Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge/Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge.iso/UFO/ETSEARCH.TXT

Text File | 1989-12-31 | 18KB | 359 lines

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
qu