The Chronicles of the Angry Geologist

I was on my way home from work today, driving the same way I always do. It was a bit later in the evening, thanks to some last-minute changes on a project, so traffic was a bit heavier and the volume of kids in the playground en route was lighter. I admit that I was on autopilot, staring out the passenger side of the windshield at the soccer field on the hill and thinking about impermeable clay, when something caught my attention and made me turn my eyes front. At the same instant, my right foot moved of its own volition onto the brake pedal. A second later, the car in front of me hit its brakes and signaled a turn.

Oh, cool, I thought, and kept on going.

I anticipated the action without realizing it. Am I psychic? You can bet if I was, I'd be a lot richer by now. No magic here, either, I'm afraid- it was all me. I saw something that told me that car was going to turn before it did- maybe it dropped speed slightly as the driver moved his foot from the brake to the gas, maybe I'd seen it turn there before, maybe he pulled to the right side of the road so he'd be able to make a tighter turn. But I saw something, processed it, and reacted before my conscious mind had a chance to catch up.

This is a normal, documented phenomenon. People of all sorts make decisions without their conscious mind. Might explain why Bush got two terms, but politics aside...

Which brings me to my main point.

There is no magic in dowsing. There are no subtle electrical or gravitational fields affecting the metal rods or wooden stick. And you would have to do some pretty rigorous experiments under controlled conditions to convince me that some people have greater sensitivity to either in the degree necessary to detect flowing water or buried foundations or what have you. And there doesn't need to be, because people are smarter about the physical world than they think they are.

Because experiment after experiment has disproved that dowsers can do any better than an untrained person in finding water or an object, that then begs the question, how good are ordinary people? Let's say you were dropped out in the middle of a field and asked where you think some buried foundations of an old barn were. Your conscious mind might say, "Go pound sand, Angry Geologist! There's no way I can do this without help!" But your eyes are looking around at the rolling swales and the vegetation; your feet are picking up vibrations as you walk around the grounds. Eventually, you'll come to a spot that seems to have a different tenor when your feet strike it, a little higher or lower than the surrounding landscape, where the grass is just a little bit greener or a bit marshier in the center. And you'll look down, and see an old block, and say, "Damn, how did that happen?"

You won't have any idea how you did it, just like I didn't have any idea why I hit the brakes before the car ahead of me hit his tonight. But you did it- not the sticks- you. You put together the facts and came to a conclusion, even if you didn't quite realize it- and I really believe that this is what dowsers do, only they try to dress it up in woo to explain things to themselves and try to convince people to hire them again, instead of going with the cheaper option- their own hunch. And I'm sure it feels good for both people- the water seeker is going to be happy he's got his water, and the dowser will get paid and feel good about his abilities. There isn't any malice- just gullibility on both parts.

In fact, the only difference between a geologist and a normal person is that we consciously know what we're looking for. We look for swales and stream valleys because they form along weak parts in the rock, which is where water can flow most easily. We look for green spots in the middle of a drought or wetlands vegetation because we know that's where water is getting to the surface. We look for disturbances in the soil where something might have been dug up, buried and had the earth settle around it, and bring in the magnetometer to check our work. I can tell you what's going on, but you don't need me to put together the pieces- you are smarter about this than you think you are.