English Deutsch Français Italiano Español Português 繁體中文 Bahasa Indonesia Tiếng Việt ภาษาไทย
All categories

How can someone with two copper wires can cause them to cross when over a well of water? (is that how they do it?)

2007-11-24 17:39:57 · 2 answers · asked by Be My Angel :] 4 in Science & Mathematics Other - Science

2 answers

Are you asking me to explain it using the scientific method, or using science as a body of knowledge?

Based on the body of knowledge which science has gradually accumulated over the centuries, we can speculate as to which explanations make more sense. Here are three possibilities I can think of:

#1 The "witch" possesses a supernatural power (ESP) which works on some level yet undiscovered by science.

#2 The "witch" uses subtle clues about the visible geography of the land to make educated guesses about underground aquifers, while putting on an act with copper wires just to impress gullible customers.

#3 The "witch" merely makes random guesses which sometimes succeed (in which case the "witch" takes the credit) and sometimes fail (in which case the "witch" shifts the blame).

Based on previous experiments and the knowledge we've gained from them, I'd say #2 or #3 are much much more likely than #1.

If you are asking can we construct an experiment to test which of these options might be true, the answer is yes, of course we can. For best results, you would need a double-blind experiment (that is, neither the customer nor the "witch" would know they were part of an experiment) and you would need a control group (ask some people who know nothing at all about "well witching" to guess, or perhaps just flip a coin, and see if the random guesses do better or worse than the educated guesses).

2007-11-24 18:29:44 · answer #1 · answered by dogwood_lock 5 · 0 0

The first answer is mostly good. Yes, science could evaluate the effectiveness of dowsing, if someone were willing to pay for it.

If a particular practitioner is effective, it is probably by applying all available techniques. They would know geology, aquifers, water tables, and so on. They would know the local terrain and would know details about lots and lots of wells, both successful ones and failures. They would maximize their sensitivity to any subconscious factors that might help. Perhaps there's an electromagnetic sensitivity. That is thought to be a significant factor in bird and bee navigation. They would work hard to train their intuition, so they could recognize patterns and predict water locations, even if they had no clue how they were doing it.

Even if no one knows how it works, that doesn't imply that it doesn't work.

2007-11-24 20:59:21 · answer #2 · answered by Frank N 7 · 0 0

fedest.com, questions and answers