| Dave,
There are a number of doubts about this phenomenon that come from
various sources, both regarding its authenticity and some of the
conclusions often drawn from it. If you can find a piece of primary
source material on it, you will have accomplished much more than
I have on this subject. Please let me know if you do.
See also the discussion in ERIS::PHILOSOPHY, topic 292 where this
was discussed and some references were provided.
I think I've seen some things about this more recently, too, I'll
try to enter something tommorrow.
kind regards,
todd
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| Dave,
Not sure if it has pointers to a source for the original study, but
there is a book titled "The 100th Monkey", by Ken Keyes, which
discusses this phenomenon. Check your local library or new-ageish
bookstore.
good luck,
chuck
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| Todd,
I had a look at that topic in Philosophy. My doubts about the
original experiment and the wide acceptance of the validity of
this experiment seem to be correct.
Someone mentioned a book "The 100th monkey and other paradigms of
the paranormal" by Kendrick Frazer, Prometheus Books,
ISBN 0-87975-655-1 Did you get a chance to see this? Does
Lyall Watson quote a source?
I think that the phenomen is fairly aptly named. However, the
conclusion should be that whenever a wierd and wonderful claim
is made (and referred to) by a certain number of people, then
the general public cease to question it, and begin to use it
themselves.
Regards,
Dave
PS I am not assuming that this experiment did not take place nor
reported correctly just because the source has not been cited yet.
I am remaining open on this. Any pointers would be appreciated.
|
| I should say first that I don't doubt the concept of a group mind
in some form in biology. There are some good examples in the
insect world of amazing degrees of cooperation between individuals
who are basically nothing more than a few neural cells worth of
intelligence and instinct. Clearly something very interesting goes
on with groups in nature.
The Hundredth Monkey, on the other hand, is likely a distortion by
Watson, who appears to have admitted as such in in the Fall,1986
issue of _Whole_Earth_Review_, "Lyall Watson Responds", on pp. 24-25.
Watson's original mention was in his _Lifetide_, 1979, N.Y., Bantam
Books. _Lifetide_ was one of a number of widely read books in which
Watson (who holds a Phd in zoology, according to his book jackets
and according to research done by Martin Gardner) was also well known
for his various books in the 1970's popularizing the idea of scientific
proof of various tradtional occult doctrines. Watson was a significant
populist of the 'power of pyramids' movement as well, with his book
_Supernature_ (Doubleday, 1973). That seems to also have turned out to
have been a distortion at best, having failed replication even by
researchers sympathetic to the claims, such as Art Rosenblum of the
Aquarian Research Foundation in Philadelphia.
For those not familiar with the Hundredth Monkey idea, Watson claimed
that monkeys on the Japanese island of Koshima had learned a certain
skilled task of washing food in an extraordinary manner. Apparently,
when a critical mass of monkeys had learned the task by laborious trial
and error and imitation means, suddenly all the monkeys were doing the
same task, including individuals of the same species on other
islands which presumably the monkeys from the first island did not
physically contact.
Ken Keys, in his 1982 _The_Hundredth_Monkey_, (Coos Bay Oregon, Vision
Books), used the idea of the Hundredth Monkey from Watson's book
and compared it to the possibility for an individual being
able to bring the human world to peaceful coexistence in the same
manner.
The 'skeptical' view of the story was told in the _Skeptical_Inquirer_,
#9, Summer, 1985, pp. 348-356, "The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon,"
by Ron Amundson. I don't know if the Frazer book reprints the
article or does another treatment of the material, since I haven't
read it, but I'd expect they'd cover the same ground. Prometheus and
_SI_ seem to be politically strongly connected. Often unreliable, imo,
but sometimes useful material taken with an appropriate grain of salt.
kind regards,
todd
|
| 1869.5 (todd)
> The 'skeptical' view of the story was told in the _Skeptical_Inquirer_,
> #9, Summer, 1985, pp. 348-356, "The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon,"
> by Ron Amundson. I don't know if the Frazer book reprints the
> article or does another treatment of the material, since I haven't
> read it, but I'd expect they'd cover the same ground. Prometheus and
> _SI_ seem to be politically strongly connected.
I'm not sure of the exact relationship, but Prometheus Books and CSICOP
are run out of the same office (_SI_ is the magazine -- it refers to
itself inaccurately as a "journal" -- published by CSICOP). Prometheus
is owned by the founder and "CEO" (head of the council? something like
that) whose name has just -- in classic Freudian denial/censoring --
slipped my mind. Frazer is, I believe, the editor of _SI_.
Topher
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