Posted by andyb on March 03, 2006 at 11:39:19 from 213.249.162.132 user beardbiter.
In Reply to: Re: History of Science (was Map dowsing) posted by John Nichols on March 03, 2006 at 06:02:50:
I think it is a common post-Enlightenment mistake to consider religion and science to be belief systems. A more accurate way of looking at them would be as communities of practice. It’s what you do, who you do it with and who it has an impact on is more important than what you believe. You can go to church and say your prayers without buying the ontological package.
Religion is more about experience and participation in community practices (rituals) than taking an ontological position.
Same in science. Science is what scientists do and other people quote (usually inaccurately) to back up their arguments. When John is calculating earthquake damage he doesn't bother too much about quantum mechanics. (Or maybe he does, I'm being presumptuous here but he doesn't have to). It's only when too many inconvenient facts pop up, or some smart-arse tells you your sums are all wrong or someone else doesn’t like the political implications or your work that the paradigm begins to shift.
In my view, strong empirical evidence for the effectiveness of map dowsing would demand more than a paradigm shift but an abandonment of pretty much all our understanding of cause and effect.
A map is a symbolic representation with no necessary physical connection with the place represented. How could map dowsing (MD) work? I can think of only three possibilities.
One would involve some sort of anomaly of quantum physics in which forces pop up at just the right time to excite the dowser. Now according to my (very limited) understanding of this theory it is considered possible that things could pop out of nowhere but I thought that this was because of the inherent improbability of everything, what we want for MD, however, is the Maximum Improbability Drive, for improbable events to appear with even more improbable regularity.
Possibility number two involves the map and rods unlocking some sort of hidden powers within the dowser. Ancestral memories? Perhaps one of Eve’s daughters stopped at the site for a brew on her way out of Africa. Or perhaps not? Maybe you would prefer shamanistic spirit journeys? Some part of the dowsers’ unconscious pops into a parallel spirit world, wanders over to the site represented by the map and has a look. Mmm nice work if you can get.
The third possibility would require some sort of non-human intelligence to read the symbols use its own powers/ senses /intelligence to divine the water and move the rods. Well I suppose a lot of people believe in such intelligences but this one would certainly be moving in a mysterious way.
Of course there are at least two other possibilities which we might consider. One is that the effect is a conjuring trick. Quite a few people seem to be able to do such tricks, some of them may even be people’s grandfathers. The there is our old friend confirmation bias, our tendency to remember the remarkable and forget the humdrum examples which might undermine the good stories.
Now I can’t explain exactly how a text gets from Oz to Kansas but I expect it something to do with radio-waves, relay stations and digital de-coders…