Saucers and Sex - UFOlogy and Sexology

"Saucer sightings and sex - not worth investigating and best left to kooks and perverts." There are, it seems to many, subjects that are beyond respectable scientific inquiry. Even the reports of UFO sightings are confined mainly to tabloids ("I SOLD MY BABY TO UFO ALIENS!" screams the headline) and enthusiasts' newsletters. And judging from the behavior of parents, teachers, clergy, legislators, and others in authority, sex is a personal, subjective matter, best left virtually undiscussed.

This desire to declare some subjects off limits to scientific investigation is similar to the second objection to parapsychology: it's virtually certain that no reliable evidence about the relevant phenomena will be discovered. But in this case, it is not the methods that are in question; rather, the phenomena themselves have features that allegedly make their scientific study infeasible.

UFOlogy

Such reservations about subject matter can be countered by showing how to approach these subjects scientifically. In each case, there are broader questions of clear and considerable scientific interest that include UFOlogy and sexology in their scope.

The broader question for UFOlogy is, of course, Is there extraterrestrial life? and its variants: How likely is it that there is extraterrestrial life? How likely is it that Earth has been visited by any such life? How likely is it that there have been any close encounters? And there is the deeper question, which we will pick up later, What is life?, and how closely tied to terrestrial examples should the concept itself be?

Arguments for the existence of such life fall into two kinds, both of which were exemplified in ancient times. Because they have not changed in their essentials since then, I will present ancient versions of each. The first was offered by Plutarch and is an argument from design; the second, given by Lucretius, has a very modern ring because it avoids notions of design and instead relies on chance in atomic theory.

Plutarch's Purpose Argument

Plutarch begins by arguing that Earth was designed for the purpose of supporting life. His argument stands in a long tradition of arguments from design. In their most controversial uses, they purport to show that the universe itself was designed by a divine being. But, as hinted in the discussion of the Argument from Design (Vegetabilist Version - see the discussion of Separation by Standards in the next chapter), such reasoning has more everyday, nontheological, uses. We are surrounded by artifacts that show a purposeful arrangement in their parts. Although we can often tell what the purpose is, sometimes - when, for example, the artifact is a complex, unfamiliar piece of laboratory equipment - we can tell little more than that the arrangement is for a purpose (or purposes) we've not been able to discern. The patterns exemplified by such arrangements can also be found in processes. For example, both a camera's stable structure and the production process that results in that structure give us an indication of purposiveness; and in this case, we can tell that picture-taking is the purpose in question. Let's call the relevant sorts of patterns "purpose-indicators." Wherever we find purpose-indicators, we readily conclude that it's very likely the object was designed for its purpose(s). But why draw such conclusions only about human artifacts? After all, we can observe purpose-indicators in many natural objects and processes. The reasoning seems to apply with equal force to, say, eyes, as to cameras, both of which 'take pictures'. Why not conclude that the eye, too, was designed for its purpose? Plutarch employed exactly analogous reasoning about Earth. He began by observing that Earth is a complex object that exemplifies the purpose-indicator of supporting life. So, he reasoned, Earth was designed to support life. Plutarch then claimed that there is a heavenly body that can be observed to be like Earth in exemplifying the purpose-indicator of supporting life. If so, then it is unlikely that its intended purpose would go unfulfilled. So, very likely, it, too, supports life. Plutarch's astronomy was a bit off: he thought that the heavenly body in question was the Moon. Now we know better. But we also have better ways of making astronomical observations. With the additional assistance of astrophysical theories of planetary formation, we can find reason to believe that there are Earth-like planets Out There. If we accept the principles linking purpose and design, we, like Plutarch, have some reason to believe in extraterrestrial life somewhat similar to life here.

While purpose-directed explanation has real power, applying it is a subtle matter. There are three issues that Plutarch's Purpose Argument raises and that will affect the other applications of purpose-directed explanation we will be considering later. First, we need to know which patterns are purpose-indicators and which are not, and we need to know what counts as evidence of their presence. Analogies between natural objects and artifacts made to resemble them (e.g., eyes and cameras) are instructive, but they don't answer this first set of questions in a general and precise way. Second, we need to figure out how the purpose-indicators confer particular degrees of likelihood on the conclusion that the object was designed. In effect, we need a mathematical function that looks at purpose indicators and yields a numerical probability as output. Third, we need to determine the actual kind and degree of similarity between the purpose indicators of Earth and heavenly companions and to construct a theory that will tell us how life develops under such similar constraints. The first two issues have kept some of the best minds busy for a couple of millennia, and they're not done yet. The third issue will require significant advances in both astrophysics and biology. So, when I say that we have some reason to believe in life Out There if we accept Plutarch's application of purpose-directed explanation, the reason is very weak and could well be defeated by future theoretical or observational progress.

Lucretius's Luck Argument

Lucretius denied the very existence of purposive beings and designers, and instead held that the universe consists solely of infinitely many material atoms moving about in the infinite void (space without bounds) through infinite time. With so many atoms and so much space and time for them to move in, every possible pattern of atomic arrangements will be repeated infinitely many times in infinitely many places. Since one such pattern is life on Earth, we are guaranteed the existence of extraterrestrial life just like us. So, Lucretius held, you have infinitely many indiscernible twins (as do Fido and Fluffy) scattered throughout the cosmos.

Lucretius even had available an argument for the infinity of the void. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that space were not infinite. Then it must have an edge or boundary. Imagine standing near the boundary and conceiving of what lies beyond it. By hypothesis, nothing lies beyond the boundary, but what is nothing but more empty space? So it is inconceivable that space itself has a boundary, and whatever is inconceivable is impossible. Hence, there is no boundary to space after all. So space is unbounded, which in turn means that space is infinite. Aside from the assumption that what is inconceivable is impossible – are our minds really such reliable guides to impossibility? – the final step of the argument is questionable. If we are like bugs on a balloon, then we could go anywhere and everywhere without ever meeting a boundary, despite the fact that our domain was no bigger than the balloon's surface. Perhaps our own three-dimensional space is spherically folded in such a way and is thus unbounded but finite. Contemporary cosmologists say things that suggest this is a real possibility. I have a hard time grasping just what they mean (and I suspect they do, too). But apart from the weakness of this subordinate argument, there is another problem with Lucretius's proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The main problem with his argument is that, although the duplication he describes is possible on his view of the universe, it is also possible that the pattern here is never repeated anywhere else because it is possible that lifeless collections of atoms are repeated endlessly throughout space and time – except here on Earth. It takes an additional argument to show that the randomness of atomic motion guarantees the actual occurrence of every possible configuration at some place or time. As we've see in the discussion of Scientific Creationism, however, randomness is not an easy concept to manage, and we shouldn't be too hard on Lucretius for having assumed that it would work in his favor.

Both Plutarch and Lucretius had concepts of living thing tied closely to terrestrial examples. If we loosen the ties, then we need to redraw the boundaries of the concept of living thing, and this will reshape the question of extraterrestrial life. Biologists have speculated that noncarbon-based life is possible, and some computer scientists have suggested that living things are mainly devices for preserving (genetic) information, so a chemical basis is unnecessary – a self-reproducing automaton, or automata capable of "machine sex," should be counted among the living. We will return to some of these issues when we seek the meaning of "life."

Additional Sources on UFOlogy

Sexology

Although Justice Brennan's remark has been derided as too obvious, no one should deny the truth it expresses. But many seem anxious to keep the truth out of public view, as if knowledge of sex were itself a violation of privacy. Sex is a subject severely, perhaps uniquely, infected by guilt, shame, anger, fear, and ignorance, and these characteristics feed on themselves and one another, discouraging people from asking (much less trying to answer) often urgent questions about both quality and quantity of life. Research about sex is, therefore, extraordinarily difficult, not just because it seeks to study complex phenomena, but because powerful social and political forces pervert and distort the subject and the potential subjects. Justice Brennan's insight notwithstanding, the situation may seem hopeless:

Two recent publications reinforce this impression of hopelessness.

In 1995, the Social Science Research Council issued a report on the state of sexuality research in the United States. What is striking about the report is not that it lists about fifty major unanswered questions – every 'standard' branch of science has plenty of unanswered questions – but that the questions concern such elementary and basic conceptual and empirical matters. Here are a few examples:

What individual behaviors, abilities, attributes, motivations, and practices contribute to sexual health?

How is sexuality defined and what does it signify or represent over the life span for individuals in varied and changing social roles?

How are male and female roles and attributes assumed and what is the significance of this process for sexual behaviors expressed at various developmental junctures?

What is the link between male and female gender roles and the risks and responsibilities of sexual behaviors?

[What is] the diversity and distribution of sexual values, beliefs, and behaviors within different populations [that may be affected by AIDS] and their meanings for individuals?

What is the range of adolescent sexual behaviors?

What is the impact of [adolescent] peer relations on sexual activity?

What is the actual prevalence and range of experiences of abusive and coercive sexuality in the United States?

What impact do experiences of sexual coercion as a child have on subsequent adult sexual development and behaviors?

Why is the public rhetoric and treatment of sexuality issues so distinct?

How does knowledge produced by research get disseminated and refracted through a political lens? - REQUIRED READING

The importance of these questions is beyond question. But it's a bit as if physicists had issued a report saying that they needed to figure out what light is, and how lenses bend it; one might have hoped for something a bit more specific by now. (Further evidence of the state of sexology is given in a 1994 survey of sixty-two sexologists. REQUIRED READING)

The largest survey of American sexual behavior, The Social Organization of Sexuality, has been very sharply criticized by biologist R. C. Lewontin. In designing and conducting their study, the researchers appear to have made some indefensible assumptions about their subjects, leading Lewontin to say, quite defensibly, with some sarcasm:

Unlike many, however, Lewontin does not indulge in the invalid inference, "Doing X is very difficult; therefore, doing X is impossible." (Add as many "very"s as you like – the inference is still invalid.) Instead, he says, wisely and sympathetically,

So, although he is a tough critic of some current work in sexology, Lewontin does not conclude that sexology is pseudoscientific, any more than he concludes that biology is pseudoscientific. Because judgments about science and pseudoscience often take (a certain conception of) physics as typical and definitive of science, any attempt to study highly complex systems may seem less scientific – but this is just a way of repeating the error in the invalid inference from difficulty to impossibility. Because judgments about sexology are often tainted by attitudes toward sex, it faces additional barriers to investigation that do not bedevil, say, invertebrate zoology or botany. Given that Justice Brennan is right about sex, we have good reason to be more than hopeless about the future progress of sexology, and no good reason to dismiss it as pseudoscience. This is a clear case in which insufficiency of resources has helped to foster an impression of substandard status, thus making it more difficult for researchers to claim the needed resources.

In the meantime, people suffer and die.

Additional Sources on Sexology

2000 David F. Austin

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