768 lines
45 KiB
Plaintext
768 lines
45 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: MIKE CHOROST MUFON SYMPOSIUM PAPER FILE: UFO1569
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Theses for a Pre-Paradigm Science: Cereology
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Michael Chorost
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Written March 1991; published July 1991
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1. Cereology as a Pre-Paradigm Science
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2. Non-Human Intelligence?
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3. The Problem with "Intelligence"
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4. A Guess: Are the Crop Circles A Symbol System?
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5. About Unconvincing Guesses
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6. The Future Looks Back on the Present: A Hopeful Guess
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Appendix: Colin Andrews' Catalog of Formations, with Annotations by
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Michael Chorost (not included in electronic version)
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I'm writing this paper in March 1991, well before the start of the
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next crop circles season. I anticipate that by July, there will be new
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developments I will want to talk about, instead of reading a paper written
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months before. Thus I have not designed this paper to be read aloud.
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However, since it is oriented toward grounding cereology as a theoretical
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discipline, I am likely to presume many of its points in my talk. I will be
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happy to entertain questions about it in Chicago.
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1. Cereology as a Pre-Paradigm Science
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In this first of six sections, I want to talk about cereology as a
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discipline, and acquaint readers with some of its complexities and prob-
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lems. In the remaining sections, I will explore one particular problem in
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detail: are the circles a language? And if so, how might we figure it out?
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The crop circles phenomenon is much more complex than it appears
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at first glance, so it follows that cereology, the study of the phenomenon,
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needs to think ways which will encompass that complexity. So it is impor-
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tant to establish right off that the phenomenon has aspects which make
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naive "the aliens have started talking to us" theories difficult to uphold.
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The evidence leads in contradictory directions. For example, researchers
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(primarily meteorologists) have gathered eyewitness reports of circles from
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as far back as 1918, and have found written texts describing what may be
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crop circles from as far back as 1590. One 17th-century text describes
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an event in 1633, where a school curate saw, while walking at night in a
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Wiltshire field, "innumerable quantitie of pigmies or very small people
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dancing rounde and rounde, and singing and making all manner of small
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odd noyses." He heard "a sorte of quick humming noyse all the time" and
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"when the sun rose he found himself exactly in the midst of one of these
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faery dances."1 Such "quick humming noyses" have been heard in
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present-day crop circles,2 and have been captured on tape by the BBC
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and other observers. The curate's story seems to fit, because modern
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crop circles are believed to form very rapidly, as this one apparently did,
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and the "pigmies...dancing rounde" could have been a 17th-century
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observer's way of interpreting a spinning, possibly glowing force field.
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Another text, authored by Robert Plott in 1686, discusses an appar-
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ently similar event in 1590 and theorizes that such artifacts are made by
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lightning. An illustration theorizes that cone-shaped "lightning strikes"
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are responsible for the rings and, astonishingly, rings containing squares.
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David J. Reynolds notes that Plott describes "'imperfect segments', rings
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within rings, squares (?!), 'Semicircles, Quadrants and Sextants' being
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formed by combinations of multiple strokes, differing angles of descent
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and variations in lightning strength across a stroke" (p. 348, italics in
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originals.)3 Unfortunately, Plott does not give enough information to make
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it clear whether he is observing "fairy rings", which are fungal infections
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in the soil which blight plants in slowly spreading circular areas, or crop
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circles. In fact, much of his discussion points away from crop circles.
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Not once does he mention that the plants are flattened in spiral patterns,
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nor does he talk about the intricate braiding often seen in crop circles.
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And when he digs under one formation, he discovers that the soil "was
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much looser and dryer than ordinary, and the parts interspersed with a
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white hoar or vinew much like that in mouldy bread, of a musty rancid
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smell."4 This is a finding entirely consistent with fairy rings. And yet,
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as Reynolds notes, Plott is quite explicit about the existence of non-circu-
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lar formations like quadrants and hollow squares, going so far as to
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provide diagrams of them. To my knowledge, there is no such thing as a
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fairy square. Thus we cannot eliminate the possibility that Plott saw what
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we think of as crop circles. Of course, it's also possible that he saw
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something which was neither fairy rings nor crop circles, but something
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else altogether.
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Plott's discussion anticipates parts of the modern debate with
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remarkable fidelity. He devotes considerable attention to rumors of pos-
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sessed satanic dancers, but ultimately concludes that such "hoaxes" could
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only account for a particular subset of the phenomenon: "If I must needs
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allow [dancers] to cause some few of these Rings, I must also restrain
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them to those of the first kind, that are bare at many places like a path-
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way; for to both the others more natural causes may be probably as-
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signed" (14.) It appears that Plott anticipated the meteorological theory
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by roughly 300 years.
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These observations have to make any alien-intelligence theorist stop
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and think. Plott talks about events which happened in 1590. The
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curate's anomalous sighting happened a decade after the publication of
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Shakespeare's First Folio. If they are true crop circles, and if they're by
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aliens who have been trying to get our attention for four centuries, there
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is at least one species in the galaxy which is remarkably dumb (and it's
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not necessarily us.) The finders of these texts subscribe to the meteoro-
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logical theory, so they interpret the reports as evidence of a naturally
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occurring plasma-vortex phenomenon. The reader may not accept that
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theory, but whatever he or she does accept has to take these astonishing
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writings into account.
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The 17th-century texts are not the only example of fractious data.
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For every eyewitness report of a glowing object or alien spacecraft
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making a crop circle at night, there is another eyewitness report of a
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violent wind which flattens out a circle in broad daylight.5 And there are
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now numerous articles claiming that the phenomenon is generated by
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"earth energies" which determine the location and shape of each crop
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circle. The theory relies on dowsing results. Nonsense? Possibly; but
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Terence Meaden, the arch-enemy of intelligence-oriented theories, has
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begun using dowsing himself, theorizing that "the metal-rod movement of
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the dowser may be related to a reaction to the minor changes in the local
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magnetic field of the soil induced by the plasma vortices and their fast-
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spinning fields."6 Whatever the validity of such claims (and they need to
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be tested!), they add further complications to cereology.
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I hope these examples have served to shred the belief that all the
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evidence points in one direction. Hoax theorists point to the Bratton
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hoax, an embarrassing but quickly detected hoax perpetuated on one of
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1990's surveillance groups; alien-intelligence theorists point to eyewitness
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reports and the humming noises; vortex theorists point to other eyewit-
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ness reports, and the humming noises; earth-energy theorists point to
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dowsing results, and the humming noises; and everyone points to every-
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one else as terrible examples of interpretation of data.
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So we have a complex situation. That's nothing new; it's life. But
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there is an illuminating way to describe the kind of complexity that reigns
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now. I borrow from Thomas Kuhn's well-known work The Structure of
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Scientific Revolutions7 in suggesting that cereology is a pre-paradigm
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science. Kuhn defines a "paradigm" as an "implicit body of intertwined
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theoretical and methodological belief that permits selection, evaluation, and
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criticism" (17). More briefly, a paradigm is a way of thinking which
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unifies a scientific discipline. So far, that's exactly what cereology lacks.
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It consists of a mass of disparate observations and a few theories, none
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of which explain very much. The absence of a paradigm is beautifully
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illustrated by two very different interpretations of what may be an eye-
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witness report of a quintuplet formation being made. On July 13, 1988,
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according to Circular Evidence, a woman saw "a large, golden, disc-shaped
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object within [a] cloud" which emitted "a bright white parallel beam...from
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the bottom of the disc at an angle of roughly 65o [which] shone across
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the sky towards Silbury Hill" (p. 115.) Delgado and Andrews imply that
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an alien spacecraft used an energy beam to inscribe the formation.
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Terence Meaden, on the other hand, writes, "On 13th July 1988, a lady
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was eyewitness to a hollow pencil-shaped tube (not a beam) of light which
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reached from cloud to ground for an observed period of a couple of
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minutes. A huge volume of the cloud, which was at 4000 feet, appeared
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electrified."8 One event, one witness; two interpreters, two "facts"; no
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paradigm.
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So how are cereologists to conduct pre-paradigm science? Kuhn
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writes, "In the absences of a paradigm or some candidate for a paradigm,
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all of the facts that could possibly pertain...are likely to seem equally
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relevant. As a result, fact-gathering is a far more nearly random activity
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than the one that subsequent scientific development makes familiar." (15)
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This accurately describes how matters stand as of this writing. The
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sensible thing to do is to repeat history, i.e. gather as many observations
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as possible, omnivorously, excluding nothing. There should be routine
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data collection with IR cameras, geiger counters, magnetometers, plant DNA
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assays, weather stations, and so on. Good photos and accurate measure-
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ments need to be taken; even dowsing results and unusual physical sensa-
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tions should be assiduously recorded. And everything should be pub-
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lished. Some sets of observations may not be deemed relevant in the
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future--that is the risk of pre-paradigm science--but we owe it to future
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researchers and historians to bequeath them as rich a storehouse of data
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as we can.
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We could be doing better on this score. As of this writing, meas-
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urements and positional data of both English and North American forma-
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tions are both scarce and of uneven quality. Instrumental experiments
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are rarely performed. In addition, poor organization and political battles
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impede the release of what data does exist. Michael Green is sadly right
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when he notes that "inordinate professional jealousy and commercial rival-
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ry...has unfortunately marked the study of the subject to date, and has
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led to a hoarding of essential information."9 For example, the meteorolo-
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gists are sitting on their data, partly because they're unwilling to let
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their opponents have it. The alien-intelligence theorists are also sitting
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on their data, partly because they feel reluctant to give away the product
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of many hours of hard work. Neither concern is justified. Researchers
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are responsible only for the quality of their data, not for what others do
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with it. It seems to me that anybody who thinks his data will help his
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opponents more than it will help him is in an unenviable position, as far
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as his theory is concerned. And to sit on data is effectively to waste the
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work that went into its collection. The CCCS (Centre for Crop Circle
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Studies) is trying to overcome these problems, and we should wish them
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the best of luck. Steady but polite pressure from Americans may help,
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too.
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Two things are necessary, over and above performing the research:
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a smoothly functioning network funneling data toward publication, and the
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attitude that information should be shared with the community to promote
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further research. Secrecy and mercantile considerations serve only to
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gum up the works, especially at this fragile stage. It would be best if
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history could record that information was freely and generously shared in
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these difficult early days. A 1991 report by Chris Rutkowski and other
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members of the NAICCR (North American Institute for Crop Circles Re-
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search) beautifully exemplifies this attitude. It lists 46 cases of ground
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markings in 1990, about thirty of which appear to be English-style crop
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circles. It provides formation types, lay rotations, dates, sizes, and
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approximate locations. (I am now writing a review of it, which I anticipate
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will appear in the May 1991 issue of the Mufon UFO Journal.) I hope
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other cereologists will consider its example well.
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After obtaining data, cereologists will just have to theorize as
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carefully and responsibly as they can, and dare to be wrong. Francis
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Bacon writes, "Truth emerges more readily from error than from confu-
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sion."10 This maxim strikes me with particular force when I contemplate
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the meteorologists' corpus of research. I think its basic thesis is in
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error, yet even the few the scraps of data the meteorologists publish are
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more useful than the typically haphazard observations offered by people
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whom I think are closer to the mark. Organized error can be re-organ-
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ized into truth.
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2. Non-Human Intelligence?
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2001: A Space Odyssey seems less science-fictional than it did in
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1968, now that artificial constructions of an anomalous nature are appear-
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ing repeatedly around the world. Most of the major researchers in cere-
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ology are convinced that human beings are not making them, because they
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cannot figure out what human device, however sophisticated, could pro-
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duce all of the observed effects and remain undetected for so long. I am
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inclined to agree with them, though I would add that it is always risky to
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underestimate the ingenuity of our own species. I suspect that the
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possibility of a fabulously intricate hoax, however slight, keeps a lot of
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cereologists awake at nights. Perhaps worrying about the hoax theory is
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one way of worrying about the implications of the circles not being hoax-
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es.
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Some researchers, primarily the meteorologists, believe that the
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circles are produced by a natural phenomenon that we have only now
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begun to notice. Many people find this unconvincing. Nature can indeed
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produce fabulously intricate structures, like us, but I have never seen it
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do so both overnight and on such a vast scale. And I find it difficult to
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ascribe the rapidly increasing complexity of the shapes to natural forces,
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which typically change slowly when they change at all.
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By elimination, I have become sympathetic to non-human intelligence
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theories--as I suspect many of my readers will be also. There is some
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slight anecdotal evidence for such theories; NAICCR's report on ground
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markings notes, for instance, that 4 of its 46 listed cases have UFO sight-
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ings associated with them. Anecdotal evidence is notoriously difficult to
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use, however, so I will not appeal to it in my analysis.
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Let us suppose--it is still more or less an outright guess--that the
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crop circles are the products of a non-human intelligence, and explore the
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implications of that thesis. It will be fun to do so, if nothing else. The
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rest of this essay will be devoted to that undertaking.
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It is possible, as I have remarked elsewhere,11 that the formations
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are the visible side-effect of some deliberately directed physical process,
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the way tire tracks and footprints are. At present, there is virtually
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nothing that can be said about this important theory. Discussion only
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becomes possible when one hypothesizes that the formations are supposed
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to mean something, either to their creators or to ourselves. And it is to
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this possibility that I will devote most of my attention.
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If we want to try to decode the circles, we are faced with gigantic
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problems at the very outset. Typically, when we receive messages from
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human intelligences, we have some amount of shared background to draw
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upon in decoding them. Shared language is obviously the most useful
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background; but if that is absent, there are usually others, such as
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shared physical environment, shared needs, shared knowledge of history,
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shared interests, shared physiologies. Not knowing Arabic, I can still
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guess that an Arab with me in a souk is hungry if he looks at me and
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mimics the act of eating.
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But we may share nothing with an alien intelligence. At any rate,
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we can presume nothing.12 We cannot presume similar sensory equipment
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or physical needs; we cannot presume similar evolutionary conditions; we
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cannot even presume corporeal bodies or a sense of self. I could go on
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and on about the radical uncertainty involved. To cut a long discussion
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short, it comes down to this: we must guess, just plain guess, that they
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are like us in some ways, and proceed accordingly. In writing about
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decoding a hypothetical alien message, Lewis White Beck argues that "we
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must guess that it is a message, guess what it says, and then try to see
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if the signal can convey that message."13 For example, we could guess
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that the dimensions of the circles encode mathematical relationships such
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as pi and e, and search to see if such numbers can be found in a sys-
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tematic way. Or we could guess that certain logical relationships are
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being implied, and search for the most basic ones, such as transitivity
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and hierarchy. Or it could be posited that the spatial locations of the
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circles relative to each other are related to spatial distances elsewhere,
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such as between stars. The chances of picking the wrong message are
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high, but Bacon's dictum about truth still applies.
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3. The Problem with "Intelligence"
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I will dare to be wrong later in this essay, but I want to make a
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remark about "intelligence" first. The debate over the crop circles can
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all too easily polarize into two camps, intelligent versus non-intelligent
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causation. But the entire debate could be off the mark. The
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phenomenon's cause may not be "blind nature", but it may not be intelli-
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gence the way we know it, either. If it's aliens, they might be far smart-
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er than us in some ways, but dumb as bricks in others. Or suppose the
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circlemaker is Gaia--an intelligence resulting from complex interactions in
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the biosphere of the planet? Or, the combined psychic interactions of the
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human race? Or a natural phenomenon which is being manipulated by
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such psychic interactions? Farfetched ideas, to be sure, but so is the
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phenomenon. As my colleague Dennis Stacy has repeatedly warned me in
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correspondence, thinking along rigid "p or not-p" lines can overlook
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fruitful areas of inquiry. An arrow flying in a straight line can still miss
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the target.
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Also, it is well to remember that all of the words denoting "intelli-
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gent beings" in English were designed to refer to exactly one species:
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Homo sapiens of Earth. All English words denoting "intelligent non-human
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beings" are negatives: "alien" is rooted in the Sanskrit antara, which
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means merely "other", and "extra-terrestrial" means "not from Earth." In
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terms of thinking about alien intelligence, our language is as limited as
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the counting system which calls all quantities above five "many."
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However, I will guess an intelligence not altogether different from
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ours, simply because it is the easiest for us to think about. It is as
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reasonable a place to start as any.
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Of course, the problem of decoding would still be daunting. To
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manage it, we can make more guesses: perhaps the circlemakers have
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already observed us and know something about us. They may have
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guessed that our minds will leap to certain guesses, and attempted to play
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to our predilections. (Such double-guessing could someday tell us quite a
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bit about them.) As Cipher A. Deavours points out, aliens ought to have
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some interest in developing codes designed to reveal rather than conceal
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information.14 Decoding could be orders of magnitude easier if the cir-
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clemakers have taken our ways of decoding into account. We may be
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seeing our humanness being filtered through alien consciousness and
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played back at us.
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Of course, the simplest way of communicating with us would have
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been to use our own symbols, or to use something readily comprehensible
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to us, like groups of circles corresponding to the prime numbers. The
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fact that we have not readily understood the circles suggests a number of
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possibilities: we have not really tried yet; there is no message; there is a
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message, but one whose content is not directed at us; the entities are so
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profoundly different from us that they cannot figure out what we would
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find easily accessible; they have more subtle motives than straightforward
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communication; they have decided to dispense with easy formalities and
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want us to think hard, perhaps with the implied lure that the reward will
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be worth the effort. I find the first the most preferable, since so little
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has been done by way of attempts at decoding. In any case, it's reason-
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able to guess that something complex and multileveled is either happening
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or being communicated.
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4. A Guess: Are the Crop Circles A Symbol System?
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All this said, I will now risk being wrong in a major way. I will
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argue that we are indeed looking at a symbol system. The shapes seem to
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have a certain "symbolicity" (see Colin Andrews' catalog, Appendix I.) I
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don't necessarily mean that they are a phonetic alphabet like English; I
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mean something more like pictorial codes or schematics. However, I shall
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have to be rather vague about what I mean by the word "symbol." The
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most specific definition I can offer is "a mark which means something to a
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group of people, by convention." For there can be many different kinds
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of symbols. A symbol can be a mark with exactly one referent; for exam-
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ple, there is a certain schematic which signifies exactly one kind of tran-
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sistor. Or it can be a mark amenable to different interpretations, like the
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color red in the Soviet flag (it means revolutionary political possibilities
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to some, raw tyranny to others.) Or it can be a mark which functions in
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a language, meaning little in itself but contributing to a total meaning.
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For example, the physical mark "key" contributes in a certain way to the
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sentence "Where are my car keys?" and in a different way to "The key to
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the treasure is there." It seems to me that the circles could be symbols
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in any of these ways (and there are many more possible ways.) I tend to
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gravitate toward the third, language-oriented kind of symbolicity, but I
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don't wish to exclude the others. My intention is to spark a rich debate
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by opening up possibilities, not to truncate debate by closing them off.
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To a lot of people, the formations "feel" like a symbol system. And
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they do have broad structural elements in common with human symbol
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systems (which, it must be pointed out, may not be much of a basis for
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comparison.) Like many human symbol systems, they can be broken down
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into certain recurring basic shapes--the circle the line, the rectangle, the
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ring, the curved arc, and so on. These elements are their "strokes." If
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the formations are complex, they are complex by the accumulation of pre-
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existing elements, not the creation of new elements (though each summer
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does bring some new elements.)
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Like human symbol systems, the crop circles present enough variety
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to suggest the possibility of reference to a large number of objects or
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ideas. If we saw only three formations repeated over and over, we would
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probably be more inclined to think them artistic or cultural icons, or
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natural artifacts, rather than members of a linguistic or representational
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system.
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Like human symbols, their variety remains within limits; of 1990's
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numerous single and double dumbbells, no two are alike, but all are
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recognizably part of a class. It's a bit like the way the English letters
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b,d,p,q,c, and o form a recognizable class. The Egyptian hieroglyph for
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"bird" would stick out and look very strange in that class, and indeed it
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would not belong anywhere in the alphabet. As would the letter "b" look
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very odd, if claimed to be a Chinese ideogram.
|
|
|
|
The "variety within limits" argument is important for another rea-
|
|
son. The appearance of "scrolls", rectangles, and triangles suggests that
|
|
there is no physical limitation to the kind of shapes that can be created.
|
|
If a short rectangle can be made, so can long ones to form lines, and the
|
|
scrolls suggest that irregular lines can be drawn "freehand", as it were.
|
|
The fact that the formations seem to vary within boundaries seems to
|
|
suggest a defined and ordered system.
|
|
|
|
Of course, there are problems with the argument, such as that the
|
|
formations bear little obvious spatial relationship to each other the way
|
|
human symbols usually do. One is also hard-pressed to group the weirdly
|
|
curvy "scroll" formations as belonging to the same system as the highly
|
|
angular double-dumbbells; perhaps the scrolls really are mistakes or
|
|
doodles. Or perhaps the only message being conveyed is "Watch this
|
|
space, and be here next summer." Humorists have also suggested alien
|
|
art galleries and alien advertising. My guesses may more wrong than I
|
|
can imagine. But for all that, I think it is not crazy to guess that we are
|
|
looking at a symbol system, not random squiggles.
|
|
|
|
It just may be possible to start grouping 1990's new formations into
|
|
classes. Such attempts are highly arbitrary by their nature, conditioned
|
|
by the viewer's predispositions (as are readings of Rorschach inkblots),
|
|
but the attempt is worth making. It would be interesting to see what
|
|
groupings other people make. Colin Andrews' catalog (see Appendix A)
|
|
lists 65 formation types (one is a known hoax, so I don't count it.) I can
|
|
derive the following classes from studying Colin's catalogue:
|
|
|
|
(Numbers refer to the formation number in the catalog)
|
|
|
|
Single dumbbells (21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 36, 55)
|
|
Double-dumbbells (34, 35, 54)
|
|
Thetas (40, 41, 49, 50)
|
|
Plain circles with satellites (3, 5, 6, 17, 43, 52)
|
|
Ringed circles (10, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 38, 64)
|
|
Saturns (7, 8, 11, 32, 37, 46)
|
|
Rings (44)
|
|
Scrolls (45, 48, 65)
|
|
Triangles (47, 63)
|
|
Sports (unique formations, i.e. 26, 39, 53, 58, 59, 62)
|
|
|
|
To explain my nomenclature: I call the "thetas" so because their split
|
|
central circle reminds me of the Greek letter "O" (I imply no actual con-
|
|
nection to Greek.) The "saturns" remind me of Saturn with its moons
|
|
(again, no connection to the planet implied, though it's not impossible that
|
|
there be one.) I take the name "scroll" from The Crop Circle Enigma
|
|
(which shows pictures of them on p. 156.) I name the "sports" so be-
|
|
cause a "sport" in biology is a unique object.
|
|
|
|
Interestingly enough, it may be that the formation types are also
|
|
roughly contiguous in space. The hand-drawn map reproduced in Issue 2
|
|
of The Cereologist (p. 3) shows that all three double-dumbbells appeared
|
|
quite close to each other, in fact within an area five kilometers long and
|
|
two kilometers wide, just north of Alton Barnes. At least six of the ten
|
|
single dumbbells appeared in the Longwood Estate area, just southwest of
|
|
Winchester. The four thetas may fall in a line (it will take much better
|
|
data to verify this.) Two of the scrolls are quite close to each other, at
|
|
Beckhampton.
|
|
|
|
The spatial-relationships idea is being pursued vigorously by
|
|
Harvey Lunenfeld of East Northport, New York. We've been trying to
|
|
obtain positional data for as many of the formations as possible, in order
|
|
to create a computerized database. Harvey and his son Randy are now
|
|
configuring sophisticated mapping software which will facilitate the search
|
|
for spatial relationships, and also for correlations with other types of
|
|
data. So far we've been obtaining our positional data from thumbnail
|
|
deduction from photographs and other available evidence. The job will
|
|
become much easier once we gain access to satellite imagery good enough
|
|
to show exactly where the formations are. Access to some of the English
|
|
databases would also help greatly, of course.
|
|
|
|
Allow me to call attention to the fact that certain elements recur in
|
|
different contexts. The triangle's "F" is much like the shapes jutting out
|
|
from all three double dumbbells. (Could it be significant that none of the
|
|
single dumbbells have such shapes?) The other triangle's flanking shapes
|
|
are very much like the double rectangles on many of the single dumbbells
|
|
(and, note, none of the double dumbbells.) One simple circle has a three-
|
|
fingered shape jutting out of it which looks almost exactly like the one
|
|
attached to the Allington Down (more precisely, East Kennett) double
|
|
dumbbell. Some of the single dumbbells and the theta formations have
|
|
partial arcs as components. The saturns are a combination of plain circles
|
|
with satellites and ringed circles. This evident combination and recombi-
|
|
nation of elements makes it plausible to suppose that there is some form
|
|
of "grammar" ruling their placement.
|
|
|
|
It may be possible to work out the properties of the grammar
|
|
without understanding the meaning of the symbols. One way to do this is
|
|
to compare groups of symbols to each other, isolating consistent statistical
|
|
similarities and differences. For example, if the ratios of the areas of the
|
|
two circles in single dumbells compares in some consistent way to the
|
|
ratios of the lengths of the forks to their circles, that might indicate a
|
|
meaningful element of language. This particular example is mathematically
|
|
oriented, but other strategies are feasible, too: one could compare the
|
|
spatial orientation of the thetas to that of all of the other groups, or
|
|
compare the length of formations to their compass orientations. It is an
|
|
encouraging fact that cryptographers are frequently able to decode
|
|
messages whose plaintext is written in a language they do not know very
|
|
well. Deavours writes,
|
|
|
|
It is of interest that codes can often be solved where
|
|
the underlying language of the plaintext is not known
|
|
for certain. One can also gain an immense knowledge of
|
|
the structure and character of a communication without
|
|
understanding a single thought expressed therein. For
|
|
intergalactic communication, this offers much hope that
|
|
we may succeed in deciphering what is received (203-
|
|
204.)
|
|
|
|
As evidence that meaning is not crucial to decipherment, Deavours men-
|
|
tions that
|
|
|
|
the great French cryptanalyst, Georges Painvain, of
|
|
World War I fame, solved many complex ciphers of the
|
|
German General Staff but possessed so little knowledge
|
|
of German that he was unable to translate the deci-
|
|
phered text after solution (209).
|
|
|
|
Not knowing the language need not impede understanding its shape and
|
|
general characteristics. Such research could yield one great practical
|
|
benefit down the road: upon receiving a Rosetta Stone, we would then be
|
|
able to learn and read the language that much more quickly, perhaps well
|
|
enough to begin using it ourselves. In the touchy and uncertain days
|
|
immediately following alien contact, such an advantage might be very
|
|
welcome indeed. This makes it all the more imperative to facilitate re-
|
|
search with an effective network of data distribution.
|
|
|
|
Figuring out what the grammar's shapes represent (if grammar it is,
|
|
of course) will be tough, because the formations appear to lack all social
|
|
context. There is no "Rosetta Stone" permitting them to be compared to a
|
|
known symbol system; there are no objects helpfully put next to them to
|
|
show what they depict or schematize; there are no appreciative alien enti-
|
|
ties in view admiring them as art. Quite the contrary, they are placed
|
|
wordlessly (so to speak) on this planet's largest equivalent of a blank,
|
|
lined sheet of paper. But we should try. We can attempt to restore the
|
|
context, or at least make one. Our guesses might be correct.
|
|
|
|
But a worrying philosophical issue intrudes here. Let us say we
|
|
guess a message--a meaning--and find out that the circles transmit it.
|
|
Can we be sure that we have truly decoded the circles? Perhaps not.
|
|
Humans are infinitely resourceful at seeing patterns that are not there.
|
|
Edward R. Tufte, in his engaging book "Envisioning Information", reprints
|
|
a picture of a rock in southern Massachusetts which is covered with
|
|
ancient hieroglyphs.15 Next to the picture he reproduces ten hand-drawn
|
|
sketches of the markings, made between 1680 and 1854. Not only are the
|
|
sketches strikingly different, but different scholars have triumphantly
|
|
adduced totally different origins for the glyphs: Scythian, Phoenician,
|
|
Runic, Viking, and Algonquin, to name a few. Tufte cheerfully damns this
|
|
as "scholarship of wishful thinking" (73). I am not sure if there is any
|
|
way to solve the problem, other than asking the circlemakers what they
|
|
mean (and even that might not help as much as we think it would.) My
|
|
reaction is just to say, "Let us see what we can guess and find, then see
|
|
which guess convinces the most people, and deal with the philosophical
|
|
problems as they arise."
|
|
|
|
The lack of context is significant in another way. It is a truism
|
|
that symbols mean something only in a social context. If these shapes
|
|
have a concrete and socially-based meaning to their creators, how are
|
|
they changed by being engraved on fields on another planet? Suppose
|
|
that the magnificent Fawley Down pictogram (a "theta" formation) refers to
|
|
a Rigellian action which human physiologies cannot duplicate? If we know
|
|
nothing of Rigellian physiology, we'll never figure that out, will we? And,
|
|
more importantly, how does the meaning of the symbol change when it is
|
|
stamped, without context or explanation, in a field of wheat near Winches-
|
|
ter, England? What does the symbol mean at that particular place and
|
|
time, if anything? Not, I feel sure, just to tell us what Rigellians do.
|
|
What would a glowing Coca-Cola advertisement mean in a Brazilian rainfor-
|
|
est where Coke is not available? Anything but "Buy Coke." Perhaps it
|
|
would be (meant as, read as) an ironic statement on the extravagance of
|
|
modern advertising. But if a picture of that advertisement in the rainfor-
|
|
est was reproduced as an advertisement by Coke, the sign would again
|
|
mean "Buy Coke"--but also something more, like "Coke is, or should be,
|
|
available literally everywhere." Meaning is an event with multiple layers,
|
|
most if not all of which are radically and subtly dependent on context.
|
|
|
|
It is attractive to suppose that the formations are a sort of logical
|
|
puzzle, like an IQ test. This would seem to make their context internal
|
|
rather than external; the shapes would define their own context. But this
|
|
argument is misleading. If one was presented with an IQ test without
|
|
knowing what it was, or being shown how to work with the shapes pre-
|
|
sented, it would be meaningless. The very idea of the logical puzzle is
|
|
socially constructed. The Soviet psychologist A. R. Luria has shown that
|
|
it is almost impossible to convey the idea of the syllogism to normally
|
|
intelligent but nonliterate people. When Russian peasants were given the
|
|
syllogistic puzzle In the Far North, where there is snow, all bears are
|
|
white. Novaya Zembla is in the Far North and there is always snow there.
|
|
What color are the bears?, a typical response was, "I don't know. I've
|
|
seen a black bear. I've never seen any others. Each locality has its own
|
|
animals." From their point of view, it was absurd to try to figure out the
|
|
color of bears with logic, since bear coats are something you see, not
|
|
deduce.16 The ideas of the logical puzzle and the transitive relationship
|
|
are evidently learned, not inherent to human intelligence. If there is a
|
|
logical pattern, it would be nothing simple to figure out, for the first
|
|
thing we would have to do is figure out what has to be figured out. And
|
|
that would almost certainly require the discovery of some external context,
|
|
like an alien culture's way of thinking and reasoning. Unless, of course,
|
|
the circlemakers have tried to use some human mode of reasoning.
|
|
|
|
There are an enormous number of possibilities. A reading of the
|
|
circles will not come easily. A lot will depend on the ability to make
|
|
inspired guesses, and convince other people that they are right. The
|
|
rest will depend on good data, good analytical tools, and vast amounts of
|
|
hard work. But the potential payoff ought to make any linguist salivate.
|
|
The field has ample room for the next Chompollon.
|
|
|
|
5. About Unconvincing Guesses
|
|
|
|
Having put forward a guess (of a sort), let me say something about
|
|
unconvincing guesses. I have seen quite a few articles purporting to
|
|
decode individual formations to reveal some definite meaning, like "Kha-
|
|
wah" ("life giver")17 or "This is a dangerous place to camp."18 The
|
|
typical move in such guesses is to declare that the formation contains
|
|
letters in an ancient language or elements from an obscure symbol system,
|
|
and decode it by translating those letters/elements into English. I find
|
|
these kinds of guesses uniformly unconvincing. If you compare the cir-
|
|
cles to any language or symbol system, you'll score a number of hits.
|
|
Compare them to English, and you'll find F's, O's, C's, Q's, I's, M's, and
|
|
W's. Compare them to American traffic symbols, and you can find resem-
|
|
blances to stoplights (i.e. three circles in a row), dashed lines on the
|
|
road, and "no entry" signs. This second example is deliberately ludi-
|
|
crous, but it illustrates the "Rorschach" quality of the phenomenon: one
|
|
can see almost anything in it. Simple resemblance alone, let alone highly
|
|
approximate resemblance, is a very shaky ground for decoding.
|
|
|
|
It is also very common for such arguments to ignore the fact that
|
|
the supposed "letters" and 'symbols" are stuck onto unrelated shapes,
|
|
and otherwise distorted and garbled. It doesn't make sense to use an
|
|
alphabet or symbol system by making it nearly unrecognizable. Finding a
|
|
highly resemblant set of symbols could change the whole game, but to my
|
|
knowledge, no one has accomplished this, not even Michael Green in his
|
|
ambitious attempt to link the circles to designs on ancient Roman and
|
|
Celtic stone carvings.19 Green finds several interesting similarities
|
|
between ancient carvings and modern crop circles, but it's not enough to
|
|
establish a meaningful link, since hundreds of formations have appeared
|
|
in the last few years, and there are hundreds of Roman/Celtic shapes
|
|
which look nothing like any known crop circle. More problematically, the
|
|
Roman/Celtic shapes are typically combinations of circles, so the probabili-
|
|
ty of a few rough matches by pure chance is very high. And, of course,
|
|
even if the Celts were imitating crop circles seen thousands of years ago,
|
|
their interpretations of them ("cosmic egg", "sun god", etc.) cannot be
|
|
known to be the same as the intentions of the entities who generated
|
|
them. They could be completely off the mark, as far as the circlemakers
|
|
are concerned. The historical link would be exciting and valuable if
|
|
Green could establish it more strongly, but it would be of little direct
|
|
assistance in interpretative efforts.
|
|
|
|
In sum, most would-be "decoders" look at a few formations, ignoring
|
|
all the rest; they make no attempt to resolve diverse shapes into a sys-
|
|
tem; they fail to consider disconfirming evidence. Instead, they Rorschach
|
|
their theories into a small part of the phenomenon, and find exactly what
|
|
they want to find.
|
|
|
|
Of course, no one can avoid Rorschaching into the circles. I myself
|
|
have read my hopes, beliefs, and professional biases into them. But one
|
|
must at least try to consider the whole phenomenon and think about it
|
|
systematically. Error may then be productive error. Anything else is
|
|
only confusion.
|
|
|
|
6. The Future Looks Back on the Present: A Hopeful Guess
|
|
|
|
There is far more that could be said, but I am probably pushing
|
|
the limits of Mufon's printing budget with a paper of this size, and the
|
|
patience of my readers as well. I will close, then, by offering a hopeful
|
|
look at the present from the viewpoint of the future. Someday, there may
|
|
be a paradigm which explains the crop circles to everybody's satisfaction.
|
|
Then it will be difficult for people to see this strange and beautiful
|
|
phenomenon any other way. But historians will be fascinated by the pre-
|
|
paradigm writings of this era. To them our ways of seeing will look
|
|
untutored and naive, but also fresh and new--the words of children
|
|
seeing things for the first time. Despite their superior knowledge, they
|
|
may envy us, we who have the extraordinary opportunity of first sight.
|
|
Naivete is a rare gift. Let us use it well.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Notes
|
|
|
|
(1) R.M. Skinner, "A Seventeenth-Century Report of an Encounter with an
|
|
Ionized Vortex?" Journal of Meteorology, November 1990, p. 346. The
|
|
source is John Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire (publication date not
|
|
given.)
|
|
|
|
(2) John Haddington reports hearing and recording "a strange and beauti-
|
|
ful trilling noise" in a circle at Bishops Canning, 1990. See his "The
|
|
Wansdyke Watch", The Cereologist, issue 1 (Summer 1990), p. 15.
|
|
|
|
(3) David J. Reynolds, "Possibility of a Crop Circle from 1590." Journal of
|
|
Meteorology, November 1990, pp. 347-352. The text is Robert Plott's The
|
|
Natural History of Stafford-shire, Oxford, 1686.
|
|
|
|
(4) Plott, p. 15 (italics in original.) I am grateful to Carl Carpenter for
|
|
sending me a xerox of the relevant chapter of the book, pages 7-21.
|
|
|
|
(5) For examples of the former, see Delgado and Andrews' Circular Evidence
|
|
(Bloomsbury Press, 1989), pp. 179-190. For examples of the latter, see
|
|
Terence Meaden, The Circles Effect and its Mysteries (Artetech, 1989)
|
|
especially chapter 2.
|
|
|
|
(6) Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Circles Effect
|
|
(held at Oxford Polytechnic, June 23, 1990), p. 50. This has been reprint-
|
|
ed as Circles From the Sky. The April 1991 issue of the Mufon UFO
|
|
Journal contains a large bibliography which includes ordering information
|
|
for most of the books cited in this paper.
|
|
|
|
(7) University of Chicago Press, 1962.
|
|
|
|
(8) Proceedings, p. 39. The event is also discussed in The Circles Effect
|
|
and its Mysteries, p. 55.
|
|
|
|
(9) Michael Green, "The Rings of Time: The Symbolism of the Crop Circles."
|
|
In The Crop Circle Enigma (Gateway Books, 1990, ed. Ralph Noyes) p. 139.
|
|
|
|
(10) Quoted in Kuhn, p. 18.
|
|
|
|
(11) Michael Chorost and Colin Andrews, "The Summer 1990 Crop Circles",
|
|
Mufon UFO Journal, December 1990, pp. 3-14.
|
|
|
|
(12) Some people have tried to define what we can presume. Gregory
|
|
Benford: "The most extreme view one can take is to reject any category of
|
|
knowledge of the alien, declaring them all to be inherently anthropomor-
|
|
phic or anthropocentric, and flatly declare that the alien is fundamentally
|
|
unknowable" (26). Benford later goes on to suggest, though, that we may
|
|
be able to expand our categories to include alien ways of knowing: "We
|
|
can make ourselves greater. We can ingest the alien" (27). ("Aliens and
|
|
Unknowability: A Scientist's Perspective", in Starship, vol. 43, Winter-
|
|
Spring 1982-3, pp. 25-27.) On the other hand, Marvin Minsky argues that
|
|
alien intelligence is likely to resemble ours, because "every evolving intel-
|
|
ligence will eventually encounter certain very special ideas--e.g. about
|
|
arithmetic, causal reasoning, and economics--because these particular ideas
|
|
are very much simpler than other ideas with similar uses" (127). (Byte,
|
|
April 1985, pp. 127-138.) Speculation is useful for defining the problem,
|
|
but it's rather like Robinson Crusoe trying to do sociology.
|
|
|
|
(13) Lewis White Beck, "Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life." In Extraterrestri-
|
|
als: Science and Alien Intelligence, edited by Edward Regis, Jr. Cam-
|
|
bridge University Press, 1985.
|
|
|
|
(14) Cipher A. Deavours, "Extraterrestrial Communication: A Cryptologic
|
|
Perspective", in Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien Intelligence. pp. 201-
|
|
214. (Interestingly enough, the author's name is not a joke.)
|
|
|
|
(15) Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information. Graphics Press, Cheshire,
|
|
Connecticut, 1990.
|
|
|
|
(16) Luria's finding is discussed in Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The
|
|
Technologizing of the Word (New York: Methuen, 1982), pp. 52-53.
|
|
|
|
(17) Letter by Ernest P. Moyer, reprinted in Focus (Dec. 31, 1990), p. 16.
|
|
|
|
(18) Jon Erik Beckjord, broadside sheet, February 1991.
|
|
|
|
(19) Michael Green, "The Rings of Time: The Symbolism of the Crop Circles."
|
|
In The Crop Circles Enigma, Gateway Books, 1990, pp. 137-171.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
About the Author
|
|
|
|
Michael Chorost was educated at Brown and the University of Texas at
|
|
Austin, and is now at Duke, working toward his Ph.D. in Renaissance liter-
|
|
ature and philosophy of language. His first article on the subject, "The
|
|
Summer 1990 Crop Circles", was coauthored with Colin Andrews and was
|
|
published in December 1990's Mufon UFO Journal. He has also authored
|
|
a bibliography of the phenomenon.
|
|
|
|
The author may be contacted at:
|
|
|
|
North American Circle
|
|
P.O. Box 61144
|
|
Durham, NC 27705-1144
|
|
********************************************
|
|
* THE U.F.O. BBS http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
|
|
******************************************** |