The war of the words: revamping operational terminology for UFOs.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

H. G. Wells, The Outline of History

We have tried to analyze the most baffling phenomena while disregarding structural peculiarities of languages ...

Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity

Do UFOs exist? Most people who read about UFOs want that question answered. Knowing this, writers on the subject of UFOs often spend an entire book, or series of books, trying to prove whatever answer they provide. So that those demanding an assertive answer from this author won't feel cheated, I shall give one here as precisely and concisely as I can. Fortunately for the attention-deficient reader, this should require only a few paragraphs.

First, to answer the question: Yes, UFOs exist. I say this with such certainty because I have seen them hundreds of times while driving to the store, taking a stroll, and just gazing up at the stars. In fact, I dare say that anyone who denies ever seeing a UFO has:

a. spent a lifetime under a rock, b. lied, or c. doesn't understand the definition of the term UFO.

In the early 1950s, Captain Edward Ruppelt, head of the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book investigation, coined the term UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) and its necessary counterpart IFO (Identified Flying Object). (1) We can consider the primary purpose of ufology - a neologism denoting UFO investigation - as an attempt to accurately reclassify UFOs to IFOs.

Seeing a UFO

When you drive down the road at 50 mph and peripherally see a black blur, you have had a UFO experience by definition. If you take the time to look back and examine the object in question, you have graduated into a ufologist of sorts. In your investigation, you may recognize the black blur as a member of the bird species C. brachyrhynchos. Having thus identified a crow, you have turned a UFO into an IFO. People see UFOs (and UNFOs, unidentified non-flying objects) frequently, and accurately turn them into IFOs (or INFOs) perhaps most of the time.

At this point, I would wager that the majority of readers have picked up on a problem with the term UFO. This stems from the fact that UFO has become synonymous with otherworldly spacecraft. This erroneous generalization of the term has caused much unwarranted controversy and confusion over the subject. (We'll get back to this in a moment.)

Another, perhaps more critical, problem exists in ufology which derives from the widespread use of the term Unidentified Flying Object in the first place. Here I refer to the fact that flying object implies qualities which do not accurately describe the characteristics of many documented sightings. According to definitions provided by the Merriam-Webster and American Heritage dictionaries, "flying object" signifies a material entity which propels itself through the air via some mechanical means. It seems ludicrous to cram all the data on unidentified things in the air into such a limited, elementalistic definition.

UAP - Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

To avoid ascribing inaccurate qualities across the board, I introduce the term UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon) and its counterpart lAP (identified aerial phenomenon). I believe these terms generalize the bulk of reported sightings far better than the terms UFO and IFO. I say this, first, because the word aerial does not necessarily denote self-propulsion, mechanisms, or an operator. More importantly, the word phenomenon in both physics and philosophy signifies an occurrence perceptible by the senses. This usage does not make hasty ontological judgments of physicality from the get-go. For instance, Kantian philosophy defines the word phenomenon as the appearance of something to the mind as opposed to its objective existence, independent of the mind.

To illustrate the usefulness of the term Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) over UFO, I would direct the curious to the case of the enigmatic lights reported in the sky over Greifswald, East Germany in 1990. (2) According to some sources, dozens (if not hundreds) of German and Russian employees at a nuclear power plant witnessed the formation of unexplained luminous orbs which hovered above the restricted site for over an hour. At least one person produced a video tape of the dancing lights, and in a segment of the tape we see one of the orbs merge with another in midair.

When we see "illusory" behavior like this, we feel compelled to ask whether the phenomenon had any physical mass to it at all. For the sake of argument, let us assume that the phenomenon actually occurred and that the Greifswald footage does not represent a computer generated hoax. If so, we might seek an explanation such as a demonstration of high-tech holography. If this theory proved true, then the terms UFO/IFO no longer seem applicable. As most people know, holographic projections do not constitute solid objects or involve mechanics of flight such as the aerodynamic lift generated from the camber of a wing. However, the term UAP or unidentified aerial phenomenon works very well to incorporate such ethereal possibilities.

IAP - Identified Aerial Phenomenon

Similarly, Identified Aerial Phenomenon (IAP) describes holography as accurately as it incorporates such documented phenomena as ball lightning (or kugelblitz), corona discharges, and vaporized barium clouds. (Note that the term IFO for identified flying object falls far short of the mark in these cases.)

Four hundred years before the Greifswald video, in Nuremberg, scores of inhabitants reported seeing formations of illuminated spheres, cylinders, and disks above the town. (3) Using even the most extreme models available to ufologists (including various fringe psychological, theological, and extraterrestrial theories) to explain these events, UAP applies far better than UFO does.

Aside from UAP's more encompassing description, this term avoids the heavy cultural baggage attached to UFO, whose initial association with extraterrestrial origins, however true or untrue it may prove upon final analysis, sets up a narrow and inflexible framework for honest scientific research. Here an investigator can benefit greatly from the use of the term UAP simply because it does not have the cultural connotations of UFO.

Fear of Ridicule

We can see this acculturation (or occulturation) of the term UFO clearly in Polish Archbishop Jozef Miroslaw Zycinskis' recent reply to a reporter's question concerning interest in UFOs. At the Vatican news conference, the Archbishop dismissed ufology as indicative of the intellectual paucity of our era. (4) Many in mainstream science and academia seem to agree with the Archbishop's assertion. Physicist Dr. Bruce Maccabee, for example, notes that for those in the scientific community who investigate airborne anomalies the fear of ridicule is real and he likens the endeavor to professional suicide. (5)

For a long time, scientists sneered at reports by numerous witnesses of luminous phenomenon seen during earthquakes in various countries. Experts ascribed all kinds of explanations to the sightings, from hoax to hallucination. It took a team of scientists at Idu, Japan to accidentally observe the strange lights firsthand before they became an accepted occurrence:

Until then, in spite of the abundance of eyewitness accounts, there was some doubt as to the reality of those long flashes of lightning, balls of fire, spreading beams, pencils of light, and curtains of varying color and intensity.... Ordinary explanations for phenomen[a] of this kind - storm lightning, aurora borealis, electric arcs between high-tension cables, and above all, the witness' own emotion ... could be refuted one after the other at Idu, and the luminous manifestations attributed to the earthquake. (6)

Mysterious Aerial Phenomena

Science seems replete with mysterious aerial phenomena, including the earthlights at Idu, the more recent observation of lightning sprites, and numerous other unknowns of today. With this in mind, we find the Orthodox scientific mental myopia over UFOs a far better example of intellectual paucity than the investigation of as-yet unidentified phenomena.

As I believe I have adequately demonstrated, integrating the concepts embodied in the term UAP can help avoid subtle difficulties in comprehending airborne ontological oddities. I also see the word "phenomenon" as incorporating a more modern scientific approach by denoting the omnipresence of perspectivism, as opposed to the archaic notion of "true objectivity." To paraphrase inner-space explorer Dr. Timothy Leary, a branch of science does not become scientific by emulating the physics of past centuries. "We've got to learn to use the best models in the physics of this century," Leary said (a philosophy any reader of Korzybski will recognize). The terms UAP and IAP do this quite well by incorporating the operational principles of modern quantum and neurolinguistic sciences.

Longtime ufologist Dr. Jacques Vallee recently commented, with great disappointment, that ufology seems to have slipped back into its infancy. (7) Perhaps the introduction of the term UAP and its replacement of the antiquated term UFO will help ensure that this modern field of investigation avoids any unnecessary atavism and academic enmity. (8) As Tennessee Williams once said, "It's an unanswered question, but let us still believe in the dignity and importance of the question."

We can use all the help we can get in a scientific discipline whose subjects remain - to borrow a phrase - up in the air.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Jerome Clark. The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial (New York: Visible Ink Press, 1998).

2. UFOs: The Best Evidence Ever Caught on Video. Jonathan Frakes, host. Broadcast in the United States on the Fox television network July 1997.

3. See Nuremberg Broadsheet (1561) reproduced in Carl Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (Princeton University Press, 2nd printing, 1991).

4. Victor L. Simpson. Pope Defends Church Central Truths. Associated Press. 15 October 1998.

5. See Dr. Maccabee's online reply to New York Post editors' criticism of the recent ufological study conducted by the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE). Paul Flatin of the Kyodo News Service (29 June 1998) noted: "Despite the abundance of UFO reports over the past 50 years, the scientific community had shown little interest in the subject due to a lack of funding to support research and a perception that the field is not respectable, the [SSE] report said."

6. Haroun Tazieff. When the Earth Trembles (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966).

7. See report in the November-December 1995 issue of UFO Magazine, Jacques Vallee Issues Warning to UFO Researchers.

8. My research thus far indicates the use of the term "unidentified aerial phenomenon" as early as 22 March 1949, as described in a memo from the U.S. Strategic Air Command to the director of the FBI. (released under the Freedom of Information Act, 1977). Although I have advocated the initial use of the term "UAP" over "UFO," readers should note that I have not prescribed replacing it altogether. I say this for two reasons: "UFO" has decades of cultural staying-power (as a MUFON State Director once quipped, "we're not going to change our name to MUAPN"), and "UFO" has its place - however dubious - in the specialized field of studying airborne ontological oddities. In his classic Anatomy of a Phenomenon (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1965), Dr. Vallee wrote: "UFO phenomena are to be found among reports of objects, lights, beings, or physical effects that are regarded by the witnesses as anomalies because of their appearance or behavior." (See Vallee's Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990, p.208-19) for more on definitions and classification systems in ufology.) Some "UFO" reports do not even involve aerial phenomenon at all, as Vallee, Clark, Randles, and other veteran ufologists have extensively documented. To encompass these "paranormal" or "Fortean" reports as well as mysterious UAPs, I make the change from the conventional "UFO" (all caps, denoting an abbreviation) to "ufo" (pronounced "you foe").

Mark A. Raimer is the Editor-in-Chief of Rhesus Monkey Magazine and a ufologist involved in the study of the Hudson Valley's "black triangle sightings."