Hundredth monkey Phenomenon

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Have you ever heard of the 100th Monkey Phenomenon?

The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon, is a supposed phenomenon in which a behavior or thought spreads rapidly from one group to all related groups once a critical number of initiates is reached. By generalization it means the instantaneous spreading of an idea or ability to the remainder of a population once a certain portion of that population has heard of the new idea or learned the new ability by some unknown process currently beyond the scope of science. The story behind this supposed phenomenon the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon,  originated with Lawrence Blair and Lyall Watson in the mid-to-late 1970s, who claimed that it was the observation of Japanese scientists. One of the primary factors in the promulgation of the story is that many authors quote secondary, tertiary or post-tertiary sources who have themselves misrepresented the original observations.

Popularization of the claim of the Hundredth Monkey Syndrome

The story of the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon was published in Lyall Watson’s foreword to Lawrence Blair’s Rhythms of Vision in 1975, and spread with the appearance of Watson’s 1979 book Lifetide. The claim is that unidentified scientists were conducting a study of macaque monkeys ,(the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon), on the Japanese island of Koshima in 1952. These scientists purportedly observed that some of these monkeys learned to wash sweet potatoes, and gradually this new behavior spread through the younger generation of monkeys—in the usual fashion, through observation and repetition. Watson then claimed that the researchers observed that once a critical number of monkeys was reached—the so-called Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon—this previously learned behavior instantly spread across the water to monkeys on nearby islands, I.E. the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon.

Popularization of the claim on  the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon

This story was further popularized by Ken Keyes, Jr. with the publication of his book The Hundredth Monkey . Keyes’ book was about the devastating effects of nuclear war on the planet. Keyes presented the hundredth monkey phenomenon story as an inspirational parable, applying it to human society and the effecting of positive change. Since then, the story has become widely accepted as fact.

The original research of the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon

In 1985, Elaine Myers re-examined the original published research in “The Hundredth Monkey Revisited” in the journal In Context. In her review she found that the original research reports by the Japan Monkey Center in Vol. 2, 5, and 6 of the journal Primates are insufficient to support Watson’s story. In short, she is suspicious of the existence of a hundredth monkey phenomenon the published articles describe how the sweet potato washing behavior gradually spread through the monkey troupe and became part of the set of learned behaviors of young monkeys, but she doesn’t agree that it can serve as an evidence for the existence of a critical number at which the idea suddenly spread to other islands.

However, the story as told by Watson and Keyes is popular among New Age authors and personal growth gurus and has become an urban legend and part of New Age mythology. Also, Rupert Sheldrake has cited that a phenomenon like the hundredth monkey effect would be an evidence of Morphic fields bringing about non-local effects in consciousness and learning. As a result, the story has also become a favorite target of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and was used as the title essay in The 100th Monkey: And Other Paradigms of the Paranormal published by them in 1990.

In his book Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer explains how the urban legend started, was popularised, and has been discredited.

The effect discredited of the Hundredth Monkey Phenomanon

An analysis of the appropriate literature by Ron Amundson, published by the Skeptics Society, revealed several key points that demystified the supposed effect.

Unsubstantiated claims that there was a sudden and remarkable increase in the proportion of washers in the first population were exaggerations of a much slower, more mundane effect. Rather than all monkeys mysteriously learning the skill it was noted that it was predominantly younger monkeys that learned the skill from the older monkeys through observational learning, which is widespread in the animal kingdom;older monkeys who did not know how to wash tended not to learn. As the older monkeys died and younger monkeys were born the proportion of washers naturally increased. The time span between observations was in the order of years.

Claims that the practice spread suddenly to other isolated populations of monkeys may be called into question given the fact that at least one washing monkey swam to another population and spent about four years there. It is also to be noted that the sweet potato was not available to the monkeys prior to human intervention.This same phenomenon may be applied to the birth of the European Renaissance. It is historically known that, within a half century (1400–1450) artists, sculptors and artisans of every stripe appeared in all the major countries of Europe. This rapid acceleration of consciousness, perfectly analogous to the learned behavior of the ‘hundredth monkey’ may also be connected to Carl Jung’s concept of ‘synchronicity’^[7] that is, very similar and related things occurring simultaneously. Considering physical behaviors being manifested suddenly, these ‘behaviors’ of ‘ideas and meanings’ are consistent with Jung’s concepts of simultaneous ‘coincidences’ in the consciousness of peoples separated by vast distances. That the concepts Rupert Sheldrake proposes of ‘morphic resonance’ have as their base even Jesus’ comment of ‘reaping the harvest of what was sown.’ Because the concepts are not primarily materialistically referenced, but expressed as mental concepts sympathetic to the precursors these ideas represent, they are consistently rejected as pseudoscience by the scientific establishment.

Hundredth monkey Phenomenon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect

Posted By Hank Kinger, Aka ” Never Stops” Online BadAss

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