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Tromp, who presents experimental evidence indicating that some individuals are sitive than others to changes in the strength and polarity of electrical fields associated with both natural and artificial objects. And the problem then becomes one of assessing the possibility that underground supplies of water may affect variations in electromagnetic fields to the extent that these changes in electrical field strength are registered in the dowser's muscles, stimulating them to contract, and thereby indicating the presence of underground water. The judgment of competent geologists is that it is impossible that changes in electromagnetic fields caused by the specific presence of underground water can be registered in specific ways in the muscular contractions of dowsers.

The question may also be raised as to whether the dowser is not merely a sound practical geologist who knows the ground water situation from experience in a given area, and that he is responding to certain surface outcroppings or other indications of underground water when his witching stick dips. . . .

It is true that many dowsers respond to certain cues in the environment while they are going through the dowsing process. For example, the dowser in Homestead, utilizes anthills, and piñon

trees with branches that hang down unusually far, as general guides to underground water. But our evidence indicates that these and have no specific connection are merely cues for the dowser with shallow underground water. Furthermore, the dowser makes no attempt to collect information other wells in the vicinity or to about the location and depth of utilize other types of empirical data in the location of new wells.

A second approach to the problem of the empirical validity of water witching is to examine the best evidence available as to the reliability of the dowsing technique. There have been two recent relevant scientific studies. In 1939 the New South Wales Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission issued a report containing full data on wells drilled by private companies, so that full statistical data are available. . . . According to their statistics, it does not seem to make much difference whether a well is dowsed or not.

Medical School at the University In 1948 P. A. Ongley, of the of Otago, published results of controlled experiments performed on 58 different New Zealand water dowsers. Not a single dowser the experiments, which consisted showed any reliability in any of of the following:

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1. Asking the dowser to locate an underground stream and then return to it with his eyes closed.

2. Having the dowser locate an underground stream and then later identify which pegs were on the stream and which were not-the experimenter having placed one half of a number of pegs over the underground stream designated by the dowser and the other half of the pegs off the stream.

3. Asking two or more dowsers to check one another on the location of underground water.

4. Asking the dowser to say whether a hidden bottle was full of water or empty.

5. Asking two or more dowsers to determine the depth of the water below the surface of the ground.

It is difficult to avoid the con

of water witching. It is a "superstitious" practice from the point of view of the educated observer, and the pattern has obviously been transmitted to the current generation of farmers from earlier generations. But does it persist merelv because farmers are lacking in education and are "magical minded"?

many of the most highly educated individuals. still resort to the practice when they have a well drilled.

clusion that water witching is not an empirically reliable method for locating underground supplies of water. It is plain that the witching stick dips in response to muscular contractions of the dowser that are due to some type of unconscious mental or psychic processes and not in response to the physical presence of underground water supplies. But the question remains as to why water witching continues to be practiced if it is not an empirical method for locating

water.

A few rural sociological writers have given some attention to (the) third theory in which such practices as water witching are viewed not merely as "supersititious survivals" but as ritual responses to situations of technological uncertainty in the contemporary scene. Carl Taylor, in his Rural Socio

There is certainly a grain of truth in the second explanation

logy, has made the following state

ment:

"The reliance of the old time

farmer upon the almanac was proverbial, and his belief in signs, although sometimes exaggerated, is by no means extinct. . . . The point we wish to make here is not that superstitions, signs, and charms have greater influence among rural than urban people (although this is probably the case), but that farming as an enterprise is influenced by the uncertainty of weather and seasons to such an extent that specious explanations of the causes and ef

fects of this uncertainty have become widespread among rural people."

There would appear to be a functional connection between technological uncertainty in locating wells in this arid environment with a complicated geological structure and the flourishing of the water-witching pattern.

Our conclusion is that water witching is a ritual pattern which fills the gap between sound rational-technological techniques for coping with the ground water problem and the type of control which rural American farmers fee! the need to achieve. The best. geological knowledge of ground water resources that is currently available still leaves an area of un

certainty in the task of predicting the exact depth of water at a given location in a region with a variable ground water table. The water-witching pattern provides a reassuring mode of response in this uncertain situation.

Thus, although water witching is to be regarded by the scientific observer as a nonempirical means for achieving empirical ends-and is functionally equivalent to the magical practices of nonliterate societies it is generally viewed as a rational technological procedure by its adherents in rural communities. The technique can, therefore, best be described as a type of "folk science" or "pseudo science" in the rural American cultural tradition . . .

Science With A Touch Of Magic

THE ARTICLE by Dr. Evon Z. Vogt originally occupied 12 pages of The Scientific Monthly, and with a specific bibliography of 29 items. Collecting the evidence from the "Homestead" community required a year's field work, and a more complete account of the test case is promised in a forthcoming monograph, "The Homesteader: A study of Values in a frontier Community." Thus Dr. Vogt can hardly be accused of hasty generaliza

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tions or careless conclusions; his article is faithful to the Scientific Method and the Laws of Logic.

But, somewhere along the way, we lose sight of water-witching entirely!

It almost appears that Dr. Vogt, in erecting arbitrary "boundary fences" to his field of inquiry, has drawn a circle that shuts out the core of his subject. Consider the following statement: "At the

outset we may rule out the various 'supernaturalistic' claims-as, for example, the claim that dowsers have some kind of mysterious power transmitted through the generations from Moses which enables them to find water. We may also eliminate the simple explanation of many dowsers to the effect that the water in the ground attracts and pulls the water in the freshly cut witching stick."

May this not be a risky purge of available evidence? Foolish is the man who thinks to reduce the art of a fine chef to a recipe in a cookbook-we may not accept wholesale the personal theories of the chef as to how he puts a "magic touch" on our soufflé, but we would hardly be justified in rejecting the human element entirely.

And how is it possible to tell whether or not one process is "functionally equivalent" to another, if we do not know the basic character, the rationale, of either? Dr. Vogt does not presume even to define a magical practice, and he is careful not to give any hardand-fast explanation of water-witching. Certain outer aspects of the two processes seem similarbut while crying and laughing both can bring tears to the eyes, we would scarcely say the two states of feeling are functionally equivalent, except in their most superficial characteristics.

There is good evidence, we think, for believing that water-witching is a magical practice, in the sense that it employs human faculties which the ordinary person in our day does not display. Yet who is not aware of the fact that every human being has an inherent power of divination, noticeable in intuitions, "hunches," and the random illuminations and perceptions that tell us more than our reason can? Wise men of all ages declared that man can be totally blind, and yet have the power of sight. If mechanical television enables us to see and hear at great distances, so may there be another kind of vision which uses a built-in human sounding board and a receiving center which will never be discovered by surgery.

Dr. Vogt's avowed purpose is to show water-witching as a folkritual pattern "functionally equivalent" to magical practices found among non-literate, and he mentions as examples a number of signs and superstitions preserved in rural areas. Curiously enough, on the other side of the globe, it has been found that certain ancient superstitions followed religiously by the non-literate farmers of India (with respect to the moon and planetary influences which affect the germination and growth of plants) are scientifically accurate, however strange to modern biologists may be the "science" involved.

Dr. Vogt's most definite statement on water-witching is: "It is

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plain that the witching stick dips in response to muscular contractions of the dowser that are due to some type of unconscious mental or psychic processes and not in response to the physical presence of underground water supplies." This suggests that the phenomenon of water-witching is properly a matter for psychologists-or at least for meta-physicists.

As Dr. Alfred Marshall Mayer told the Yale Scientific Club in 1872, the earth is a great magnet and "on any sudden agitation of the sun's surface the magnetism of the earth receives a profound disturbance in its equilibrium, causing fitful tremors in the magnets of our observatories, and producing those grand outbursts of the polar lights, whose lambent flames dance in rhythm to the quivering needle." The researches of Bart and Scweigger in the 19th century fairly well established the fact that the ancients were acquainted with the mutual attractions of iron and lodestone, the positive and negative properties of electricity, the reciprocal magnetic relations of the planetary orbs (which are all magnets), and that they used aerolites or "magnetic stones" in the temples as we now use the magnet. Some students of comparative philosophy, religion and science. concluded that Moses knew the laws of electricty-which might explain his "magic rod."

In 1932 a German dowser whose predictions were said to be over 90% accurate, claimed that his pulse went up to 140 beats when he used the rod. He held that one end of the rod was positive and the other negative. His conclusions were formed by comparing reactions with the rod first in the right, then in the left hand. Some German scientists believe that a successful "rod" operator has retained some primitive sense, like the homing instinct of birds-not shared by others. In any case, the actual success of the "divining rod" in some hands, is evidence-as yet unappreciated-of the psycho-physiological continuity of the human organism with the whole of nature. The human body in fact is a marvelous transformer of many forces in nature as yet largely unsuspected in science.

Far from being a collection of hazy speculations and illogical theories, Magic in olden time was the most highly respected branch of human knowledge. Michael Psellus, Byzantine philosopher of the 11th century, describes it briefly: "Magic formed the last part of the sacerdotal science. It investigated the nature, power, and quality of everything sublunary; of the elements and their parts, of animals, all various plants and their fruits, of stones and herbs. In short, it explored the essence and power of everything."

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