Now I turn to discuss a third theory of the Atonement, which I will call the pattern theory. If you want to associate the pattern theory with the name of a medieval theologian so as to have a symmetry with Anselm and Abelard, you might call it the Odoic theory, named for a twelfth-century philosopher and theologian, Blessed Odo of Tournais. However, if any of you have ever seen the theory presented in print, it has most likely been in the the following quotation from CS Lewis.
We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins,
and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity.
That is what has to be believed. Any theories we may build up as to how Christ's death did
all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they
do not help us, and even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself. All
the same, some of these theories are worth looking at.
The one most people have heard is the one I mentioned before -- the one about our
being let off because Christ had volunteered to bear a punishment instead of us.
Now on the face of it that is a very silly theory. If God was prepared to let
us off, why on earth did He not do so? And what possible point could there be in punishing
an innocent person instead? None at all that I can see, if you are thinking of
punishment in the police-court sense. On the other hand, if you think of a debt,
there is plenty of point in a person who has some assets paying it on behalf of someone
who has not. Or if you take "paying the penalty," not in the sense of
being punished, but in the more general sense of "standing the racket" or
"footing the bill," then, of sourse, it is a matter of common experience
that, when one person has got himself into a hole, the trouble of getting him out usually
falls on a kind friend.
Now what was the sort of "hole" man had gotten himself into? He had tried
to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen
man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay
down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that
you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the
ground floor -- that is the only way out of a "hole". This process of surrender
-- this movement full speed astern -- is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance
is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie.
It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training
ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a
kind of death. In fact, it takes a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a
bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the
more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly
would be a perfect person -- and he would not need it.
Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of
death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could
let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If
you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back
without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the
same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps
us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God's helping us? We mean God putting into us
a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is
how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another.
When you teach a
child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters
because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds
our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen, that would be all plain sailing. But
unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own
nature, never does at all -- to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's
nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need
God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can
share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.
But supposing God became a man -- suppose our human nature which can suffer and die
was amalgamated with God's nature in one person -- then that person could help us. He
could surrender His will, and suffer, and die, because He was man; and He could do it
perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in
us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only
if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop
out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and
He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and
suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.
C.S. Lewis, _Mere Christianity_ (Macmillan Paperbacks edition 1960) pp 58-60
Now you will note that this is in one way the opposite of the forensic theory. According to the forensic theory, we were sentenced to be hanged, as it were, but Christ offered to be hanged in our stead, and so we have been let off. But as Lewis puts it, Christ's death does not let us off from dying, but rather enables us to die. Because he made a total submission of his human will to the will of God, he can now make that same total submission in any one of us who will let him. And in that submission, we place ourselves (or rather Christ places us) in a right relationship with God our Creator, and so we come home to our rightful place in the Universe, to our true natures as normal men, men as they were made to be. Note that submission is here treated as the equivalent of death. With rare exceptions, you can avoid anything unpleasant that faces you by committing suicide. Given an unhappy marriage, parents that don't understand you, children that don't appreciate all that you have done for them, a demeaning job with no hope of promotion, unemployment, obesity, baldness, creaky joints, the heartbreak of psoriasis, and all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, you have only to make your quietus with a bare bodkin (or more neatly, with a handful of pills). Death is almost the only unpleasantness that you cannot avoid by committing suicide. It is therefore the ultimate confrontation with the fact that you do not run the Universe, that you are not in charge, that you cannot always have things your own way. Christ does not offer us a way to avoid submission, either to the physical necessity of death or to the moral and rational necessity of acknowledging the sovereignty of God. Instead of a detour around death, he offers us himself as a guide and companion on a road he has walked before, through death and into endless life with God.
As George MacDonald put it: "The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that we might not suffer, but that our sufferings might be like His."
St. Paul writes (2 Corinthians 5:14): "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then are all become dead men." This is not the language of substitution. If one man dies as a substitute for another, like Sidney Carton dying as a substitute for Charles Darnay in the _Tale of Two Cities_, then the conclusion is that the second man remains alive. But St. Paul takes a different approach. He speaks of baptism as a participation in Christ's death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-11; Colossians 2:12). For him, the Christian facing lions in the arena need not fear death, because he has been baptised -- he has already died. The loss of life is of no concern to him -- he has already handed his life over to God and has received the gift of supernatural life in return. Some of you may say that you have been baptized and that it doesn't seem to have had quite that effect on you. (Others, more snidely, may prefer to comment on the lack of spectacular results in your baptized neighbors.) I reply that baptism is not the whole process. It is the beginning of a transformation that will normally take the rest of your natural life and then some to complete.
What I did with the Abelardian theory, I am now going to do with the pattern theory, in that I am going to tie it in with some other ideas. First, briefly and vaguely, I will mention some theories of learning, and then go on to discuss at greater length some recent, and highly controversial, speculations about the nature of physical laws. As before, I will ask you to remember that if these ideas strike you as unworthy of your belief, or even your respect, it does not follow that the pattern theory of the Atonement falls in the same category.
I recently saw an advertisement that I think worth quoting in this context. It follows:
When Horst Abrahams -- Chairman of Research and Development for the 10,000 Professional Ski Instrucors of America -- first heard of SyberVision, he was intrigued. "I'd heard that SyberVision had developed a whole new sports learning system at Stanford University. And it sounded impressive. But I've been training athletes for fifteen years now, and it's pretty hard to convince me that there's a better way. "So when U.S. Demonstration Team skiers Jens Husted and Chris Ryman told me SyberVision was the fastest, easiest and most effective way to make anyone a better skier, I said, 'Show me.' They did. Literally. "That evening Jens and Chris sat me down in front of a VCR to see my first SyberVision videotape. 'Relax,' they told me. 'Just watch.' "The people at SyberVision explained it best. 'Most of us try to learn -- or teach -- using words. But the best way to learn is through _visual images_. It takes effort for your brain to translate words into action. But your brain can translate action into action easily.' ... "It sounded a little like science fiction. But it looked real enough when I watched the video. There was Jean-Claude Killy (and Jens and Chris, who also modeled for the tape), gliding with perfect form through a variety of skiing terrains and conditions. "The action was exciting. And I didn't think there was anything else to it. But then the most amazing thing happened. _I could feel my body begin to respond to the tape_ -- as if I were skiing along with Killy. The neuromuscular training was working. "The next day, out on the slopes, it didn't take me long to realize that something different was happening. I was moving with a smoothness that I had striven for in the past but hadn't always been able to achieve. Neuromuscular training was guiding my every move. "I watched the SyberVision Cross-Country video with Jeff Nowak. And out on the trails I made cleaner, more efficient moves and got more enjoyment out of that tremendous sport. "I finally have to admit it -- I'm impressed. SyberVision is truly the most advanced sports training system I've ever seen. I urge anyone who skis -- from beginners to pros -- to try it." (signed) Horst Abrahams
Killy was so impressed with this program, they told me, that he made an exception to his usual no-endorsement rule. He himself said, "I've seen beginners pick up the fundamentals incredibly fast with this program. I've seen competent weekend skiers turn into real athletes. Even at my level, SyberVision can improve technique. I wish I'd used it a long time ago."
SyberVision isn't just a videotape. It's a complete training system. It gives you visual reinforcement (through neuromuscular training), tips on mechanics, and insight into the psychology of great athletic performance. You'll watch 60 minutes of beautifully filmed action on the videotape. It's been prepared and edited in a very special way to help you learn through watching. ...
Well, so much for the sales pitch. Advertisements have been known to overpraise their products, and I would probably not have given this one a second glance if I did not have the testimony of numerous skiers, and my own experience, telling me that an amazingly effective way of improving one's skiing is to come down the hill a few times directly behind a better skier, watching him, turning where he turns, and imitating him without thinking too much about it. And I see in this a parable of Law and Gospel. Law, with its "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not" corresponds to being told, "Keep your knees flexible, and lean forward just enough to feel the pressure at the front of your ankles, then slowly sink down, and then start to come up at the beginning of your turn, planting your pole directly downhill as you shift your weight to the outside ski and move your knees to the downhill side, not forgetting to...." Gospel corresponds to following in the tracks of a first-rate skier, and letting his example gradually modify your style automatically.
At this point, someone may say: "In other words, you are saying that the most effective program for moral improvement is for us to read the Bible regularly, but especially to read the Gospels, and to meditate on the life of Christ, and to steep ourselves in the general atmosphere of his personality, and try to be like him and to do what he would do in any situation, and that is what you mean by the Atonement and the Redemption and Christ as our Savior and all that."
Yes and no. That is certainly part of what I mean, and by no means a trivial part. However, it is only a part. I think that we have been promised that Christ will not merely set us a good example, but will also work in us to enable us to follow that example. Now, it may very well be that Christ is the sole instance in which an example not only inspires and instructs, but also actually works on and in the would-be copiers to draw them into conformity with the example. However, I have recently encountered an intriguing suggestion that what Christ does in and for us bears a certain resemblance to some other processes at work in the world.
And I should like to discuss that suggestion at length, carefully emphasizing that this is in the nature of speculation, and that if it should turn out not to have a leg to stand on, scientifically speaking, this would in no way undermine the pattern theory of the Atonement, let alone the doctrine of the Atonement itself.
A British botanist named Rupert Sheldrake has attracted considerable attention lately with a concept called morphic resonance, explained in two books:
Rupert Sheldrake, _A New Science of Life: the hypothesis of formative causation_, 1981, published in Great Britain by Blond and Briggs, Ltd., published in America by JP Tarcher, Inc., Los Angeles, distributed by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.
Rupert Sheldrake, _The Presence of the Past_, Times Books, New York 1988, Vintage Books (Random House) 1989.
Sheldrake's hypothesis, as best I can state it, is that a fundamental property of reality is that it is imitative, precedent-following, habit-forming. The mere fact that some things in Category X have conformed to Pattern P in the past creates a tendency for all things in Category X to conform to the same pattern hereafter, and the more conformity there already is, the stronger the tendency. A vibrating tuning fork sets up a field of sound waves of a certain frequency, and other objects in that field will tend to vibrate to the same frequency. In an analogous fashion, suggests Sheldrake, objects conforming to a given pattern set up a morphogenetic field that induces other objects, by what he calls morphic resonance, to conform to the same pattern.
Sheldrake writes:
According to this hypothesis, systems are organized in the way they are because similar systems were organized that way in the past. For example, the molecules of a complex organic chemical crystallize in a characteristic pattern because the same substance crystallized that way before; a plant takes up the form characteristic of its species because past members of the species took up that form; and an animal acts instinctively in a particular manner because similar animals behaved like that previously. (Sheldrake, p13)
To put it in a different way: at first the basin of attraction of the morphogenetic field will be relatively shallow, but it will become progressively deeper as the number of systems contributing to morphic resonance increases. Or to use yet another metaphor, through repetition the form will get into a rut and the more often it is repeated, the deeper the rut will become. (p101)
Let us look at some applications of the hypothesis.
I begin with an innocuous and uncontroversial observation. Water, under normal atmospheric pressure, freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit -- 0 degrees Celsius. But if you put pure water in a jar with a smooth inner surface, you can usually supercool it -- lower its temperature considerably below the freezing point and still keep it liquid. Molecules of water do not readily line up in the pattern of an ice crystal except in the presence of an already existing ice crystal. Drop a tiny chip of ice into a beaker of supercooled water, and you will see freezing occur with dramatic suddenness. The same is true of a supersaturated solution, say of common table salt in water. Salt dissolves in water, but only up to a certain ratio of salt to water. Suppose that we have a saturated solution, filtered to remove any undissolved salt crystals, and that we allow some of the water to evaporate. The solution is now super-saturated, but even though the water holds more salt than it can properly keep in solution, salt crystals will not form until a crystal has been dropped into the beaker, and then the surplus ions of sodium and chlorine rush to line up on the cubical array of the crystal, and so the crystal grows rapidly until the excess salt has all come out of solution. (It is not strictly true that without a seed -- an initial crystal of ice or salt -- the crystallization process cannot take place no matter how supercooled or supersaturated the liquid. A grain of dust or a scratch on the inside wall of the beaker may serve as a trigger to start the process. Even a sharp tap on the side of the beaker may happen to shake a few ions or molecules into just the right position relative to each other to get the process started, and once started it takes off. Whether this fact is an embarrassment to Sheldrake's hypothesis we shall be better able to judge when we have studied the hypothesis a little more.)
And if I were to stop right there, I would have a suitable sermon illustration. (I might preach on the text, "Ye are the salt of the earth." Matthew 5:13) I would compare Christ to a seed crystal dropped into a solution and growing into a huge crystal as all the particles of solute were attracted by the field of the original crystal and lined up on it. It would be a pleasant variation on the traditional sermons about the mustard seed and the leaven. However, there is allegedly more to report.
Sheldrake writes:
Consider a newly synthesized organic chemical which has never existed before. According to the hypothesis of formative causation, its crystalline form will not be predictable in advance, and no morphogenetic field for this form will yet exist. But after it has been crystallized for the first time, the form of its crystals will influence subsequent crystallizations by morphic resonance, and the oftener it is crystallized, the stronger should this influence become. Thus on the first occasion, the substance may not crystallize at all readily, but on subsequent occasions crystallization should occur more and more easily as increasing numbers of past crystals contribute to its morphogenetic fields by morphic resonance. In fact, chemists who have synthesized entirely new chemicals often have great difficulty in getting these substances to crystallize for the first time. But as time goes on, these substances tend to crystallize with greater and greater ease. ... The conventional explanation of the fact that substances usually crystallize more easily after they have been crystallized for the first time, and of the fact that the ease of crystallization generally increases the more often they are crystallized is that fragments of previous crystals "infect" subsequent solutions. When there is no obvious means by which these seeds could have moved from place to place, they are assumed to have travelled through the atmosphere as microscopic dust particles. There can be no doubt that the "infection" of a supersaturated solution with appropriate crystal seeds greatly facilitates crystallization. But according to the hypothesis of formative causation, the crystallization of a substance should also be facilitated by the mere fact that it has been crystallized before. So when substances are found to crystallize more readily the oftener they are crystallized, an increasing number of invisible seeds in the atmosphere may not be the only explanation. This question could be investigated experimentally under conditions in which dust particles were removed by filtering the air and all other potential contamination was eliminated. The period of time taken by a newly synthesized substance to crystallize from a supersaturated solution could be measured under rigorously standardized conditions in the absence of seeds both before and after this substance had been repeatedly crystallized elsewhere. A decrease in this period would provide evidence in favor of the hypothesis of formative causation. In more complicated experiments, it might be possible to demonstrate not only that the morphogenetic field of a particular crystal species was subject to the cumulative influence of past crystals, but also that the structure of this field was not determined before the first crystal of this type appeared. For instance, consider the following procedure. A solution of a newly synthesized chemical is divided into several batches, say P, Q and R, each of which is taken to a different laboratory located hundreds of miles away from the other laboratories as an additional precaution to avoid cross-contamination by seeds. Now each batch is delberately seeded with a different type of crystal in an attempt to encourage different patterns of crystallization of the new chemical, whose crystal form is as yet undetermined _ex hypothesi_. These crystallizations take place as far as possible simultaneously. Assume that P, Q and R each give a different type of crystal. Samples of these crystals are analysed and their structures determined by X-ray crystallography. Now one is selected at random, say R, and large batches of the chemical are repeatedly crystallized using seeds of R-type crystals. According to the hypothesis of formative causation, these large numbers of R-type crystals should have a stronger morphic influence on all subsequent crystallizations than the small initial samples of P- and Q-type crystals, and hence there should be a higher probability of obtaining R-type than P- or Q-type crystals. An attempt is now made to repeat the P- and Q-type crystallizations with the same sorts of seeds that were used initially. Crystallization is also carried out in the absence of any seeds whatsoever. If, in all these cases, R-type crystals are obtained, the result would strongly support the hypothesis of formative causation. And if this type of experiment could be repeated with many different newly synthesized substances, a really convincing weight of evidence could be built up. However, if only a single type of crystal were obtained initially in P, Q, and R, the result would be inconclusive. On the one hand, if crystallization began slightly sooner in one of these solutions than in the others, the influence of these crystals by morphic resonance might be strong enough to cause the same type of crystallization to occur in the other solutions. On the other hand, this result would also agree with the conventional assumption that a single crystal form would be obtained because it was a unique minimum-energy structure. Nevertheless, even with a single type of crystal, it should be possible to detect a decrease in the time taken by the substance to crystallize under standard conditions as increasing numbers of past crystals of this type contribute to the morphogenetic field by morphic resonance. Experiments with crystals are only one of the ways in which the hypothesis of formative causations could be tested. Examples of possible experiments with biological systems are discussed [below]. (Sheldrake, pp103-107)
Sheldrake as quoted above refers to crystals of newly synthesized chemicals not previously occurring in nature. I here insert a possibly doubtful reference from another writer, this to a substance (glycerine, also called glycerol) that does occur in nature.
Some substances crystallize easily, some can be persuaded to do so only with difficulty and some, it seems, may never form crystals under any circumstances -- though our inability to get them to do so may be merely the result of our limited imagination. For example, two hundred and fifty years ago glycerine was first extracted from natural fats in the form of a colorless, sweet, oily liquid and put to use in medicine, lubrication, and the manufacture of explosives. Despite super-cooling, reheating, and all the usual aids for inducing crystallization, glycerine remained resolutely liquid and it was assumed that the substance had no solid form. Then, early this century, something strange happened to a barrel of glycerine in transit between the factory in Vienna and the regular client in London. "Due to an unusual combination of movements which occurred, purely by chance, in the barrel," it crystallized. [Reference below.] The client was probably livid, but chemists were delighted and began borrowing bits from the barrel to seed their own samples, which rapidly solidified in the same way at a temperature of 18 degrees Centigrade. Among the first to do this were two scientists interested in thermodynamics who found that, soon after their first crystals arrived in the post and were used successfully for inducing crystallization in an experiment on one sample of glycerine, all the other glycerine in their labs began to crystallize spontaneously, despite the fact that some was sealed in air-tight containers. [Reference below.] They reported this occurrence as a casual, unimportant aside in a technical paper on another topic, but today similar unintentional metamorphoses have taken place in many parts of the world and glycerine crystals are common. Lyall Watson, _Lifetide_ (Hodder and Stoughton Paperbacks, London, 1979) pp 53-54
The assertion is that the mere fact that there were crystals of glycerine in the laboratory caused glycerine in sealed air-tight containers to crystallize. This goes beyond standard theory, but can be shrugged off. Perhaps the containers were not as well sealed as the scientists thought.
Watson gives two citations in the above passage, and I reproduce them both below:
CITATION 1: [Aleksandr Ivanov Oparin, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ON EARTH, 3rd ed, translated by Ann Synge, Academic Press, New York, 1957, p 98] Dauvillier adduced the crystallization of glycerine as an example of such configurations arising by chance. Although glycerine had been known since the eighteenth century, for a long time it had only existed in liquid form. The first crystals of glycerine were found in a barrel which was sent from Vienna to London. This sudden crystallisation was due to an unusual combination of movements which occurred, purely be chance, in the barrel. Since that time the spontaneous crystallisation of glycerine has been observed two or three times in all. It is, however, easy to obtain crystals of glycerine by seeding liquid glycerine with a pre-existing crystal.
NOTE: Oparin does not footnote his reference to Dauvillier, but has the following entries for him in the bibliography: [A. Dauvillier, ASTRONOMIE, 52, 529 (1938); GENESE, NATURE ET EVOLUTION DES PLANETES, Paris, 1947; COSMOLOGIE ET CHEMIE, Paris, 1955.]
CITATION 2: [GE Gibson and WF Giauque, "The Third Law of Thermodynamics..." _J Am Chem Soc_ 45:93-107, 1923, quote from pp 102-3] The problem of crystallizing glycerol proved to be of some interest. A tube of glycerol was kept with one end in liquid air, the other at room temperature, for a period of several weeks without results. Seeding with various organic crystals of similar structure was also tried. In fact the artifices ordinarily used for starting crystallization in the absence of seed crystals were all tried without success. The few references in the literature indicated that glycerol has only been obtained in the crystalline form by chance. Inquiry among places storing large quantities of glycerol finally revealed some crystals at the plant of the Giant Powder Company at Nanoose Bay, B.C. After the seed crystals had arrived it was found that crystallization practically always occurred when amounts of 100 g. of any laboratory sample were slowly warmed over a period of a day, after cooling to liquid-air temperatures. This occurred even when great precautions were taken to exclude the presence of seeds. However, it was found readily possible, by temperature manipulation alone, to produce crystalline or supercooled glycerol at will.
Sheldrake points out that, if his theory is true, a gene for a particular phenotypic trait would have an ability to produce that trait that was stronger the more that trait had thus far occurred in Nature. He goes on to say:
These expectations are in harmony with the facts. First, hybrids between well-established species or varieties usually combine features of both, or are of intermediate form. Second, in hybrids between a relatively recent variety and a long-established variety, the characters of the latter are usually more or less dominant. And third, recent mutations affecting morphological characters are nearly always recessive. (Sheldrake, p128)
[A proposed experiment: take a recent mutation A of a recent mutation B, breed huge numbers of whichever strain is recessive to the other, and see whether dominance is affected.] (Sheldrake, p130)
[A proposed experiment: take a recently developed plant strain, preferably self-pollinated, that is known to produce one phenotype in environment X and another in environment Y. Raise many plants in environment X and then raise a few (from stored seed) in environment Y and see whether the phenotype has changed.] (Sheldrake, pp132-133)
Sheldrake points to the development of a single cell into the adult organism as a phenomenon suggesting morphic resonance.
But the genetic program must involve something more than the chemical structure of DNA, because identical copies of DNA are passed on to all cells; if all cells were programmed identically, they could not develop differently. So what exactly is it? In response to this question, the idea can only disintegrate into vague suggestions about physico-chemical interactions somehow structured in time and sspace; the problem is merely re-stated. (Sheldrake, p20)
Within the same organism, different patterns of development take place while the DNA remains the same. Consider, for example, the arm and the leg of a man: both contain identical cell types (muscle cells, connective tissue cells, etc.) with identical proteins and identical DNA. So the differences between the arm and the leg cannot be ascribed to DNA _per se_; they must be ascribed to pattern-determining factors which act differently in the developing arm and leg. The precision of arrangement of the tissues -- for example the joining of tendons to the right parts of the bones -- shows that these pattern-determining factors must work with great precision. (Sheldrake, p38)
Sheldrake writes:
A number of testable predictions can be deduced from the hypothesis which differ strikingly from those of the conventional mechanistic theory. A single example will suffice: if an animal, say a rat, learns to carry out a new pattern of behavior, there will be a tendency for any subsequent similar rat (of the same breed, reared under similar conditions, etc.) to learn more quickly to carry out the same pattern of behavior. The larger the number of rats that learn to perform the task, the easier it should be for any subsequent similar rat to learn it. Thus, for instance, if thousands of rats were trained to perform a new task in a laboratory in London, similar rats should learn to carry out the same task more quickly in laboratories everywhere else. If the speed of learning of rats in another laboratory, say in New York, were to be measured before and after the rats in London were trained, the rats tested on the second occasion should learn more quickly than those tested on the first. The effect should take place in the absence of any known type of physical connection or communication between the two laboratories. Such a prediction may seem so improbable as to be absurd. Yet, remarkably enough, there is already evidence from laboratory studies of rats that the predicted effect actually occurs. (Sheldrake, 13f)
[A proposed experiment: take two genetically identical groups of rats. Train the experimental group, but not the control group, to make some standard response to a given stimulus. Test the descendants of both groups to see how fast they learn to make the given response to the given stimulus.] To summarize: an increased rate of learning in successive generations of both trained and untrained lines would support the hypothesis of formative causation; an increase only in trained lines, the Lamarckian theory; and an increase in neither, the orthodox theory. Experiments of this type have in fact already been performed. The results support the hypothesis of formative causation. The original experiment was started by W McDougall at Harvard in 1920, in the hope of providing a thorough test of the possibility of Lamarckian inheritance. The experimental animals were white rats, of the Wistar strain, which had been carefully inbred under laboratory conditions for many generations. Their task was to learn to escape from a specially constructed tank of water by swimming to one of two gangways which led out of the water. The "wrong" gangway was brightly illuminated, while the "right" gangway was not. If the rat left by the illuminated gangway, it received an electric shock. The two gangways were illuminated alternately, one on one occasion, the other on the next. The number of errors made by a rat before it learned to leave the tank by the non-illuminated gangway gave a measure of its rate of learning:
Some of the rats required as many as 330 immersions, involving approximately half that number of shocks, before they learned to avoid the bright gangway. The process of learning was in all cases one which suddenly reached a critical point. For a long time the animal would show clear evidence of aversion for the bright gangway, frequently hesitating before it, turning back from it, or taking it with a desperate rush; but, not having grasped the simple relation of constant correlation between bright light and shock, he would continue to take the bright route as often or nearly as often as the other. Then, at last, would come a point in his training at which he would, if he found himself facing the bright light, definitely and decisively turn about, seek the other passage, and quietly climb out by the dim gangway. After attaining this point, no animal made the error of again taking the bright gangway, or only in very rare instances. [W McDougall, An experiment for the testing of the hypothesis of Lamarck, _Brit J Psych_ 17 (1927) pp 267-304 (the above quote from p282)
In each generation, the rats from which the next generation were to be bred were selected at random _before_ their rate of learning was measured, although mating took place only after they were tested. This procedure was adopted to avoid any possibility of conscious or unconscious selection in favor of quicker-learning rats. This experiment was continued for 32 generations and took 15 years to complete. In accordance with the Lamarckian theory, there was a marked tendency for rats in successive generations to learn more quickly. This is indicated by the average number of errors made by rats in the first eight generations, which was over 56, compared with 41, 29, and 20 in the second, third, and fourth groups of eight generations respectively. [W McDougall, Fourth report on a Lamarckian experiment, _Brit J Psych_ 28 (1938) pp321-345] The difference was apparent not only in the quantitative results, but also in the actual behavior of the rats, which bcame more cautious and tentative in the later generations. [W McDougall, Second report on a Lamarckian experiment, _Brit J Psych_ 20 (1930) pp201-218] McDougall anticipated the criticism that in spite of his random selection of parents in each generation, some sort of selections in favor of quicker-learning rats could nevertheless have crept in. In order to test this possibility, he started a new experiment, with a different batch of rats, in which parents were indeed selected on the basis of their learning score. In one series, only quick learners were bred from each generation, and in the other series only slow learners. As expected, the progeny of the quick learners tended to learn relatively quickly, while the progeny of the slow learners learned relatively slowly. However, even in the latter series, the performance of the later generations improved very markedly, in spite of repeated selection in favor of slow learning. [A chart provided for rats bred from slow learners shows the average number of errors by the rats of each generation. For generations 1 through 9, all numbers are above 110. For generations 10 through 22 all are below 85.] These experiments were done carefully, and critics were unable to dismiss the results on grounds of flaws in technique. But they did draw attention to a weakness in the experimental design: McDougall had failed to test systematically the change in the rate of learning of rats whose parents had not been trained. One of these critics, FAE Crew, of Edinburgh, repeated McDougall's experiments with rats derived from the same inbred strain, using a tank of similar design. He included a parallel line of "untrained" rats, some of which were tested in each generation for their rate of learning, while others, who were not tested, served as parents of the next. Over the 18 generations of this experiment, Crew found no systematic rate of change in the rate of learning either in the trained or in the untrained line. [FAE Crew, A repetition of McDougall's Lamarckian experiment, _J Genetics_ 33 (1936) pp61-101] At first, this seemed to cast serious doubt on McDougall's findings. However, Crew's results were not directly comparable in three important respects. First, for some reason the rats found it much easier to learn the task in his experiment than in the earlier generations of McDougall's. So pronounced was this effect that a considerable number of rats in both trained and untrained lines "learned" the task immediately without receiving a single shock! The average scores of Crew's rats right from the beginning were similar to those of McDougall's after more than 30 generations of training. Neither Crew nor McDougall was able to provide a satisfactory explanation of this discrepancy. But, as McDougall pointed out, since the purpose of the investigation was to bring to light any effect of training on subsequent generations, an experiment in which some rats received no training at all and others received very little would not be qualified to demonstrate this effect. [McDougall (1938) _op. cit._] Second, Crew's results showed large and apparently random fluctuations from generation to generation, far larger than the fluctuations in McDougall's results, which could well have obscured any tendency to improve in the scores of later generations. Third, Crew adopted a policy of very intensive inbreeding, crossing only brothers with their sisters in each generation. He had not expected this to have adverse effects, since the rats came from an inbred stock to start with:
Yet the history of my stock reads like an experiment in inbreeding. There is a broad base of family lines and a narrow apex of two remaining lines. The reproductive rate falls and line after line becomes extinct. [Crew, _op. cit._ p75]
Even in the surviving lines, a considerable number of animals were born with such extreme abnormalities that they had to be discarded. The harmful effects of this severe inbreeding could well have masked any tendency for the rate of learning to improve. Altogether, these defects in Crew's experiment mean that the results can only be regarded as inconclusive; and in fact he himself was of the opinion that the question remained open. [N Tinbergen, _The Study of Instinct_, (OUP, 1951) p201] Fortunately, this is not the end of the story. The experiment was carried out again by WE Agar and his colleagues at Melbourne, using methods which did not suffer from the disadvantages of Crew's. Over a period of 20 years, they measured the rates of learning of trained and untrained lines for 50 successive generations. In agreement with McDougall, they found that there was a marked tendency for rats of the trained line to learn more quickly in subsequent generations. _But exactly the same tendency was also found in the untrained line._ [WE Agar, FH Drummond, OW Tiegs, and MM Gunson, Fourth (final) report on a test of McDougall's Lamarckian experiment on the training of rats. _J Exp Biol_ 31 (1954) pp 307-321] It might be wondered why McDougall did not also observe a similar effect in his own untrained lines. The answer is that he did. Although he tested control rats from the original untrained stock only occasionally, he noticed "the disturbing fact that the groups of controls derived from this stock in the years 1926, 1927, 1930, and 1932 show a diminution in the average number of errors from 1927 to 1932." He thought this result was probably fortuitous, but added:
It is just possible that the falling off in the average number of errors from 1927 to 1932 represents a real change of constitution of the whole stock, an improvement of it (with respect to this particular faculty) whose nature I am unable to suggest. [JB Rhine and W McDougall, Third report on a Lamarckian experiment, _Brit J Psych_ 24 (1933) 213-235]
With the publication of the final report by Agar's group in 1954 the prolonged controversy over "McDougall's Lamarckian Experiment" came to an end. The similar improvement in both trained and untrained lines ruled out a Lamarckian interpretation. McDougall's _conclusion_ was refuted, and that seemed to be the end of the matter. On the other hand, his _results_ were confirmed. These results seemed completely inexplicable; they made no sense in terms of any current ideas, and they were never followed up. But they make very good sense in the light of the hypothesis of formative causation. (Sheldrake, pp 185-190)
I here insert a skeptical comment of my own. The reader will notice that McDougall's third report is co-authored by JB Rhine. This name rang a bell, and I did some checking. McDougall was the founder and first director of the Parapsychology Center at Duke University, and Rhine was his assistant and successor. Parapsychology is the study of extra-sensory perception (ESP), under which heading are placed telepathy (perceiving the thoughts of another person), clairvoyance (perceiving a present physical situation by paranormal means), precognition (perceiving a future physical situation), and psychokinesis (influencing physical events by thought). In the late 1940's, Rhine wrote a book called THE REACH OF THE MIND, which defended the reality of ESP phenomena and recounted some of the experiments done at Duke and elsewhere. The book was popular and was abridged in READER'S DIGEST. Many researchers have complained that Rhine is incredibly sloppy about experimental controls, record-keeping, and the like (see Martin Gardner's FADS AND FALLACIES IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE). For example, he regularly tests subjects for telepathic ability by giving one of them a deck of 25 cards, each stamped with one of 5 different symbols. The "sender" looks at one card at a time, while the "receiver," seated on the other side of the room, tries to guess the symbol on the card. The receiver can see only the backs of the cards. However, until a visiting skeptic complained, Rhine was using cards so carelessly constructed that the symbols showed through and were visible in photographs of the backs of the cards. Rhine is in general reluctant to impose experimental conditions that involve precautions against cheating (unconscious or deliberate) by his subjects, explaining that such conditions make the subject uncomfortable, and that uncomfortable persons are less able to exercise their paranormal powers. On the basis of what I have read about their ESP research, I regard any experimental results reported by McDougall or Rhine as suspect, not because I suppose them guilty of conscious deceit, but because I suspect them of allowing their desires and expectations to affect their observations. Therefore, although I am still impressed by the rat learning experiments, I am only about half as impressed as I was before I learned who two of the experimenters were.
Sheldrake mentions some basic laws of physics and considers how they might be restated as instances of the principle of morphic resonance.
An extraordinarily interesting feature of the morphic resonance acting on a system with a persisting form is that this resonance will include a contribution from the past states of the system itself. In so far as a system resembles itself in the past more closely than it resembles any other past system, this self-resonance will be highly specific. It may in fact be of the most fundamental importance in maintaining the very identity of the system. ... The preferential resonance of a system with itself in the immediate past could conceivably help to account for its persistence not only in time, but also at a particular place. (Sheldrake, pp 113-114)
If the system "identifies" itself with a particular location and if its persistence at this location depends on morphic resonance with itself in the immediate past, its resistance to being moved from this location -- its _inertial mass_ -- should be related to the frequency with which this self-resonance occurs. For resonance depends on characteristic cycles of vibration; it cannot occur in an instant, because a cycle of vibration takes time. The higher the frequency of vibration, the more recent will be the past states with which self-resonance occurs; thus the greater will be the tendency of the system to be "tied" to its position in the immediate past. Conversely, the lower the frequency of vibration the less strong will be the tendency of the system to "identify" itself with itself at a particular location: it will be able to move further relative to other objects before it "notices" that it has done so. There is a remarkable resemblance between the relationship suggested above and the proportionality between the mass of a particle and the frequency of its matter wave given by the de Broglie equation:
m=hv/(cc)
where m is the mass of the particle, v the frequency of vibration, h is Planck's constant, and c the velocity of light. This relationship is fundamental to quantum mechanics and is amply supported by experimental evidence. (Sheldrake, p119)
Some laws of physics have the appearance of being inevitable, of being laws that would have to hold in any conceivable universe. Many laws, however, seem to be arbitrary. A theory that seems to be gaining adherents is that when the Big Bang occurred and material particles came into being, their behavior at first was random and lawless. However, when a few particles began (for no particular reason) to behave in a certain way, they established a precedent which the other particles of the same kind then proceeded to follow, and this established the physical laws that would thereafter describe the behavior of those particles. Please note that this notion is a long way from being proved or universally accepted. If it does come to be accepted, it will give Sheldrake's work a considerable boost.
It is Sheldrake's misfortune that, shortly before his first book was published, another writer published a book that (among other things) advanced a similar theory, based largely on evidence that turned out to be extremely shaky. We have already encountered writer and book (Lyall Watson, _Lifetide_), quoted above on the crystallization of glycerine. He also provides us with the following story:
The behavior of the Japanese monkey _Macaca fuscata_ has been studied intensely for more than thirty years in a number of wild colonies. [Imanishi, "Social behavior in Japanese monkeys", _Psychologia_ 1:47-54, 1957] One of these is isolated on the island of Koshima just off the east coast of Kyushu, and it was here in 1952 that man provided the monkeys with the right sort of evolutionary nudge. Provision stations were established at selected sites in the range of the troop. Normally young monkeys learn feeding habits from their mothers who teach them by example what to eat and how to deal with it, and in these macaques the behavior had grown to a complex tradition involving the buds, roots, leaves, shoots and bark of well over a hundred species of plants. So they approached the new artificial food supplies with a formidable array of behavioral predispositions, but nothing in their established repertoire enabled them to deal effectively with raw sweet potatoes covered with sand and grit. [M Kawai, "On the newly acquired behaviours of the natural troop of Japanese monkeys on Koshima Island", _Primates_ 4:113-115, 1963] Then an eighteen month old female, a sort of monkey genius called Imo, solved the problem by carrying the potatoes down to a stream and washing them before feeding. In monkey terms this is a cultural revolution comparable almost to the invention of the wheel. ... And, reversing the normal trend, it was the juvenile Imo who taught the trick to her mother. She also taught it to her playmates and they in turn spread the news to their mothers. Slowly, step by step, the new culture spread through the colony, with each new conversion taking place in full view of the observers who kept a constant watch right through all the daylight hours. By 1958, all the juveniles were washing dirty food, but the only adults over five years old to do so were the ones who learned by direct imitation from their children. [M Kawai, "Newly acquired precultural behaviour of the natural troop of Japanese monkeys on Koshima Island", _Primates_ 6:1-30, 1965] Then something extraordinary took place. The details up to this point in the study are clear, but one has to gather the rest of the story from personal anecdotes and bits of folklore amongst primate researchers, because most of them are still not quite sure what happened. And those who do suspect the truth are reluctant to publish it for fear of ridicule. So I am forced to improvise the details, but as near as I can tell, this is what seems to have happened. In the autumn of that year an unspecified number of monkeys on Koshima were washing sweet potatoes in the sea, because Imo had made the further discovery that salt water not only cleaned the food but gave it an interesting new flavor. Let us say, for argument's sake, that the number was ninety-nine, and that at eleven o'clock on a Tuesday morning, one further convert was added to the fold in the usual way. But the addition of the hundredth monkey apparently carried the number across some sort of threshold, pushing it through a kind of critical mass, because by that evening almost everyone in the colony 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 troop at Takasaki-yama. [S Kawamura, "The process of sub-cultural propagation among Japanese monkeys", in CH Southwick, _Primate Social Behaviour_ Van Nostrand, Princeton, 1963] The latest news from Japan is that Imo has by no means exhausted her powers, but has unleashed several additional cultural bombshells. Another of the foods provided at the stations is wheat, which the monkeys enjoy but find difficult to deal with once it has blown out of containers onto the sand. Imo was only three when she solved this dilemma by picking up mixed handfuls of sand and wheat and winnowing the grain by casting both into the sea. There the sand soon sank, leaving the wheat floating free on the surface where it could easily be scooped up and eaten. A Tsumori, "Newly acquired behaviour and social interaction of Japanese monkeys", in SA Altmann, ed., _Social Communication Among Primates_ U Chi Pr, Chicago, 1967] At the moment this subculture has spread only to Imo's immediate associates, but it will be fascinating to see what happens next. I personally wouldn't be surprised if, in her later years, Imo invented agriculture. Lyall Watson, _Lifetide_ pp 173-174
The conclusion drawn by Watson and others is that the mere fact that a large number of monkeys, say one hundred, had adopted a pattern of washing their potatoes created a kind of field of influence that disposed other monkeys of the same species, similarly situated, to conform to the same pattern, even if they had no opportunity to observe and imitate the behavior in the conventional sense. Watson calls this the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon, and if the reports of it were properly verified, it would constitute a striking confirmation of Sheldrake's hypothesis. However, we note that the facts are open to dispute. Watson, as he himself points out, is relying on rumor -- what he calls "personal anecdotes and bits of folklore among primate researchers" -- and cannot produce scientific witnesses who are prepared to report the phenomenon in the professional journals and sign the reports. Of course this is understandable. When you see something that is not supposed to be there, you keep quiet to protect your job and your reputation. But the fact remains that the evidence available to us comprises, not the reports of eyewitnesses, but Mr Watson's judgement after he has sifted the "folklore". That makes our judgement of his judgement crucial. And he is undoubtedly a man predisposed to believe the marvelous. He opens his book with an account of an interview with a five-year-old girl in Venice, who, when handed a tennis ball, handed it back inside out, with no break in the surface. This does not prove that his judgement is worthless. But I should be be more disposed to accept the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon if he were a hard-nosed skeptic.
Sheldrake may not have read Watson, but Ken Keyes, Jr. did. Keyes has written a book called THE HUNDREDTH MONKEY, (1982) which has gone into ten printings and sold more than a millions copies, and is devoted to persuading the reader that if each of us will make a point of thinking very hard that nuclear war simply must not be allowed to happen, the number of persons thinking this may reach a critical mass (like the hundred monkeys in Watson's book), at which point suddenly everyone in the world will realize that nuclear war must not be allowed to happen, and thus the danger of nuclear war will be completely avoided. The Keyes book has become part of the resource material for a special "peace education" course that is taught in a number of public schools. The course is discussed in an article in the (???) issue of COMMENTARY, and the story of the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon, comparing the accounts Watson relied on with Watson's account, and Watson's account with later accounts that were based solely on his account but went far beyond it, can be found on pages 174-186 of THE FRINGES OF REASON: A Whole Earth Catalog, ed. Ted Shultz, Harmony Books, a division of Crown Publishers, NY. 1989. (available by direct mail for $13.00 postpaid) The book just cited gives, as I said, a full account of what I can only call the growth of the legend, and leaves me pretty much convinced that the Monkey story has no factual basis whatever.
Now please note, everyone, that Sheldrake never mentions the monkeys, or Watson's book, and that it is most unfair to saddle him with the responsibility for it, or to use it as a tarbrush to discredit his work. It is as if someone were to try to discredit Darwin's work by connecting it with a book by some crank who claimed to have produced men in his laboratory by selective breeding of Rhesus monkeys.
Digression: THE FRINGES OF REASON is a book well worth reading in its own right, since it is vitally important that Christians should have a keen awareness of what is and what is not evidence, and should beware of passing on unsubstantiated rumor or speculation as fact when it appears to favor our cause. This is tactically dangerous, since it has a tendency to blow up in our faces and discredit the Faith. It is morally dangerous, since the God of Truth cannot be served by carelessness about the truth. In this connection, let me all your attention to a quarterly called THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (Box 229, Central Park Station, Buffalo, NY 14215; $22.50/year; Tel 716/834-3222), published by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. If the price is a bit steep for you, try your college library. According to its statement of policy, the Committee "does not reject claims on a priori grounds, antecedent to inquiry, but rather examines them objectively and carefully." In my judgement, they do not always stick to this excellent resolution, but in an imperfect world this is not surprising. As you might expect, they regard accounts (whether ancient or modern) of miracles in a Christian or other religious context as claims of the paranormal just as much as claims of UFO contacts. The reader will learn something about caution and sifting evidence.
Meanwhile, I repeat that it is improper to dismiss Sheldrake and his arguments out of hand because someone else has used bad arguments to draw a similar conclusion.
Suppose for the sake of argument that Sheldrake is in fact correct. Then we may state the doctrines of Original Sin and the Atonement as follows: The first humans to exist could have obeyed God or disobeyed him. In fact they chose to disobey him, and in so doing, set a precedent of disobedience for subsequent humans. Since precedent-following is a fundamental property of all things in this universe, subsequent humans had a strong tendency to follow this precedent and be disobedient as well. Their disobedience reinforced the morphogenenetic field, and as more and more humans were born and each, by morphic resonance, conformed to the existing pattern of behavior, said pattern bacame stronger and stronger until it was for all practical purposes irresistible, and there was no more chance of a man's being morally perfect than of a planet's defying the laws of gravity. At least, that would have been the case if God had not intervened. He took human nature upon him and lived on this earth as a morally perfect man, and by so doing established a new and different morphogenetic field. The result is that there are two fields, that generated originally by "Adam", and that generated by Christ. If you want to resonate to the second field rather than the first, then expose yourself to its influence as much as possible, by prayer, by the Sacraments, by deliberate moral effort. As you allow God in Christ to take over your life and to cause you to resonate to his frequency, you will help to reinforce that field and make it easier for others to conform to the pattern established by Christ. You will become an organ of Christ's body, a branch of Christ the True Vine, and the morphogenetic field that molds you into the image of Christ will be the Holy Spirit, who will become your supernatural life.
Now Sheldrake's thesis is advanced by him as a theory (or, if you prefer, a model or paradigm) in the natural sciences. How well it will succeed as a scientific explanation remains to be seen. If we accept it, it will give us good grounds for accepting the pattern theory of the Atonement. On the other hand, if we reject it, that does not entail rejecting the pattern theory of the Atonement, any more than rejecting Sanders's proposed synthesis of Christianity and Freudian theory entails rejecting the beau-geste (Abelardian) theory of the Atonement. CS Lewis's statement of the theory, as quoted above, does not assume Sheldrake's approach, and stands perfectly well on its own merits. Please go back a few pages and re-read it.