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Real Aliens - crop CIRCLES symbols part 4
Not knowing the language need not impede understanding its shape and
general characteristics. Such research could yield one great practical
benefit down the road: upon receiving a Rosetta Stone, we would then be
able to learn and read the language that much more quickly, perhaps well
enough to begin using it ourselves. In the touchy and uncertain days
immediately following real aliens contact, such an advantage might be very
welcome indeed. This makes it all the more imperative to facilitate re-
search with an effective network of data distribution.
Figuring out what the grammar's shapes represent (if grammar it is,
of course) will be tough, because the formations appear to lack all social
context. There is no "Rosetta Stone" permitting them to be compared to a
known symbol system; there are no objects helpfully put next to them to
show what they depict or schematize; there are no appreciative real aliens enti-
ties in view admiring them as art. Quite the contrary, they are placed
wordlessly (so to speak) on this planet's largest equivalent of a blank,
lined sheet of paper. But we should try. We can attempt to restore the
context, or at least make one. Our guesses might be correct.
But a worrying philosophical issue intrudes here. Let us say we
guess a message--a meaning--and find out that the circles transmit it.
Can we be sure that we have truly decoded the circles? Perhaps not.
Humans are infinitely resourceful at seeing patterns that are not there.
Edward R. Tufte, in his engaging book "Envisioning Information", reprints
a picture of a rock in southern Massachusetts which is covered with
ancient hieroglyphs.15 Next to the picture he reproduces ten hand-drawn
sketches of the markings, made between 1680 and 1854. Not only are the
sketches strikingly different, but different scholars have triumphantly
adduced totally different origins for the glyphs: Scythian, Phoenician,
Runic, Viking, and Algonquin, to name a few. Tufte cheerfully damns this
as "scholarship of wishful thinking" (73).
I am not sure if there is any
way to solve the problem, other than asking the circlemakers what they
mean (and even that might not help as much as we think it would.) My
reaction is just to say, "Let us see what we can guess and find, then see
which guess convinces the most people, and deal with the philosophical
problems as they arise."
Michael Chorost
