Dowsing

Recorded by alluding to radiation.

dowsing or dowsery is a pseudoscientific activity (that is, it is incompatible with current scientific knowledge), which is based on the assertion that electrical stimuli, electromagnetic, magnetism and radiation from an emitting body can be perceived and, sometimes, handled by a person by means of simple devices maintained in unstable suspension such as a pendulum, "L" rods, or a fork that supposedly they amplify the magnetoreception capacity of the human being.

Usually it is claimed that the use of dowsing would allow searching for water or oil with the help of a rod, whose movement is interpreted as a sign of the presence of said fluid. The movement of the wand is generally attributed to the ideomotor effect, which in a nutshell consists of a psychological interpretation of small involuntary movements of the user. Scientific evidence suggests that dowsing is no more effective than simple chance, which is why it is considered a pseudoscience.

History

Zahorí in action, illustration of the work of Pierre Le Brun, Critical History of Superstitious Practices, 1732.

Etymology

"Dowsing" is a neologism built from two terms: the Latin radium: 'radiation' and the Greek aesthesia: 'perception by the senses' or 'capacity to feel' (from aesthesis: 'perception').

The word "dobdomancy" It comes from the Greek rhabdos: 'rod' and manteia: 'divination'. This term was coined in 1785.

Dowsers

A dowser, sometimes called a dowser or dowser, is someone who claims to be able to detect changes in electromagnetism through the spontaneous movement of simple devices held by their hands, usually a wooden or metal rod in the shape of "Y" or "L" or a pendulum. Dowsers claim to be able to detect the existence of magnetic fluxes or ley lines, water currents, mineral veins, underground lakes, etc. at any depth and support the effectiveness of the technique for psychological reasons, and the movements of the instruments for the ideomotor effect.

Background

Dowsing in its traditional variant of searching for groundwater is a practice that has been carried out for at least 4,500 years. It has been widely practiced since ancient times, in the absence of geological knowledge or scientific instruments, although today It continues to be widely used in rural areas.

Attempts at explanation

The first attempts at a scientific explanation were based on the notion that the dowser's rods were physically affected by emanations of the substances of interest. For example, William Pryce in his 1778 Mineralogia Cornubiensis.

In 1986, the journal Nature included dowsing in a list of "effects that were presumed to be paranormal, but can be explained by science". Specifically, dowsing can be explained in terms of the dowser's sensory cues and prior knowledge, expectation effects, and probability.

Skeptics and some believers ^[who?] think that the instrument used by the dowser has no energy of its own, but amplifies small unconscious movements of the hands, effect known as ideomotor effect. This would make the rod an instrument of expression of knowledge or subconscious perception of the diviner.

Some authors^[who?] state that humans could be sensitive to small gradients in the Earth's magnetic field, although there is no evidence on this.

Dowsing as practiced today appears to have originated in Germany during the 15th century to find metals. Already in 1518 Martin Luther cited it as a violation of the first commandment, considering it an act of witchcraft in his work Decem praecepta . In the 1550 edition of Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia there is an engraving of a dowser with a Y-rod in some mining extractions. In 1556, Georgius Agricola made a detailed description of dowsing for the search for metals.

In 1662, the Jesuit Gaspar Schott claimed that the practice was superstitious, and even satanic, although he would later say that he was not sure that the devil was always the one waving the wand.

The use of sticks or branches for locating has been a popular element of folk belief in the early 19th century in New England. The first Mormon leaders, a religion that emerged at that time, participated in those beliefs. Thus, Oliver Cowdery, a scribe of the Book of Mormon and one of the twelve apostles of the Mormon Church, used a rod to practice divination.

The term dowsing appeared in English for the first time in the 1930s, coming from the French radiésthesie created around 1890 by Abbot Alexis Bouly who would found the Society of Friends of Dowsing.

Practice

Technique

Vara in the form of And.

The practitioner of dowsing uses a vegetable or metallic rod or a pendulum, which apparently serves as a stimulus to perceive the indicated place. However, some dowsers use other types of equipment, or do not use any.

Those who make use of the tree fork, preferably common hazel or willow, hold it with both hands and in a certain position (see illustration) while the subject walks the terrain to be explored, until his movement indicates the presence sought.

Uses

Dowsing practiced with a pendulum is an alternative medicine technique that aims to serve for diagnosis and is closely related to the fields described by acupuncture. A known use of dowsing, perhaps the one with the longest tradition, is that carried out by the so-called dowsers, who claim to be able to find the most favorable sites for digging wells, where the water table is more accessible, through these techniques.

The purported uses of dowsing are many. With it you try:

• diagnose diseases,
• exact measures,
• find water,
• find minerals,
• inventing natural resources,
• predict current or future states of living matter,
• find lost objects,
• locate energy radiation points,
• find people, etc.
• guess numbers and combinations.

Checking

Controlled experiments have never confirmed the claimed effects because their results are not beyond chance.

Studies: a 1948 study evaluating the ability of 58 dowsers to detect water, A review of several controlled studies in 1979, Christopher Bird in 1979 under the title The divine hand and James Randi, in the book Flim-Flam!, all of them proving the effect in one way or another as a fraud.

A 1987 and 1988 study in Munich by Hans-Dieter Betz and others concluded that most dowsers did not perform well. Despite this, the authors, performing an unconventional statistical analysis and selecting only the 10 best results out of 803, stated that some dowsers were able to obtain good results. A more rigorous analysis of the data by J.T. Enright shows that the results are indistinguishable from a random selection.

More recently a study in Kassel (Germany) under the direction of the Gesellschaft zur Wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) [Society for the Scientific Research of Parasciences] and Richard Dawkins conducted a controlled and filmed experiment with various dowsers, without that none of them achieved positive results.