These words were written by a well-read man of science, a member of the Royal Society and later its president. They were written about a phenomenon that was only beginning to become controversial and would stay controversial for 44 more years before it was accepted into the corpus of scientific knowledge (Westrum, 1978). We can read them today with a certain irony, with an extensive knowledge about meteorites that was not available when Pringle so incorrectly assessed their reality in 1759. But there is a lesson to be drawn here, regarding not the occasional mistakes of scientific opinion but rather one of the bases for such mistakes. Pringle thought not only that meteorites did not exist but also that if they did exist, he would know about it. This is a most important point, for the same mistake is likely to be made not only about other anomalous events important for scientific knowledge but also about events relevant to social policy. The &dquo;hidden event,&dquo; as I suggest we call it, has a significance both for science and for society.

Social Intelligence A bout Hidden Events: Its Significance for Scientific Research and Social Policy

In recent years, there has been considerable public interest in the possible existence of certain controversial anomalies and their implications. These anomalies include the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman and his American Relative the 'Bigfoot', and Unidentified Flying Objects. The interest in anomalies has accompanied a revival of interest in the occult1 and in certain scientific fringe theories such as those of Immanuel Velikovsky.2 The public has turned to scientists in many of the cases to validate or debunk the claims made by advocates of anomalies, occult beliefs, and fringe theories. Scientists in turn, alarmed by the rise of these types of interests, have attempted to deny legitimacy to these claims on various grounds.3 This debunking posture on the part of scientists now seems so natural that scientists who become anomaly advocates appear somewhat anomalous themselves.4 The general debunking posture requires explanation, since one cannot simply assume that because scientists are the representatives of truth, they naturally resist such 'error' however appealing this ideology might be to members of the scientific community. The explanation can be sought in two sets of factors, which one might Call 'the interests of the scientific community' and 'the logic of scientific belief', respectively.5 The first set of factors will not be discussed at any length here, although the author plans to do so in a later work.6 For the moment, let us simply observe that the popularity of beliefs and belief systems which conflict with those

Social Intelligence About Anomalies: The Case of UFOs

Two case studies involving waves of claims and public discourse about mysterious aerial sightings in the United States over half a century apart are presented. Most evaluations of such episodes by scientists ethnocentrically portray sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) as the product of deviance, irrationality, or psychopathology The emphasis on natural science approaches to understanding the social sciences is primarily responsible for the present erroneous pseudoscientific status of UFOs, as is the failure to recognize or take as problematic the notion of rationality as a cultural category. Consequently, the symbolic significance of UFOs has been obscured. Contemporary interpretations of UFOs serve the unconscious resurrection of the power and function of omnipotent beings during a secular age. A semiotic culture-as-text social anthropology approach is more fruitful as it does not treat rationality as an objective given, but emphasizes the social construction of reality and the translation of unfamiliar symbol systems.

The Quest for Transcendence: An Ethnography of UFOs in America

"I could more easily believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven." If President Thomas Jefferson could say this so unluckily in 1807, what should we say today to the contention that our earth is visited not merely by stones but by craft manned by intelligent beings ?

R V Jones

Papers

The natural philosophy of flying saucers