Radical Perceptions

Bob Couttie. Forbidden Knowledge: The Paranormal Paradox. Lutterworth Press, 1988.

Let’s get one thing out of the way immediately: this is probably the worst proof-read professionally published book I have ever come across. There seems to be a major bug in Lutterworth’s typesetting program. It is a tribute to the author that it did not disturb my enjoyment of the book too much, although one or two sentences are scrambled beyond meaning.

Bob Couttie once did conjuring tricks on radio, an act which seems quite enough of a paranormal paradox in itself. Like many stage magicians, including James ‘the Amusing’ Randi, he finds himself drawing broadly sceptical conclusions about the who gamut of paranormal phenomena. This book, based on a radio series, looks at such topics and personalities as Uri Geller, Doris Stokes, astrology and dowsing. His is not too impressed with any of these, and the first part of his book provides a critical demolition of some familiar subjects. Much of this will be familiar to Magonia readers, particularly some of the early psychic research exposés, on which I think he spends too much time.

However this is all treated in a refreshing manner - Couttie manages to avoid the smartass cynicism that mars so much of CSICOP’s output. I feel that the author’s scepticism is the result of a painful process of disillusionment rather than an arbitrarily adopted pose. When he discovers Geller faking an effect his reaction is disappointment rather than triumphal glee.

It is the third part of the book, ‘Towards an Anthropology of the Paranormal’, that I think will be of most interest to Magonia readers. He comes to the very Magonian conclusion that perhaps the most important thing about the paranormal is not whether it is ‘true’ of ‘false’ - a hundred years of experiments have not convinced the doubters or defeated the believers, nor does it seem likely that the next hundred will - but what it means in social terms. Perhaps the kernel of the book is in the short, three page, chapter, ‘Madness, Mystics and Shamans’ in which he offers a social context for paranormal phenomena. In the following chapter, ‘The Evidence of Experience’ he discusses what Peter Rogerson has termed ‘radical misperception’, and concludes with a sentence that could be Magonia’s credo:

“Just as it has been by and large a failure of parapsychology that it has not examined the social context of the psychic and psychic experience, so it would also be a failure if one looked at the social context without considering the individual’s experiences and the nature of perception”

An important and entertaining book. -- John Rimmer, from Magonia 29, April 1988.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

With this review we come to the end of our file of book reviews that never quite made it into the pages of MUFOB or Magonia. However our team of highly-trained library elves and archival Sasquatches will explore the back files of those magazines for reviews of interesting books - and one or two lemons - which we would like to draw to your attention - and possibly encourage you to add them to your own collections, using the handy Amazon link beneath each entry. JR.

Phyllis Siefker. Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origins and Evolution of Saint Nicholas, Spanning 50,000 Years. McFar1and, 1997.

A book which prompts the thought is Santa Claus a distant relative of Bigfoot, the descendant of the ritual wild man, symbol of fertility and the untamed wilderness without and within? Siefker's thesis is that Santa is derived not from Saint Nicholas himself but from a devil-figure servant which used to accompany him in the Yuletide ceremonies in Holland, and chastise naughty children. This Dutch Black Peter was equivalent to the German- American Pelznichol or 'Furry Nicholas', the descendant of the medieval Wild Man. While dealing with the Wild Man Siefker says much of interest, but in trying to take the story back into the mists of antiquity she falls into the classic folklorists trap of uncritically quoting old and long superseded authorities rather than the latest research. Thus, on the authority of forty-year-old books by Joseph Campbell, themselves quoting old books, we get the Neanderthal bear cult dragged in, though paleoanthropologists have long since discounted the evidence on which the myth of that cult was built.

This book did set me thinking as to the possible role of various European Wild Man traditions might have played in the early genesis of the Bigfoot legend, which in the 1950's, under the then influential theories of the late Franz Weidenrreich who believed that humanity went through a giant ape man stage of evolution, as typified by gigantopithecus - now known to be a large relative of the orangutan - became transformed into a giant apeman, as seen on the covers of books. etc. -- Peter Rogerson

Scouse Skies

Tony Eccles. A Different Sky: Unusual Sightings and Strange Phenomena over Merseyside. Bluecoat Press, Liverpool, 2003. £5.99

With Magonia's origins in the Merseyside UFO Bulletin, it was inevitable that this book brought back memories of my own early steps in ufology. But this is not some nostalgic ramble down memory lane, but a collection of concise and readable accounts of a range of UFO-related phenomena in a fairly small geographical area from the 1960s to the present day.

Tony Eccles is founder of the Merseyside Anomalies Research Association, and the cases presented here include both direct investigations by MARA and archival material from previous decades. The case summaries present straightforward descriptions, and the author is always careful to point out mundane explanations where these are a possibility, but without forcing details to fit a preconceived ETH or sceptical viewpoint. In most cases the witnesses are allowed to speak for themselves. The categorised chapters ('flying triangles', earthlights, MIB, etc.) usually conclude with sensible summaries of the issues involved.

It might be argued that some of these cases are not particularly spectacular per se, but it is their concentration in a limited geographical area which emphasises the broad nature of the phenomena and how they are perceived by a cross-section of the public at large - an LIT is always more interesting when it happened over your old neighbourhood.

This is the sort of book which helps to promote a positive public attitude to UFO research by its local focus, and could be a model for researchers elsewhere. However, it is likely that the strong local-interest publishing tradition in Liverpool has made it rather easier to get this book published in this part of the country than in some other places. -- John Rimmer.

A Pair of Roswells

Mike McAvennie (editor) Sci Fi Declassified: The Roswell Dig Diaries. Pocket Books, 2004.

In order to appear to be a serious and socially responsible TV station, Sci Fi Channel decided to sponsor some Real Science. Their choice on this occasion was to sponsor an archaeological excavation at the so-called Roswell debris site in September and

October 2002. This was headed by a real archaeologist, Dr Bill Doleman, head of the University of New Mexico’s contract archaeology team. As resident UFO consultants Sci Fi channel had Don Schmitt and a sidekick Tom Carey. These two still seem to believe the same old tales told by the likes of Glenn Dennis et al, and have built a timeline based on their tall tales, rather than actually contemporaneous sources.

Despite this Doleman does actually seem to have done real archaeology and real science, but alas for ufologists there are no smoking guns or massively anomalistic finds. Doleman is intrigued by a sort of gouge in the ground some way off from the alleged impact site, but this turns out to be already visible in an aerial photograph taken in 1946. True believers are likely to be disappointed by this lack of sensation and finds large parts of the book rather heavy going, sceptics will sniff out some of the little asides which illuminate ufological relationships, and perhaps some people will decide that archaeology can be a lot more fun than they imagined

Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte. Mexico’s Roswell: The Chihuahua UFO Crash, with an after-word by Stanton T. Friedman. The authors, 2007. [Republished in 2008 as The Other Roswell, see Amazon link below]

It has to be said at the outset that this Mexican UFO crash case has a quite different evidential standard than Roswell. At Roswell there is no doubt that something occurred and some artefacts were actually picked up, the dispute is to their exact nature. In this case absolutely no evidence exists to back up the wild tale of a UFO crashing after colliding with a light plane. The tale simply appears in one of those mysterious anonymous documents which float around ufology.

The authors visit the location to track down witnesses; there are none, though as the local tourist board and local businesses catch on, that might change. No trace can be found of the mysterious light aircraft or of its mysterious flight. That must be because it was being piloted by drug smugglers, perish the thought that it never existed in the first place.

Of course the mysterious document is a hoax, and this story is a complete piece of fiction. That it receives an appreciative afterword by Mr Friedman tells us all we need to know about that gentlemen and the people who take him seriously. That this story appeared on the History Channel tells all we need to know about that TV channel in particular and much of television in general. -- Peter Rogerson.

Talking to the Aliens



Andrz Kukla. Extraterrestrials: A Philosophical Perspective. Lexington Books, 2010.

In this short and highly technical monograph, retired psychology professor Andre Kukla examines the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrials. Firstly he critically examines the various arguments for and against the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence and finds the sort of arguments from large numbers used by both sides wanting. Astronomers tend to argue that "ghee whiz the universe is so big and is so full of stars that there must be other intelligences out there" while biologists tend to reply "ghee whiz, there have been so many species on earth and only one has developed intelligence, so intelligence must be very rare". Kukla argues that these are both invalid arguments, based on a single case. The reality is that we cannot say whether or not life or intelligence is widespread or not.

 

He then tackles the question as to whether hypothetical aliens would share our science or not, and again comes to the conclusion that we just don't know. Nor do we know whether they would even our most basic mathematical ideas. We simply don't know how much overlap between their science and ours there might be, we don't even know that if they shared the ability to communicate with us through radio, their understanding of radio and the means to produce it would be the same as hours.

In the final and most difficult part of the monograph argues that even if we grant all the most optimistic interpretations about the extraterrestrial intelligence, if, as is argued by Noam Chomsky and his followers, human language is based on some evolved neural substrate, then we could not ever learn their language. This would be true whether or not the pre-diaspora ancestors of modern humans already spoke a grammatically rich language, or something more primitive. A language with a completely different evolutionary history could never be learned by human beings. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson. Originally posted on-line, January 2010