Since the very beginning of time the Sun has stood above everything, staring down in icy silence at the frenzied activities of humanity, who regard it as a fiery orb? How could it be otherwise, such is their direct mental approach towards life? Yet the closer we approach the source of light and heat, the colder and darker its face will become. The nearer we are to it, the brighter the stars will be. As its light diminishes, heat, atmosphere, water and life will also disappear.
- What serves the Sun as a carrier of light and heat, if, in the view of our learned scientists, space is a vacuum?
- Why is the light and heat in the tropics more diffuse, and at the poles the Sun's light more intense and its radiant heat less?
- Why is water at the poles warmer at the bottom? Why is the sunlit surface so icily cold?
- Why doesn't the warmer, lighter bottom-water of the sea rise upwards?
- Why are water temperatures at the equator so warm? Why is it that it gets colder with increasing depth, and why does it get warmer again below the boundary layer of +4C (+39.2F), and why does Life begin there anew?
- Why do the magnetic lines of force run from south to north, and why does the Earth rotate from west to east?
- Why does a top stand upright when it is spun from the side?
- Why is the desert so dead despite all the heat?
- How is it that the warm Gulf Stream can push cold seawater aside and wend its way for thousands of kilometres over ocean mountains and valleys in a reversed temperature-gradient, without the assistance of a mechanical gradient?
- Why does groundwater in walls rise far above the surface of the ground?
- Why don't wooden posts rot under water, but always above it?
- Why do damp tiled roofs dry out from the eaves towards the ridge?
- Why can rising cold water pierce through the hardest rock?
- Why doesn't the Earth's warm air rise?
- Why is it so cold at the top of a mountain - nearer the Sun?
- Why is it warmer nearer the ceiling and colder at the floor in our houses when an artificial source of heat is used?
- Why do gases condense with a decrease in temperature, and why don't the fiery gases of the Sun, with supposed temperatures of over 6000C (10,832F), stream out into space?
- Why does marble expand with heat, and why doesn't it contract again with cold?
- Why do west->east flowing water-courses fertilise their banks?
- Why are the banks of east->west flowing rivers so barren?
- Why are the banks of south->north flowing watercourses fertile on one side only? (*)
- Why do riverse flowing into cold seas migrate laterally to the north?
- Why does the salt content of the seas vary?
- Why do herrings migrate northwards in winter?
- Why do deep-sea fish glow?
- Why do cold-blooded animals carry fever-inducing poison?
- Why does a cold fever occur in the tropics? Why does a warm fever arise from a chill? What is fever anyway?
- What is temperature? What is heat? What is cold?
- What is energy?
- Why does the heart beat in our breast? Who gives this muscle its impulse to move? Where is the motor for this pump? Why does blood circulate in our blood vessels? Why do we breathe day and night, when asleep and even when totally unconscious?
- Why do the fluids in a chicken's egg circulate without a heart? Why does a stone suffocate when we cut off its air supply?
- Why do light-demanding timbers have a thick bark, and shade-demanders only a thin one?
- Why does a trout stand still in a raging torrent, as if by magic?
- What is it that keeps the Earth floating in space?
- Does the heart beat because we breathe, or do we breathe because the heart beats? Where is the heart of a planet?
- Why does water pulsate and breathe? Why does groundwater manage to remain on the sides of mountains and why, growing colder and heavier, does it rise upwards? Why does it frequently spring from high peaks?
- Why do deltas and estuaries develop?
- What is evaporation? What is vaporisation?
- What is dissolution, what is combination, what is absorption, and on what effects are these processes founded?
- Why is our body-temperature sub-normal when climbing a mountain and above normal as we descend?
(* North->south and south->north effects are reversed in the southern hemisphere - Ed.)
(Questions transcribed from "Nature As Teacher - New Principles in the Working of Nature" - Viktor Schauberger - translated and edited by Callum Coats - Volume Two of the Eco-Technology series