This series continues to explore the evolving relationship among science, philosophy and faith, with a focus on the import of modern physics and technology. In several posts, such as my interview with Michael Della Rocca on his latest book, The Parmenidean Ascent, we explored epistemological limits.
This piece attempts to touch on unchartered territory concerning knowledge, science and technology. To understand recent disclosures about unexplained aerial phenomena (“UAP”), I reached out to Carol Cleland, a Professor at University of Colorado Boulder specializing in extraterrestrial matters, who writes about the search for different life in The Quest for a Universal Theory of Life. My objective is to better understand whether recent information is qualitatively significant, turning long-standing mysteries into scientific or philosophical problems. Specifically, what are the broad implications of technology that definitively eclipses our understanding?
UFO’s have been discussed for years, but now the intelligence community and Department of Defense are essentially confirming real, yet inexplicable phenomena. The recent descriptions go beyond the grainy pictures of circular spaceships. It now appears that our government has been tracking these mysteries for many years, describing hypersonic velocity at Mach 5 or above, the ability to change directions instantly, cloaking, and trans-medium travel through water or in a vacuum environment. To discuss the reality and import of otherworldly technology, I sought out Carol to try to process the latest disclosures.
Carol, thanks so much for your willingness to contribute to my series! To start with a fundamental question: do you share the view that we are seeing something otherworldly, beyond our scientific understanding? Effectively, that the sightings of UAP’s are most likely extraterrestrial crafts? Up until recently, there were three explanations: 1) secret US technology, 2) foreign adversarial technology that has leapfrogged our capabilities, or 3) a completely different paradigm altogether. Based on recent reporting, it appears that 1 & 2 can be ruled out. Russian or Chinese technology is not believed to be different from our own and, apparently, foreign pilots have seen the same phenomenon, with crafts performing in ways well beyond current capabilities. Do you think we are confronted with truly new, ground-breaking information? Were you surprised by these disclosures?
I concur that explanations 1 & 2 can be ruled out. Regarding your third proposed explanation, I’m not sure what you mean by a “different paradigm”. This is awfully vague terminology and encompasses a lot of possibilities, both natural and artificial, and hence doesn’t really constitute an ‘explanation’. Given the extensive number of reports by numerous technologically and scientifically competent observers, I do think that UAPs represent real phenomena. I wouldn’t, however, jump to the conclusion that UAPs represent extraterrestrial technology. They might be poorly understood artifacts arising from complex interactions between instrumentation on military planes (the source of the most detailed and reliable reports on the speeds, maneuverability, cloaking, etc., of UAPs) and natural phenomena (including atmospheric, oceanic, and land interactions, especially since many UAPs are observed over the ocean and near coastlines). Another possibility is that UAPs represent challenges to the application of current science to the natural world. Our most fundamental theories of physics and chemistry are accepted primarily based on “tests” conducted in the sterile, artificial environment of laboratories. Applying these general theories to the messy, uncontrollable world of nature is always difficult because there are so many poorly understood and unknown local contingencies involved. A third possibility is that UAPs violate our fundamental theories of physics and chemistry. Last, but not least, they could represent an extraterrestrial technology. What is needed is a dedicated civilian (vs. military) based investigation of these possibilities.
Now moving to the specific phenomena, our government is explicitly considering the possibility of extraterrestrial technology. In a Washington Post interview with the former Director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program Luis Elizondo, he curiously discussed explanations of the sightings in terms of “space” – suggesting that “it could be from outer space, inner space, or the space in between”. He even referenced quantum physics to suggest that there are a host of other “extradimensional” possibilities. The suggestion was that we could be seeing technology that is “between 50 and 1,000 years ahead of us”. As additional background, a theory mentioned by an Intelligence Community professional that caught my attention is a chance that these ships could be from under the ocean – with sightings identifying the “spacecraft” returning to water. The pressing question is any speculation you could offer about these phenomena? Do you take the latest information at face value? How much additional information do you think the government might have?
The former director in the interview did resist persistent pressure by the interviewer to say that UAPs represent an extraterrestrial technology. He eventually responded by saying there were lots of ideas being tossed around by all sorts of different people (many of whom are not scientists) and mentioned some truly wild speculations to underscore this. So, I think he was just being evasive. However, he shouldn’t have talked about keeping “all possibilities open” because some of the possibilities he mentioned are so far outside our current scientific understanding that they amount to little better than saying the wicked witch of the east could be responsible. Why not include her? I find her more probable than the idea that UAFs are from a civilization under Earth’s ocean and I have no idea what he means by their possibly being from “inner space, or the space in-between”; I’m sure he doesn’t have any idea what he means by this either. As for the reference to their being “extradimensional in a quantum physics sense”, that is pure unscientific quantum mysticism.
To delve deeper into the phenomena, I’ve read that many sightings of UAP’s are around nuclear facilities. It was suggested in the aforementioned piece that certain incidents have affected our nuclear capabilities – essentially brought them offline. In fact, in other countries, the phenomena have actually turned nuclear facilities back on. Do you believe it’s meaningful that these sightings are around nuclear equipment?
I’d need to see more data to have an opinion. Keep in mind that some places, like nuclear plants and military bases, are monitored for intrusions by aircraft more than others. Other places may have similar numbers of UAFs that have gone unrecognized due to lack of monitoring. As for turning facilities off and on, again, has this occurred often or could it be a fluke, an accidental coincidence? How often do nuclear plants unexpectedly go off-line? The lights in my house, for instance, dim, flicker, and sometimes go out even in nice weather, but there is usually a natural explanation for it, e.g., a truck hit a power line or a surge at a power plant.
Shifting to the implications of such information, in the context of your book, how do we attempt to understand such phenomena, unrepresentative of our familiar life on Earth? If these are examples of life as we don’t know it, in traditional biological terms, how do we potentially try to understand these new forms of life, and get closer to a universal theory of life? Rather than search for such life, it appears to be among us.
You are assuming that UAPs represent an alien technology. We don’t know this. So, what do we know? It is clear to me that UAPs are not illusory. They are real phenomena. Moreover, UAPs represent genuine anomalies, that is, they aren’t explicable in terms of either our current scientific understanding of nature or current human technology. This is all we know.
But this is enough to render them worthy of immediate, sustained and focused, scientific attention. For as discussed in my book (Ch. 8), recognition that a phenomenon is truly anomalous (as opposed to merely puzzling but eventually explicable by tools currently available) paves the way to scientific discovery. Whether such an exploration of UAFs reveals defects in our scientific understanding or that we are not alone is an open question. Either way, the results will be a major win-win for science because we will have substantially increased our understanding of the universe in which we live. In short, what is needed is a dedicated investigation of UAFs conducted by scientists, engineers, and other experts on aerial phenomena. My understanding is that Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist, is already putting together such a team; see here. It is unfortunate, however, that, in addition to scientists, his team includes UFO buffs lacking scientific training and does not include any philosophers.
Finally, to situate the dilemma in the discipline and epistemology generally, the explicit discussion of miracles might be interesting historical framing, for instance in the cases of Hume and Kierkegaard. For Hume, of course, miracles were impossible as they were a transgression of natural laws. Essentially an invisible agent – God or supernatural power – that broke a law of nature. For Kierkegaard, you might see the existential embrace of the absolute paradox as a kind of personal experience of a miracle, but something contravening natural laws is not a basis for faith as a world-historical event. I find the new information jarring, as it appears to be not only potentially real, but relatively common. If we are now confronted with technology violating laws as we understand them, what are the scientific or philosophical implications? Is it still merely of historical or purely scientific interest – with no “religious” bearing?
I have no views about its religious significance, and I don’t believe that UAFs represent miracles. But, as I said above, UAFs hold forth the promise of revolutionizing our understanding of the world regardless of whether they are a natural phenomenon or the product of an extraterrestrial intelligence. I’d love to discover that we are not alone. But the evidence currently available is consistent with alternative explanations. I look forward to finding out what Loeb’s team discovers.
Carol Cleland
Carol Cleland (PhD, Brown, 1981) arrived at CU Boulder in 1986, after having spent a year on a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Language and Information. She is a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute Affiliate, a member of CU Boulder’s Center for Astrobiology, and Director of CU Boulder’s Center for Study of Origins. She was involved as Co-I and Key Collaborator on several science teams of the now disbanded NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI).
Charlie Taben
Charlie Taben graduated from Middlebury College in 1983 with a BA in philosophy and has been a financial services executive for nearly 40 years. He studied at Harvard University during his junior year and says one of the highlights of his life was taking John Rawls’ class. Today, Charlie remains engaged with the discipline, focusing on Spinoza, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. He also performs volunteer work for the Philosophical Society of England and is currently seeking to incorporate practical philosophical digital content into US corporate wellness programs. You can find Charlie on Twitter @gbglax.
