138 The Watershed Within: Scientific and Moral Reflections on Water in the 21st Century

Wednesday, 7 November 2001
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM

WATER SCIENCE: AQUARIAN AND PISCEAN VIEWPOINTS

Paper number: 138-9
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 1:30 PM – 5:30 PM

Authors

Abstract

Science seeks understanding of the world, not necessarily its control or its use. In scientific practice the only one absolute taboo is to set up blockades on the road to inquiry. Such a blockade is the claim that science can only be accomplished from one point of view. Called "the view from nowhere" by Thomas Nagel, this view has been appropriate for the advance of quantum mechanics and molecular biology. However, it cannot be applied to the any collective study of people and water. Because people (scientists) must take such a view it cannot be "from nowhere" and can only be (a) an unnatural, separate perspective (Aquarian), or (b) a total reality of which the perspective is a part (Piscean). Water use and control logically follows from the Aquarian perspective, but scientific objectivity (the '"view from nowhere") does not.

Some examples will illustrate the relevance of these issues. Does science support the fact of this particular moment in the long history of desert basin recharge being so special that long-stored ground water be mined as rapidly as technology will allow? Does science appropriately treat flood disasters as phenomena that adversely impact people ("acts of god"), or are people part of the phenomena that make disasters out of natural flooding? Do the scientific facts provide the basis for large-scale diversion of river water in arid basins, when downstream channel changes, soil salinization, and other long-term impacts imperil future generations? For such issues, the Piscean perspective is at least as valid as the Aquarian, and there can be no "view from nowhere."