Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or , gemstones, Petroleum, claimed radiations (radiesthesia),[As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in Germany alone can generate a conservatively-estimated annual revenue of more than 100 million DM (US$50 million)". GWUP-Psi-Tests 2004: Keine Million Dollar für PSI-Fähigkeiten (in German) and English version .] gravesites,
A Y-shaped twig or rod, or two L-shaped ones, called dowsing rods or divining rods are normally used, and the motion of these are said to reveal the location of the target material. The motion of such dowsing devices is generally attributed to random movement, or to the ideomotor phenomenon,[Zusne, Leonard; Jones, Warren H. (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. pp. 105–110. ][Novella, Steve; Deangelis, Perry. (2002). Dowsing. In Michael Shermer. The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience. ABC-CLIO. pp. 93–94. "Despite widespread belief, careful investigation has demonstrated that the technique of dowsing simply does not work. No researcher has been able to prove under controlled conditions that dowsing has any genuine divining power... A more likely explanation for the movement of a dowser's focus is the ideomotor effect, which entails involuntary and unconscious motor behavior."][Lawson, T. J; Crane, L. L. (2014). Dowsing Rods Designed to Sharpen Critical Thinking and Understanding of Ideomotor Action. Teaching of Psychology 41 (1): 52–56.] a psychological response where a subject makes motions unconsciously.
The scientific evidence shows that dowsing is no more effective than random chance.[ via ][Brian Regal. (2009). Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press. pp. 55–57. ] It is therefore regarded as a pseudoscience.
History
Early divination and religion
Dowsing originated in ancient times, when it was treated as a form of
divination. The
Catholic Church, however, banned the practice completely.
[Inglis (1986) pp. 246–247.]
Reformer Martin Luther perpetuated the Catholic ban, in 1518 listing divining for metals as an act that broke the first commandment (i.e., as occultism).[ Decem praecepta Wittenbergensi populo praedicta, Martin Luther]
Old texts about searching for water do not mention using the divining twig, and the first account of this practice was in 1568.
In 1662, divining with rods was declared to be "Superstition, or rather " by a Jesuit, Gaspar Schott, though he later noted that he was not sure that the devil was always responsible for the movement of the rod.[Michel Eugène Chevreul, De La Baguette Divinatoire du pendule dit explorateur at des table tournants au point de vue de l'histoire, de la critique, and de la méthode expérimentale, Paris, 1854. " Le père Gaspard Schott (jés.) considère l'usage de la baguette comme superstitieux ou plutôt diabolique, mais des renseignements qui lui furent donnés plus tard par des hommes qu'il considérait comme religieux et probe, lui firent dire dans une notation à ce passage, qu'il ne voudrait pas assurer que le demon fait toujours tourner la baguette." ( Physica Curiosa, 1662, lib. XII, cap. IV, pag. 1527). See facsimile on Google Books] In southern France in the 17th century, it was used to track criminals and heresy. Its abuse led to a decree of the inquisition in 1701, forbidding its employment for purposes of justice.
An epigram by Samuel Sheppard, from Epigrams theological, philosophical, and romantick (1651) runs thus:
Modern dowsing
Dowsing practices used in an attempt to locate
are still performed much like they were during the 16th century.
The 1550 edition of Sebastian Münster's
Cosmographia contains a
woodcut of a dowser with forked rod in hand walking over a cutaway image of a mining operation. The rod is labeled in Latin and German; "Virgula Divina
– Glück-Rüt" ('Rod Divine, Luck-Rod'), but there is no text accompanying the woodcut. By 1556, Georgius Agricola's treatment of mining and
smelting of
ore,
De Re Metallica, included a detailed description of dowsing for metal ore.
[William Barrett and Theodore Besterman. The Divining Rod: An Experimental and Psychological Investigation. (1926) Kessinger Publishing, 2004: p. 7]
In the 16th century, German deep mining technology was in enormous demand all over Europe. German miners were licensed to live and work in England;
The Middle Low German name for a forked stick (Y-rod) was Schlag-Ruthe
In the lead-mining area of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England in the 17th century the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, inspired by the writings of Agricola, watched a practitioner try to find "latent veins of metals". Boyle saw the hazel divining rod (virgula divinatoria) stoop in the hands of the diviner, who protested that he was not applying any force to the twig; Boyle accepted the man's genuine belief but himself remained unconvinced.
Dowsing was conducted in South Dakota in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to help homesteaders, farmers and ranchers locate water wells on their property.[Grace Fairchild and Walker D. Wyman, Frontier Woman: The Life of a Woman Homesteader on the Dakota Frontier (River Falls: University of Wisconsin-River Falls Press, 1972), 50; Robert Amerson, From the Hidewood: Memories of a Dakota Neighborhood (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1996), 290–298.]
The military have occasionally resorted to dowsing techniques. In the First World War Gallipoli campaign, sapper Stephen Kelly, of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, Australian Expeditionary Force, became well known for finding water for the British troops.[Inglis (1986), p.248] In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, some United States Marines used dowsing when locating weapons and tunnels.[FIX ME (could not access entire article) ] As late as in 1986, when 31 soldiers were taken by an avalanche during an operation in the NATO drill Anchor Express in Vassdalen, Norway, the Norwegian army attempted to locate soldiers buried in the avalanche using dowsing as a search method.
Dowsing is still used by some farmers and water engineers in Britain; however, many of the country's utilities have distanced themselves from the practice.[ California Farmers Hire Dowsers to Find Water , ABC news][ Scientist finds UK water companies use 'magic' to find leaks , BBC Oxford, 21 November 2017. (retrieved 21 November 2017)][Matthew Weaver, UK water firms admit using divining rods to find leaks and pipes , The Guardian, 21 November 2017.][Camila Domonoske, U.K. Water Companies Sometimes Use Dowsing Rods To Find Pipes , The Two-Way, NPR, 21 November 2017.]
Postulated mechanisms
Early attempts at an explanation of dowsing were based on the notion that the divining rod was physically affected by emanations from substances of interest. The following explanation is from
William Pryce's 1778
Mineralogia Cornubiensis:
A study towards the end of the 19th century concluded that the phenomenon was attributed to cryptesthesia, where the practitioner makes unconscious observations of the terrain and involuntarily influences the movement of the rod.[Inglis (1986), pp.254-5.]
Committed Parapsychology G. N. M. Tyrrell also believed that the action of the rod was caused by involuntary muscular movements and debunked the theory of external influences.[Tyrrell, G. N. M. (1938). Science and Psychical Phenomena, Methuen, London.]
Dowsing over maps, prior to visiting the site, was also believed to work, hence some kind of clairvoyance was proposed. This was believed to act on the nervous system, rather than on the muscles directly. These various mechanisms remain in contention among dowsers.
Fraudulent security devices
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a number of dowsing-like devices were marketed for modern police and military use, primarily as explosive detectors, such as the ADE 651,
Sniffex, and the GT200.
[ Double-Blind Field Evaluation of the MOLE Programmable Detection System, Sandia National Laboratories ] In consequence of these frauds, in 1999 the United States National Institute of Justice issued advice against buying equipment based on dowsing.
Equipment
The device used by a dowser is typically referred to as a dowsing or divining rod, even though it may not be rod-shaped.
Dowsing twig
Traditionally, the most common method used is the dowsing twig, a forked (Y-shaped) branch from a tree or bush. Some dowsers prefer branches from particular trees, and some prefer the branches to be freshly cut.
Hazel twigs in Europe and
witch-hazel in the United States are traditionally commonly chosen, as are branches from
willow or
Peach. The two ends on the forked side are held one in each hand with the third (the stem of the Y) pointing straight ahead. The dowser then walks slowly over the places where the target (for example, minerals or water) may be, and the dowsing rod is expected to dip, incline or twitch when a discovery is made.
[Inglis (1986)] This method is sometimes known as "willow witching." Some dowsers would hang a golden ring on the edge of the dowsing rod, or split the tip to slide in a silver coin.
Pair of rods
Many modern dowsers use a pair of L-shaped metal rods. One rod is held in each hand, with the short arm of the L held upright, and the long arm pointing forward. The upright arm is often free to rotate inside a tube. When something is "found," the rods move in synchrony. Depending on the dowser, they may cross over or swing apart.
If the object is long and straight, such as a water pipe, the rods may point in opposite directions, showing its orientation. The rods may be fashioned from wire coat hangers or wire flags used for locating utilities. Glass or plastic rods have also been accepted. Straight rods are also sometimes used for the same purposes, and were common in early 19th century
New England.
Pendulum
A
pendulum weight on a short cord or thread is the tool of choice for many modern dowsers.
[Inglis (1986), pp. 245–246] The dowser holds the cord in one hand and allows the pendulum to swing freely. The dowser then observes how the pendulum is swinging and interprets the motion to offer insights.
[William Bown; " Science: The physics of a dowsing pendulum ", New Scientist, 6 October 1990.]
Studies
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Dowsing studies from the early twentieth century were examined by geologist John Walter Gregory in a report for the Smithsonian Institution. Gregory concluded that the results were a matter of chance or explained by observations from ground surface clues.
[Gregory, J. W. (1928). Water Divining. Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. United States Government Printing Office. pp. 325–348.][Mill, Hugh Robert. (1927) Belief and Evidence in Water Divining. Nature 120: 882–884.]
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Geologist W. A. MacFadyen tested three dowsers during 1943–1944 in Algeria. The results were entirely negative.
[MacFadyen, W. A. (1946). Some Water Divining in Algeria. Nature 157: 304–305.]
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A 1948 study in New Zealand by P. A. Ongley tested 75 dowsers' ability to detect water. None of them was more reliable than chance. According to Ongley "not one showed the slightest accuracy."
[ via ]
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Archaeometrist Martin Aitken tested British dowser P. A. Raine in 1959. Raine failed to dowse the location of a buried kiln that had been identified by a magnetometer.
[Aitken, M. J. (1959). Test for Correlation Between Dowsing Response and Magnetic Disturbance. Archaeometry 2: 58–59.][Kenneth Feder. (2010). Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to Walam Olum. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 93. ]
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In 1971, dowsing experiments were organized by British engineer R. A. Foulkes on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. The results were "no more reliable than a series of guesses".
[Foulkes, R. A. (1971). Dowsing Experiments. Nature 229: 163–168.]
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John Taylor and Eduardo Balanovski reported in 1978 a series of experiments they conducted that searched for unusual electromagnetic fields emitted by dowsing subjects; they did not detect any.
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A 1979 review by Evon Z. Vogt and Ray Hyman examined many controlled studies of dowsing for water, and found that none of them showed better than chance results.
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British academics Richard N. Bailey, Eric Cambridge, and H. Denis Briggs, carried out dowsing experiments at the grounds of various churches. They reported successful results in their book Dowsing and Church Archaeology (1988).
[Leusen, Martijn Van. (1998). Dowsing and Archaeology. Archaeological Prospection 5: 123–138.] Their experiments were critically examined by Archaeology Martijn Van Leusen who suggested they were badly designed and the authors had redefined the test parameters on what was classified as a "hit" or "miss" to obtain positive results.
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A 2006 study of grave dowsing in Iowa reviewed 14 published studies and determined that none of them correctly predicted the location of human burials, and simple scientific experiments demonstrated that the fundamental principles commonly used to explain grave dowsing were incorrect.
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A randomized double-blind trial in 2012 was carried out to determine whether Homeopathy were able to distinguish between Bryonia and placebo by use of a dowsing method. The results were negative.
[McCarney R, Fisher P, Spink F, Flint G, van Haselen R. (2002). Can homeopaths detect homeopathic medicines by dowsing? A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial . Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 95: 189–191.]
Kassel 1991 study
A 1990 double-blind study
[ GWUP-Psi-Tests 2004: Keine Million Dollar für PSI-Fähigkeiten (in German) and English version .] was undertaken in
Kassel, Germany, under the direction of the
Gesellschaft zur Wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences).
James Randi offered a US$10,000 prize to any successful dowser. The three-day test of some thirty dowsers involved plastic pipes through which water flow could be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried under a level field, the position of each marked on the surface with a colored strip. The dowsers had to tell whether water was running through each pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100% success rate. However, the results were no better than chance, and no one was awarded the prize.
Betz 1990 study
In a 1987–88 study in
Munich by
Hans-Dieter Betz and other scientists, 500 dowsers were initially tested for their skill, and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them for further tests. Water was pumped through a pipe on the ground floor of a two-story barn. Before each test, the pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor, each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years, the dowsers performed 843 such tests and, of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates, at least 37 showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that some dowsers "in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance … a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."
[Wagner, H., H.-D. Betz, and H. L. König, 1990. Schlußbericht 01 KB8602, Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie. As quoted by Jim T. Enright in the Skeptical Inquirer.]
Five years after the Munich study was published, Jim T. Enright, a professor of physiology who emphasized correct data analysis procedure, contended that the study's results are merely consistent with statistical fluctuations and not significant. He believed the experiments provided "the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what they claim",
Scientific reception
Ideomotor phenomenon
Science writers such as William Benjamin Carpenter (1877),
Millais Culpin (1920), and
Martin Gardner (1957) accept the view of some dowsers
that the movement of dowsing rods is the result of unconscious muscular action.
[Carpenter, William Benjamin. (1877). Mesmerism, Spiritualism, &c. Historically & Scientifically Considered. New York: D. Appleton and Company. pp. 47–53][Millais Culpin. (1920). Spiritualism and the New Psychology: An Explanation of Spiritualist Phenomena and Beliefs in Terms of Modern Knowledge. London: Edward Arnold. pp. 34–43][Martin Gardner. (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Dover Publications. pp. 101–115. ] This view is widely accepted amongst the scientific community.
[Ray Hyman. (2003). "How People Are Fooled by Ideomotor Action" . Quackwatch.][Chris French. (2013). "The unseen force that drives Ouija Boards and fake bomb detectors" . The Guardian.] The dowsing apparatus is known to amplify slight movements of the hands caused by a phenomenon known as the ideomotor response: people's subconscious minds may influence their bodies without consciously deciding to take action. This would make the dowsing rod susceptible to the dowsers' subconscious knowledge or perception; and also to confirmation bias.
[Hyman, R; Vogt, E. Z. (1968). Psychologists examine the secrets of water witching. Science Digest 63 (1): 39–45.][Terence Hines. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. pp. 418–421. ][Ray Hyman. (2007). Ouija, Dowsing, and Other Selections of Ideomotor Action. In. S. Della Sala. Tall Tales About the Mind & Brain: Separating Fact From Fiction. Oxford University Press. pp. 411–424][ "Dowsing (a.k.a. water witching)" . The Skeptic's Dictionary.]
Pseudoscience
Dowsing is in all other respects considered to be a
pseudoscience.
[Brian Regal. (2009). Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia. Greenwood. pp. 56–57. ][Pigliucci, Massimo; Maarten Boudry. (2013). Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University Of Chicago Press p. 38. ][Benjamin Radford. (2013). "Dowsing: The Pseudoscience of Water Witching". Live Science.]
Psychologist David Marks in a 1986 article in Nature included dowsing in a list of "effects which until recently were claimed to be paranormal but which can now be explained from within orthodox science."
Science writer Peter Daempfle has noted that when dowsing is subjected to scientific testing, it fails. Daempfle has written that although some dowsers claim success, this can be attributed to the underground water table being distributed relatively uniformly in certain areas.[Peter Daempfle. (2013). Good Science, Bad Science, Pseudoscience, and Just Plain Bunk: How to Tell the Difference. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 115. ]
According to archaeologist Kenneth Feder, "the vast majority of archaeologists don't use dowsing, because they don't believe it works."
Psychologist Chris French has noted that "dowsing does not work when it is tested under properly controlled conditions that rule out the use of other cues to indicate target location."
Water dowsers often achieve good results because random chance has a high probability of finding water in favorable terrain.
Notable dowsers
Notable dowsers include:
See also
Bibliography
Further reading
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Agicula, Georgius. (1556) De Re Metallica eng. On the Nature of Metals Modern Edition
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Barrett, Linda K. and Evon Z. Vogt, "The Urban American Dowser", The Journal of American Folklore 325 (1969), S. 195–213.
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Barrett, William and Theodore Besterman. (1926). The Divining Rod: An Experimental and Psychological Investigation. Kessinger Publishing Reprint Edition, 2004.
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Bell, A.H., Practical Dowsing. (1965) pub. G.Bell and Sons Ltd. London
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Christopher Bird. (1979). The Divining Hand. New York: Dutton.
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Child, Sydney T., Water Finding and the Divining Rod. (1902) Ipswich pub. East Anglia Daily Times
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Ellis, Arthur Jackson. (1917). The Divining Rod: A History of Water Witching. Washington: Government Printing Office.
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France, Henry de. (1930). The Modern Dowser pub. G.Bell and Sons Ltd. London
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Gregory, John Walter. (1928). Water Divining. Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. United States Government Printing Office.
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Latimer, Charles. (1876) The Divining Rod: Virgula Divina – Baculus Divinatorius (Water-Witching) Modern Edition (2017)
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James Randi. (1982). Flim-Flam!. Prometheus Books. Devotes 19 pages to double-blind tests in Italy which yielded results no better than chance.
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Maby, J. Cecil and Franklin, T. Bedford. The Physics of the Divining Rod. (1939) G.Bell & Sons Ltd., London
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Plattes, Gabriel. (1639), A Discovery of Subterraneal Treasure.... Modern Edition (2010)
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Shenefelt, Philip D., "Ideomotor Signaling: From Divining Spiritual Messages to Discerning Subconscious Answers during Hypnosis and Hypnoanalysis, a Historical Perspective", American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Vol. 53, No. 3, (January 2011), pp. 157–167.
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Karl Spiesberger, Reveal the Power of the Pendulum.
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Trinder, W.H., Dowsing, (1939) pub. British Society of Dowsers
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Ralph Whitlock. (1982). Water divining and other dowsing: a practical guide. Newton Abbot: David & Charles
External links
