I live and work alone and travel light, relying largely on
my memory and making a point of letting intuition guide my way. --Lyall Watson*
The hundredth monkey phenomenon refers to a sudden
spontaneous and mysterious leap of consciousness achieved when an allegedly
"critical mass" point is reached. The idea of the hundredth monkey
phenomenon comes from Dr. Lyall Watson (1938-2008) in his book Lifetide (1979).
Watson, who had a Ph.D. in ethology for work done at the London Zoo with
Desmond ("The Naked Ape") Morris, was writing about several studies
done in the 1960's by several Japanese primatologists of Japanese macaques
(Macaca fuscata). Watson alleged that the scientists were "reluctant to
publish [the whole story] for fear of ridicule." He wrote that he had
"to gather the rest of the story from personal anecdotes and bits of
folklore among primate researchers, because most of them are still not quite
sure what happened." So, wrote
Watson:
I am forced to improvise the details, but as near as I can
tell, this is what seems to have happened. In the autumn of that year an
unspecified number of monkeys on Koshima were washing sweet potatoes in the
sea. . . . Let us say, for argument's sake, that the number was ninety-nine and
that at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday morning, one further convert was added to
the fold in the usual way. But the addition of the hundredth monkey apparently
carried the number across some sort of threshold, pushing it through a kind of
critical mass, because by that evening almost everyone was doing it. Not only
that, but the habit seems to have jumped natural barriers and to have appeared
spontaneously, like glycerine crystals in sealed laboratory jars, in colonies
on other islands and on the mainland in a troop at Takasakiyama.
Yes, according to Watson, one monkey taught another to wash
sweet potatoes who taught another who taught another and soon all the monkeys
on the island were washing potatoes where no monkey had ever washed potatoes
before. When the "hundredth" monkey learned to wash potatoes,
suddenly and spontaneously and mysteriously monkeys on other islands, with no
physical contact with the potato-washing cult, started washing potatoes! Was
this monkey telepathy at work or just monkey business on Watson's part?
It makes for a cute story, but it isn't true. At least, the
part about spontaneous transmission of a cultural trait across space without
contact is not true. There really were some macaque monkeys who washed their
sweet potatoes. One monkey started it and soon others joined in. But even after
six years not all the monkeys saw the benefit of washing the grit off of their
potatoes by dipping them into the sea. Watson made up the part about the
mysterious transmission. The claim that monkeys on other islands had their
consciousness raised to the high level of the potato-washing cult is a myth
(Amundson 1985, 1987; Pössel and Amundson, 1996).
Ron Amundson wrote a very critical article of Watson's claim
in 1985. In 1986, in a response to Amundson's critique of the hundredth monkey
claim, Watson said his data came from "off-the-record conversations with
those familiar with the potato-washing work." Markus Pössel contacted
Masao Kawai, one of the senior researchers working on the original macaque
project, and asked him about Watson's claims. Kawai said he was not "aware
of any sweet potato washing or other skills that propagated more rapidly than
would be expected by normal, individual, 'pre-cultural' propagation." When
asked about "spontaneous and rapid spread of sweet potato washing from
Koshima to groups of macaques on other islands and on the mainland," Kawai
responded: "Individual monkeys in other groups or in zoos may have
accidentally learned washing behavior, but it hasn't been observed anywhere on
Koshima that washing behavior has spread to other group members" (Pössel
and Amundson 1996).
When asked if there were "anecdotes or bits of
folklore" among his primatologist colleagues regarding rapid behavior
propagation, Kawai said "No." And when asked were there any contacts
between Lyall Watson and his (Kawai's) colleagues, Kawai said "No."
Thus, I repeat: Watson created the hundredth monkey phenomenon. Amundson refers
to Watson's "myth-making" rather than his confabulation. Watson's
response to Amundson's critique was published in the Fall 1986 issue of Whole
Earth Review. Watson wrote: "I accept Amundson's analysis of the origin
and evolution of the Hundredth Monkey without reservation. It is a metaphor of
my own making, based—as he rightly suggests—on very slim evidence and a great
deal of hearsay. I have never pretended otherwise. . . ." Watson
apparently made no effort to contact the researchers to inquire about the
hearsay he claims he heard. In any case, Watson did not put forth the idea as a
metaphor; he put it forth as a fact for which there was some unspecified
hearsay evidence.
It should be noted that Watson was the author of some 25
books, and the hundredth monkey nonsense involves only a few paragraphs of his
total output. Watson was unrepentant about it, however, and wrote on his
website: "I still think it's a good idea!" As a metaphor? Or as a
fact? I wonder.
The notion of raising consciousness through reaching
critical mass is being promoted by a number of New Age spiritualists. Ken
Keyes, Jr. has published a book on the Internet that calls for an end to the
nuclear menace and the mass destruction which surely awaits us all if we do not
make a global breakthrough soon. The title of his treatise is The Hundredth
Monkey. In his book he writes such things as "there is a point at which if
only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so
that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!"
It seems to be working for spreading the word about the
hundredth monkey phenomenon.
Even though there is no evidence for the hundredth monkey
phenomenon, Rupert Sheldrake has claimed that his theory of morphic resonance
explains "the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater
quantities of a population acquire them."*
Watson died in June
2008, but his legacy lives on in the hundredth monkey myth.
