Watson, Lyall (1939-)

Zoologist and archaeologist whose book Supernature at-tempted to bridge the gap between science and the occult. Watson was born April 12, 1939, in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was educated at the University of Witwatersrand (B.S., 1958), the University of Natal (M.S., 1959), and the University of London, England (Ph.D., 1963). Through the 1960s he was director of the Zoological Gardens of Johannesburg, South Africa (1964-65), produced documentary films for the British Broadcasting Corporation, London (1966-67), and was an expedition leader and researcher in Antarctica, the Amazon River area, Seychelles, and Indonesia (1968-72). In 1967 he founded the life science consultancy Biologic of London, and in the 1970s he wrote a number of books. Three further books followed themes first developed in Supernature: The Romeo Error (1974), Gifts of Unknown Things (1976), and Lifetide: The Biology of The Unconscious (1979).

Lifetide had an important effect within the emerging New Age movement. In two pages it told the story of four scientists studying monkeys in islands off the coast of Japan. The scientists left food for the monkeys. In 1953 they observed an older monkey wash the sand and grit from a potato. She then seemed to teach the other monkeys the same procedure. Gradualy the practice spread to the other monkeys in the group. Watson stated:

"In the autumn of that year [1958] an unspecified number of monkeys on [the island of] Kosima were washing sweet potatoes in the sea…. Let us say, for argument's sake, that the number of monkeys was ninety-nine and that at eleven o'clock on Tuesday morning one further convert was added to the fold in the usual way. But the addition of the hundreth 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 troupe of Takasakiyama."

What became known as the "hundreth monkey" myth would be seized upon by New Age spokespersons who were seeking to explain to people how relatively small groups would be capable of bringing New Age consciousness to a public generally apathetic to their concerns. It was believed if only a critical number of people accepted the consciousness, it would, as if by magic or atomic explosion, spread suddenly to everyone.

Given the jumps in such an argument, Watson was soon attacked on the factual basis of the story. Psychologist Maureen O'Hara and psychic-critic Ron Amundson both challenged the story and forced Watson to admit that it was in essence fiction. By that time, however, it had become a widely discussed issue in the New Age movement and author Ken Keyes had printed and distributed over 300,000 copies of a book, The Hundreth Monkey (1982).

Sources:

Keyes, Ken. The Hundreth Monkey. Coos Bay, Ore.: Vision Books, 1982.

Melton, J. Gordon. New Age Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale Research, 1990.

Watson, Lyall. Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

——. Gifts of Unknown Things. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976.

——. Lifetide: The Biology of The Unconscious. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.

——. The Romeo Error: A Matter of Life and Death. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1975.

——. Supernature. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1973.