University of Sussex
MSc Sustainable Development
D3SD12: Decolonising Knowledge
for
Sustainable Development [23/24]
Assessment 2 – Analytical Essay
Dowsing & Science
will the conflict prevail?
Credit: Hergé
26 February 2024
(2,212 words)
Candidate Number: 254201
Decolonising Knowledge for Sustainable Development [23/24] Analytical Essay
February 2024 Candidate Number: 254201
Dowsing & Science
will the conflict prevail?
“Instead of trying to conflate all non-Western knowledge into a category termed 'indigenous', and all
Western knowledge into another category, it may be more sensible to accept differences within these
categories and perhaps find similarities across them.”
(Agrawal, 2014)
“It is necessary for both modern technological measures and traditional techniques to exercise a
certain degree of hospitality towards each other”
(Esteva, 1996)
Introduction
With its origins lost in antiquity, the practice of dowsing, or divining, has survived for hundreds of years,
despite having been held in contempt by modern science, viewed with scorn by the general public, and
rejected as the devil’s work by the Catholic Church (Brown, 2010).
Dowsing is now widely practiced, although in a somewhat hidden way, in agriculture, infrastructure,
medical diagnosis and many other fields, by utility companies, police forces, medical practitioners,
mining companies and farmers. It was used by the US Marines in Vietnam to detect booby traps and
mines (Ibid).
Dowsing, taken here as a form of indigenous knowledge, stands in contrast to Modernity and
represents one of the worlds of the pluriverse, a ‘world in which many worlds fit’, each with its own
way of living and being, and with its own forms of knowledge, in opposition to Modernity (US, 2024),
the dominant worldview that emerged in Europe between the Renaissance and the end of the 18th
century, that considers modern science as the ‘only reliable truth’ (Kothari et al., 2019).
With a brief look at the history of dowsing, this essay situates the practice in the context of the
indigenous knowledge/modern science dichotomy and tries to answer the question of whether the
dichotomy between dowsing and modern science will be resolved, with the former finally being
accepted by the latter.
A brief history of dowsing
Whilst from the 13th century onwards, various observers have pointed to the Biblical episode of Moses
striking a rock with his staff to bring forth water as the earliest reference to dowsing (Dillinger, 2012),
the origins of dowsing are unknown. With various earlier ascriptions, from the Greek and Roman eras,
through medieval times, there have been several references to magical rods and staffs, but it was not
until the mid-16th century that reference was made to divining rods being used for finding things, and
the description of the divining rod in the mining textbook De Re Metallica (1556), by Georgius Agricola,
is widely accepted as the first published evidence (Hansen, 1982).
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Decolonising Knowledge for Sustainable Development [23/24] Analytical Essay
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As a folk magic practice used in the mines of central Europe of the 16 th century, early explanations
ranged from the demonological to the atomic. However, during this period, the effectiveness of the
divining rod was never resolved, and nor was the issue of whether dowsing was a purely technical
practice or if magic was involved. In 1700, German scientist Johann Zeidler, after examining all manner
of divining rods, concluded that the instrument was held in such a way as to magnify subtle muscle
movement in the diviner’s arms (Dillinger, 2012). After the 17th century, dowsing was marginalized by
scientific mining techniques, although the practice continued, mostly in relation to water divining and
“pseudo-medicinal diagnostics” (Ibid, p.1).
The early 20th century saw the flowering of dowsing in France by Catholic priests, including Abbé Alexis
Bouly, a water diviner who went on to dowse for unexploded ordinance after World War I and to found
the Society of Friends of Radiesthesia (WRF, n.d.) and who, along with Abbé Mermet and others,
pioneered the use of the pendulum and the art of medical dowsing (D0w5er, 2020).
The character Professor Calculus in the Tintin series is based, in part, on Belgian dowser Victor Mertens,
author of a book on dowsing published by Hergé’s Tintin publisher, who founded the Brussels Dowsing
Society and who famously used dowsing to search for the lost wedding ring of Hergé’s wife (Pegler,
2016).
Does it work? If so, how?
The common refrain that ‘it just works’ points to the fact that dowsers do not know how it works, only
that it works, and therefore they use it. Hansen (1982) studied the available research, including
parapsychological investigations and those related to the sensitivity of humans to electric, magnetic,
and electromagnetic fields, as well as experiments with finding hidden objects, and found the results
inconsistent and subject to varying degrees of experimental control and reporting, although certain
apparently positive, yet inconclusive, outcomes were observed.
Several explanations of dowsing have been proposed, of which Hansen (Ibid) suggested three. The
‘normal inference’ explanation posits that the dowser is responding to sensible cues in the
environment around her and moving the rod(s) accordingly. The ‘physical theory’ suggest that the
dowser responds to radiation, such as electro-magnetic radiation. Under the psychical explanation, she
uses some kind of extra sensory perception. In all three cases, she is unconsciously moving the
instrument. The physical theory would be supported by Dr. Zaboj V. Harvalik, a retired physics
professor and former U.S. Army adviser, later vice-president of the American Society of Dowsers, who
discovered that dowsers could detect radio frequencies (Ibid).
Some consider that if the instrument is moving due to the unconscious movement of the dowser,
rather than by some external force, then the practice is not valid and must be based on a
pseudoscientific technique that relies on some theory that has been debunked by modern scientific
enquiry. Linking dowsing directly to previously refuted hypotheses makes it easy for sceptics to treat
it as pseudoscience (Woolley, 2018). Others maintain that dowsing is a practice, rather than a belief
system, and is not necessarily based on some ‘supernatural belief’. “The practice generates the theory,
not the other way around” (Ibid, p. 24).
Ten out of 12 water utilities surveyed in the UK in 2017 initially admitted to using dowsing to detect
water pipes and leaks, with most disavowing or downplaying the practice when pressed further,
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indicating that some of their technicians might use the technique, even though the practice was not
sanctioned by the company (Sharman, 2017).
If dowsing does work, it’s workings surely have something to do with the interdependence of all beings
and things, as a reflection of “how the observed exists only in dependence of the observer” (Damdul,
2019, p.109), as posited by the science of quantum physics.
Instead of considering the possibility that it might just be unexplained, it is suggested that modern
science, at this stage of its development, is not mature enough to be able to embrace such phenomena.
Coloniality and dowsing in the pluriverse
One of the characteristics of the Western civilizational model is “knowledge systems based on
instrumental rationality, with its sharp separation between humans and nature (anthropocentrism)”
(Escobar, 2019, p.122).
At the same time that European Modernity was giving rise to the age of reason, and colonial
domination by European powers was being implemented around the world, this same Modernity was
dominating over pre-Christian religions and pre-modern ways of thinking and knowing in Europe itself
(Quijano, 2007). As for pre-Christian religions such as paganism, indigenous European knowledge,
including practices such as dowsing, suffered the “colonization of the imagination of the dominated”
(Ibid, p.169).
These “two types of science, State science and "nomad" science, coexist, the former always trying to
appropriate the contents of the latter” (Escobar, 1992, p. 44).
The uncomfortable relationship between the church, on the one hand, and European modernity and
rationality, on the other (Quijano, 2007) mirrored similar uncomfortable relationships between
dowsing and modern science, and between dowsing and the Church.
Some see dowsing as related to earth spirituality, a belief system that recognizes the consciousness
and sentience of nature, including non-human beings (Eisenstein, 2019), which is closely related to the
Gaia hypothesis, which holds that the planet is a complex, self-regulating system of interdependent
living entities, which ultimately makes it a conscious organism itself (Lovelock, 1979).
Earth spirituality, which contrasts with the modern scientific view of nature that sees non-human
animals and plants as lacking consciousness, and includes belief systems and practices such as animism,
wicca, and paganism, is “closely aligned with, and often consciously borrows from, ancient and
indigenous conceptions of Nature” (Eisenstein, 2019, p.158).
From this point of view, dowsing can be related also to balancing cosmic energy flows and Chinese
geomancy (feng shui), Taoist practices that were seen by Chinese Enlightenment thinkers of the early
20th century as “superstitious, pseudo-scientific, and selfish” (Yongjia, 2019, p. 116), but that were later
accepted by the Taoist elites who, at the beginning of the 21st century, began to promote harmonious
human-nature relations. The sensitivity to environment and nature developed and required by
dowsing brings humans closer to nature.
Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1958) can be applied to dowsing - the diviner has a tacit
knowledge of how the rod detects minerals or water, and is “activating a reservoir of unspoken
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knowledge, hunches, and intuition” (Dym, 2010, p. 199). Mining under the Freiberg Mining Academy
of the 18th century involved an “accumulation and combination of tacit knowledge and scholarly
insights” (Ibid, p. 847).
It is also necessary to consider the role of intuition in dowsing and indigenous knowledge although, as
for the dichotomy between indigenous knowledge and modern science, discussed later, the dichotomy
between creative thinking, or intuition, and reason is a false one, with “analytic, highly judgmental
aspects to generating creative results and imaginative, inventive aspects to logic and reasoning” (Bailin,
2020, p.19).
Based on an analysis of our knowledge of things and our knowledge of truths, both immediate and
derivative, including knowledge by acquaintance and by description, Russell (1998b, p.65) states that
“all our knowledge of truths depends upon our intuitive knowledge”.
The dichotomy between indigenous knowledge and modern science
While dowsing is taken here to be representative of indigenous European knowledge, the distinction
between modern scientific and local or indigenous knowledge can be problematic (Agrawal, 2014a).
One of the ways in which indigenous knowledge differs from modern scientific knowledge is in terms
of epistemology and methodology, with each investigating reality in a different way. Also, on
contextual grounds, modern scientific knowledge is more easily separated from its environment,
whereas indigenous knowledge such as dowsing is more closely tied to its environment (Ibid).
Given the overall similarities between indigenous knowledge and modern science, the differences
within each category, and the dynamic nature of knowledges within each category, as well as the
interrelatedness of knowledges between the two categories, the separation between indigenous
knowledge and modern science is somewhat artificial. Considering the evidence of communication,
exchange and learning between different knowledge systems “it is difficult to adhere to a view that
separates indigenous and scientific/Western knowledge” (Ibid, p.3).
Philosophers of science have failed historically in defining a meaningful differentiation between
science and non-science, or indigenous knowledge and modern science. Instead of trying to force all
of indigenous and modern knowledges each into their own distinct category, we should accept the
differences within and look for commonalities between the categories, considering rather “multiple
domains and types of knowledge, with differing logics and epistemologies” and moving away from the
“sterile dichotomy between indigenous and Western, or traditional and scientific knowledge” (Ibid,
p5).
Kohler-Rollefson rightly points out that the supposed dichotomy implies the absence of indigenous
knowledge in Western culture and of scientific knowledge in indigenous culture, and that indigenous
knowledge may appear mystical because it involves the use of sensory skills not required by academic
scientific study (Kohler-Rollefson in Agrawal, 2014b), which then degenerate or are lost completely,
and therefore calls for the merging of modern scientific with indigenous knowledge.
Other responses to Agrawal seem to support the idea that there is not clear distinction between
indigenous knowledge and modern science (Kate B. Showers, R.C. Serrano, Katrin van ‘t Hooft, Carmen
G. Hess, Bertus Havekort, in Agrawal, 2014b).
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The apparent dichotomy between indigenous knowledge and modern science can be resolved through
recourse to the Taoist theory of the two-forces, which holds that two fundamental forces, positive and
negative, yin and yang, alternatively combine and separate in a dynamic interplay, which indicates that
there is no black or white, only shades of grey (Needham and Golas, 1999). Night contains the seed of
the day, and vice versa. It is not either/or, but degrees of both, with the two ‘opposites’ not fixed, but
rather co-existing somewhere on a spectrum between two poles. Indigenous knowledge and modern
science should be seen on a yin/yang spectrum, with modern science characterized more by rationality
and explicit knowledge, and indigenous knowledge more by tacit knowledge and intuition.
With recent discoveries in various fields, including research that indicates that plants are capable of
‘associative learning’ (Gagliano et al., 2016), as well as studies in mycelial intelligence, animal
communications, and the information-carrying potential of water, the boundaries between modern
science and fields like earth spirituality and dowsing are breaking down (Eisenstein, 2019).
Conclusions
Considering indigenous knowledge and modern science, rationality and intuition, and even explicit and
tacit knowledge, from the Taoist point of view of yin and yang, rather than as polar opposites, reduces
the apparent dichotomies, bringing the binary poles closer together.
Instead of trying “to liberate the production of knowledge, reflection, and communication from the
pitfalls of European rationality/modernity” (Quijano, 2007, p177), it is suggested that this would be a
way of extricating ourselves “from the linkages between rationality/modernity and coloniality” (Ibid).
With continuing advances in modern science broadening its scope and forcing it to be more open-
minded, particularly in the areas of environmental and biological science, but also in relation to human
physiology and psychology, and considering that the practice of dowsing predates modern science and
has persisted to this day, it is likely that the gap between modern science and dowsing (and other
esoteric practices), will continue to close.
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