• Context and Implications

    From Ricky Sutphin@RICKSBBS to All on Wed Dec 11 11:49:00 2024
    Context and Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial

    Life:


    A Whitepaper

    by Richard C. Hoagland
    (C) 1989

    Introduction

    One of the things I have tried to understand, as my research
    and that of others has revealed ever more suggestive data,
    supportive of the phenomenal idea that these objects in the
    Viking images could in fact be artifacts, is the curious
    "historically anomalous" position of the agency which took the
    pictures in the first place: NASA.

    Despite "a billion dollars plus" spent by Viking in the
    Search for Life on Mars, NASA has refused throughout these
    ensuing thirteen years to even once reexamine its original
    "political" position on these images -- that the objects they
    contain are merely "tricks of light and shadow" -- despite now
    published and peer-reviewed good science to the contrary. This
    reaction, increasingly at odds with both outside scientific
    assessments of our work and rising public calls for swift
    resolution of this question, has resulted in this paper -- a
    serious attempt to place NASA's curious "non-reaction" in some
    historical context and perspective.

    The Ancient Roots of Our Obsession with 'ETs'

    Scholars who have studied the history of our involvement
    with the idea of "extraterrestrials" have been more or less
    amazed to discover the ancient roots of what has been generally
    perceived, until these studies, as a minor and relatively recent
    "pop" cultural reaction to the Space Age -- you know, "Star
    Trek", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "ET", etc. Dr.
    Michael Crowe, Professor of the History and Philosophy of
    Science, at the University of Notre Dame, has published the most
    current (1986) in-depth treatment of the subject: "The
    Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750-1900: The Idea of A Plurality
    of Worlds from Kant to Lowell." Crowe's own words summarize best
    what he and others have discovered:

    "The question of extraterrestrial life, rather than having
    arisen in the twentieth century, has been debated almost from the
    beginning of recorded history. Between the fifth-century B.C.
    flowering of Greek civilization and 1917, more than 140 books and
    thousands of essays, reviews, and other writings had been devoted
    to discussing whether or not other inhabited worlds exist in the
    universe . . . the majority of educated persons since around 1700
    have accepted the idea of extraterrestrial life and in numerous
    instances have formulated their philosophical and religious
    positions in relation to it."

    Notwithstanding Crowe's all-too-familiar Western
    Civilization chauvanism -- that all human intellectual thought
    began in Classical Greece -- he is pointed in the right
    direction; it is amply demonstrable that we are heir to several
    thousand years of intense preoccupation with ETs prior to the
    Greeks -- such as Sumer's fascinating "Oannes Myth," and their
    attribution of their entire civilization and culture to
    visitation and specific instruction by a representative of an
    advanced extraterrestrial society, in about the 4th Millennium
    B.C. (the full "Oannes Legend" is carefully cited in detail in
    The Monuments of Mars -- see RESOURCE). The ancient documents
    and cosmologies that Crowe then cites as evidence for Grecean
    origins of human ET curiosity -- such as Epicurus' "Letter to
    Herodotus" -- actually reflect an already very old tradition,
    which the Greeks (along with all their other supposed cultural
    "inventions" -- according to Stanley Kramer, noted "Sumerologist"
    at the University of Pennsylvania) simply passed along to us from
    Sumer, several millenia before.

    The 'Extraterrestrial' Roots of 'The Enlightenment'

    Crowe's recounting of the involvement of more recent
    historical figures in the great Extraterrestrial Life Debate is
    more original -- from the written works of fundamental religious revolutionaries, such as John Wesley (founder of the Methodist
    Church), to extraterrestrial musings of that "great man" of pre-
    Einsteinian physics, Sir Isaac Newton, to discovery of detailed
    conversations carried on around the subject by such geopolitical
    giants as Napoleon -- and amply confirm that even theoretical
    interest in ideas of other worlds has had a remarkable effect in
    shaping human thought -- and thus the current world. Rather than
    merely making the claim that "the discovery of extraterrestrials
    would powerfully influence human ideas," the historical record
    reveals direct evidence that the extremely ancient, widespread
    belief in extraterrestrial life has repeatedly and directly
    affected life on Earth -- beginning with Sumer 6000 years ago.
    Furthermore, its captivating hold on leading philosophers and
    intellectuals of what has since been termed "The Enlightenment" (
    c. 1700-1800) -- from Descartes to Kant -- reveals the
    fascinating, and heretofore unappreciated, extent to which the
    quest "for extraterrestrials" actually created the context for
    the rise of modern science.

    Which makes all the more inexplicable NASA's adament refusal
    to either take a second scientific look at the anomalies on its
    own Viking photographs -- the first demonstrable hard evidence
    favoring the existence of extraterrestrials in the millennial-
    long history of this Debate -- or to take new and better pictures
    of Cydonia, when the unmanned Mars Observer mission returns to
    Mars, in 1993.

    Why -- against the historical backdrop of documented,
    overwhelming interest in the idea of "a plurality of worlds" --
    this apparent paradox?

    The Search for Extraterrestrials as Inspiration
    for Major Astronomical Discoveries

    One of the most revealing new insights regarding the history
    of questions relating to extraterrestrial intelligence, is the
    extent to which the science of the times followed prevailing
    religious doctrines on the subject -- contrary to our general
    understanding of how science has supposedly developed.

    Countless quotes from the technical papers of legendary
    scientific figures of the 18th Century -- the heyday of the
    Enlightenment -- ranging from men like Immanuel Kant (and his
    Nebular Hypothesis -- how solar systems form) to Sir William
    Herschel (and his theories of star distribution and formation in
    the Milky Way) make clear that their revolutionary insights and
    discoveries were impelled by something other than pure "science."

    Their theories, which have led directly to our present
    understanding of the Universe were, it turns out, inspired in
    significant measure by a search for extraterrestrials! -- by a
    fundamental acceptance and pursuit of something termed "the
    doctrine of the Plurality of worlds." This basically religious
    inclination was spurred by a deep theological conviction,
    prevasive of the times, in "the principle of Plentitude" -- the
    assumption that a truly Infinite God could not help but create an
    infinitude of other, habitable worlds . . . if not Inhabitants
    themselves.

    The Rise of Modern Science --
    and the Rejection of 'the Plurality of Worlds'

    Only increasingly sophisticated telescopes, and other
    instruments of astronomical research (which eventually enabled
    acquisition of real information on the stark inhabitability of
    the other planets in this solar system) finally produced the
    sharp divergence of scientific thinking -- beginning with the
    question of extraterrestrials -- from this curious religious
    heritage. This break thus marked the true beginnings of
    "rationalist science" -- and an increasing intellectual
    embarrassment by later scientists, over the religiously-based
    cosmologies which originally gave birth to the idea of "a
    plurality of worlds." At its height, it was a sweeping
    theological assumption that populated even the surface of the sun
    with "beings whose organs are adopted to the peculiar
    circumstances of that vast globe" (according to one memorable
    quote from Herschel).

    NASA's Intellectual Timidity Based on Fear
    of Intellectual Embarrassment?

    It is easy to see, in this brief overview, one element of
    NASA's obvious discomfort with reawakening ideas relating to even
    a formerly inhabited planet in the solar system. Much of current
    science seems to operate by "fear of intellectual embarrassment";
    with a history like this, it's no wonder that the idea of a
    plurality of worlds seems more appropriate, in the eyes of some
    of NASA's scientists, to the Book of Common Prayer than to the
    pages of the scientific journal ICARUS!

    But this is not the whole sad story, of "extraterrestrials
    and modern science."

    The Scientific Death-Knell to
    'the Plurality of Worlds'

    By the beginnings of the twentieth century, all scientific
    expectation of actually verifying the existence of
    extraterrestrial intelligence essentially had died -- with the
    singular "anomaly" of a continuing intellectual flirtation with a
    place called "Mars."

    With this one, agonizing exception -- which almost
    singlehandedly destroyed modern astronomy and modern planetary
    science, according to Carl Sagan -- that should have been the end
    of it, no more "God given Plurality of Worlds"; the new
    scientific evidence in hand simply made life-bearing planets --
    except for Earth (or "earth-like" worlds, like Mars . . .) --
    impossible.

    The rapidly ascending theory of planetary formation, in the
    early decades of this century, was now focusing on planets as
    "random by-products of near stellar collisions" -- events
    calculated as so rare, that in the entire several-billion-year
    history of the Milky Way Galaxy itself, there had been literally
    only one near-collision, with the resultant freak creation of the
    sun's nine planets!

    Thus, by virtue of the immense distances separating stars,
    sheer statistics argued implacably against more than "one or two"
    collisions in the entire history of time and space. Meaning,
    that in all the Galaxy -- if not the Universe -- we were quite
    alone . . .

    The Scientific Resurrection of the Nebular Hypothesis --
    the Modern Basis for a Real 'Plurality of Worlds'

    The scientific process, if it's properly pursued, has a way
    of quietly continuing, leading to continuing developments in
    fundamental theory, new observations which throw out old ideas,
    etc. Within a few more decades, by the middle of this century --
    the 1950's -- from the confident, premature pronouncement that
    Earth was undoubtedly the only inhabited planet (with, of course,
    the possible exception of Mars . . .) in the entire Galaxy,
    several fundamental astronomical breakthroughs came about -- and
    with these, came a return to a Galaxy potentially filled with
    stars as central suns, orbited by countless other worlds . . .

    In 1959, as the Space Age itself was just dawning, two
    astronomers proposed a radical approach to actually establishing
    contact with all the new potential beings on all those new
    potential worlds far beyond the solar system -- they proposed
    that technology might enable "ET to phone home" -- or at least,
    try "to ring up good ol' Earth."

    The modern, scientific "SETI Paradigm" -- the Search for
    Extraterrestrial Intelligence -- was born.

    The Politics of SETI --
    Even Recognizing ET Artifacts as Opposed to ET Signals

    Morrison and Cocconi, the two astronomers just cited,
    proposed using microwave radio equipment -- technology developed
    for the fledgling science of radio astronomy after World War II -
    - in a bold program of interstellar listening for signals. The
    SETI Paradigm that they created by announcing this proposal was
    simply this: that, because of the vastness of the interstellar
    night and the immense difficulty of even approaching a reasonable
    fraction of the speed of light with any spaceship technology
    known to human science (especially in the 1950's!), any truly
    intelligent entities seeking conversation with other intelligent
    entities, separated by the almost inconceivable interstellar
    distances, would inevitably turn to radio transmissions . . . and
    "phone" their messages at the speed of light between the stars.

    That was thirty years ago . . . and the idea that it will
    always be easier and more economical to send radio transmissions
    then to send a fleet of spaceships, like the ancient theological
    obsession with "a plurality of worlds," has now became the new,
    unquestioned wisdom of the age-old Search . . .

    All opposing scientific concepts -- such as the very real
    technological possibility that spaceships someday might be good
    enough to do the job (to a truly advanced race of interstellar
    beings) -- quietly were banished. If it isn't a radio signal,
    whispering in from somewhere deep in interstellar space, no one
    currently looking for ETs is even interested . . .

    And therein lies the second cause of NASA's rejection of our
    Intelligence Hypothesis: there simply can't be artifacts on near-
    by planets!

    Not only are they all demonstrably lifeless (after all, not
    even a microbe lurks beneath the Martian sands, according to
    Viking's trusty life experiments) -- so there's no one "home" to
    build such artifacts -- all possibilities for visits from beyond
    the solar system have been effectively ruled out -- by the basic
    "theology" of the SETI Paradigm itself: to travel is
    engineeringly too difficult . . . and too expensive!

    The 'Ultimate' Reason for NASA's Apparent Fear of
    the Intelligence Hypothesis: It's on the Wrong Planet!

    And, if "they" -- interstellar beings with a spendthrift
    propensity for wandering around the Galaxy in spaceships -- by
    some miracle had visited the solar system, "they" certainly
    wouldn't have wasted great amounts of time and energy building
    silly "pyramids" and "faces" on the surface of a dead and
    battered Mars! Shades of those fantasies about canals . . .

    Because . . . when all else is said and done . . . that's
    the ultimate reason NASA, by their own admission, hasn't bothered
    to scientifically examine one frame of Viking's Cydonia
    photography: the planet Viking photographed--

    The planet Mars itself.

    The ultimate reason NASA hasn't taken seriously our
    Intelligence Hypothesis is simply this: Mars is scientifically
    bad news!

    No other single planet in the solar system, or in the
    history of the pursuit of the plurality of worlds, has been more
    abused or ridiculed than Mars. With the scientific excesses and
    downright vicious namecalling of the last century, over the
    "reality" or "non-reality" of Martians, still ringing in their
    ears, planetary scientists -- not a generally courageous lot --
    are loath to reopen anything even remotely resembling the
    "circus" that surrounded Schiaparelli's Canals . . . Lowell's
    "valiant canal-constructing Martians". . . or Orson Welles'
    Invasion . . .

    Or, in the words of Sagan:

    "It became so bitter and seemed to many scientists so
    profitless, that it led to a general exodus from planetary to
    stellar astronomy . . . the present shortage of planetary
    astronomers can be largely attributed [to this]."

    Conclusion

    If Sagan's assessment is correct, the present treatment of
    the entire issue of the "Face" by NASA and its small cadre of
    planetary scientists (led, it must be noted, by Carl Sagan) --
    who vividly recall the sad and bitter scientific history of Mars
    and its "canals" too well -- is driven by a fervant fear that
    history will once again repeat itself -- only this time, in
    addition to intellectual embarrassment, the stakes are now
    perceived as cataclysmic: potentially, a disastrous loss of
    funding from the Congress, and with that -- as NASA is the only
    game in town which pays for "looking at the planets" -- the
    imminent destruction of the very profession of "planetary
    scientist" itself!

    Or, as one planetary researcher put it to me candidly: "If
    you keep this up, you will destroy the planetary program!"

    Which, of course, is a revealing personal statement --
    regarding the nature of true scientific curiosity versus the
    desire for security . . . pursued merely in the name of
    "science."

    Ultimately, now that "good science" (as acknowledged by many
    reputable researchers, in a variety of fields) has been done
    outside of NASA with regard to Viking's Cydonia photography, the
    dispoition and implication of what's on those images lies, not
    with "science" or with fearful men and women pretending to be
    scientists . . . but with people.

    The meaning of potential artifacts on Mars is almost
    incalculable -- and must lie somewhere nearer that millenia-old
    quest for answers to what Albertus Magnus termed "one of the most
    wonderous and noble questions in all Nature," than to NASA's 13-
    year timid and myopic "non-response." So, how do we find out?

    The problem ultimately is not with most scientists not
    really being "scientists," or with an agency called "NASA"
    worrying more about survival than with scientific Truth . . . but
    with our own individual response to "Do we really want to know .
    . .?"

    Because the wonder of this data is: we can.

    -0-



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