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Originally Posted by Ivconic
Ain't no other explanation for rods to functioning than by ideomotoric (was that the term??) response.
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There have been a number of other explanations for the movement of dowsing rods which you can read in the remote sensing forums. None of the explanations posted seem suitable for testing unless you are using a double blind test to see if the dowser is able to consistently find a hidden item. But this does not test the theory or explanation. It only tests the suitability of using dowsing to locate an item. The most prominent theory of how dowsing works is "ideamotor response", which by scientific standards would reduce dowsing to the same success rate as guessing. ie: an idea (whether conscious or subliminal) from the brain of the dowser results in a twitch of the muscles which causes the rods to move. This idea is thought to be of the same quality as an idea which causes the hands to move when using a ouija board.
My opinion is that "ideamotor response" is not responsible for any dowsing that results in a higher than chance rate of locating a target.
If we separate dowsing into 3 categories to describe the results, we might find this:
1. Dowsing done by a person who gets responses that result in finding the correct location of the target significantly more times than chance guessing.
2. Dowsing done by a person who gets responses that do not result in finding the correct location of the target
3. Dowsing done by a person who gets no response at all from the rods.
I would suspect "ideamotor response" is responsible for unsuccessful dowsing that is done by most people in category 2, who find the wrong location of the target. Category 3 dowsers who get no dowsing response cannot be ascribed to ideamotor or anything else, because there was no response. But what about people who have better than chance guessing success? Sometimes their data can be shown to be false by looking closely at the data gathered. How many unsuccessful attempts were counted along with the successful when calculating the success rate, etc. After removing any skewed results, if you still have evidence of results better than chance guessing, you are focused on dowsing that is considered successful, and may be worth investigating.
Some explanations of how dowsing works have not been advanced in the remote sensing forum, and are indeed linked to the senses and physiology of the human body. Tests have been performed which seem to indicate there are sensory parts of the body that work independently or in conjunction with other senses to determine something has changed in the location where the dowser has walked over. These tests seem to support the notion that people have become less aware of their senses in modern times. They also seem to point to the direction that the ability to dowse may be dependent on inherited genetic abilities that some people have.
We see in modern times people have become less aware of their senses. But still today, there are Australian aboriginies who can find water in the desert where people from the cities cannot. We have people who live in Central and South America living off the land, who can find many things in the jungles that people from the city cannot find. These people are sometimes hired as guides to show the way for people who do not have the same abilities to hear their senses. Is it a genetic gift or something that comes with practice?
The same question applies to the ability to successfully dowse. Until people bother to research the dated materials where these tests and others were performed, I doubt there will be much new information other than "ideamotor response" and a few unsupported incredible explanations in this forum for how dowsing works.
But one thing that has been proven....
There is no person on earth willing to demonstrate dowsing working consistently in a credible live test for all who want to see.
Best wishes,
J_P