Abstract Water is a complex source of imagination, dreams and rituals, where cultural differences ebb and flow, where a plethora of meanings and interpretations interlink and wash over one another. Water has an ambivalent character as stated in most of the ancient cosmogonies and in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Water’s composition was discovered by the London scientist Henry Cavendish in about 1781. Although it is an apparently simple molecule (H2O), it has a highly complex and anomalous character. The anomalous properties of water are those where the behavior of liquid water is quite different from what is found with other liquids. As often stated, life depends indeed on these anomalous properties of water. Notably there are 12 phase, 22 density, 12 material, 11 thermodynamic and 9 physical anomalies. A powerful look into the water molecule was given by Nobel Prize recipient Richard P. Feynman as published in Six easy pieces. A look into the most recent quest for more knowledge about water leads us to the polywater and to the memory of water, 2 examples of pathological science.
Santo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.