loyal friend was Professor Philipp Forchheimer, a hydrologist of
world repute.
Most people have heard of Viktor Schauberger only in connec-
tion with his inspired ideas about water or of the energy-saving
machines that harnessed the enormous power encapsulated in
lively water. They were, indeed, so fundamental and important as to
justify his reputation as an ecological pioneer. However, as we are
concerned with the broader challenge of restoring the damage
wrought by humanity on the Earth, we shall need to present
Schauberger's larger worldview of how Nature works.
Walter Schauberger, who unlike his father, had a formal educa-
tion in science and was, for a time, a university lecturer in physics,
worked hard to make Viktor's ideas more accessible to mainstream
science. After he did a lecture tour in 1950 at a number of England's
top universities, some of the distinguished scientists were asked
what they thought of the Schauberger physics. While they agreed
that the theories were quite convincing, the problem, it appeared,
was that 'it would mean rewriting all the textbooks in the world.'^6An alternative worldview
Viktor Schauberger suffered much from the vindictiveness of the
scientific establishment towards him. Nevertheless, his constant
complaints about them obscure his principal message, which is far
more important than academic arrogance per se. This is that our
whole culture is completely under the thrall of a materialistic
worldview or way of seeing; we are caught in the excitement of
apparently being free to do anything we want, and by the glamour
of possessing lots of riches and distractions. Our science is but the
product of this worldview, as is our philosophy and education, our
religion, our politics and our medicine. You don't need to subscribe
to conspiracy theories to realize that all aspects of our society suf-
fer from a grand delusion that is contributing to the breakdown of
our world order and to the collapse of our ecosystems.
The real issue is that the intellectual movement of the late sev-
enteenth century, the Enlightenment, and its equivalent in science,
Rationalism, have caused a great schism in human society. The
philosopher Rene Descartes (famous for his 'I think therefore I am')
has a lot to answer for. That movement put man on a pedestal, intro-
duced the idea of humanity being apart from Nature and started to
HIDDEN NATURE