A short life of the author
Lyall Watson (12 April 1939 – 25 June 2008) was a South African biologist, anthropologist, and author who wrote about the natural world with a combination of scientific training, mystical openness, and literary elegance that made him one of the most widely read and most frequently criticised science writers of the late twentieth century. His subject was the border zone between the known and the unknown — the phenomena that orthodox science dismissed or ignored but that persisted stubbornly in human experience: plant sentience, animal intelligence, weather’s effects on behaviour, the biology of death, and the possibility that the natural world contained more mystery than reductionist science was willing to acknowledge.
Background
Watson was born in Johannesburg and grew up in close contact with the South African landscape and its wildlife. He studied botany and zoology at the University of Witwatersrand, earned a PhD in ethology (animal behaviour) under Desmond Morris at the London Zoo, and studied anthropology, palaeontology, and marine biology at various institutions. He was a genuine scientist — trained, credentialed, and fieldwork-experienced — which made his subsequent embrace of fringe and paranormal phenomena all the more provocative and all the more exasperating to his scientific colleagues.
Supernature (1973)
Watson’s first and most famous book argued that there exists a “supernature” — a layer of natural phenomena that is real, biologically based, and subject to investigation, but that falls outside the boundaries of conventional science. He discussed biological clocks, lunar cycles, plant responses to stimuli, dowsing, telepathy, psychokinesis, and a variety of other phenomena with a tone of open-minded inquiry that was enormously appealing to readers and infuriating to scientists.
Supernature sold millions of copies worldwide and established Watson as a major figure in the 1970s culture of expanded consciousness, alongside Carlos Castaneda, Fritjof Capra, and Gary Zukav. The book’s central claim — that science had been too narrow in its definition of the natural — resonated with a generation that distrusted authority and was hungry for alternatives to materialist reductionism.
The “Hundredth Monkey” Controversy
Watson is best known in scientific circles for a claim he made in Lifetide (1979): the story of the “hundredth monkey,” according to which a group of Japanese macaques on the island of Koshima learned to wash sweet potatoes in the sea, and when a critical number of monkeys had learned the behaviour, it spontaneously appeared in monkey populations on other islands — suggesting a mechanism of morphic resonance or collective consciousness.
The story was widely cited in New Age literature as evidence for Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic resonance theory and for the idea that consciousness can create sudden paradigm shifts. The problem is that Watson’s account does not accurately reflect the original Japanese primatological research, and he later acknowledged that he had “oversimplified” the data. The “hundredth monkey” has become a case study in how appealing narratives can overwhelm careful evidence.
Other Books
Gifts of Unknown Things (1976) is perhaps Watson’s finest book — an account of his time on a small Indonesian island where he encountered healing practices, psychic phenomena, and a relationship between humans and nature that defied Western categories. It reads as a kind of naturalist’s The Year of Living Dangerously.
The Romeo Error (1974) examines the biology of death and near-death experiences. Heaven’s Breath (1984) is a natural history of the wind — one of the most original and entertaining works of popular science writing. Dark Nature (1995) explores the biology of evil, arguing that cruelty and aggression are as natural as cooperation and altruism. Lightning Bird (1982) chronicles the search for a mythical African bird associated with lightning.
Elephantoms (2002), his last major book, is a meditation on elephants, memory, and absence — part natural history, part elegy — that is one of his most personal and moving works.
Critical Assessment
Watson is a genuinely controversial figure. His admirers — who are numerous — value his willingness to take seriously phenomena that mainstream science dismisses, his beautiful prose, and his deep knowledge of natural history. His critics — who are equally numerous — regard him as a talented writer who sacrificed scientific integrity for popularity, who blurred the line between observation and speculation, and whose most famous claims have not withstood scrutiny.
Both assessments contain truth. Watson’s best work — particularly Heaven’s Breath and Gifts of Unknown Things — is genuinely excellent popular natural history. His weakest work is credulous and sloppy with evidence. He remains a figure worth reading, provided the reader brings appropriate scepticism.
Collecting Watson
Supernature (1973, Hodder and Stoughton) in first edition is the primary collectible. Gifts of Unknown Things (1976) is sought by admirers. Watson’s books were published in numerous languages and editions. Signed copies are relatively scarce.
Bibliography
| Title | Year | Publisher | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil Watson's investigation of evil from a biological perspective — examining aggression, cruelty, deception, and parasitism across the natural world to ask whether evil has an evolutionary function — arguing that what we call evil in humans may be an exaggeration of strategies that are adaptive in other species, a provocative synthesis of ethology, psychology, and moral philosophy. | 1995 | Hodder & Stoughton | English |
| Gifts of Unknown Things Watson's account of his time on an Indonesian island — where he witnessed phenomena (a woman dancing in the rain without getting wet, children communicating at a distance) that his biological training could not explain — blending travel narrative with natural history and speculation about consciousness, in a book that reads like a scientific Castaneda without the evident fabrication. | 1976 | Hodder & Stoughton | English |
| Lifetide Watson's sequel to Supernature extends its investigation of anomalous biology into deeper territory — examining biological fields, morphic resonance, near-death experiences, and the possibility that life itself possesses properties not reducible to chemistry — introducing the controversial 'hundredth monkey' concept that would enter popular culture as shorthand for spontaneous collective evolution. | 1979 | Hodder & Stoughton | English |
| Supernature Watson's international bestseller explores the boundary between science and the paranormal — examining phenomena like plant consciousness, biorhythms, telepathy, and the hundredth monkey effect with the vocabulary of a trained biologist — a book that defined the 'New Science' movement of the 1970s by insisting that orthodox biology ignores phenomena that resist conventional explanation. | 1973 | Hodder & Stoughton | English |