Morphic resonance works on the basis of similarity: we are roughly similar to many people, but we are most similar to ourselves in the past. That’s why, consciously, we have our own memories, but if a group of people learn something new, there is good evidence that others who are similar are able to learn it quicker. What parent has not been amazed at the ease with which their very young children adapt to new technologies like computers and cell phones?
In one of the longest series of experiments in the history of psychology, conducted first at Harvard and then at Edinburgh and Melbourne universities, rats were trained to run a new maze and the behavior of their descendants was examined to see if maze-running ability was conveyed through the genes. On average, subsequent generations got better and better, but it turned out that the control rats, whose parents had never been trained, also got better. In fact, they showed the same improvement as rats descended from trained parents—so the ability was not passed on through the genes. These results suggest that contributions to the morphic field survive the death of individuals. We all have access to a collective memory, and we all contribute to it.
Because morphic fields extend beyond the brain into the environment, they also link us to the objects of our perception, enabling us to affect them through our intention and attention.[vi] This is another aspect of morphic fields that lends itself to experimental testing. Such fields would mean that we can affect things just by looking at them, in ways that cannot be explained in terms of conventional physics. For example, the feeling of being stared at, or of making someone turn around by staring at them, has been reported by between seventy percent and ninety-seven percent of adults and children. Martial artists, military snipers, celebrity photographers, and hunters all report this phenomenon and learn not to look too long or too intently at their targets because it tends to alert them.
The unsolved problems of animal navigation, migration, and homing may also depend on invisible fields connecting the animals to their destinations.[vii] In effect, these could act like invisible elastic bands linking them to their homes.
Biological implications of morphic resonance
There is already evidence from observations on fruit flies that morphic resonance effects may be occurring in the realm of morphogenesis. When fruit fly eggs were exposed to a chemical (diethyl ether), some of them developed abnormally, turning into flies with four wings instead of two. When this treatment was repeated generation after generation, more and more flies developed four wings, even if their ancestors had never been exposed to the chemical. [viii]
There is also much circumstantial evidence that animal behavior can evolve rapidly, as if a collective memory is building up through morphic resonance. In particular, large-scale adaptations have occurred in the behavior of domesticated animals all over the world.
One example concerns cattle guards. Ranchers throughout the American West have found that they can save money on cattle guards by using fake ones, consisting of stripes painted across the road. Real cattle guards are made of a series of parallel steel tubes, or rails, with gaps in between, which make it difficult for cattle to walk across them, and even painful to try. However, present-day cattle do not usually even try to cross the guards, and the illusory grids work just as effectively as the real ones. Cattle approaching an illusory grid “put on brakes with all four feet,” as one rancher expressed it.
Is this just because calves learn from older cattle that they should not try to cross? Apparently not. Several ranchers have told me that herds not previously exposed to real cattle grids will avoid the phony ones. Ted Friend, of Texas A & M University, has tested the response of several hundred head of cattle to painted grids, and has found that naive animals avoid them just as much as those previously exposed to real grids. [ix] Sheep and horses likewise show an aversion to crossing painted grids. This aversion may well depend on morphic resonance from previous members of the species that have learned to avoid cattle grids the hard way.
Morphic resonance in human learning
Morphic resonance has many implications for the understanding of human learning, including the acquisition of languages. Through the collective memory on which individuals draw, and to which they contribute, it should in general be easier to learn what others have learned before.
This idea fits well with the observations of linguists like Noam Chomsky who propose that language learning by young children takes place so rapidly and creatively that it cannot be explained simply in terms of imitation. The structure of language seems to be inherited in some way. In his book, The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker gives many examples to support this idea.
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