UFOlogy
Protoscience - the origin of new sciences
Ufology has been practiced by both "kooks" and respected mainstream scientists like Carl Sagan. UFO reports are as worthy of study as any topic, and deserve case-by-case analysis using the scientific method. Study of UFO sightings this way has yielded very interesting and important results, although generally about weather phenomena, secret military flight programs and human perception, not aliens from space visiting Earth. Most critics consider ufology at worst a pseudoscience, or at best a protoscience.
[edit] Major theories of UFOs
Five schools of thought to explain UFO sightings:
- Some UFOs are spacecraft used by extraterrestrials to visit Earth.
- According to the Psychosocial Hypothesis, the UFO craze is a modern social phenomenon similar to reports of witches in past centuries.
- The Psychopathological hypothesis suggests that some people satisfy personal psychological needs by pretending to have been abducted by aliens.
- Various occult, paranormal, supernatural or religious explanations.
- UFO's are best explained as advanced, secret or experimental aircraft of decidely earthly origin.
[edit] Contest
Carl Sagan suggested that there be a contest called "Ten questions to ask an alien." The ten questions are to be "questions to which no human today knows the answers, but where a correct answer would immediately be recognized as such." Dr. Sagan was interested in seeing if there were questions that could be formulated in fields other than mathematics.
