zero was independently developed in Mesopotamia, India, and Mesoamerica
• Calculus was independently developed by Newton and Leibniz at approximately the same time
• Evolution by natural selection was independently proposed by Darwin and Wallace at approximately the same time
• The telephone was independently developed by Bell, Gray, and possibly others at approximately the same time

The conventional explanation for cultural convergence is that similar environmental pressures and cognitive capacities produce similar solutions — convergent evolution in the cultural domain. But the timing of some convergences (Darwin and Wallace, Newton and Leibniz, Bell and Gray) is striking — not merely similar but nearly simultaneous, as if the “idea” became available to multiple minds at the same time.

Sheldrake would explain this through morphic resonance: once an idea is thought (or nearly thought) by one mind, its morphic field makes it more accessible to other minds working on similar problems. The first thinker creates the field; subsequent thinkers resonate with it.

The Cavendish Banana Problem

There is a curious phenomenon in industrial chemistry known informally as the “Cavendish banana problem.” Certain chemical processes — the synthesis of specific compounds, the development of specific catalytic reactions — are notoriously difficult to achieve the first time but become dramatically easier after the initial success, even in laboratories that have no connection to the original successful lab.

The conventional explanation (seeding, shared literature, conference presentations, personal communications) accounts for most cases. But some chemists report that the transition from “impossible” to “routine” happens too quickly and too broadly to be fully explained by information transfer through known channels.

Sheldrake’s Critics and Controversies

Sheldrake’s work has been harshly criticized by mainstream science:

John Maddox, editor of Nature: In 1981, Maddox reviewed Sheldrake’s A New Science of Life with the infamous assessment: “the best candidate for burning there has been for many years.” This extraordinary statement — calling for the symbolic burning of a scientific book — reflected the intensity of the establishment’s reaction to Sheldrake’s challenge to materialist orthodoxy.

Lewis Wolpert, developmental biologist: Dismissed morphic resonance as “not even wrong” — a phrase implying that the hypothesis is too vague to be testable and therefore does not qualify as science.

Steven Rose, neurobiologist: Criticized Sheldrake’s experiments as poorly controlled and his theoretical framework as unfalsifiable.

The fundamental criticism: Morphic resonance proposes a mechanism (field-mediated non-local information transfer) that has no basis in known physics. There is no known field that could carry the information content of learned behaviors, crystal structures, or cultural patterns across space and time without physical transmission. The hypothesis requires new physics — and while new physics is always possible, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Sheldrake’s defense: Sheldrake argues that the inability to explain a phenomenon mechanistically does not mean the phenomenon does not exist. Gravitational attraction was observed for millennia before Newton provided a mathematical description, and Newton himself admitted he did not know HOW gravity worked (“hypotheses non fingo” — I do not frame hypotheses). Darwin demonstrated evolution by natural selection without any knowledge of the genetic mechanism. The phenomenon can be established empirically before the mechanism is understood.

The Digital Dharma Perspective: Fields of Knowing

From the Digital Dharma engineering perspective, morphic resonance — whether or not it operates through the specific mechanism Sheldrake proposes — represents a hypothesis about the information architecture of reality.

The standard materialist model posits that information is stored in physical substrates — DNA, neural circuits, books, hard drives — and is transmitted through physical channels — electromagnetic radiation, sound waves, chemical diffusion, wired or wireless electronic communication. There is no information without a physical carrier. There is no transmission without a physical channel.

Sheldrake proposes an alternative: information can be stored in non-material fields and transmitted through resonance between similar systems. This is a radical departure from the materialist model — but it is not entirely without precedent in physics. Quantum entanglement demonstrates non-local correlations between particles that cannot be explained by local hidden variables or classical communication channels. The EPR paradox (Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, 1935) demonstrated that quantum mechanics allows correlations between distant particles that appear to violate locality — correlations that have been experimentally confirmed by Bell test experiments (Aspect et al., 1982; Hensen et al., 2015).

Quantum entanglement does not transmit information in the classical sense (it cannot be used for faster-than-light communication). But it demonstrates that non-local correlations are a feature of physical reality — that the state of one system can be correlated with the state of a distant system in ways that do not require a physical signal traveling between them.

Whether morphic resonance is analogous to quantum entanglement is speculative. The scales are vastly different (quantum entanglement operates at the subatomic level; morphic resonance claims to operate at the level of organisms and social systems). But the conceptual parallel is suggestive: if non-local correlations are a feature of reality at the quantum level, they might also be a feature of reality at macroscopic levels — though the mechanism would need to be different.

The indigenous traditions would not find any of this surprising. Every shamanic tradition describes a “web of life” — an interconnected field in which all beings are related, all events are connected, and information flows through channels that are invisible to ordinary perception but accessible to trained practitioners. The Aboriginal Dreaming, the Lakota Mitakuye Oyasin (“all my relations”), the Buddhist Indra’s Net (in which every jewel reflects every other jewel) — all describe a reality in which separation is illusion and connection is fundamental.

Sheldrake has given this intuition a testable form. The tests have been inconclusive. The mechanism is unknown. But the question is alive: Is reality more connected than the materialist model allows? Do patterns propagate through fields that we have not yet learned to measure?

The hundredth monkey was a myth. But the question it pointed to — whether knowledge can spread through invisible channels, whether collective learning can make individual learning easier, whether the universe has a memory that shapes its future — remains one of the most important questions consciousness research can ask.

The answer may reshape our understanding of what reality is, how knowledge works, and what it means to be connected to all that lives.