New research from the Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart in Germany supports the theory that water has a memory—a claim that could change our whole way of looking at the world.
Does water have memory? Can it retain an “imprint” of energies to which it has been exposed? This theory was first proposed by the late French immunologist Dr. Jacques Benveniste, in a controversial article published in 1988 in Nature, as a way of explaining how homeopathy works. Benveniste’s theory has continued to be championed by some and disputed by others. The video clip above, from the Oasis HD Channel, shows some fascinating recent experiments with water “memory” from the Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart in Germany. The results with the different types of flowers immersed in water are particularly evocative.
Photo: Geraint Rowland via Flickr
If Benveniste is right, just think what that might mean. More than 70 percent of our planet is covered in water. The human body is made of 60 percent water; the brain, 70 percent; the lungs, nearly 90 percent. Our energies might be traveling out of our brains and bodies and into those of other living beings of all kinds through imprints on this magical substance. The oceans and rivers and rains might be transporting all manner of information throughout the world.
I like to believe that the good doctor was correct–if for no other reason, because the phrase “the memory of water” makes my heart leap up and spin.
By Diana Rico
Video clip © Oasis HD Channel and embedded from YouTube.com. Photo: Geraint Rowland via Flickr
Isn’t this what Masaru Emoto’s research is all about? Check out his books starting with Messages in Water with their amazing photographs.
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Nan, I love Masaru Emoto’s work, and I have an intuitive sense that much of what he claims has truth to it. But the fact is that he does not use scientific methodology. He himself has admitted this, and I’ve also been told this privately by two eminent scientists and by a respected science journalist who have had significant contact with Dr. Emoto.
Here is the best thing I’ve found about the science (or lack thereof) behind Dr. Emoto’s work. It is a clear-eyed, objective article written by a scientist named Kristopher Setchfield who hoped to replicate Dr. Emoto’s findings in his own lab and spent months doing an exhaustive review of all of Dr. Emoto’s published works: http://is-masaru-emoto-for-real.com/
Some excerpts from the article: “While [Emoto] does employ the spirit of the scientific method in his research design, he makes critical mistakes in its rigor…. Dr. Emoto’s procedure for photographing crystals has no controlled means of ensuring that experimenter’s bias is prevented or minimized…. Dr. Emoto specifically stated, “I do not require any blind tests on any samples.”… While it is possible that he did, in fact, discover that water has an observable sensitivity to external stimuli such as prayer and words, Dr. Emoto’s experimental design and clinical procedures do not prove the claim. A double blind procedure in which a photographer would not know what water sample he or she was photographing would make the claim considerably more credible.”
That is not to say I think Dr. Emoto’s work doesn’t have value. I enthusiastically participated in the world peace prayers he conducted after Fukushima and posted extensively about them on my blog, HOLY WATERS. I personally believe that water is alive (just because I have that spiritual belief and sense, not because I’m a scientist), and I do a lot of personal ceremony and prayer to honor and work with the waters. But for those who care about scientific rigor, Dr. Emoto’s work unfortunately falls short. That is just the objective truth.
Apparently before Dr. Benveniste’s article, which I have only just hard of, I wrote a short article, Take More Water With It, which was published in a small distribution pagan magazine for writers. If anyone would care to read it, I have posted it in my ‘Notes’ on Facebook, or I will be happy to email you a copy. It seems my ideas aren’t flights of fancy after all. serenaogg@yahoo.co.uk
Please provide a link to the peer-reviewed study published in a reputable journal–or just stop.
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If true, this is really interesting in terms of the chemistry of water. But, there is a profound confusion in the way the supposed finding is being interpreted. The fact that a drop of water can pick up a pattern does indeed seem bizarre, and the mechanism mysterious, but that is not the point that the video is making. The video is suggesting that water might be a medium for some sort of context-free information storage and communication, which actually makes no sense. First of all, if water can indeed store a pattern, that is not that big a deal. Lot’s of other types of matter already do that. There are plenty of mundane examples of matter “remembering” patterns – nucleotide sequences, the hardware that allows me to leave this comment, the snow in which one’s writes one’s name, etc. From the standpoint of communication, which is about connecting patterns to meanings that are shared between sender and receiver, this finding (at least from what is described in the video) really means nothing. The notion that the Dutch are taking in “information” when they drink from the Rhine is exactly like saying that you can get smarter by eating your books! It hasn’t worked for my dog.
Are you familiar with Goethe’s scientific work? He developed an approach to science that he called, if my memory is recalling accurately, a phenomenological approach to science. Goethe was mostly known in his lifetime as a poet and write, particularly for his Faust, but he considered his scientific studies to be his most important, greatest work. He developed a study of color that contradicted Newton’s theories about color and light. At the time, Newton was the fashion and Goethe virtually ignored.
But Goethe has not remained ignored. His scientific studies are still not mainstream but many prominent physicists recognize his work’s great value. I am not able to describe what a phenomenlogical approach to studying the things we find in this world but it can be ‘scientific’. I think most make a mistake when they apply a narrow-minded definition of what ‘scientific’ means. I think that what scientists mean when they insist on academic & scientific ‘rigour’ is that the collective hunches (aka theories) they use are the right ones and approaches others use, such as a phenmenological approach to understanding light or wave particles, etc. have just as much value. It is mere culture, which is human-created and not scientifically objective, that tells us ‘science’ is better than other approaches.
Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian-German mystic and scientist, edited Goethe’s scientific papers after Steiner got his PhD at the Austrian equivalent of this country’s MIT. Many dismiss Steiner as a spiritual mystic and ignore that his work was grounded in a PhD in science from a prestigious, science-oriented university. After editing Goethe’s scientific writings, Steiner, of course, acquired a deep understanding of the phenomenological approach to studying nature scientifically and wove it into his extensive life work. Eminent physicists all over the world — not all of them, but they are all over — have grounded their study of science in an etension of Steiner and Goethe’s thinking. I think Ernst Katz, a physics professor at U. of Michigan for about fifty years, was not a slouch. And Art Zajonc, physics professor at Amherst since 1978 and now the director of the Mind-Life institute, which conducts collaborative conversations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the most prestigiously recognized scientists in the world.
The melding of the supersensible realm, which not many humans yet understand as readily as they understand how molecules ‘work’, to use a simplistic example of scientific analysis. It is a mistake to assume that because we have not yet quantified by physical tangible measurements something that we know exists, it does not ‘count’. Many ‘scientists’ ignore things that we humans know exist, such as traits of water that Emoto’s work demonstrates. I don’t give a damn if Emoto’s work is accepted by some so-called real scientists. I think nature and this whole cosmos is far more awesome than mere scientific thinking allows us to know.
I won’t ‘win’ this argument. The world listened to Newton, and his thinking has shaped physics ever since, even though many of his theories have been demonstrated to be wrong. If the scientific world had aligned behind Goethe, I believe the whole world would be radically different. If humanity is supposed to evolve a phenomenological understanding of the magic reality in this cosmos, we’ll get there. Science and human ego cannot stop the cosmos from going where it is going to go: I hope even scientists can acknowledge that there are powers unfolding in this universe we all inhabit that are beyond science. And I don’t want to live in a world in which ‘science’ dryly destroys all the magic.
I have listened to Dr. Art Zajonc, a world renown physics professor as well as a man deeply committed to a contemplative mind, speak of science in terms that work for me. He said that we don’t study science to reduce the majestic things we find in this world to scientifically measurable data. He said we study things ‘scientifically’ but also phenomenologically, so we humans can more fully behold the majesty, the exquisite beauty embedded in, well, everything. The more fully we understand why the stars shine, the more beautifully meaningful they are but we don’t have to know the hard scientific data to behold them and ‘get’ them.
This is a very meaningful topic for me and I might be diverging from the tenor of this conversation. Feel free not to post my comment. I imagine if anyone is reading this, they have picked up on my fairly mild antagonism towards scientists. I think Newtonian-descended scientific thinking has limited humanity. I’m ready for some big, magical, scientific-but-phenomenologically scientific leaps. And, as it happens, I think Steve Jobs took magical-but-scientific leaps all the time, giving me hope.
I very much like and agree with the comments of Tree Fitzpatrick, who is obviously a well read and educated
person who is seaking the science-spiritual truths of the reality within which we exist in this wonderful universe.
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These experiments are interesting, but do not give any useful information about what’s causing the patterns detected. The extrapolation from the results into the ideas that flows of water represent flow of information is to put romanticism and mysticism on top of those simple findings.
The only way you can say that water conveys data is if you can illustrate how some data can be conveyed over distance via water.
And why is H2O such a special compound? Why isn’t citric acid important? or mercury? or any other compound that’s liquid at some temperature or other?
What’s the next experiment to show how the effect of the water signature experiment can be reduced by changing some factor or another? This would prove what’s causing those pictures, not romanticised poetry.
Anyone who seriously studies the memory of water is ridiculed and destroyed. Except there is this study.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3817-icy-claim-that-water-has-memory.html
in Hindu mythology the god who protects earth is called as Narayana….means Lord of water …his bed is thousand head snake…i.e nerves and brain … holy water is also in hindu temples and poojas …
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This directly connects biological and cognitive sciences with phenomenology. The implications of this are huge stepping back to see the big picture. Our understanding of physical principles (the ground work for everything we do) now measurably falls short, we are seeing with scientific data that average human minds can change and shape matter telekinetically. You are what you think.
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I you truly want a serious and critical analysis on Dr. Emoto’s work, I suggest you read this: http://is-masaru-emoto-for-real.com/
It’s one thing to be open-minded and another altogether to ignore facts over what we want to believe.
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Amazing video! Diana, thanks for sharing this to us. And yes, I would love to believe that somehow ‘water’ can tell us some stories, unlock some secrets and perhaps make this world a better and happier place…
Water? I try never to drink the stuff…fish f%k in it.
I like when water *has the memory* of how to turn into beer. And whiskey. And wine. And coffee. And chicken noodle soup….beef stew, the list is long.
(ya gotta boil the stuff first. people pee in it. fish f%k in it. Put THAT in yer memory and *think* about it…. ewe.)
Unfortunately, there is no scientific study done by the “Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart” (such an institution does not exist – look it up) about water memory. What happened is this: Diana Rico somehow found this video on Oasis HD and, because it bolstered her cherished beliefs, she uncritically took the video as truth. Hey: it’s only human nature – we look for things that support our beliefs, not weaken them. If she took a little time to look into this claim further, she would have found it to be bogus. For a scientist’s evaluation of this video see here:
http://blogs.nature.com/kausikdatta/2011/12/28/water-memory-myth-that-wouldnt-die
Of course, this won’t change the mind of anyone posting on this blog – that also is human nature.
Cheers
since i am a physicist (have been for 44 years) i’d do the experiments were it clear just how they were performed. lots of baloney out there.
The klausidatta blog referred to by Euprax brings up excellent questions as does Setchfield’s paper about Emoto’s methods. However there is way, way more to it.
I recently wrote a literary research paper to investigate how it might be possible that water could retain the memory of a homeopathic remedy, and I found research by scientists in chemistry, physics, biophysics, medicine and material science that offer possible hypotheses. This is an amazing field of research.
Euprax:
I looked up the “Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart” online and found this:
http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/itlr/index.php?lang=en
Institute of Aerospace Thermodynamics
Which is located in Stuttgart. Could this be the place?
Dear Euprax: Without question, this is a controversial field, and I appreciate your providing the link to Kausik Datta’s article disputing the Stuttgart claims, as I believe readers should have as much information as possible so they can make up their own minds. I should also say that before I wrote this post, I did run a check to see if there was an Aerospace Institute in Stuttgart (there is one at the University of Stuttgart), as well as checking out Oasis HD, which is a Canadian TV channel that broadcasts nature documentaries.
Please note, too, that I am not absolutely unthinking regarding the work going on in this field. While I do *want* to believe that water has memory—and I stated it in exactly that way in the post—I also reported that Dr. Jacques Beneviste’s theory of water memory is controversial and included a link to a very extensive discussion of the issues some scientists have had with his studies. On Dec. 8 I also posted a lengthy comment outlining the unscientific nature of Dr. Masaru Emoto’s work (despite the fact that I love said work with all my heart).
The bigger difference between us, perhaps, is that I do not believe in Western Newtonian-based science as the only or necessarily the best paradigm for understanding how the world works, at least for me. I like what the commenter Tree Fitzpatrick wrote above on Dec. 10: “I think nature and this whole cosmos is far more awesome than mere scientific thinking allows us to know.”
The makers of “Water has Memory” video possibly came up with a name based on that institute, but the fact that they didn’t even bother to get the name right speaks volumes about their lack of concern for truth. Think about it: If you were reporting to the world the exciting research you were doing at the Institute of Aerospace Thermodynamics, would you mangle the name like that? And why aren’t the names of “the researchers” (as they are called in the video) given? What are they ashamed of?
BTW, if you go to the website for the Institute of Aerospace Thermodynamics and look at the News and Research, you will find no mention of this video or water memory research whatsoever.
It distresses me that this passes for optimism. Am I to believe that the water in my tea remembers being in the toilet? Homeopathy is the definition of the placebo effect. Municipal water supplies contain minute traces of every medication and contaminant, yet consistently tests purer than most bottled water marketed to a gullible public with artificial fear.
This is exactly the kind of junk science that devastates the real effort to educate people about the urgency of environmental responsibility. Like Emoto, it deliberately lies about there being a cause and effect. None was ever established nor reproduced. Merely stating that the idea is “controversial,” is no excuse for becoming an accomplice to this fraud. A serious writer would speak to them directly with serious questions, as well as to actual scientists in the field.
Newton was not wrong, his formulas led directly to discoveries he never could have imagined and were only refined on micro and macro scales. Goethe’s theories did not produce the Hubble telescope, nor the Hadron Supercollider that expanded the real consciousness of humanity far beyond anything that preceded them.
“The ancients lived in deep knowledge of the sacredness of water.” Really? They also had no concepy of proper hygiene or disease vectors, defecated in their own water sources and died young from things only science could defeat. It is a tragedy that science is taught so badly that it drives so many back into darkness.
We are all made of actual star dust. No religion ever demonstrated something so magnificent.
having worked through the comments and tracked down some descriptions of the “scientific” methodology it’s becoming clear to me how this process works. as with several other things that i’ve looked into over the years as diversions, this is pretty straight forward physics and physical chemistry. i’ll continue making notes on it, do some work in the lab when i have time, and write a paper on it later this year if everything comes together well. look for something in Physical Review E or Journal of Physical Chemistry in, perhaps, a year.
“I think nature and this whole cosmos is far more awesome than mere scientific thinking allows us to know.”
Human stories are predictable. They are also limited. They come from our own brains, after all. That’s why “wishful thinking” so seldom comes up with anything astonishing.
On the other hand, a rigorous methodology which points us towards aspects of the universe, and more to the point, does everything possible to eliminate the biases and errors of our own thinking — that is, science — has given us knowledge of everything from black holes and quasars to microscopic worlds teeming with life well outside the range of our mere senses, but which constantly affect us nonetheless. It has given us protons and photons and a universe so large that we exist in less than 0.000000000000001% of it. It has given us a universe of astonishment, and taught us more about our place in it than 40,000 years of myth, though myth has had its part in giving us our sense of self. But, did I mention that this is plain old materialistic science which has so expanded our horizons?
The fact is, when the rigorously materialistic investigations into the physical universe reveal some new, astonishing insight into how it all ticks, two things are inevitably true:
1. It fits. It fits observation, and it fits with what we know in other fields; any hypothesis which runs directly counter to things which we already know to work is very unlikely to be true.
2. The understanding of how things actually fit makes a lot of observations click into place, and is the most amazingly fantastical illumination-in-your-brain feeling which exists — it is a high-powered WOW moment of delight at the universe.
I cannot tell you how sick I am of people who insist that scientists must be so “closed minded” or without wonder or joy in the universe. What that tells me is that they have never actually visited what real scientists are like, and know nothing at all about science itself, how it works, how it is practiced, what it means, how it feels. But by damn, they are convinced that “it doesn’t have all the answers.”
No kidding science doesn’t have all the answers. To quote Dara O’Briain, if it had all the answers it would just stop. But not having all the answers certainly doesn’t mean it has none of them.
Other commenters have pointed out that the institution supposedly doing this research says nothing at all about it on their website, nor are the “researchers” actually named. There is a reason for this — because this kind of thing runs counter to everything else we know in physics and chemistry, and it is about as likely to overthrow those understandings as it is for the Rapture to happen next Tuesday. I do not believe that either the Institute of Aerospace Thermodynamics or the Institute of Statics and Dynamics of Aerospace Structures or the Institute of Combustion Technology for Aerospace Engineering (since those are the actual “Aerospace” Institutes at the University there) are “working on” any such thing as what this YouTube video claims. My guess? Video by an overexcitable and undereducated undergrad.
As for the wonderful ‘poetry of water’ — absolutely. Water is amazing stuff, yes, in ways that are actually true. And poetry is wonderful. Having a poetic understanding is a delightful way to understand life. But poetry is also deeper and richer when it is linked to a real understanding of the world, believe it or not, than when it is hopelessly dependent upon wishful thinking.
Suggest you check out the poetry of Sarah Lindsay for a slightly better idea of this.
That is an excellent comment by Thomas Blaney.
Science is about finding out what can be done repeatedly. Other ways of learning are about how we misinterpret information in ways that conform with our biases. The results of other ways of learning are not reproducible in any more consistent way than would be predicted by chance.
Being misled by coincidence is not special, or Zen, or cosmic, or anything else positive. Being misled is just misunderstanding something. We should not encourage this.
If water had memory, a special series of hitting and diluting would not tell it what to remember, especially when it is supposed to remember the opposite of what it is exposed to.
there needs to be a distinction between optimism and gullibility.
.
I think the author’s bias is clear. She wants this to be true. No links to any reputable studies. Why isn’t the vast majesty of the real universe enough for some people?
The original studies were originally published and referred to as “the Hado”.
I would not say that water has memory, but what was indicated was that crystals formed in fresh water (untreated-not the chemically-laden stuff that we drink in developed areas) reflect the EMOTIONS that the water was exposed to. If a something horrible had happened nearby the crystals formed were ugly in color and formation. Several hundred people were sent to a lake to pray and the resulting crystals were said to be beautiful! Water from Loudes forms beautiful crystals also as does water exposed to violin music. A sample of water exposed to elephants formed elephant-shaped crystals, etc. The water also responded to words. Many more tests were done under scientific conditions-not just one petri dish, but hundreds, and under the same controlled conditions during each experiment. I had first learned of “the Hado” at a convention that I attended many years ago and then did some research to find more information-not just what was given to me. I don’t think this concept is so “out there”-after all, we are living on a relatively tiny planet that just happens to have the resources that we need to maintain life and we are held in place by the gravitational pull of a star and other planets, etc. Even if you don’t believe this all pretty miraculous-and it is-it is also scientifically astounding and the chances of all of it ocurring just so again are so tiny (scratch all that talk about “hundreds” of inhabitable planets such as ours-astronomers now say that is unture). So if we can be suspended in space with all of our necessaries-why can’t water reflect its environment? Just a thought.
“Each drop of water having a face of its own; unmistakeable and unique.” I found this statement, as well as, Benveniste’s theory amazingly fascinating. Doctor and Scientist study on this specific topic of Water Memory I find very interesting. though provoking comments made by : Diana Rico and Tree Fitzpatrick. Making for a good read for myself. Thanks!