Edge Science

Number 15 August 2013

Current Research and Insights

Gbekli Tepe and the Origins of Civilization

by Robert M. Schoch

Also:

In Quest of Experiential Anomalies

by James Clement van Pelt

A publication of the Society for Scientific Exploration

EdgeScience #15
August 2013
EdgeScience is a quarterly magazine. Print copies are available from edgescience.magcloud.com. For further information, see edgescience.org Email: edgescience@gmail.com Why EdgeScience? Because, contrary to public perception, scientific knowledge is still full of unknowns. What remains to be discoveredwhat we dont knowvery likely dwarfs what we do know. And what we think we know may not be entirely correct or fully understood. Anomalies, which researchers tend to sweep under the rug, should be actively pursued as clues to potential breakthroughs and new directions in science. Publisher: The Society for Scientific Exploration Editor: Patrick Huyghe Associate Editor: P.D. Moncreif Contributors: Aaron Dabbah , Robert M. Schoch, James Clement van Pelt Design: Smythtype Design The Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) is a professional organization of scientists and scholars who study unusual and unexplained phenomena. The primary goal of the Society is to provide a professional forum for presentations, criticism, and debate concerning topics which are for various reasons ignored or studied inadequately within mainstream science. A secondary goal is to promote improved understanding of those factors that unnecessarily limit the scope of scientific inquiry, such as sociological constraints, restrictive world views, hidden theoretical assumptions, and the temptation to convert prevailing theory into prevailing dogma. Topics under investigation cover a wide spectrum. At one end are apparent anomalies in well established disciplines. At the other, we find paradoxical phenomena that belong to no established discipline and therefore may offer the greatest potential for scientific advance and the expansion of human knowledge. The SSE was founded in 1982 and has approximately 800 members in 45 countries worldwide. The Society also publishes the peer-reviewed Journal of Scientific Exploration, and holds annual meetings in the U.S. and biennial meetings in Europe. Associate and student memberships are available to the public. To join the Society, or for more information, visit the website at scientificexploration.org. President: William Bengston, St. Josephs College Vice-President: Robert Jahn, Princeton University Secretary: Mark Urban-Lurain, Michigan State University Treasurer: York Dobyns EUROPEAN COORDINATOR: Erik A Schultes, Leiden, The Netherlands
Copyright 2013 Society for Scientific Exploration The authors, artists, and photographers retain copyright to their work. ISSN 2330-4545 (Print) ISSN 2330-4553 (Online) Cover: Pillars with a fox, a three dimensional feline, and a boar. Photo by: Robert M. Schoch and Catherine Ulissey.

CONTENTS

THE OBSERVATORY

Everyday Anomalies Unearthed in Archaeology Get No Respect By Aaron Dabbah

FeatureS
Gbekli Tepe and the Origins of Civilization: Rethinking Our Distant Past
By Robert M. Schoch

11

In Quest of Experiential Anomalies: Obstacles, Passages, and What Beckons Beyond

By James Clement van Pelt

20

BACKSCATTER

A Very Small Stage in a Vast Cosmic Arena

EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013 / 3

THE OBSERVATORY

Everyday Anomalies Unearthed in Archaeology Get No Respect

rchaeologists get a raw deal. Indiana Jones sort of screwed them. When people find out they dont spend a lot of time treasure hunting, discovering ancient relics, dodging boobytraps, fighting Nazis, or shrugging off supernatural phenomena with a sardonic smirk, the dating opportunities tend to evaporate. I have noticed a certain upswing in whip sales to academics, but my suspicion is that this is simply wishful thinking. The average archaeological site consists of dirt. Maybe some rocks. If youre lucky, dirt and rocks in some sort of discernible order, like rocks stacked on top of each other or patterns of different colored dirt. Not very glamorous. Not even very hygienic. A wacky day for an archaeologist likely involves a spear point, a post-hole, or what they affectionately call a midden i.e. a dump for domestic waste. Well, domestic waste has to be at least mildly interesting, you say? Au contraire, mon frre a midden typically includes animal bones, human excrement, botanical waste, broken household materials and the various unpleasant substances we politely put out on the curb for the sanitation engineers to take away these days. Basically, the bread and butter of archaeology is rooting around in the sewer, except that the people they study generally didnt have sewers and tossed everything into a hole outside the back door of the hut. Its a big deal when an archaeological site includes the recognizable, above-ground outline of an ancient building. Its pretty rare. This means that archaeologists, rather than requiring effective hand-to-hand combat skills, just have to be fairly perceptive and deep thinking individuals to recognize the significance of what little evidence they have to work with. It must drive them nuts when anomaly buffs focus solely on what we in the anthropological biz used to call the gee whiz phenomena. An esteemed and incredibly smart anthropology professor once pointed out to me that he taught two classes to undergraduates: Anthropological Theory and Cults, Charisma, Conversion, and Commitment. Anthropological Theory was typically attended by the two or three theoretical nerds who appreciated the necessity of understanding the basis of the field. Cults, Charisma, Conversion, and Commitment packed the house. Every semester. Year after year. Sadly, the essential contents of the two classes were identical. This is the relation of archaeological discovery to the wider world. Lots of exceedingly weird stuff gets turned up, but unless youre discovering Troy, Atlantis, Spanish galleons with 10 million in gold doubloons lost at sea, or anachronistic artifacts in perfect working order, nobody really cares that much. Findings like evidence of prehistoric flint mining in East Anglia, nine pre-Columbian stone structures in southern Illinois, remains of mysterious stone walls in the Berkeley and Oakland, California Hills, indications of lowland Maya

Aaron Dabbah

hydraulic systems, or the indecipherability of south Asias ancient Harappan language are all extremely anomalous, and suggest the relative incompleteness of our knowledge of our ancestors, but that said, they are totally not sexy. They dont lend themselves well to a blockbuster action movie. And no evil rivals with nefarious plans for world domination racing to discover them first. In graduate school, an archaeology professor spent an entire lecture explaining point by point why he thought, as a working, professional archaeologist, that Erich von Dniken (the father of the current ancient aliens fan-boy movement) was a moron. I used to attribute the vitriol to typical academic bitterness at people who popularize their fields. I now realize, after visiting countless archaeological sites, that excessive focus on the mythological in archaeology will capture the attention of the public for a brief time, but obscures the hard physical and intellectual labor that actually constitute mainstream archaeology, and which turns up volumes worth of anomalous data on a routine basis, so much so that one begins to wonder what is anomalous: our view of the past, or the strange facts we keep unearthing that dont necessarily fit the model? We probably shouldnt expect too much in the way of public relations from archaeologists. One of the big draws of the field is that your subjects tend to have been dead for a really long time. Less opportunity for them to be annoying. AARON DABBAH has a Masters in Applied Anthropology and has conducted research on the public presentation of historical information, served as Head of Integrated Library Systems for the New York Public Library, and currently works in Ontology, Taxonomy, and Natural Language Processing for AOL. His blog, EsoterX.com, is an anthropological look at the nature of monstrosity.

Photo credit: Trifonov_Evgeniy/istockphoto

4 /EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013

Robert M. Schoch

Gbekli Tepe and the Origins of Civilization: Rethinking Our Distant Past

bekli Tepe is an incredibly old, wondrously sophisticated, archaeological site in southeastern Turkey just north of the Syrian border. Here is found evidence of a civilization and I use the term civilization purposefully, if somewhat provocativelythat dates back to the period of 10,000 to 12,000 years ago or earlier, the end of the last ice age. This contradicts the standard paradigm, which contends that civilization first

arose around 5,000 or 6,000 years ago in middle and southern Mesopotamia (the region of modern Iraq, southeast of Gbekli Tepe), or perhaps as early as 7,000 years ago based on new data coming out of Syria, Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.1

When Did Civilization Originate?

For more than two decades I have advocated the idea that civilization dates back thousands of years earlier that previously believed. This position was initially based on my work on the Great Sphinx in Egypt. In the early 1990s, I demonstrated, using geological data, that the statues origin is thousands of years older than the generally accepted date of circa 2500 BCE.2 Initially I conservatively suggested that the core body of the Sphinx dates back to 5000 BCE or a bit earlier. I made my case comparing erosion and weathering profiles on the Sphinx to the ancient climatic history of Egypt. In brief, the Sphinx sits on the edge of the Sahara Desert, a hyper-arid region for the past 5,000 years; yet the statue shows substantial rain-induced erosion. The original structure must date back thousands of years prior to 3000 BCE (the head was re-carved in dynastic times). Seismic studies, carried out in conjunction with geophysicist Thomas Dobecki, confirmed that the oldest portion of the Sphinx dates well prior to

EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013 / 5

Panoramic view of Gbekli Tepe.

Photo by: Robert M. Schoch and Catherine Ulissey.

dynastic times.3 Over the years, as I continued my studies and collected more data, I slowly revised my estimate, considering progressively earlier possible dates for the statue. I am now comfortable with the notion that possibly the Sphinxs earliest origins go back 10,000 years or more, perhaps even to the period of circa 10,000 BCE to 9000 BCE; that is, the end of the last ice age. For many years one of the harshest criticisms of my re-dating of the Great Sphinx was that it apparently stood in stark isolation at such a remote period in time. The people who carved it must have been extremely sophisticated culturally and technologically. They were civilized. But where was corroborative evidence of such sophistication, of true civilization, at such an early date? In February 1992, the American Association for the Advancement of Science sponsored a debate on the age of the Great Sphinx at their annual meeting in Chicago. I presented my revised dating while Egyptologist Mark Lehner defended the status quo position. I went into the meeting thinking we would have a calm, civil discussion of scientific data, but nothing of the sort took place. Indeed, I quickly realized that it was a setup, an academic lynching, and the powers that be were determined to prove me wrong at all costs and discredit my reputation. If they had been allowed to burn me at the stake, as indeed Giordano Bruno was in

1600 for his heretical ideas (such as that our Sun is indeed a star and the stars we see in the sky are suns with planets orbiting around them), I am sure they would have. But with that option unavailable in the late twentieth century, the next best thing was to belittle and defame me at a major scientific meeting. Leading the charge, Lehner attacked by labeling my research pseudo-science and arguing that, If the Sphinx was built by an earlier culture, where is the evidence of that civilization? Where are the pottery shards? People during that age were hunters and gatherers. They didnt build cities. 4 In 1992, I lacked a good answer to this question; I could only point out that I am a geologist; it was up to the archaeologists to go searching for pottery shards. However, I was sure of my science, and I persisted. Now, decades later, we have a site which vindicates my early position. When the 1992 AAAS debate took place, Gbekli Tepe was not even known, other than from a 1963 survey that suggested there might be something there (possibly a cemetery from Roman or Byzantine times). Not until 1994 did Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute re-discover the site. He began excavating in 1995 and only in recent years has the site come to the general attention of the public.5

6 /EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013

Robert Schoch with the Great Sphinx of Egypt in the background.

Photo by: Catherine Ulissey.

At Gbekli Tepe, immense finely carved T-shaped limestone pillarsmany in the range of two to five and one-half meters tall and weighing up to an estimated ten tons or moreform Stonehenge-like circles. But to compare these stone circles to the famous Stonehenge in England is an injustice to Gbekli Tepe! Unlike the rough-hewn megaliths of Stonehenge and many other European stone circles, the pillars of Gbekli Tepe are beautifully carved with finely finished surfaces, which in many cases are decorated with bas-reliefs of animals including foxes, boars, snakes, aurochs (wild cattle), birds, arthropods (a scorpion, ants and/or spiders),6 and enigmatic symbols, among the most common of which look like the letter H or an H turned 90 degrees on its side. Some of the pillars are anthropomorphic (humanoid) with arms, hands, belts, and loincloths. Sculptures in the round have also been found at Gbekli Tepe, including various animals, small statues of humans, and something that resembles a totem pole carved in stone. The level of sophistication seen at Gbekli Tepe clearly, in my opinion, indicates that a true civilization existed here.

Gbekli Tepe

View of an enclosure at Gbekli Tepe. Photo by: Robert M. Schoch and Catherine Ulissey.

EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013 / 7

Top right: Pillar with unidentified animals, wild boar, and fox(?). Bottom left: Pillar with an aurochs (wild cattle), fox, and crane. Bottom right: Humanoid central pillar showing arms, hands, belt, and loincloth. Photos by: Robert M.
Schoch and Catherine Ulissey.

8 /EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013

What is really amazing is the age of Gbekli Tepe. Based on radiocarbon techniques and geological studies, the site dates back an astounding 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.7 Interpreted as a sacred sanctuary, temple, or series of temples by Klaus Schmidt, thus far no definitive settlements have been found at Gbekli Tepe or in its immediate vicinity. Furthermore, based on the floral and faunal remains found at the site, the Gbekli Tepe people had neither domesticated animals nor plants. They were gatherers and huntersthe very sorts of people who Mark Lehner at the AAAS meeting dogmatically asserted were not capable of civilization.

Feline-like animal carved on one of the pillars at Gbekli Tepe. Photo by:
Robert M. Schoch and Catherine Ulissey.

Pillar with a vulture, various birds, other animals, and unidentified structures. Photo by: Robert M. Schoch and Catherine Ulissey.

Those following Lehners paradigm insist that true civilization necessarily implies and requires cities (the term civilization is related to the Latin civitas, city or city-state), and it would take a city, or at least a village, and the accompanying civilization to erect Gbekli Tepe. Voicing this opinion is Constantinos Ragazas who asserts, It takes a village to build a temple! And that presupposes settlements and agriculture and civic society.... Small nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers have none of these characteristics. They could not have done it!8 Like my critics two decades earlier, Ragazas cannot accept the extreme antiquity of Gbekli Tepe, writing, The science not withstanding, the archeologists are simply wrong on this one. Gbekli Tepe is not mankinds first religious temple built some 12,000 years ago by hunter-gatherers; many millenniums before settlements and agriculture. Such singular full-blown architectural achievement didnt spontaneously spring forth from the brow of hunters. Were it not for the wrong dates, this would have never been in question. 9 If not 12,000 years old, then how old is Gbekli Tepe? Ragazas places its age at circa 600 BCE. Without going into the details here, for me the evidence that Gbekli Tepe genuinely dates back some 12,000 years is overwhelming.10 This extreme antiquity of Gbekli Tepe is clearly inconvenient for those who wish to maintain the status quo paradigm, as exemplified by the following statement from Ragazas. The great dilemma for archeologists is reconciling the date [12,000 years ago] with the men that [who] built Gbekli Tepe. Either the date is wrong or our theories are wrong and men were more capable 12,000 years ago [than previously believed]. Archeologists trust their date over their understanding of men. I argue the date is wrong and men remain men. The same as we have always known them.11 In contrast, in light of the evidence of Gbekli Tepe, I believe we need a new understanding of humanity. It is not [t]he same as we have always known. People were more capable, more knowledgeable, more civilized 12,000 years ago than had been assumed. Still, the critics may have a point. The builders and patrons of Gbekli Tepe lived somewhere, but where? Where are their dwellings, their villages, their cities? We must take into account that only a small fraction of Gbekli Tepewhich is an immense sitehas been uncovered so far. Based on geophysical surveys, another fifteen or more stone circles remain unexcavated, and the overall extent

Cities 12,000 Years Ago?

EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013 / 9

View of Gbekli Tepe. Photo by: Robert M. Schoch and Catherine Ulissey. of the materials buried there are unknown.12 Furthermore, what lies under the many other hills in the immediate vicinity? The required cities might be found there, or perhaps the ancient city associated with the site is already known. Gbekli Tepe is located approximately 15 kilometers east and slightly north of Urfa (known in recent years as S anlurfa, this is the classical Edessa). The appellation City of Prophets is rightfully applied to Urfa, for not only did Abraham reside here, there are legends that connect this modern metropolis of half a million people with Lot, Jacob, Job, Elisha, Jethro, Moses, and the early Christian disciple Thaddeus (St. Addai), to name just a few. Many authors ascribe the birth of Abraham to the early second millennium BCE, thus validating the antiquity of Urfa. However, evidence suggests that the origins of the city stretch much further back in time, to 10,000 BCE or earlier. In the 1980s, during excavation work for a new parking garage in the old town section of Urfa, a magnificent approximately life-sized statue of a man was uncovered. Duly deposited in the cellar of the local museum, the statue went ignored and unclassified for years, as it was out of context and at the time unique.13 By 1993, however, other finds in the region surrounding Urfa began to provide a context and setting for Urfa Man. Finally the statue was recognized for what it is: a priceless artifact dating back to at least the tenth millennium BCE. Analyzing Urfa Man, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt concluded, Obviously, already in the Stone Age there was a holy place [in Urfa] . . . the Urfa statue can hardly be imagined other than to have been connected to some sacred context at least in the widest sense. However, it is improbable

Robert Schoch in the Museum of S anlurfa standing next to the statue of a man found in Urfa (Urfa Man) and believed to date back to the general time of Gbekli Tepe. Photo by: Catherine Ulissey.

10 /EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013

 Unlike the rough-hewn megaliths of Stonehenge and many other European stone circles, the pillars of Gbekli Tepe are beautifully carved with finely finished surfaces, which in many cases are decorated with bas-reliefs of animals including foxes, boars, snakes, aurochs, birds, arthropods, and enigmatic symbols...
that the Stone Age sanctuary at the Urfa spring will ever be archaeologically researched. This is prevented . . . by the dense building structure of the old town as well asmuch more importantby the facilities and buildings of the Islamic pilgrimage centre of Abrahams birth cave and the neighboring holy spring.14 Urfa Man was found in the heart of the still thriving City of Prophets. The remains of the major city associated with the Gbekli Tepe people may lie buried deep beneath contemporary Urfa, and Gbekli Tepe was their sanctuary away from the urban bustle. Supporting this hypothesis, in the old portion of Urfa, an early settlement site, which appears to have been approximately contemporaneous with Gbekli Tepe, was found during reconstruction of a street.15 Unfortunately, it could only be briefly examined before being covered over again.

permanent settlements or habitation sites, such as houses, have been definitively identified at Gbekli Tepe thus far. But this is controversial; after all, only a very small percentage of the site has been excavated, and it is anyones guess as to what might lie buried beneath the dirt. Building on the temple theory and linking the site to later religions, some have suggested that Gbekli Tepe marks the Garden of Eden (it lies in the general area where according to at least some interpretations the land of Adam and Eve should be located). Complementing and reinforcing the concept that Gbekli Tepe is a religious ritualistic center, Ian Hodder and Lynn Meskell, both of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University, have argued that two of the major symbolic themes evident at Gbekli Tepe are: 1) phallocentrism (an emphasis on penises), and 2) a concern with wild, dangerous, and scary animals.16 Many of the animals depicted at Gbekli Tepe can easily be interpreted as dangerous, such as boars with large canines, lions and other felines, and foxes, as well as snakes, scorpions, and carnivorous birds, such as vultures. Furthermore, some of these animals have prominent, and apparently erect, penises. In my opinion Hodder and Meskell overemphasize the phallic aspect, and the scary animal motif is far from established. My sense of many of the animals at Gbekli Tepe, with their bared teeth, is that they are happy or smiling in joy and mischief, rather like the Cheshire Cat. There is a luxuriant quality to the animals. In response to the scary animal theme proposed by Hodder and Meskell, Douglas Baird, the head of the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, has pointed out that the largest figures found at Gbekli Tepe are the central anthropomorphic T-pillars of one of the enclosures, and an animal (fox?) is nestled in under one arm.17 That is, far from being scary, the humans dominate and subjugate the animals.

Wild Animals and Phallocentrism

How do we interpret Gbekli Tepe? What exactly is it? Klaus Schmidt has identified it as a large temple complexa series of temples, shrines, and ritual spaces. This interpretation is based on the grandeur, size, and monumentality of the stonework, and the images on the pillars, which Schmidt considers to be religious symbols and emblems. Both the popular media and many mainstream archaeologists and historians have latched on to this concept of the worlds oldest temple. Reinforcing this interpretation is the argument that no

Fox with prominent penis on a pillar at Gbekli Tepe. Photo by: Robert M.
Schoch and Catherine Ulissey.

EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013 / 11

Regardless of the themes and motifs depicted at Gbekli Tepe, and they are certainly open to interpretation, most archaeologists have regarded the site as religious, essentially a series of temples. Countering the temple interpretation, University of Toronto archaeologist E. B. (Ted) Banning has proposed that despite their elaborate decoration and sophisticated artwork, the structures at Gbekli Tepe may in fact have been houses.18 Specifically, he suggests, the Gbekli Tepe constructions may represent large communal houses. He states that they are similar in some ways to the large plank houses [of the native peoples] of the Northwest Coast of North America with their impressive house posts and totem poles. . . . It is . . . likely that some of these buildings [at Gbekli Tepe] were the locus for a variety of rituals, probably including feasts, mortuary rites, Carved pillar resembling a totem pole magic, and initiations, . . . from Gbekli Tepe now housed in the there is generally no reaMuseum of S anlurfa Photo by: Robert M. Schoch and Catherine Ulissey. son to presume a priori, even when these are as impressive as the buildings at Gbekli Tepe, that they were not also peoples houses.19 Indeed, a stone sculpture resembling a totem pole was found at Gbekli Tepe. I am not convinced that the black and white distinction between temple and house is necessarily as applicable to the people of Gbekli Tepe as it may be to some members of modern society. I suspect that the structures so far uncovered at Gbekli Tepe were neither temples nor houses, at least initially (for they underwent modification and reuse before being buried 10,000 years ago). In my opinion, a better analogy might be a university and astronomical observatory; a center of learning and research in science, medicine, and the arts; a site of social gatherings, which could include religious rituals, but also much more.

Temples, Houses, or an Observatory?

Boar-like figure and two unidentified animal sculptures, all from Gbekli Tepe, now housed in the Museum of S anlurfa. Photos by:
Robert M. Schoch and Catherine Ulissey.

The Demise of Gbekli Tepe

Gbekli Tepe was built, used, and added to for a couple of thousand years by my estimation.20 There were three main phases. First, the beautiful T-shaped stone pillars were carved and erected. Typically about a dozen such pillars were erected in a circle or oval, and two more stood in the center. Based on the roughened top surfaces that they bear, the pillars may also have supported some kind of roof or superstructure at some point in their history, but not necessarily during this first phase of construction. Second, relatively crude stone walls were built between the outer pillars, forming circular enclosures. These walls abut, and in some cases cover or hide, the carved bas-reliefs on the pillars. It is also apparent that some of the T-shaped pillars had toppled over and were re-erected when the secondary stone walls were built. I sense that the site was being converted into some kind of defensive structure. Perhaps this is a time when roofing was added and indeed the stone circles were turned into houses. Finally, about 10,000 years ago, the entire complex was intentionally buried under tons of rock and debris. This intentional burial may be unusual for an archaeological site, but in the case of Gbekli Tepe the systematic layers of fill and the material the fill contains (including flint tools and waste, and animal and plant remains)

12 /EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013

 The Gbekli Tepe people achieved a high level of sophisticated culture, flourished for a relatively short period of time... and then suddenly disappeared.
indicates that it was intentionally buried.21 Why the different uses of the site? Why the eventual abandonment and burial? Had the temple, the sacred ground, come to the end of its life cycle? Was it ritually de-sanctified, decommissioned? Or did the people of Gbekli Tepe turn from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and in the process abandon their old ways, their old gods? Or did the people suffer natural catastrophes? I believe this latter possibility was indeed the case. The last glacial period came to an end 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, when sea levels were rising, climates were fluctuating, and our planet was subjected to a series of major solar outbursts closely spaced together.22 In the wake of calamity, did the people of Gbekli Tepe first attempt to fortify their structures and then, realizing that it was futile, bury them and flee? Did they hope to return again to uncover their monuments? What became of the Gbekli Tepe people?

Salisbury Plain, England. My belief is that the builders of Gbekli Tepe created a megalithic structure used for celestial observations, and their descendants brought this knowledge with them when the[y] migrated to England and helped build Stonehenge, Plegge writes.26 According to conventional dating, the earliest stages of Stonehenge go back to about 3,100 BCE, some five millennia after the demise of Gbekli Tepe. Furthermore, the two sites are separated by nearly 4,000 kilometers and the English Channel. So, can we seriously suggest that the Gbekli Tepe people were the ancestors of the builders of Stonehenge? Plegge cites a paper published by University of Leicester geneticist Patricia Balaresque and colleagues that concludes, based on Y-chromosome data, that there was movement, migration, and expansion of lineages from Anatolia (the area where Gbekli Tepe is located) into Western Europe over the last 10,000 years.27 Reinforcing this hypothesis is a recent linguistic study. After analyzing vocabulary data from 103 different IndoEuropean languages (ancient and contemporary), University of Auckland computer scientist Remco Bouckaert and colleagues concluded that the Indo-European languages originated in Anatolia some 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.28 Thus both the genetic data and linguistic analyses support the hypothesis that the Gbekli Tepe people and their descendants may have migrated out of Anatolia, ultimately to re-establish new societies, new cultures, new civilizations elsewhere thousands of years later. In this sense, might we consider Gbekli Tepe the origin, the Garden of Eden, where civilization arose by the end of the last ice age some 12,000 years ago? ROBERT M. SCHOCH, a full-time faculty member at Boston University since 1984, earned his Ph.D. in geology and geophysics at Yale University (1983). His most recent book is Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future (Inner Traditions, 2012) in which he discusses, among other topics, Gbekli Tepe and his work on the Great Sphinx. Website: www.robertschoch.com

The Gbekli Tepe people achieved a high level of sophisticated culture, flourished for a relatively short period of time (even if some thousands of years), and then suddenly disappeared. As Klaus Schmidt has stated, Even one thousand years later [after the purposeful burial of Gbekli Tepe and disappearance of the people], nothing is left of this world.23 But perhaps the Gbekli Tepe people did pass on some of their heritage. Possibly they buried their monuments, abandoned their homeland in Anatolia, and migrated to other parts of the world. Tantalizing evidence to support such a scenario has recently come from various fields. Egyptologist Ludwig D. Morenz has pointed out that the concept of a sky vulture, as interpreted on a pillar of Gbekli Tepe, is found thousands of years later in ancient Egypt.24 Similarly, Hodder and Meskell note that ithyphallic statues from Gbekli Tepe and associated sites are similar to the ithyphallic Egyptian god Min, although they are quick to point out that they do not wish to argue for direct cultural links.25 However, retired computer professional and avocational archaeoastronomer Joe Plegge suggests explicitly that there may be direct links between the Gbekli Tepe people and the builders of Stonehenge of Wiltshire,

Possible Descendants of the Gbekli Tepe People

Endnotes
1. Lawler, Andrew. Uncovering Civilizations Roots, Science, vol. 335, no. 6070: 790793, 17 February 2012. Available through www.sciencemag.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/content/335/6070/790.full, accessed 5 July 2013. 2. Schoch, Robert M., and John Anthony West. Redating the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt, Geological Society of America, abstracts with programs, vol. 23, no. 5: A253 (1991).; Schoch, Robert M. How Old Is the Sphinx? Abstracts for the 1992 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Chicago, February 1992, 202.; Schoch, Robert M. Redating the Great Sphinx of Giza, KMT, A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, vol. 3, no. 2: 5259, 6670 (1992).; Schoch, Robert M. Geological Evidence Pertaining to the Age of the Great Sphinx, In New Scenarios on the Evolution of the Solar System and Consequences on History of Earth and Man, edited by Emilio Spedicato and Adalberto Notarpietro, 171203. Proceedings

EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013 / 13

of the Conference, Milano and Bergamo, Italy, June 79, 1999, Universit degli Studi di Bergamo, Quaderni del Dipartmento di Matematica, Statistica, Informatica ed Applicazion, Serie Miscellanea, Anno 2002, no. 3. Available from www.robertschoch.com/geodatasphinx.html, article dated 19992000; revised 20022003; accessed July 7, 2011.; see also Schoch 2012 [see endnote 7, below]. 3. Dobecki, Thomas L., and Robert M. Schoch. Seismic Investigations in the Vicinity of the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt, Geoarchaeology, vol. 7, no. 6: 527544 (1992). Available from www.robertschoch.com/seismicdata.html, accessed 30 August 2011. 4. New York Times. Scholars Dispute Claim that Sphinx Is Much Older. Article dated February 9, 1992. Available from www.nytimes.com/1992/02/09/us/scholars-disputeclaim-that-sphinx-is-much-older.html, accessed 14 June 2010. 5. Schmidt, Klaus. 2006/2008. Sie bauten die ersten Tempel: Das rtselhafte Heiligtum der Steinzeitjger, Die archologische Entdeckung am Gbekli Tepe. Munich, Germany: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.; Schmidt, Klaus. 2012. Gbekli Tepe: A anlurfa, Stone Age Sanctuary in South-Eastern Anatolia. S Turkey: ArchaeNova / ex oriente e.V. Berlin (special edition produced by ArchaeNova and printed in Turkey by anlurfa, 2012; copy purchased on site Kurtulus Matbaas, S at Gbekli Tepe, June 2013). 6. Peters, Joris, and Klaus Schmidt. Animals in the Symbolic World of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Gbekli Tepe, South-Eastern Turkey: A Preliminary Assessment. Anthropozoologica, vol. 39, no. 1: 179218 (2004). 7. For discussion of the dating of Gbekli Tepe, see Schmidt references [endnote 5 above] and: Schoch, Robert M. 2012. Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions.; Dietrich, Oliver. Gbekli Tepe Radiocarbon Dates: A Short Comment. Undated article [circa 2012/2013], available from www.academia.edu/1177902/Gobekli_Tepe_ Radiocarbon_Dates_-_A_Short_Comment, accessed 7 June 2013. 8. Ragazas, Constantinos. The Hanging Gardens of Gbekli Tepe. Paper dated 1 May 2013, 12 pages; quotation from page 2, italics in the original. Available from http://vixra. org/pdf/1305.0076v4.pdf, accessed 20 July 2013. 9. Ragazas 2013 [see endnote 8], p. 2; italics in the original. 10. See references in endnote 7. 11. Ragazas 2013[see endnote 8], p. 8; italics in the original, material in brackets added by R. Schoch. 12. Schmidt 2012 [see endnote 5], p. 212. 13. Schmidt 2012 [see endnote 5], p. 189: elik 2000 [see endnote 15, below], p. 4, states that Urfa Man was found in 1993. 14. Schmidt 2012[see endnote 5], p. 189; material in brackets added by R. Schoch. 15. elik, Bahattin. An Early Neolithic Settlement in the anlurfa, Turkey, Neo-Lithics 2-3/00, pp. 46 Center of S (2000).

16. Hodder, Ian, and Lynn Meskell. A Curious and Sometimes a Trifle Macabre Artistry: Some Aspects of Symbolism in Neolithic Turkey, Current Anthropology, vol. 52, no. 2: 235263 [including comments by outside readers, 251-258] (April 2011). 17. Baird, Douglas. [Comment on Hodder and Meskell], Current Anthropology, vol. 52, no. 2: 251 (April 2011). 18. Banning, E. B. So Fair a House: Gbekli Tepe and the Identification of Temples in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East, Current Anthropology, vol. 52, no. 5: 619660 [including comments by outside readers, 641-654] (October 2011). 19. Stacey, Kevin. Archaeologist Argues Worlds Oldest Temples Were Not Temples at All. Press release dated 6 October 2011. Available from www.eurekalert.org/pub_ releases/2011-10/uocp-aaw100611.php, accessed December 22, 2011. 20. Schoch 2012 [see endnote 7], pp. 5357. 21. For a discussion of the soils and sediments at Gbekli Tepe, see: Pustovoytov, Konstantin. Soils and Sediments at Gbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey: A Preliminary Report, Geoarchaeology, vol. 21, no. 7: 699719 (2006). 22. Schoch 2012 [see endnote 7], pp. 87-103. 23. Batuman, Elif. The Sanctuary: The Worlds Oldest Temple and the Dawn of Civilization, New Yorker, 19 December 2011, pp. 72, 74, 76, 78, 8083; Schmidt quotation from p. 80. 24. Morenz, Ludwig D. Vom Himmel hoch ...-Zu BildZeichen geronnene Himmelsmetaphorik, GM, vol. 232: 97101 (2012). 25. Hodder and Lynn Meskell 2011 [see endnote 16], p. 238. 26. Plegge, Joe. 2012. Turkish Stonehenge: Gbekli Tepe. Dickinson, North Dakota: Plegge Enterprises; quotation from p. 69. 27. Balaresque, Patricia, Georgina R. Bowden, Susan M. Adams, Ho-Yee Leung, Turi E. King, Zo H. Rosser, Jane Goodwin, Jean-Paul Moisan, Christelle Richard, Ann Millward, Andrew G. Demaine, Guido Barbujani, Carlo Previder, Ian J. Wilson, Chris Tyler-Smith, and Mark A. Jobling. A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages, PLoS Biology, vol. 8, no. 1, 9 pages (January 2010). 28. Bouckaert, Remco, Philippe Lemey, Michael Dunn, Simon J. Greenhill, Alexander V. Alekseyenko, Alexei J. Drummond, Russell D. Gray, Marc A. Suchard, and Quentin D. Atkinson. Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family, Science, vol. 337, no. 6097: 957960 (24 August 2012). For a corroborative linguistic study, see: Pagela, Mark, Quentin D. Atkinson, Andreea S. Calude, and Andrew Meade. Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia, PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), 6 May 2013. Available from http://www.pnas.org/content/ early/2013/05/01/1218726110, accessed 21 July 2013.

14 /EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013

James Clement van Pelt

In Quest of Experiential Anomalies:

Confronting the Obstacles, Removing the Blinders
I
n considering the mysteries of telepathy, clairvoyance, past lives, out-of-body experiences, and the like, I find just as mysterious the unaccountable lack of official interest in the investigation of such anomalous phenomonaanomalous because they cannot be accounted for by the prevailing model of reality. If there is any chance that the generally accepted model of reality is radically incomplete, or considerably distorted, or centered in the wrong spot (once again); or that the mortal veil may be permeable to some degree; or that there may be more to each of us than a brain doomed to rot inside its skull when one of its critical processes fails; or that we are not alone in a cosmic sense, or even in the ultimate senseif there is any chance that any such hypothesis can be validated or falsified by empirical research beyond reasonable challenge, then what other research topic could promise a more potentially fruitful outcome? What keeps such phenomenaespecially those that challenge the causal closure of physical reality and the limits of physical mortalityfrom being universally deemed among the most important research topics in the world? Why are universities great and small not teeming with scientists and philosophers focusing their careers on those and similar topics? Given its potential to rip away the tattered canvas we mistake for reality, how can such research be assigned an official priority so strangely close to zero? What keeps it so marginalized, so often considered illegitimate and career-destroying pseudoscience, so institutionally indigestible and unfundable that barely a dozen small academic centers in the world are permitted to pursue it? As I type and reflect, by coincidence our young tabby cat has hopped onto my desk and found her spot between me and my display monitor, idly watching shapes appear onscreen as my fingers clack away behind her. I stop and select a few words with my mouse, and now the cat is riveted to the mouse cursor moving about the screen. I notice, and I move it like a moth flitting at a window. She begins to lunge and swat, determined to trap this pointy little critter. After a few minutes she pauses, perplexed. My little cat has encountered an anomaly: something, she knows not what, is invisibly interposed between her and her prey. Something mysterious is interrupting the direct causal chain between her intention to catch the critter, and her ability to do so. She gives it her full attention. As Feynmann put it, The thing that doesnt fit is the most interesting.1 She quickly fills in the gap in this causal chain, because she has the idea of a window. She hypothesizes that a kind of window is in the way; moving around to the back of the monitor, she expects to catch the bug on the other side. When she sees no window and no bug, she peers through the monitors vents, in case the bug is inside. Still no bug, so she quickly loses interest and wanders off. In the same way, science as we have come to know it sometimes wanders off from going after the greatest mysteries, and for the same reason: an incomplete idea of what is the case leads to the conviction that to pursue such research is pointless. When it comes to investigating anomalous phenomena, a presumption seems to prevail that there is no there thereno anomalies that really defy common notions of causation; no weirdness that cannot be accounted for in terms of statistics, neurology, imagination, hallucination, and the tendency to over-attribute agency to natural phenomena. Each example can be explained away, one by one (hypoxia? probability?) or all at once (causal closure, anti-Cartesianism, Occams Razor, etc.). It is as simple as that basic law of probability in a Bernoulli process: flip a coin long enough, and heads and tails are sure to come up in equal numbers; likewise, ignore weird research long enough, and someone will come up with at least a minimally plausible physical explanation for any set of anomalous phenomena. Neither can be

Photo credit: c-foto/istockphoto

EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013 / 15

falsified, since the definition of long enough is as long as it takes to get the expected result. The conviction that psi and other such anomalies are not worth studying is advanced in the name of science, and with its authority, but it is based on a series of presumptions unwarranted by scientific evidence. Those presumptions are derived from a model of reality whose explanatory power has proven to be astounding as it applies to purely physical phenomena. Beyond that purview, and in other crucial ways, that model is as far off from what can be known as is my cats understanding of the moth in the window. Filters are one of sciences most valuable tools. They can be applied to an object under study such as a biological cell, an astronomical entity, or patterns of behavior in order to mask elements that would otherwise obscure especially interesting properties. They can be used to sharpen the tools by which underlying processes are teased out of a complex system, or to highlight fallacies in how a situation is understood. But unacknowledged presumptions can operate as filters that mask the promise in the mystery of the thing that doesnt fit. Then they are better thought of as blinders than filters, masking elements that may be essential to an understanding of the phenomenon under study and its often unforeseeable implications. Their effect is to obscure the plausibility of data and perceptions that stray outside the official story of how reality is designed and who determines that. In doing so they interfere with the scientific method and choke off the creative wellsprings of science. The two most actively applied filters can be called the filter of physicalism and the filter of meaningless coincidence. Once named, they can be understood as obstacles to scientific empiricalinvestigation of phenomena that suggest that currently accepted scientific assumptions and theories about the nature of mind or consciousness, and its relationship to matter, may be incomplete.2 Once exposed, they may be subject to being counteracted in the same way that impediments to intellectual progress have been countered through the ages.

 The prevailing model of reality is equipped with anti-explanatory power: a filter to neutralize the threat represented by any rival belief system by waving away any empirical or anecdotal evidence that could violate it, including any sign or revelation erupting into everyday experience.
scientific principles, in ways that screen out the possibility that anything anomalous could imply a causal frame greater than the physical. The deep skepticism expressed toward even the possibility of anomalous causation poisons the general cultural atmosphere that might otherwise sense breakthroughs on the horizon if research into such anomalies were given priority in proportion to its potential outcomes. The filtering effect stands out especially when it causes investigators to prejudge the results of their experiments. In a study reported at the 2003 conference of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (a mostly sociological enterprise), experimenters tested children in benign ways to observe how they interacted with fantasy characters, generalizing from the results how people interact with imaginary supernatural agents that may give rise to religion. Filtered out entirely from the experiment was any possibility that nonphysical entities might actually be encountered in exceptional situations, or that there may actually be a nonphysical dimension of reality to which people interact in adaptive ways we may consider religious.3 Removing the filter doesnt mean accepting that spiritual beings and realms are not imaginary. But if there is no persuasive evidence that they are imaginary, and mountains of anecdotal testimony to the contrary, it seems counterproductive to presume the one and deny the other when it would be just as easy to remain open to either possibility until actual findings point one way or the other. Otherwise, might not there be a blind spot in the research protocol? A team of MIT scientists recently reported having created false memories in mice by manipulating molecular

The Filter of Physicalism

The essential tenet of physicalism (materialism and naturalism are more often used in other contexts) is that a complete physical description of anything, even reality itself, is sufficient to completely describe it, with nothing left over. Only particles and forces/fields, along with what they compose and what emerges from their interactions, can be real. Applied to consciousness it is called identity theory: the idea that mental states are identical with physiochemical states of the brain and their emergent properties. The necessary corollary is that the only possible causes are physical; anything else is epiphenomenal, inconsequential, or illusory, and in any case immaterial in both senses. Reality is encompassed within a causal frame in which all effects result from chains of physical causes moving unidirectionally through timebilliard-ball causality. Because believing is seeing, those convictions operate subconsciously on people who misconstrue them to be

16 /EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013

The Filter of Meaningless Randomness structures at the neuronal level in the hippocampus by transCombining with the filter of physicalism to cripple the study of ferring a fear engram (impression) from an association with provocative anomalies is the filter of meaningless randomness, a cage in which the mice had been painfully shocked to a which derives from assumption that physical things, including cage where they had not, causing them to show fear in that the physical universe, do not possess a property that makes new setting. Inducing any sort of memories, true or false, them meaningful in themselves. Physical reality is thus devoid solely by neuronal manipulation would be stunning if it were of meaningfulness except for what imaginative beings like us really to constitute the transfer of memory content rather make upwhich makes meaning (and ethics and morality) than a chemically induced instinctive reaction, and the scia species of opinion, a subjective creation lacking any objecentists were appropriately modest about their achievement: tive truth value. That leaves meaning itself up in the air, Susumu Tonagawa, an MIT neuroscientistcautioned that ungrounded in the fundamental structure of reality. the false memories created in the mice in the experiments This filter operates to condition people to negatively prewere far simpler than the complex false memories that have judge evidence that could imply causes and effects that are not generated controversy within psychology and psychiatry physical. How? By applying the filter, any allegedly anomaYet there is no similar modesty in his citing abduction by lous phenomenon whose cause cannot be ascribed to natural aliens, or past lives as examples of rich false memories. forces or human intention can be dismissed out of Because of the filter, it goes without saying (and regardless hand as random, hence insignificantjust a of any evidence to the contrary) that such memories cannot coincidence. The term coincidence in possibly originate in actual experience but only in processes its everyday usage actually implies its involved in their formation at the neuronal level.4 Yet careful research has tried and failed to show that necessary adjective: meaningless, memories of past lives in particular are necessarily false.5 as in just a [meaningless] coinThis is not to say that memories of past lives cidence, based on the unwaror extraterrestrial encounters are necessarily ranted yet utterly predominant ever valid, nor that it is unscientific to doubt assumption that whatever has a the truth of such memories. But it does seem random element in its causation that to presumptively discount the research must to that extent be meaningof competent and sincere investigators speless. The idea of a meaningful coincicializing in such areas, and who employ dencean instance of mental telepathy, rigorous and proven methodologies, or foreknowledge of an actual event, or constrains the scope of investigations a memory of a past life that correlates that may have immense significance (life with previously unknown records on other planets? life beyond death?), is an oxymoron by definition of distorting how they are likely to be coincidence. regarded in ways antithetical to the ethos Any phenomenon that cannot of science. Think what it would mean to be explained in physical terms, any understand memory well enough to deterweirdness that seems a possible excepmine with reasonable certainty whether any tion to the prevailing model of reality, can sincere recollections of either extraterrestrial be disposed of simply by labeling it just a to dio/ istockpho Credit: kycstu encounters or past lives are not false memocoincidence. Thus the application of this filter ries. In an unfiltered scientific world, seeking an can neutralize any threat to the prevailing model, answer to that one question would surely justify a memory guaranteeing its unchallenged predominance. research program conducted and funded on a vast scale. An example of this filter at work can be seen in a report on Since the beginning of modernity, the Humean assertion the Global Consciousness Project: The experiments show that has been that the more a claim is at variance with the physihuman intention can induce small but significant changes in the calist model, the greater should be its burden of proof, to output of an RNG [random number generator]. When we take the point of impossibility. But the logic of that dictum works the same instruments into the field, we find they also respond both ways. The claim that nothing can exist except physical to special moments of group consciousness produced by shared things, and that no causes are possible except physical causes, experience in rituals and ceremonies, or inspired by great music is a claim far closer to being absolute than the counterclaim or intense meetings of mind.7 A graph in the report displays a remarkable spike in the probability field measured by means of that there could be exceptions. Therefore, by Humean logic, RNG not just during the terrible events of September 11, 2001, the claim of physicalism would seem to require nearly absobut shortly preceding it. How are we to account for these effects lute proof. In contrast, the far more limited counterclaim is within the frame of physical causality? What about the host of supported by the single fact each of us can know for cersimilar instances where the field of group consciousness protain: that there is such a thing as experience, which is selfduced by shared experience appears to influence the physical evidently insubstantial in the material sense regardless of its world, reminiscent of the way gravity distorts spacetime, even correlation to physicality.6 though physical causation cannot account for it?

EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013 / 17

While the statistical results of these and other such experiments are clear and uncomplicated, and while the methodology and instrumentation are generally impeccable (and actually quite brilliant in eliminating possible physical and intentional causes), we can rest assured that such findings, despite their stupendous significance and paradigm-shifting implications, will be filtered out by ascribing them to coincidence random, meaningless coincidence. Assuming no scientific fraud, incompetence, or deficient experimental apparatus, what else could it be? To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, once the impossible has been eliminatedin this case, other-thanphysical causationwhatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. In this case, what remains is just a coincidence. Scientists have criticized some theists for using divine agency to fill in the gaps in our understanding of how the universe works and how life has evolved. They note that assigning causes to the intentional actions of an all-powerful being stops research in its tracks. Why proceed with the investigation if God did it? Yet the filter of meaningless coincidence has just that effect: once anomalous findings have been determined to be just a coincidence, what point can there be to pursue a hypothesis whose explanatory power might lead beyond the frame of physical causation? Thus the prevailing model of reality is equipped with anti-explanatory power: a filter to neutralize the threat represented by any rival belief system by waving away any empirical or anecdotal evidence that could violate it, including any sign or revelation erupting into everyday experience. Each and every one of the miraculous and wondrous events cited to bolster the authority of scripture and the faith of religious believers can be classified Credit: ayzek/istockphoto as a species of coincidence. Even lifechanging personal hierophanies that might lead one away from accepting cosmic meaninglessness can be reprocessed into insignificance by this filtering effect. How that mechanism works is illustrated by informal interviews conducted at Yale with people who experience synchronicitiescoincidental events so significant and so wildly improbable that they seem somehow intended to disclose a higher order of meaning even though they are free of human intention. We found it was very common for those who had experienced such events to remember having had them, but quite uncommon for them to recall any details after a short time (typically measured in minutes). We theorized that the mindset imposed by the prevailing physicalist paradigm tends to cause those details to be reclassified as insignificant and unworthy of the mental resources required to retain them.8

Removing the Blinders

Generally speaking, the principal sort of advocacy consistent with scientific ethics is advocacy for the truth. Out of respect for that principle, investigators of anomalous phenomena tend to stick to their experiments, sharing their findings but rarely their thoughts about the greater implications of their work, trusting that scientifically pristine findings will speak for themselves. This scientific pacifism, or passivity, seems not to have been an effective strategy. There tends to be a suboptimal career path for scientists whose findings point toward the incompleteness of the prevailing model of reality, which leads from tenured positions with respected institutions to less secure positions in centers and labs loosely connected to those institutions (and with which those institutions are acutely uncomfortable), and finally to having their activities spun off (or at least reconfigured if there is endowment funding at stake). That pattern starts in recent times with the founder of American parapsychology, J.B. Rhine, who pioneered psi research initially from within Duke Universitys psychology department, later spun off as the independent Rhine Research Center Institute of Parapsychology.9 It may be time for a more proactive strategy: to advocate the independence of science from the constraints imposed by scientifically unwarranted belief systems, in particular by defending the value of investigations that could reveal and define the limits of the rarely acknowledged presumptions now prevailing over the scientific enterprise. Certainly the first priority in carrying out that strategy is to continue to conduct science that is methodologically above reproach, which rules out all investigations with a hidden agenda to substantiate any specific belief system. For example, research into anomalies in the evidence supporting the neo-Darwinist model may be rich with possibilities, but such work is fatally compromised if the underlying motive is to select or construe facts to support scriptural accounts of Creation. Briefly, here are some steps that could fit a more proactive strategy: 1. Be on the lookout for studies and reports represented as science that betray presumptions that could limit or distort their findings and interpretations. That includes mentions of anomalous phenomena represented as if they are known to be false when in fact they are still under investigation, or should still be. Articulate those presumptions in well-reasoned communications to the investigators and their publications with the intention of pointing out possible oversights that inadvertently compromise their methodology. 2. When valid, rigorous, narrowly focused investigations of anomalous phenomena are disregarded or disparaged,

18 /EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013

actively defend them and clarify why they should be regarded as serious science. Do the same for the investigators and organizations carrying them out. Share your concerns with the sponsoring institutions. 3. Understand that belief systems can function as if they were memetic organisms. Extending Richard Dawkinss idea of memes, a memetic organism is a set of cultural forms called memes, such as ideas, images, beliefs, and related feelings, that interact to replicate themselves collectively among masses of people. Especially successful memetic organisms include combinations of memes that have the effect of motivating some people to sacrifice their own interests to propogate the memetic set. The difference between a belief system and a memetic organism is that the latter acts the way a one-celled animal or a well-written computer virus does when it responds to threats, seeks nourishment, and generally behaves in ways that tend to advance its interests. Memetic organisms are either symbiotic or parasitic depending on whether they contribute to the wellbeing of their hosts or sacrifice it to their own interests. They are emphatically not living organisms in any sense, any more than a computer virus is a living virus, but they have a kind of evolution within the cultural ecology and compete for purchase and predominance within that shared mental-emotional space. Religions and ideologies are obvious examples, each proclaiming itself the ultimate and exclusive source of truth, each providing the one and only permissible model of reality, each capable of inducing its human hosts to embrace martyrdom. But the ultimate success of a memetic organism is achieved at the point that it becomes so infused into the cultural ecology, and so invulnerable to competing systems, that it fades into the cultural milieu, becoming invisible as a distinct identity, and instead regarded as just the way things are and that which is always the case. Think of Christianity in a Medieval village isolated from any other religious influence, or the belief system of an indigenous tribe cut off from other civilizations. Consider that the very active yet practically invisible filters of physicalism and meaningless coincidence may originate from just such a memetic organism, so successful that it dominates the culture of science as much as Christianity dominated Medieval Europe, able to remain invisible and unnamed while crushing any significant threat to its absolute predominance. 4. Consider that the equation of randomness and meaninglessness is neither self-evident nor scientifically useful, and that its effect is to model a reality in which meaning is subjective and arbitrary. Consider what meaningful coincidence might mean, and what its implications might entail in a revision of how we experience the encounter with meaning in our daily lives. 5. Consider the possibility that the prevailing physicalist model of reality is no more the endpoint of understanding than were the models it has supplanted. Consider whether a Kuhnian paradigm shift to a more comprehensive model is likely, and what it would entail. Some examples: Might such a model relocate experience to a more central place, in a way that would decisively modify our idea of what a Theory of

Everything would include? Might it integrate the physical, mental, and emotional/subtle aspects of reality in a way that is neither physical-monistic nor physical-spiritual dualistic? Might it reconcile the physical and the experiential through a kind of complementarity, as relativity coexists in science with quantum mechanics such that each interacts with the other even though they presently seem incommensurable? 6. Consider the possibility that non-Western traditions (Asian, ancient, indigenous) may have insights derived from centuries of highly disciplined first-person inquiry that could guide us toward a superior model of reality. 7. Consider whether the current reality model and its effects on science and technology have turned out to be toxic to the achievement of a sustainable civilization, and in what ways it may be implicated in humanitys present initiation of a planetary mass extinction. If so in any degree, how would its successor inform the endeavor to reverse those effects while extending the range and depth of sciences explanatory power?

A More Elegant Explanatory Successor

To investigate anomalous phenomena does not require the adoption of any particular alternative model of reality (or paradigm). Such investigation does seem to be facilitated by a realization that the physicalist model, and probably any future model however predominant, is incomplete and likely to be superseded. As in past eras, phenomena that seem anomalous from within the limits of such a modelthe things that dont fit may well point toward a more elegantly explanatory successor that is as radically and usefully different from the one that now blinders science as Galileos heliocentric model of the universe differs from the geocentric model that previously seemed so sacredly true.

Notes
1. Quoted by Peter Sturrock in Types of Anomalies, EdgeScience 3, January-March 2010, p. 3. 2. Statement of purpose of the Division of Perceptual Studies of the University of Virginia School of Medicine. http://www. medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/ sections/cspp/dops/we_are-page 3. Bering, J. M. (October 2003). The Princess Alice experiments: Childrens susceptibility to supernatural agent concepts. Presentation to the annual conference of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), Norfolk, Virginia, 25 October 2003. 4. Ramirez, Tonegawal, et. al., Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus, Science Vol. 341 no. 6144 pp. 387-391, 26 July 2013. 5. On one hand, research using memory errors that occur outside of the psychological laboratory has shown that people reporting memories of past lives or abduction by space aliens make more DRM [memory] errors, than people who do not report such memoriesalthough this has not been found consistently. On the other hand, research using laboratory-induced autobiographical memory errors

EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013 / 19

has not found any such link. Ost, Salmon, et.al., False Memory False Memory: DRM Errors Are Unrelated to the Misinformation Effect, PLoS One journal, US National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health, 3 April 2013; 8(4): e57939. 6. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume warrants naturalism (absolute physicalism) by asserting that a fact or event that departs from the laws of nature, i.e. physical laws, violates what has been established by firm and unalterable experience of those lawsexperience that is and must be universal, even though people sometimes testify to the contrary. Not surprisingly, he deems it a general maxim that such testimony should be disregarded because the likelihood that it originates from deception or self-deception varies less from the laws of nature than the likelihood that the testimony is accurate. According to this, any such testimony varies from the firm and unalterable experience that establishes the the practical impossibility of such a variance. Ergo, his argument against exceptions to physicalism based on the absolute consistency of experience depends on excluding any inconsistency. See David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L. A. Selby Bigge, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), pp. 114-16. 7. Roger D. Nelson, Is the Global Mind Real? EdgeScience Number 1, October 2009, p. 6. 8. See http://synchroproject.org. In response to this observation, the projects co-director, Lesley Roy, has designed a free iPhone app as a research aid enabling users to record synchronicity events in various ways as they occur or shortly thereafter. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ synchro-project/id399837212 9. As a Duke student at the time, I was aware of the institutional relief from pushing Rhine and his weirdness out of Dukes psychology endeavors just as Skinners much weirder but more reliably physicalist behaviorism was flooding in.

Dont miss the Fall 2013 issue of the

Journal of Scientific Exploration

by Suitbert Ertel

Effect or Sensory Leakage: Psi Scrutinizing the Ball Selection Test SheepGoat Effect as a Matter The of Compliance vs. Noncompliance: The Effect of Reactance in a Forced-Choice Ball Selection Test
by Lance Storm, Suitbert Ertel, Adam J. Rock

Aerial Phenomena (UAP): Unidentified A New Hypothesis toward Their Explanation by Daniel M. Gross Birthmarks: Experimental New Cases of an Asian Practice
by Jim B. Tucker, H. H. Jrgen Keil

JAMES CLEMENT VAN PELT cofounded Yales Initiative in Religion, Science & Technology in 2003, coordinating its programming since its inception, including the Working Group in Religious and Spiritual Perspectives on Bioethics for Yales Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, the Synchro Project studying the experience of meaningful coincidence (synchronicity) and three international conferences at Yale engaging leading Western scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars. He has authored, coauthored, and contributed to numerous articles and books, including Different Cultures, One World. His academic interests center on the anthropology of consciousness, theologies of technology, social revolution theory, and consciousness studies, with special interest in the metaphysics of experience and the teleology of technology.

Alien WorldsThe Building Neuropsychological and Evolutionary Implications of the Astonishing Psychoactive Effects of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)
by Andrew R. Galllimore

Stages of Modern Science Three by Henry H. Bauer

Become a member today: scientificexploration.org.

20 /EDGESCIENCE #15 AUGUST 2013

BACKSCATTER

A Very Small Stage in a Vast Cosmic Arena

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

nomalies can open up new ways of looking at what we thought we knew with certainty. They offer a change in perspective, some dramatically so. Likewise, a good photograph. On July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on the Cassini spacecraft captured an image of Saturns rings and in the same frame planet Earth, which appears as a pale blue dot at center right. At the time, the Cassini Solstice Mission was 53,000 miles from Saturn and approximately 898 million miles from Earth. This striking perspective led Greg Taylor of the Daily Grail website to recall the words of Carl Sagan who penned the following words regarding the original pale blue dot image taken by Voyager 1 in 1990:

Look again at that dot. Thats here. Thats home. Thats us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived thereon a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, by Carl Sagan, Random House, 1994.