by a science with a materialist worldview that believes Nature exists
to be manipulated and exploited for the imagined benefit of
humanity. Accountability is apparently not an issue.
The national debate on GM held in Britain in 2003 showed that
most people are deeply disturbed by the arrogance of the view that
Man can do anything he wants on this Earth. But they have no sci-
ence to turn to for rebuttal. What is needed is a Science of Nature to
supplant the misguided science presently taught in our schools and
universities. We need to work with a holistic view of Nature as
omnipotent on the Earth, whose laws govern us humans as well and
which we flout at our peril — in brief, a Nature with which we must
learn to cooperate with humility.
What are these laws of Nature? How are we to know what is our
place, and what is demanded of us? Viktor Schauberger excelled as
a teacher of the science of Nature. He describes and illustrates, as
few have done, how Nature works, with its marvellous and complex
processes at the heart of the evolution of consciousness.
Viktor Schauberger is known at present only to a small, holisti-
cally-inclined audience that has a strong commitment to environ-
mental issues, to organic growing or to the development of
alternative energy sources. Much of the literature on Schauberger is
sometimes difficult to follow for the less committed. This book
draws on Callum Coats' seminal book on Viktor's work, Living Ener-
gies. We hope that the less technical approach of our book will facil-
itate for a broader audience how indispensable are Schauberger's
insights if we wish to understand our present ecological predica-
ment. The great ideological conflict of this new century will be
between the very limited and flawed mechanistic/deterministic
worldview and the holistic understanding of life as a wondrous,
intimately interconnected and spiritual whole.
INTRODUCTION