There is mounting evidence that as more and more people learn
or do something it becomes easier for others to learn or do it.
In one experiment, British biologist Rupert Sheldrake took three
short, similar Japanese rhymes -- one a meaningless jumble of
disconnected Japanese words, the second a newly-composed verse
and the third a traditional rhyme known by millions of Japanese.
Neither Sheldrake nor the English schoolchildren he got to memorize
these verses knew which was which, nor did they know any Japanese.
The most easily-learned rhyme turned out to be the one well-known
to Japanese. This and other
experiments led Sheldrake to postulate that there is a field
of habitual patterns that links all people, which influences and
is influenced by the habits of all people. This field contains
(among other things) the pattern of that Japanese rhyme. The more
people have a habit pattern -- whether of knowledge, perception
or behavior -- the stronger it is in the field, and the more easily
it replicates in a new person. In fact, it seems such fields exist
for other entities too -- for birds, plants, even crystals. Sheldrake
named these phenomena morphogenetic fields -- fields
which influence the pattern or form of things.
Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life (Tarcher,
1981) and The Presence of the Past (Times Books, 1988)