Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

and physical, to determine whether or not purposeful design is involved in the phenomena thewitnesses describe.Whenever a set of unusual circumstances is presented it is in the nature of the human mind toanalyze it until a rational pattern is encountered at some level. But it is quite conceivable that natureshould present us with circumstances so deeply organized that our observational and logical errorswould entirely mask the pattern to be identified. To the scientist, there is nothing surprising in thisstatement. The history of science consists in dual progress: the refinement of observationaltechniques and the improvement of analytical methods. On the other hand, the proposition that theuniverse might contain intelligent creatures exhibiting such an organization that no model of itcould be constructed on the basis of current human concepts is also theoretically plausible. Thebehavior of such beings would necessarily appear random or absurd or would go undetected,especially if these beings possessed physical means of retiring at will beyond the human perceptualrange, or into other dimensions. Such physical actions would appear on scientific records as mererandom accidents, easily ascribable to instrumental error or to a variety of natural causes.Considering the UFO phenomenon as a special instance of that more fundamental question, we arepresented with the dual possibility of very long-term unsolvability and continued manifestation, andthis is true whether the phenomenon is natural or artificial in nature.The development of a new myth feeding upon this duality is entirely predictable. In the absence of arational solution to the mystery, and due to intense public interest, it is quite likely that in comingyears every brand of charlatanism will use it as a base, although it is not possible to predict its exactform. We may very well be living the early years of a new mythological movement, and it mayeventually give our technological age its Olympus or its Valhalla, whether we regard such adevelopment as an asset or as a blow to our culture. Because many observations of UFOphenomena appear self-consistent and at the same time irreconcilable with scientific knowledge, alogical vacuum has been created that human imagination tries to fill with fantasy. Such situationshave been frequently observed in the past, and they have given us both the highest and the basestforms of religious, poetic, and political activity. It is entirely possible that the UFO phenomenonwill give rise to similar developments, because its manifestations coincide with a renewal of interestin the human value of technology.It is precisely because science is the process through which unsolvable emotional arguments can betransformed into organized sets of sub-problems amenable to rational analysis that the UFOphenomenon is interesting. Therefore, to say that UFOs are not a scientific problem, or even to posethe question of whether they are or not, is to utter an absurdity. There is no such thing as a scientificproblem; it is the man who looks at the problem who is or is not scientific in his approach. Scienceis an object in the human mind, not a characteristic we are at liberty either to bestow upon or towithdraw from every funny-looking contraption that happens to cross our skies.For a scientist, the only valid question is to decide whether the phenomenon can be studied by itself,or whether it is an instance of a deeper problem. This book attempts to illustrate, and only toillustrate, the latter approach. And my conclusion is that, through the UFO phenomenon, we havethe unique opportunities to observe folklore in the making and to gather scientific material at thedeepest source of human imagination. We will be the object of much contempt by future students ofour civilization if we allow this material to be lost, for "tradition is a meteor which, once it falls,cannot be rekindled."If we decide to avoid extreme speculation, but make certain basic observations from the existingdata, five principal facts stand out rather clearly from our analysis so far:Fact 1. There has been among the public, in all countries, since the middle of 1946, an extremelyactive generation of colorful rumors. They center on a considerable number of observations ofunknown machines close to the ground in rural areas, the physical traces left by these machines, andtheir various effects on humans and animals.Fact 2. When the underlying archetypes are extracted from these rumors, the extraterrestrial myth isseen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries, the observations ofthe scholars of past ages, and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose