====================================
About half way through the Saturday talks at the MUFON 2013 conference.
At least so far, talks and discussions have focused on the relationship of science and anomalies. How does science really work, how much can we do hard science, and just exactly what does it mean to do science?
The first talk was by Ted Peters, MUFON consultant on religion, talking about the relationship between science, religion, UFOlogy and SETI. He talked about the relationship between UFO research community and the SETI community. The second talk was by Albert Harrison, on the relationship between disclosure, science, and denial. It looked at why science, mainstream society and government all deny and avoid the UFO topic.
Peters, said that the UFO community and SETI community "should both be going to the same barbecue".
Different paradigms over modern history: formation of life, evolution to higher forms, then to intelligence, eventually to scientific enlightenment. This is the pinnacle, the scientific paradigm: we are progressing from ignorance, through increasing science. Furthermore, science and thus, improved knowledge, will solve our problems and save humanity.
One philosophy is that humanity fell from a more enlightened state, into a sort of "dark ages." Scientific endeavor and increased knowledge will bring us back to an improved state of enlightenment - a rational awakening. Peters quoted Frank Drake and Jill Tartar in this regard, to the effect that the discovery of ETI (ET intelligent life) would bring us together and help us better accept our pace in the universe.
A more new-age variation of this idea is that that we are progressing through an awakening of some type - a similar view to scientific enlightenment but that rolls in parapsychology. This has been adopted by many UFO researchers and new age advocates. It is an idea I find intriguing, though as a researcher I need to keep an open mind.
SETI - wants to form a "scientific" body of endeavor over many years to steadily search for alien signal - combing through large amounts of data.
UFOlogy - looks at individual cases, attempting to develop a bigger picture of how UFOs work.
We are both looking for the same thing, contact, but in different ways.
The issue is that the SETI community doesn't view the UFO community as being "Rational", thus it is not part of the scientific enlightenment. The UFO community view SETI as being elitist, and possibly even part of the coverup. There is a mutual suspicion between the two groups, yet they are basically seeking the same thing. In the words of Peters, they should both be at the same barbecue.
Albert Harrison (author of After Contact) talked more about the human reaction to ET contact. What would our reaction be. Would we panic, would it adversely - or positively - affect our belief systems. His conclusion was that a SETI discovery or other discovery of ET life would have little impact. Arrival of ETI would have an impact but probably not as negative as we think. It might, indeed, lead to new knowledge.
This is, to some degree, an extension of the idea that an extension of human growth and enlightenment is ET contact, and the bestowing upon humanity of a membership in the cosmic club... This admission to the "Cosmic Kindergarten" as Stanton Friedman phrased it, would be the next logical step in our evolution.
Somewhere in there, between talks, I got into a discussion of "what is science?" I have always thought in terms of development of UFOlogy according to the scientific paradigm - building a hypothesis that is testable, then making some sort of observations to verify or refute that hypothesis. I have used as a guide two books, The Art of Scientific Investigation, by William Beveridge, and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn.
One person - the speaker just after that, Dr. Ron Westrum, had an observation that there are really two scientific approaches - left brained, experimenting, etc. and right brained, theoreticians, etc. There are many styles of doing science, from purely theoretical (Einstein and other theoretical physicists) to experimental researchers (Tesla, etc. - often these are engineers or inventors as much as pure scientists). The typical scientist today, we think of as doing experiments or observations to test a hypothesis/theory. Yet the gist of his comments was that there are a wide variety of ways of study.
Shortly after that, Dr. Westrum did his own talk, focused on scientists' treatment of anomalies - or what he called "hidden events". In this case, he looked at the controversy in the mid to late 1700s about meteorites - the heretical idea that rocks could fall from the sky, and at the emergence of child abuse as a recognized phenomenon and problem during the 1950s and 1960s. He then looked at the scientific community's statements/actions regarding UFOs and found nearly the same level of resistance.
He made a comment during the talk that there was really not one "scientific method" similar to what he stated in our discussion earlier.
So - what is science?
And will the UFO phenomenon ever be accepted without ridicule by the scientific community? To me the jury is out. The best we can do at the moment is to carry on. We can only do our best, collecting data, doing research and eventually amassing enough knowledge to shift the paradigm.
