b"Divination: A geophysicist's viewFeatureDivination: A geophysicists view, science or sance?Don Emerson systemsnsw@gmail.comIntroductionNear-surface geophysics was the subject of a timely and thoughtful article by Mike Hatch in these pages last year (Preview 198). It prompted me to think about the performance of geophysics applied to the first few tens of metres of the subsurface in environmental, including metallics (buried drums and scrap), hydrogeological, unexploded ordnance (UXO), forensic, engineering, and mineral investigations by thhighly trained scientists and engineers. The near subsurface isFigure 1.a dowser at work in 18century France.a difficult medium, often having capricious lateral and vertical variability. This pertains to physical properties and boundariesDe Divinatione where he questioned how many predictions of rock units and other materials. Is there an easier way ofactually came true, and also noted that the severe, highly locating features in the subsurface? Our competitors wouldmoral Cato the Censor (234-149 BC) had wondered how one claim so. Perhaps they can teach us something. Welcome todiviner did not laugh on meeting another (to rejoice in human the realm of the paranormal. The method is a particular type ofgullibility). Yet divination was taken seriously, by many, and divining. The operators are dowsers. Practitioners are seeminglywoe betide the doubters.serenely unconcerned with, or restrained by, the above considerations. One divining instrument was bird behaviour. Cooped sacred chickens were a field-tool used by the Romans on campaign. The geological sciences developed in the late 18th century,The omens were good if, after the cage doors were opened geophysics in the 20th. Divining emerged from the mists ofand feed provided, the chickens displayed poor table manners antiquity and depends on the reaction of a simple device, ofteni.e. they ate greedily and dropped grain from their beaksthe a forked piece of wood (Figure 1). It was, and still is, used byspillage test. In 249 BC Publius Claudius Pulcher, an impatient lay people and some professionals. Divining is charismatic andRoman naval commander in a sea battle with the Carthaginians, cheap; geophysics is workaday, and it costs. Divining is cloakedfrustrated that the sacred chickens would not feed, threw them in mystery; geophysics is open and operates on establishedinto the sea shouting Let them drink, since they dont want to scientific principles and continually strives to develop andeat. (Figure 2) Sadly, Publius Claudius was routed; the prescient improve its instruments and data analysis. Divining is indifferentbirds drowned. Poor chooks.to error, and immune to derisive criticism from the educated and the elites. It is a background business, conducted withNowadays there are chickens galorenot to be selected enviable confidence, and endorsed by many. and fed in obsolete ritual, but to be fed on, by the masses. Birds could still help in divinatory matters. After consuming Divining has a fascinating history. This article, admittedlya chicken roast dinner, the wishbone (fused clavicles) is rambling, discursive and subjective, may be of interest toeasily retrieved and may function (gnawed clean) as a handy, Preview readers, especially those intrigued by the unusual. pocket, mini divining tool. Its rough, stubby similarity to the popular forked twig should make it acceptable for a devotee to divine, at will, day or night. If it fails to reveal hidden Early divination delights, then one could always break it and make a wish instead.In all cultures, from antiquity through Medieval to Renaissance times, divination involved inspired messages from deities or the supernatural, received by intuition, invoked by incantationDivinations survivaland ritual, and revealed by interpretation. In ancient RomeThe eventual triumph of Christianity, in the Roman Empire there were three categories of practitioners: ceremonialduring the reign of Constantine (AD 285-337), led to the priests (dealing with Sibylline Prophecies), haruspices, andsuppression of pagan practices. They were deemed heretical. augurs. The latter two observed and interpreted avian, animal,Divination suffered quite a shock. However, like the residual sacrificial, and celestial (astrological) signs. A strong bodyradiation from the Big Bang, the old beliefs survived, settled of opinion regarded it all as probably ridiculous and at bestat large in the general population where social movements, dubious, as reported by the orator Cicero (106-43 BC) in his DECEMBER 2020 PREVIEW 48"