David’s musings on water

David’s Musings on Water

1. Unique compound in its functional abilities

2. Importance based on movement

  a. Transport of people, plants, animals, goods, nutrients, energy

  b. Life force: “consumption” required for people, plants, animals

  c.  Destructive capability: tidal waves, crushing ice, snow avalanche, floods and carrier of silt, mud and debris—due to extremes, out of control

3. Transformation of function, not matter—very little created or destroyed

4. Physical transformation between liquid, solid, vapor

5. Sound production: pleasurable—sound of waves, flowing water

        fearsome—drenching rain, cracking ice, waterfalls

6. Visuals: refract and reflect light, vapor diffraction produces rainbows, yet water is colorless.

7. Form: architecture of individual snowflakes, ice

   It’s all the same compound, displaying transformable functions with no inherent morality.

   All living things are predominantly water.

   Human activity to transform and control function and movement: dams, canals, irrigation, seeding clouds, draining wetlands,  but still an uncontrollable element (floods, tidal waves, draught) so water is often deified, a rationalization of the uncontrollable.

   The role of science: to understand in order to balance control of movement and function.

– post by DLG