In the past year, our research on electromagnetic fields has led us into a world of invisible waves, radiation science and also Baubiologie. Parts of this world are not easily accessible to experimental science and knowledge production as it borders a quasi-scientific radiation science that Hubert Knoblauch, professor of sociology and theories of modern societies at Technical University Berlin, studied ethnographically in the 1980s as a doctoral student. On December 8, we finally had the chance to exchange with him during one of our Radiant Morning Conversations.
“I conducted this research 40 years ago.” Having said that at the start of our conversation, Hubert spoke of dowsers and radiesthesists as if he had done his research just yesterday. To us, this opened fresh perspectives on how current protests against 5G might fall on the fertile ground of long-standing traditions and parascientific knowledges about earth radiation and how to sense them with bodies, pendulums and rods. In particular, Hubert’s expertise and first-hand experiences with this somehow magical world seems to have a great potential to add historical and socio-cultural depths to our research. On this morning, two aspects resonated particularly well with our research on waves matters.
Waves matter: Sensing, theorizing and legitimizing magic
Practices of dowsing for water or for veins of ore have a long tradition. They relate to mining as well as religious and magical worlds. Four decades ago, Hubert sociologically explored these worlds by conducting interviews, browsing the library at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (Freiburg, Germany) and as a participant observer during dowsing workshops. “I learned how to dowse for electromagnetism,” he confides in us.
Radiesthesia describes the bodily ability to sense radiation emitted by terrestrial phenomena like water or minerals in the earth as well as living bodies. Explorations of environments with a dowsing rod or pendulum very much depend on the skill of the person using these devises. With modernity, such magically and religiously inspired and subject-based knowledge production were increasingly confronted with scientific explanations and objectifications of natural phenomena that did not leave much space for radiesthetic approaches. “The dowsing rod,” explains Hubert, “is the first move to modernity. The rod is under tension. It’s an unstable position.” It’s an instrument that works like a sensor. Yet, it is the wave that “offers one explanation for how the dowsing works.” Thus, wave theories of the early 20th century found their way into radiesthesist theory formation in an attempt to legitimize and give a scientific grounding to formerly occult practices.
The practice of dowsing, Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC0
In his book published in 1991, Hubert describes the coming together of these practices and modern wave theory as follows: “The orientation towards science guides — albeit with a very different understanding of science – all radiesthetic research [………] While the ‘practical theories’ offer orientation for dowsing or scrying, the pure theories, which are also produced by radiesthesists, provide an explaination of dowsing: they do not guide the search, but refer to what underlies the process. If the pragmatic schemes describe the invisible world of rays, the pure theories create the theoretical connection between the goals described in this way and the dowser. In the 1930s, the term ‘earth rays’ developed into a general explanation. ‘Earth rays’ can emanate from water, water veins and ore veins, they can be polarized or neutral, they can built net-shaped, two-dimensional or three-dimensional structures.” (Knoblauch 1991, 137-38, our translation)
Health matters: Illness as a moral question of good and bad places
Scientification as a second-order theoretical construction (cf. Schütz, in Knoblauch 1991, 15) is but one way of legitimizing radiesthesia. Public health was another concern that allowed radiesthesists to share their knowledge in the name of the common good. The advent of radiotherapy as a method for cancer treatment is likely to have offered a “legitimizing moment” linking health and radiation. At the same time, urbanization and the radiant infrastructures of the early 20th century added practical plausibility to the bodily effects of natural and artificially produced radiation.
Health issues opened new business models for dowsers. Medical radiesthesia became a big thing, including the branch of Baubiologie (building biology, see Knoblauch 1991, chapter 9), which today also promises relief to electro(hyper)sensitive people. Health is also the point where radiesthetic practices can get into legal conflicts, explains Hubert. If dowsers promise healing for money, they act against the law. Fun fact: This is also the reason why the police once visited young Hubert in his office to interrogate him about his research field and his role in it.
There is another interesting moral dimension to this medical twist in the world of dowsing rods, pendulums and scrying. Medical radiesthesia turns illness into a locational factor. Thus, “it creates good and bad places,” says Hubert. In our research on wireless urban infrastructures, we observe similar logics. For instance, electrohypersensitive people exactly know the urban spaces where they sense a lot of electromagnetic radiation and physically suffer. To avoid physical harm, they try to avoid these ‘bad’ places, even if that means that they have to move to remote places far from their work, families and friends.
Sensitivity matters, but everyone is affected
Another interesting aspect or “homology’, as Hubert calls it, concerns the role of subjective sensibility, in German Fühligkeit, as opposed to objective scientific practices. Modern theories of ‘earth rays’ established the idea that although only dowsers can actually sense radiation, everyone is affected by these invisible forces. In a similar vein, some of our interview partners have warned us against the risks of electromagnetic waves: Not being able to sense 4G and 5G signals does not mean that one is not affected by them. Every body is electrosensitive, even if not everybody is electrohypersensitive. Others point out that maybe modern science has not yet developed the techniques and methods to show how invisible waves affect our bodies.
In our research on 5G, a health-related argument against wireless signals is that living bodies can reach a tipping point and thus come to a moment when they can no longer cope with environmental wave stress. Accordingly, electrohypersensitive people describe their suffering as an intolerance that increases with the duration and intensity of exposure to electromagnetic fields. As an interview partner said, under the exposure his body is “filling up like a glass” until it overflows with cell-stress, pain and exhaustion. Opponents of wireless infrastructures therefore argue that living in a sweet state of denial in order to enjoy benefits of mobile communication is a dangerous choice and that scientific risk assessments and lab experiments cannot capture this sensitivity.
To be continued
The question of how people sense waves in a way that defies scientific objectification finally leads us to more conceptual questions that are at the core of Hubert’s expertise in the sociology of knowledge and religion and our interest in epistemic and ontological questions in Science and Technology Studies (STS). Another overlap in our research are digital infrastructures which Hubert’s group studies as part of the collaborative research centre SFB 1265 Re-Figuration of Spaces. After two hours of intense and inspiring exchange we need to wrap up and look forward to future discussions.