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- Report n°5 : "Water : symbolism and culture"
Report n°5 : "Water : symbolism and culture"
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- Water: culture and civilisation
Water: culture and civilisation
"Water is not just a resource.
It is a key issue of civilisation.
The gulf that the industrial era has created between us and this vital element must be bridged as a matter of urgency."
Domenico Luciani, President of Centre Internazionale Civiltà dell'Acqua (the international water civilisation centre)
"In our contemporary world, water is remarkably invisible."
Jean Darras, Poet
Few elements have influenced the symbolic, ritual and metaphysical values of mankind as much as water. It is deeply rooted, in a highly emblematic manner, in our cultural traditions, for culture is nothing more than man's perception of his natural environment.
In reality, only close attention to this environment enables human ingenuity to create culture. And while Homer proclaimed that "Water is the origin of all things", Greek philosophy taught that Nature (Physis) is the sole creative and generative force for all that is, for all that exists.
Yet Nature, as she reveals herself to us, is nonetheless engaged in a process of perpetual change.
"You cannot step into the same river twice, " asserted Heraclitus, for though a river may be nothing butwater, it never carries the same water.
"But water is not only a metaphor for change. It is also a source, " says the philosopher Marcel Conche.
Obviously, to say -as is so often said- that water symbolises life or birth is to oversimplify. As the philosopher Alain so prosaically puts it, "Rain is a curse for the tourist and a blessing for the farmer".
In reality, water is the basis of and the substrate for water ecosystems and the variety of marine habitats, the matrices in which life first appeared and began to develop.
Echoing Homer, Renaissance engineer Leonardo da Vinci was of the opinion that "Water is the driving force of all Nature".