Is Morphic Resonance Real
- By Landon Caeli
- Physical & Life Sciences
- 5 Replies
I'd be interested in any literature about rat populations being able to learn more quickly after an isolated population learns something. What do you have?
- Harvard Water Maze Experiment: A series of experiments started by William McDougall at Harvard in the 1920s involved training rats to escape from a water maze by avoiding a brightly lit pathway (which resulted in an electric shock).
- Generational Improvement: Over many generations (up to 22 in some studies), rats learned the maze significantly faster. The initial rats required an average of around 150 shocks to learn, while later generations needed only about 20.
- Control Groups' Improvement: Crucially, Sheldrake points out that even control rats whose parents had never been trained showed the same rate of improvement, suggesting the ability was not passed genetically but through a wider influence.
- Global Spread of Learning: This is the core of the morphic resonance argument. When the same experiment was replicated with rats of the same breed in Edinburgh (Scotland) and Melbourne (Australia), those first-generation rats started their learning at the advanced rate where the Harvard rats had left off. The knowledge seemed to be instantly and non-locally accessible to rats of the same species and breed.
Sheldrake's Interpretation
According to Sheldrake, this phenomenon occurs because:
- Repeated behavior forms a "morphogenetic field" which acts as a kind of species-wide collective memory.
- Individual animals can "tune in" to this field through a process called morphic resonance, making it easier for them to learn behaviors that many other members of their species have already mastered, even without any physical communication or genetic link.
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