Editorial May 7, 1979 Issue

UFOs and other objects

Nathan A. Talbot

Mortals have always had a relatively tidy method of identifying their surroundings. Material objects are observed and defined according to information fed us by the material senses. We neatly label most objects—a rock, a chair, a cloud, a person—and tuck the description snugly away in our mental catalog of material items. We assume we understand most of these apparently substantial objects. However, if we are occasionally uncertain, we expect that an explanation is available, perhaps from a chemist or a physicist or maybe a psychologist.

We're not very often puzzled by an object's identity. But now and then one comes along and disrupts our comfortable little classifications—an object that doesn't fit into our preconceived definition about what an object is supposed to be; how it should act; how we should react to it. Often these troublesome objects (disturbing at least to our ordinary way of understanding things) are flying objects rather than stationary objects. When we can't get a fix on them, explain them with a traditional rationale, they may be dubbed unidentified—unidentified flying objects.

While some of them are eventually proved to be phenomena understandable by our material senses, others go unidentified. They are baffling, mysterious. If we pursue an understanding of them by way of the limited material senses, we will never get rid of all our uncertainties. We will always be chasing something new and ambiguous. For every unknown we clarify, there will be other phenomena that defy explanation—others that are simply incomprehensible to the material senses.

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