I had the honor of presenting in Tarija, in front of a distinguished audience, the book “El Agua”, written by Hernán Vera-Ruiz, a brilliant physicist-chemist with a vast international career. This work introduces various scientific, cultural, religious, and mythological aspects of the characteristic element of life on the “Planet Water”, as Dr. Vera correctly suggests to call our planet.
That book, which in my function as a reviewer I saw born and developed, is striking for the author’s enthusiasm, almost an obsession, for “the history and saga of an extraordinary molecule,” as the subtitle says, reinforced, with a wink to Galileo, with the nickname of “Universum Vitae Nuntius.” That enthusiasm was born, as it could not be otherwise, from the experience of a boy from Tarija, who grew up in the municipality of San Luis de Entre Ríos and bewitched by the crystal-clear waters of the Pajonal River.
My friend’s work is solidly anchored in micro and macro sciences in its interdisciplinary branches (physics, chemistry, biology, astrophysics, geology, among others) and takes into account recent research results. But it is also a text that radiates cultures, mythologies and religions, manifesting the author’s extensive scientific and humanistic training at the service of readers less versed in science.
The calm waters of the peaceful rivers that irrigate and fertilize the land -Dr. Vera points out- inspire peace and tranquility, as in Psalm 23, but do not cease to arouse respect and fear for their devastating force, bringing to mind the (not so) mythological Flood. Like a beloved who has his excesses, water can produce pain and suffering, sometimes because of its desolate absence, sometimes because of its devastating floods, sometimes because of destructive frosts, especially when it is modulated by the phenomena of El Niño or La Niña, as capricious as the names they bear.
The tenderness of water, contained in a tear or in the dew lodged in a flower, easily turns into bitter weeping of pain and despair in the face of the storming of nature or life, or into a current of death, like our rivers poisoned by mercury and criminal greed.
From conception we swim in the water that fills two-thirds of a child’s body. Then, with age, we slowly begin to “dry up”, showing, on our skin, that life goes hand in hand with water. From that of baptism to that which sprinkles the coffin, water also accompanies our spiritual journey.
Not to mention the usefulness of the water that with its waterfalls becomes a source of clean energy, the amazement that arouses with its majestic waterfalls and river highways that, in addition to means of transport, give us a variety of fish and other creatures.
Like the author, I too have felt a fascination for an aspect of water since I was a child: the passage from the simplicity of a unique molecule to the macroscopic properties of that element (a water molecule does not wet, but a drop does!) and even more to wonderful phenomena such as the waves of the sea. Modern physics teaches us that the complex beauty of a wave is the result of a “cooperative” movement of water molecules.
This awareness leads me to think that human beings, men and women, should imitate this attribute of water and act cooperatively to transfigure individual capacities into beautiful, good and useful works for the common and universal good.
I conclude by quoting a paragraph from the Epilogue of the book: “Water inspires our curiosity to do science and discover its secrets and those of nature as a whole, to always marvel at being able to live and feel emotions and love and write poetry and believe in God”.