[meteorite-list] OT: Einstein on dowsing
From: Matthias Bärmann <majbaermann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:53:03 +0200 Message-ID: <5B40D7C2CC394D008223689AF0319A2E_at_thinkcentre> They cut the trees at new moon only, Martin, 'cause nothing can fall down from an invisible thing to get under a terranean saw. Best, Matthias ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Altmann" <altmann at meteorite-martin.de> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 12:36 AM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] OT: Einstein on dowsing Yes, cause we in Germany are sometimes more practically thinking, hehe. (That's why we never will have a meteorite law...). Folks, it's a little bit funny, when I follow that thread, I get the impression, that some think, that Einstein was once fallen from sky, as an inerrant saint. (Though I confess, that one of his achievement was ingenious - to find out, that standing up in the early morning prevents brilliant ideas). What do you expect? He like everyone else was a child of his times. He occupied himself with electro-magnetic fields, which was quite new then ect. Beginning on from such scurrile things like the mesmerists et al. fields, magnetismus, fluids, aether ect. was part of the pop culture. So why the heck, it's so unthinkable, that he once said, hmmm dowsing, sounds interesting? Look, dunno, Kepler - he spent a lot of his time awake, in making that old Islamic/medieval weather forecasts by astrology. And so what? With Kepler we're flying to the Moon, and despite he made his astrology and his weird conceptions of radiations of the planets, the satellites don't fall down on our heads. Gosh, at Einstein times, it was scientifical knowledge, that smoking is healthy or people sniffled pure ozone, because science told them, that this irritant would be so good for their constitution. And as we would be soooo enlighted today. Look, we believe for decades now in such cabalistic things like the body-mass-index. Tenth of thousands of studies, and each (only the older not) doc, tells you, uuuh if you over the norm value, your risk for stroke, for infarct, for diabetes and what the heck grows so strongly - shortly: youuu gonnaaa die!! Well others, took soberly all long-term studies they could get, and found out, statistically - ooopsie, those who have some fat on the ribs, are living on average somewhat longer. Those, who would be according all the so scientifically founded index somewhat to fat and who would have to die earlier. Or take the acupuncture. Some historians of science found out, that quite all that, which is the content of the official educational books, which an professional acupuncturist or a med, who wants to acquire that additional qualification, has to learn, was freely invented by a French charlatan. Funny thing, sometimes it works. So where is the problem with that dowsing. It's not necessary to have for all a mechanistic explanation - just one rule: Pay your dowser only in case of success :-) Look, other example. Here in Bavaria and also in Austria, the houses in da mountains traditionally were built of wood. So, till today you can ask anybody constructing with wood or anyone who runs a saw mill or any carpenter, they cut the trees only in a week of certain Moon phases. We enlighted minds smile about, we know, the Moon can't have an influence, gravitation we know, that effect you can forget, remains light, But in cloudy nights it's as dark as in the night of new moon. So. But they say, that wood we cut in the wrong two weeks, it doesn't dry so well or it takes so much longer until it's dry. And it gets later much faster brittle. Houses here have to brave a harsh climate, usually after 30-40 years, you have to exchange at least the face, but the old houses last 200 years or even much longer. Why the heck, should I believe, that all these people are stupid or superstitious? I don't know nothing about wood. They're doing that for hundreds of years. Why? Simply because it saves them a lot of money. Hence, I see no problem with that. A scientist would, before he even could think about an explanation, have to make some serial tests, to see what happens with da wood cut at any time. Nja and here we have a problem, no scientist would ever risk to burn his reputation in doing such studies, cause he would be laughed at by his fellows. My problem is more, if about such results, then a pseudo-scientific system is imposed on, ..in the end for the purpose to dip into the burse of the people - because then it starts to become criminal. Hence all that, what we see with that esotericism, "wellness" ect... (uuh in 2 weeks we can enjoy that bullsh.. on the Munich show again. Two years ago, hehehe, there were sold en masse egg whisks, cut open a the end, for putting on your head for stimulating your shakra...the "chi-stimulator". Honestly even in the darkest ages nobody would have bought such a rubbish). Simple example, coming back to the lumberjacks. Several years ago, there was suuuch a hype in Germany. A woman from Austria - she took the most primitive counting-out rhymes from medieval/islamic astrology, and wrote some books, a la Living with the Moon, the Moon calendar.. recommending at which Moon phases you have to clip your toe-nails, when you have to go to the dentist, or to the coiffeur, And sold it to the people as oooold secret knowledge of the even oooolder Tyrolian mountain farmers. And she made millions. Skol! Martin -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com [mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von JoshuaTreeMuseum Gesendet: Sonntag, 17. Oktober 2010 22:09 An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com Betreff: [meteorite-list] OT: Einstein on dowsing Rob, Your last statement is not true. It's very hard to find scientific studies involving anything even remotely connected to the "paranormal" (gasp!). Except in Russia serious scientists won't even consider studying such tomfoolery. There are a few studies, you have to dig deep to find them. Look into the German studies cited here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ADowsing Here's the abstract of the Betz study: WATER DOWSING IN ARID REGIONS: REPORT ON A TEN YEAR GERMAN GOVERNMENT PROJECT (1) >From the Journal of Scientific Exploration Stanford University Stanford, Ca. Stanford, Ca. USA , March 27, 1995 In an article published in the current issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Scientific Exploration, a science journal with the editorial offices at Stanford University, Professor Hans-Dieter Betz, a physicist at the University of Munich, presents the results of a German government sponsored program to test and apply dowsing methods to locate water sources in arid regions. This ten year project involved over 2000 drillings in Sri Lanka, Zaire, Kenya, Namibia, Yemen and other countries and is thus the most ambitious experiment with water dowsing ever carried out. While an adequate water supply is not a major problem in most industrialized nations, it is estimated that water pollution is responsible for some 80% of all diseases in Third World countries. Lack of high quality drinking water affects approximately two billion people on a worldwide scale and is a problem that is growing, according to the United Nations. The enormity of this problem led the German government to initiate a long range program via the GTZ(Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zussammenarbeit or German Association for Technical Cooperation) to explore innovative water detection methods in arid regions. Motivated by both the high cost and modest success rate of purely conventional hydrogeological methods, the GTZ project teamed geological experts, experienced dowsers and a scientific group led by Professor Betz to monitor and evaluate the results. The outcome was striking. An overall success rate of 96% (by dowsers) was achieved in 691 drillings in Sri Lanka. Based on geological experience in that area, a success rate of 30-50% would be expected from conventional techniques alone. But the overall success rate is not the only indication that the dowsing phenomenon is of considerable practical use. According to Betz, what is both puzzling but enormously useful, is that in hundreds of cases the dowsers were able to predict the depth of the water source and the yield of the well to within 10 to 20 percent. We carefully considered the statistics of these correlations, and they far exceeded lucky guesses. Numerous conventional explanations for the success of dowsing-located drill sites were carefully examined by Betz in a series of reports summarized in the article. Virtually all of the drill sites were in regions where the odds of finding water by random drilling were extremely low, thus eliminating the success by chance hypothesis. Another argument sometimes advanced is that dowsers get subtle clues from the landscape and geology, perhaps without even being consciously aware of their highly developed detective skills. This too was ruled out in various ways, the most impressive being the ability of dowsers to locate underground sources, often 100 feet down, whose streams are so narrow that misplacing the drill site by a few feet would yield a dry hole. Such precision is far beyond any know geological indicators. The scientists also carried out laboratory tests, placing water pipes underground or in a test room one story below where dowsing subjects were asked to walk around and find the artificial sources of flowing water. Such idealized tests were not successful enough to account for the real-life drilling results. This led Betz to hypothesize that it is not some unknown biological sensitivity to water that underlies the phenomenon. Betz conjectures that there may be subtle electromagnetic gradients resulting from the fissures and water flows creating changes in the electrical properties of rock and soil. The dowsers somehow sense these gradients in a hypersensitive state. Says Betz: I'm a scientist, and those are my best plausible scientific hypotheses at this point. But there are two things that I am certain of after ten years of field research. A combination of dowsing and modern hydrogeophysical techniques can be both more successful and far less expensive than we had thought. And we need to run a lot more tests, because we have established that dowsing works, but have no idea how or why. 1. The American Dowser, Fall 1995, Volume 35, No. 4 The American Society of Dowsers This work was published in The Journal of Scientific Exploration, / Stanford University - Unconventional Water Detection, by Hans-Dieter Betz, 1995. There are also some French studies supporting dowsing. ------------------------------------------------------------- As for as believing in things without supporting evidence, I don't know if you've read any of my posts here, but I'm the ONLY member of the List that doesn't believe in any form of life anywhere in the known Universe, not even a single cyanobacteria or virus, or anything living anywhere. Why? Because there is no evidence to support it. I'm very skeptical about the existence of black holes and exoplanets because of the thin evidence supporting them. They're very neat theoretical constructs, but actual things....I dunno. What I do believe are my own two eyes. I want you to hold two L-shaped rods over an iron meteorite and tell me what happens. It has nothing to do with belief, only simple observation. ------------------------------------------------------------- Phil Whitmer ------------------------------------------------------------- I firmly believe that Einstein recognized that there was nothing special about the material construction of the dowsing device, be it metal, forked sticks, pendulums, what-have-you. To suggest that ~only~ metallic dowsing rods work actually undermines a dowsing proponent's argument. *Any* device that magnifies the dowser's minute muscle twitches (whether voluntary or subconscious) will suffice. When people say they believe in dowsing, what they are really saying is that they believe in a human sixth sense -- for instance, the ability to detect minute fluctuations in electromagnetic fields. I think it would be very exciting if it could be conclusively shown that some individuals can repeatably demonstrate such an ability in a scientifically controlled and statistically valid experiment. That, to this day, no one has succeeded in doing so should at the very least raise an eyebrow in those who are so sure that dowsing really works. --Rob ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list Received on Sun 17 Oct 2010 06:53:03 PM PDT |
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