the day (or three weeks) after the party: post-event reflections, and my future odyssey into the world of ufological academia
Well, as I sit in my darkened living room,
following the Great California Deluge (at least so far for the Year 2023; the gods only
know what's in store for us in the weeks, months and years hence), listening to
the style galant of
J.S. Bach’s son J.C., I reflect that it’s been just about exactly three (very
long) weeks since the conclusion of the three-day Symposium I organized
(with some great help from some great folks), an event which I hosted virtually
from my alma mater out in Amish Country rural Pennsylvania. (Post-event access is still available through 16 March, if you’re interested to catch the
recordings of our 15 or so presentations—just follow the previous link.)
I will leave it to others to review the sessions
or the Symposium as a whole, as my role here is as plain reporter not critical evaluator.
My esteemed interlocutor, Bryan Sentes (an invitee and participant of the
event, who organized a fantastic cross-disciplinary panel at the conclusion of
the very intellectually rich first day) has tantalizingly promised a review, and
helpfully provided reference
to perhaps the first reflection on the event. We do indeed breathlessly
await this…
For my part, a few scattered reflections and recollections of the event; a log of my travels leading up to and following it; my painful but brief interregnum; and a profile of my upcoming foray into the world of ufological academia is perhaps in order, as I have remained conspicuously silent in the immediate days and weeks following Limina’s Inaugural Symposium 2023.
A few presentations into Day One, Prof. Kripal,
known to many of you already as one eloquent voice within academia concerned
with the serious study of anomalous phenomena (‘anomalalia’?) broadly construed,
and one chronicler of this zone of the uncanny, had reminded us that a
strictly scientific engagement with unidentified aerial phenomena—“the
phenomenon” as some of us occasionally style it—is incomplete without a
humanist accompaniment. And that the humanities don’t merely provide the tasty
but strictly superfluous “sprinkles on the cake”. Indeed, Kripal precisely
voiced the reason I began this Symposium with esteemed ufological historian of
science Greg Eghigian, whose masterful historical overview of the emergence of
the UFO phenomenon as, variously, a topic of military, popular and (albeit falteringly)
of scientific concern, provided a rich context of meaning within which to understand
the strictly empirical engagement with the issue. Prof. Eghigian’s talk, then,
was exactly where I thought we should begin.
And yet, at another level, we couldn’t avoid the
Fortean dimensions of the whole affair asserting themselves, despite our efforts
to strike a tone of sober-minded academic study. UFOs continue to be logged as
a topic in Forteana, and as if on cue, the day we began the Symposium was
precisely the day the whole UAP/balloons saga began—that is, with the downing
of what was quickly confirmed to be a Chinese surveillance balloon. The drama
of first a UAP being reported, then identified as a conventional craft, was a
kind of uncanny wink of the Universe’s eye to those of us gathered that
weekend. The Fortean dimension in this case was not so much apparent in what we
took to be the object of our focus during the Symposium (UAP), but rather in the very synchronicity
between the Symposium’s focus on UAP (and the epistemological, ontological and
methodological issues faced in studying such phenomena) and the events
unfolding in the news throughout that weekend, which were to bring the question
of UAP to the minds of almost everyone in the world. I could not have authored
a better metaphysical tale myself…
The Balloon Event of 2023, that fortuitously
coincided with this Symposium, was one of those events (in a more profoundly philosophical
sense) that provides an occasion for a rupture: UFO “believers” and “skeptics” suddenly
are (quite unwittingly) forced to reveal themselves for what they are—well, in
any case, they are revealed as flawed and unconsciously dogmatic human
(all-too-human) thinkers, armed with (a priori) conclusions in search of
arguments. It can be a pitiful display, sadly. But we must accept it nonetheless
as part of the course of the overall dialectic of understanding.
For my part, I accepted that the first “UAP” was
indeed a Chinese balloon, as was quickly announced upon its downing just off
the Carolina coast. Clear photos of the object soon emerged, and we were later
treated to the pictures and the story of debris recovery efforts. In my
acceptance, was I being gullible? I trusted the media, the government announcements—the
official, mainstream media, that is. But I also trusted the descriptions of the
object (for that was a better description: we were able to skip ‘phenomena’
and move to ‘object’ fairly unproblematically), descriptions which were not
particularly anomalous at all. Indeed, it was those initial descriptions which
licensed us in not even having to invoke the now rather loaded term ‘UAP’ at
all. When the object was observed, it was initially observed to be a balloon—just
of unknown origin. But if it’s a balloon, it’s uncontroversial that it’s
a human-fashioned object: someone, somewhere was responsible for it. And that
subsequently turned out to be the Chinese. Case closed—at least on the origins
question; as to what exactly it was doing there … well, that’s a matter of
careful investigation, apart from the obvious interpretive assumption that it’s
surveillance tech operated by a putative adversary (perhaps we make this assumption
because it’s built and operated by a political and economic adversary).
Now for those other alleged UAPs … and
here I will admit to having become extremely cranky at several of my interlocutors
at some noted UAP think-tanks, with whom I’m in touch on a number of internal
Slack accounts. What really irked me was the insistence, by some of the most
vociferous Slack participants at these think-tanks (there always seems to be
one or two of us who do all the talking), that we don’t know that it’s
not a “real” UAP until we get a better handle on the data. And about that data:
it’s not being fully disclosed, so here we go again, with the government
first admitting they don’t know what it is, then trying to convince us there’s
nothing to see here (so please move on) … echoes of Roswell, it would seem. And
indeed: or so it would seem—emphasis on the seeming. That’s just what
was irksome: a lot of seeming, and innuendo, and the insistence—justifiable as for as it goes—on patient agnosticism in the face of a paucity of data, yet it is really a disingenuous rational-seeming “agnosticism” topped with a healthy dollop of conspiratorial
worry-warting over government dissemblance. I mean, maybe we’re dealing
with a real UAP—a truly anomalous craft aloft, navigating by some
unknown propulsion system! Maybe! Right?!
Well, wrong. Here the priors are fairly and
unproblematically straightforward: the final three objects in question are most likely rather conventional
objects, balloons or other dirigibles. Why do I say that? Well, simply because
the descriptions of what was observed didn’t indicate anything particularly
anomalous, despite the inconsistencies in the official accounts. At one point,
a Pentagon official, a general, says in one breath that they’re not saying it’s
a balloon “for a reason” and then head-spinningly proceeds to concede that it might
be a balloon after all! (Here is the full transcript.) And if you allow yourself an updated prior deriving
from the history of UAP/UFO encounters (that is, if you put any credence in the
many fairly good reports of encounters with UFOs), you’d know that the mere
fact that military aircraft were able to intercept and down these objects (or
otherwise interact successfully with them) is itself evidence against these craft
being anomalous UAP in the classic ufological sense. How did longtime UFO-concerned
journalist Billy Cox recently put it? “Legit
UFOs don’t get shot down—and that’s the problem.”
Surely, we ought to wait for all of the data to
come in about these three other objects (which, quite without recent precedent,
were actually downed or at least shot at by military fighter jets), before
we make a final pronouncement on these cases. But, equally surely, we are
justified in placing a bet, bringing to bear the venerated logic of induction.
After all, that’s the whole point of inductive reasoning—and especially an
induction which would invoke Bayesian premises: inductive logic is useful exactly
when we are dealing with a limited or even somewhat poor current dataset,
and we want to come up with a reasonable guess (an informed one) as to
what the hell might be going on. The past (both distant and immediate)
helps us in gauging present and future occurrences or outcomes, especially if
there’s any doubt as to what on earth (or out of it) is going on in the data we’re
getting. In this case, we’re getting reports of aerial objects floating around
U.S. (and Canadian) airspace, sometimes confirmed by ground radar. But the
immediate past context was important for reasoning about these new “UAP” occurrences:
a Chinese surveillance balloon was recently shot down; the miliary decided to
recalibrate radar arrays to stop cutting out all the air clutter … and voila … more slow-moving airborne objects were detected, seen as obvious
safety-of-flight issues, intercepted, and quickly downed.
At first, some of the reports did seem UFO-y. “Metallic
structures”. Couldn’t immediately discern the propulsion mechanisms. Pieces of
the downed craft strewn about. And so on through the suggestive gamut of Roswell-like
utterances. (Here’s a convenient timeline and play-by-play
of events as they unfolded.) But not really,
of course. We are justified, as we have suggested, in guessing that we’re not dealing with anything really
extraordinary, apart from the fact of the unprecedented military interceptions (with
live fire) within U.S. airspace. What’s unusual or unfortunate is the whole kerfuffle
over these things, and the lack of clarity issuing from the putative
authorities. Because of the usual secrecy in matters Pentagon, we may never “know”
what the hell did go down (as it were), so I’m happy to move on…
Where were we before this tanget? Ah yes, we were
making a few scattered remarks about the Symposium I organized three weeks ago.
Let’s get back to that…
In my question to Mr. Powell, I pointed out that in his recent book, our keynote speaker for the
final Sunday talks, Dr. Daniel Coumbe (formerly of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen), had performed some calculations for what was this anomalous radar return that occurred
during the incident—again, presumably radar returns of the object in
question (and again, this is something one would want to carefully evaluate:
was this the same allegedly anomalous object that we see on the infrared
video? … we make the assumption that is was). Those calculations showed above-Mach
speeds—as high as twice the speed of sound. That’s already strange, near
to the airport. When I asked Powell about it, he said that this very issue was
raised with an independent evaluator of the case report that SCU generated, and
what this (French) team determined was that in fact this signal was due to
radar jamming interference! If that’s right, then we had an anomalous object
interfering with the radar trying to track it, causing the array to
generate false kinematical readings. In any alternative account of the Aguadilla
Incident, we are owed a consistent and plausible account of this further bit of
apparently anomalous evidence.
But West chose instead to focus exclusively on
the video, providing a convincing account of what the velocity of the object
would be, based on his (rather plausible) alternative line-of-sight analysis.
Seen in the context of the evidence as a whole, however—as some legal minds
present in the audience pointed out to me (in private communications)—the alternative
interpretation he wanted to offer as to what the object really was (that we’re
dealing with nothing more extraordinary than Chinese lanterns set aloft for
festive purposes, presumably from a nearby hotel—not an uncommon practice, at
least in 2013) could not really be convincing, simply because this alternative account
was not (or could not be) applied to the rest of the evidence.
The problem could be mitigated somewhat by making
it clear that this account doesn’t try to encompass all of the evidence—it
rather just purports to offer a more perspicacious look at line-of-sight issues
as they feature in the attempt to deduce the object’s velocity. But then the question becomes: so how does
this more careful look at the line-of-sight issue impact the overall assessment
of the SCU report, namely: that what we are dealing with is a truly anomalous
unidentified aerial object of unknown nature, origin and purpose? Even if we
grant the cogency of West’s analysis (and it was cogent, within the
limits he set for himself), and accept that the object was moving much more
slowly than the SCU report would have us believe, this would not in itself be
enough reason to believe that this object was a mere Chinese lantern
blowing around with the prevailing winds. What about the observations of the
object at the airport? And the radar anomalies?
To be clear, SCU does not have an account
of the object. It is claimed to be a genuine “UAP”: an unidentified anomalous aerial object of some
kind. Thus, SCU’s conclusion is entirely negative: the object cannot be
accounted for conventionally. They give extensive reasons (not, it should
be noted, dependent on the line-of-sight considerations used by West to dispute
the particular speeds the object had) as to why it can’t be a conventional
object, that is: an object of known physical nature—whether natural or manufactured.
It might be a natural phenomenon heretofore unknown to science—but then how
does it fly and move, and (apparently) divide into two? Even creatures of nature
need flight or control surfaces—on their bodies—to control their
movements. The object appeared to be in controlled flight, in many
instances moving against the prevailing winds (one strong reason the SCU concludes
it can’t be a lantern, which would be uncontrollably subject to those winds). It also appears
to enter the water and then reemerge (something West, in his alternative interpretation,
disputes), having divided into two. And at this particular moment the SCU had observed that there were further anomalies in the thermal data coming from this sensor: the object appears to increase, briefly, in volume, and two independent heat sources seem to emerge (although this fact of two heat sources would be consistent with the twin-lanterns theory West argues for, the volumetric increase observed in the thermal signature would appear to be puzzling under the West lantern interpretation). So the anomaly isn’t confined to kinematics,
or to “transmedium travel” (as it has been put: moving through air, water and other
media without altering course or speed); we have an anomaly in the very nature
of the object as such, and the associated thermal signature registered by the infrared camera. And if it has divided, that would suggest a biological
nature—except for its effortless travel through the air and the water without
visible flight surfaces or a means of propulsion. The Aguadilla case is truly a
remarkable, and perplexing, UAP event…
I won’t dwell any further on the other talks
during this Symposium, except to say that I was really pleased. I wanted more skeptical
voices to be present—and I was really thankful to Mr. West for accepting our
invitation. But I was happy that we got so many excellent presentations by
really genuine thinkers and intellectuals who really care to take the subject
seriously, as everyone did.
Closing our event was a really fascinating panel
of UAP-focused journalists (next time we will endeavor to get Billy Cox to
attend), that I allowed to go into overtime. Rare is it to have the likes of
Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal, Ross Coulthart, George Knapp and the German
UFO-interested independent journalist Andreas Müller all gathered together in
one event, talking together about their field—how far it has come, and what still
remains to be investigated more carefully.
So, at the moment, I am hard at work on a number
of projects, initiatives and future events for both the Society for UAP Studies and
Limina. I am also setting up a fairly intense travel schedule (which I’ll
get to)…
The Society will be offering an intensive lecture
seminar series, delivered by the esteemed UAP researcher Dr. Massimo Teodorani.
Tickets are about to go on sale, but the event will be each Monday throughout
the whole month of June. Dr. Teodorani will also deliver a capstone public lecture
on 1 July as part of the Society’s J. Allen Hynek Lectures. (As readers
of my blog, you have the chance to register and acquire tickets for both of
these events at a discount. Just use the codes “entausSem” for the seminar and “entausLec”
for the Hynek lecture in July when checking out and you’ll get the discount. Any questions, just
email me directly using the Society’s website.)
About my travel schedule: well, I’ve been invited
to (or will attend) a few events that may interest the UFO community…
The first is an academic workshop (invite only) in
mid-March on the politics of UAP. I can’t give you many details right now, but
I hope to be able to blog on it (and the experience should be quite a bit
different than our PhenomeCon 2022 extravaganza—which, by the way, is set for another go this coming September … apparently
my review was not enough to put the snuff on the candle. I may not be able to go.).
Here I’ll be speaking about UAP and Climate Change.
The second, also in March (yikes!), is a colloquium on SETI/UAP issues organized by the German jurist and professor of law at
Durham University in the U.K., Michael Bohlander. I might take some time,
following this event, to hop on over to Paris and meet with some UAP researchers.
That should be a great experience, as the French are arguably the most advanced
in terms of their organized (and variously government-funded) UAP research (let’s
not forget the seminal COMETA
report, which Leslie Kean first reported on in the U.S., back in 2000—she got a
copy of it soon after its release). I aim to bring key French UAP/UFO works to
the English-speaking world as part of the Society’s publishing efforts, and I hope
to have this conversation whilst in Paris (indeed, I want to do so for every language:
there are so many excellent works not available in English that should be).
In April, I’m back home for at least a month,
when I’ll speak at an upcoming Orange County MUFON event. My talk will be a version
of one of my earlier blog posts (that was subsequently issued in the SCU’s newsletter),
“Transcendental Skepticism”. My talk should prove to have more dormative virtues
than stimulants. But we’ll see.
In May, I go out to Houston for Prof. Kripal’s Archives
of the Impossible, v. 2. I hope to meet all manner of UFO (and sundry paranormal)
researchers—the latter of whom I’m uncertain about, or least, uncertain how I’ll
respond to. Hopefully not too crankily…
Mid-May, I’m off to Portugal, then to Italy and
then finally to Germany, where I hope to meet with Prof. Dr. Hakan Kayal (who
gave a really great talk at the Limina Symposium) at Würzburg University. We may end up
having a little informal colloquium, and I might be hosting Dr. Teodorani’s opening
seminar (Monday 5 June) from there. (But that’s all in the discussion phase, so stay
tuned!)
… which is all to say that I must apolozie again for the inconsistency of my blog posts. Hopefully I’ll sneak in some time here-and-there for a post or two each month from March until July—even if only to provide my reflections on these events, and the travel required to get to them.
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