h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: THE HISTORY OF DOWSING - A881345
Author: St Romani Angel Guardian of Crystals. Minister of Coffee. Working too hard!! - U203633

I wrote this article after my pendulum dowsing article got accepted, I thought maybe a history of dowsing would be interesting to any one interested in the subject and I have done a lot of research into this article, but unfortunately due to work I wont be able to get online that often so please could you make any comments or advice to a minimum till I've had the chance to reply.
thankyou.

Maybe you should put in something about how it doesn't work for everyone? eg I can do it but my mum can't (someone mentioned something about the amount of water in your own body messing up the dowsing or something).

Looks interesting, Romani. I'll read it properly when I get back from work.

cyzaki thanks but this is merely an informative piece on the history of dowsing not how it works. I wrote another article last year which is now in the edited guide that you may like to look at explaining about dowsing here A893414

hi Z and thank you. its nice to see you still get on here

romi

Oh, okies

Ooh, are you gonna do one about dowsing with sticks? Cos that's the one I can do!

all forms of dowsing work on the same principle so i think to do a piece on dowsing with sticks would be like repeating myself as i think this piece and the previuos piece more or less deals with it all................but if you think ive missed anything out that you would like to see on dowsing with sticks which is better known as "water divining" your more than welcome to use some of the information in my articles to write your own if you wanted

romi

Nah - I don't know anything about it, I just tried it once and it was like magic! Really amazing and really weird - and I didn't believe in it at all before I tried it and actually tried to stop the sticks moving, but they still did their thing!

I have some problems with this Entry. I might as well put my cards on the table and state that I am a rationalist through and through, and any article which claims that a paranormal technique is effective needs to be justified. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

There are a number of highly questionable statements. The first that caught my eye was right at the beginning: "scientists have shown that the actual act of dowsing ....is an instinct within all humans and one that we have forgotten in the main how to use." Have they? I'm a scientist and I haven't read any evidence ever to suggest that dowsing is real. As it happens, scientists very rarely prove that something is true: they tend to prove that theories are false. Scientific ideas are characterised by being falsifiable. How can one falsify the notion that we have an hidden instinct inside of us that we have forgotten to use?

Another statement is: "Superstition and scholars tried to make science out of the country skill of dowsing...including the acquisition of expensive gold and silver divining rods etc, to ensure that success ensued.". This isn't science, believe me. This is the act of garnishing something to imbue it with an air of mysticism.

"The British Isles (These Sacred and Magickal Isles)": the word 'magic' as long as I have know it is never capitalised and never spelled with a K. It might be in certain circles, but it seems to be a buzz-phrase intended to establish the author's new-age credentials, and in so doing gives the impression that the entry's audience is rather restricted.

" like many other folklore activities including spellcasting and divination by stones etc, it worked". Spellcasting works? Is that a *fact*? Will you come over and charm away my plantar fasciitis and high blood pressure please?

"Thanks to the superstitious nonsense, perpetrated by the Christian Church, dying a death, many scientists made a study of the phenomenon and as such we have a bank of information today that gives us the information that we knew all the time - Dowsing Works" This is a bit rich, given the claims made in this article. Why should Christianity be more inherently supersitious than New Age or pagan rituals? Before you start accusing others of being superstitious, you'd better back up claims like this with hard evidence. References or even links to other websites would work.

I'm not saying that there isn't room in the Guide for an article on dowsing, but it needs to be a good deal more dispassionate and a lot less credulous. h2g2 is far from the best place to try and sell one's beliefs to others.

FM
Scout

I am aware that commercial companies employ dowsers for finding water courses and other physical features. If it didn't work, I wonder why they would bother.

There is certainly a place in the Guide for the subject. Dowsing exists. It has a history.

I'm not sure the comments are particularly helpful about this entry, FM. Perhaps you would like to be a little more specific about what you would like to see to improve the entry.

OK, you're a scientist, these days most scientists know a lot about a small field. Have you made a study of the subject.

No, I have made no study of dowsing, but I'm not taking issue so much with dowsing itself as the way it's portrayed in this entry, and the language employed to give it some credibility.

Read *this* article (http://www.csicop.org/si/9901/dowsing.html) and tell me whether you still feel happy about this entry.

FM firstly I would like to say in my view dowsing of any kind is not paranormal.

as for the various statements made in my article i would like to point out that a lot of them are actual snippets ive taken from the many books ive read on this particular subject.
I would also like to point out that not only have i spent many months reading all these books I have also included most of them in this article so that any person who wishes to do so could go get the books and read for themselves.

The Christian Church at one time believed that any thing they could'nt or did'nt understand was a form of witchcraft including the such as "herbal remedies" which we all take for granted nowadays, did you know that a lot of the supposed witches the Christian Church had burnt at the stake or drowned were just simple peasants using herbal remedies.
So it is in the same way that the Christian Church once viewed dowsing.

A lot of what is written in my article is history and I'm afraid there is not a lot I can do to change history. but unfortunately most of the history written is in books not on the net.

I would also like to assure you that I am in no way trying to sell dowsing as a belief or otherwise to any one, there is'nt that much information on the net about dowsing and what little there is seems to be anti-dowsing, so i thought my article would make a change and offer a different view on the subject.

romi

To give you a bit more depth to my perspective, there is an article on Feng Shui in the EG: A1038700. I *loathe* Feng Shui, but I actually recommended this article because it is (a) very well written and (b) describes the practice and the beliefs that go into it from a commendably objective standpoint. Its is factual in that in relates what Feng Shui beleivers themself believe.

On the other hand I simply don't think that your article is dispassionate enough because it presents *belief* as *fact*. It might surprise you to know that I've done dowsing twice in my life, and both times it *appeared* to work. On recollection, however, there was no real way of proving there and then whether this was the case. You also drag in some new age terminology, and make reference to the practice of 'Magick'. Not many people out there believe in magic, and with good reason, but its role here is presented almost as a 'fait accompli'.

I remember reading an appallingly stupid article once in the New Internationalist, which had decided to jump upon the moronic anti-science bandwagon that some British philistines in the arts had set going about ten years ago. The woman who wrote it justified her mystical views on the basis of reading about an experiment where people were shown some flatworms in a tank, and then were asked to try and use their mental powers to direct them. Lo and behold, the flatworms responded to their powers, therefore this woman concluded that paranormal powers existed, QED. What she *hadn't* grasped was that the experiment was obviously not being performed on flatworms but the observers, to estimate their capacity for self-delusion.

This is what I think is going on in dowsing. People can convince themselves of virtually anything, given enough time, but the link referred to in one of my previous postings analyses the evidence from the biggest trial forensically and shows there are very large holes in the evidence for it. By all means, write an article about the history of dowsing and the claims people have made for it. But *don't* claim that scientists have shown that it works, because they clearly haven't.

I can understand your view point after all you are a scientist, however I dont claim that scientists have shown this works that bit is a snippet that i took from one of the books I read on the subject, unfortunately because I read that many I cant remember which one that bit of information was from.

I must admit at the time when I read it I was most surprised mainly because I know how sceptical scientists are, or can be.

I have never tried dowsing for water with twigs or rods but I do use a crystal pendulum which is a form of dowsing, and I remember the first few times I tried this I was most sceptical and even more surprised with the results I got considering I did'nt think it would work.

If it makes you happy I can easily delete the "magick" bit that is no problem, after all that bit is also just a snippet from a book.

but please bear in mind most of what is written is indeed history on the subject and if it does get accepted for the guide it will get altered quite a lot before actually getting in there in the editorial stage.

romi

OK: I'll sit tight and see what you do with the material before commenting further.

"if it does get accepted for the guide it will get altered quite a lot before actually getting in there in the editorial stage."

The aim is that peer review gets the entries as polished as possible before they get picked for the edited guide, otherwise the subs have an awful lot of work to do. Therefore, once it's picked it *shouldn't* need to be altered quite a lot.

FM

cyzaki I remember with my last article once it got into the editorial stage it was out of my hands, and the finished result was a lot different to how i expected it to be but on the other hand I was still happy with it.

thats what I meant when I said it would get altered quite a lot.

romi

That's not how it should work. As a sub I try to alter entries as little as possible, and always ask if anything major is to be done. However with all the changes being made with italics etc, subs are having to make sure entries are really well polished before they finish with them, so to make as little work for the subs as possible we like the PR to polish up the entries too. So this entry shouldn't be changed too much in the editing process, as if it needs major changes they should be worked out here before it is picked.

cyzaki I did'nt mean the wording had been changed just the format.
the polishing up of the entry was done here on PR.

FM I've deleted the magickal isles bit and altered the first sentence about the scientist bit if you would like to take a look before I go offline and let me know what you think that would be appreciated

romi

I'm talking about the format too. Although GuideML needn't be used if the author isn't confident to use it, the basic format with headers etc should be there when it's picked.