Pocketful of Miracles — Part One

Philosopher David Hume made a famous argument against miracles, which is still cited today. In essence, he held that a miracle would constitute a violation of the laws of nature, an event so unlikely that no amount of human testimony could possibly establish it. Human testimony, after all, is known to be fallible, while the laws of nature are known to be inviolable.

Alfred Russel Wallace, who developed the theory of evolution by natural selection simultaneously with Darwin, found this argument fallacious. Wallace was convinced that some of the occult phenomena he’d witnessed in spiritualist séances were legitimate. He was accordingly ill-disposed to accept Hume’s pronouncement that all such phenomena were a priori impossible.

He posed several objections, but the principal one was that Hume’s formulation assumes that we know all about the laws of nature – what they are, how they operate, etc. Only on this basis can we say for certain that a given observation violates these laws. But, Wallace countered, we do not enjoy any such certainty. In fact, apparent violations of the laws of nature are observed with some regularity, and in-depth examination of these unexpected observations has led to fresh discoveries and even to revisions of the “laws of nature.”

For my part, I can’t help thinking that Hume’s argument is largely rhetorical, depending on the emotional connotations of the word miracle, which he uses in conjunction with supernatural. Most educated people of Hume’s era probably agreed that the day of miracles was past and that the future belonged to those who embraced a mechanistic or naturalistic worldview. As a result, they were inclined to accept any argument dismissing miracles. This rhetorical ploy, so appealing on an emotional level, may explain the persistence of what is, frankly, a rather poor argument.

To make this clear, suppose we substitute a less emotionally loaded term. Instead of miracles, let’s talk about anomalies. As soon as we do this, we see the weakness of Hume’s position. What he is saying amounts to: Any observed anomaly constitutes a violation of the laws of nature, and therefore can be dismissed as the product of faulty testimony.

Clearly this is untrue.  For instance, anomalies observed in the famous double-slit experiments and in blackbody radiation opened the door to quantum mechanics.

Of course, just because some anomalies have stood the test of time and expanded our understanding of the universe, it does not follow that we can accept all reports of anomalous phenomena. But neither should we reject them all out of hand. The sensible thing is to sift the wheat from the chaff.

Image AI-generated by GenCraft

Take UFOs. I’m no expert on the subject. But from what I’ve seen, it appears likely that some percentage of UFO sightings are legitimate. It may be a very small percentage, but it is not zero. I don’t know whether actual physical objects are being observed, or thought-forms, or glitches in a cosmic matrix, or interdimensional intrusions, or whatever. But something appears to be going on, even if many or most of the reports can be explained prosaically.

We can say the same thing about other types of currently inexplicable phenomena, the kind of things collected under the heading of Forteana. This catchall category includes all manner of strange reports. Most are probably fabricated or the result of mistaken observation. But some are probably legitimate. The more plausible ones can be characterized as those that are multiply reported by credible witnesses, or those that recur in strikingly similar ways at widely separated times and places, or those backed up by physical evidence.

The thing about these reports is that some of the better attested ones also seem to be among the weirdest and hardest to take seriously. Jacques Vallée, the noted UFO researcher, has written extensively on this conundrum. He reports many UFO and ET sightings that seemingly have more in common with folklore or steampunk than with the products of advanced technological civilization. If any of these sightings are legitimate, they raise unsettling questions about the nature of reality.

One section of Jacques Vallée’s book Passport to Magonia (pp. 139 ff) focuses on a remarkable series of reports of a mysterious “airship” seen in US skies in the spring of 1897 — reports that, as Vallée puts it, provide “a crucial missing link between the apparitions of older days and modern saucer stories.” He writes:

A staggering number of observations of an identical object were made in the Midwest … a craft with turbine wheels and a glass section with strange beings aboard looking down … Its leisurely trajectory often took it over large urban areas. Omaha, Milwaukee, Chicago, and other cities were thus visited; each time, large crowds gathered to watch the object. Otherwise, the airship exhibited all the typical activities of UFOs: hovering, dropping "probes"—on Newton, Iowa, on April 10, for example—changing course abruptly, changing altitude at great speed, circling, landing and taking off, sweeping the countryside with powerful light beams….

Constable Sumpter and Deputy Sheriff McLemore, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, [came across the grounded airship and reported:] “A man with a long dark beard came forth with a lantern in his hand, and on being informed who we were proceeded to tell us that he and the others—a young man and a woman—were travelling through the country in an airship. We could plainly distinguish the outlines of the vessel, which was cigar-shaped and about sixty feet long.”

[A Chicago newspaper reported:] “The airship was seen here at 8:30 tonight, and was viewed by the whole population. It came from the south-east, and was not over 200 feet above the tree-tops and moved very slowly, not to exceed ten miles an hour. The machine could be plainly seen, and is described as being sixty feet in length, and the vibration of the wings could be plainly seen. It carried the usual coloured lights, and the working of the machinery could be heard, as also could the strains of music, as from an orchestra. It was hailed, but passed on to the north, seeming to increase its speed, and disappeared.”

From Merkel, Texas, came this news item:] “Some parties returning from church last night noticed a heavy object dragging along with a rope attached. They followed it until, in crossing the railroad, it caught on a rail. On looking up they saw what they supposed was the airship. It was not near enough to get an idea of the dimensions. A light could be seen protruding from several windows; one bright light in front like the headlight of a locomotive.

“After some ten minutes, a man was seen descending the rope. He came near enough to be plainly seen; he wore a light blue sailor suit and was small in size, he stopped when he discovered parties at the anchor, and cut the rope below him and sailed off in a northeast direction.”

Prepostereous and poorly sourced as this last tale is, it holds a certain interest. Vallée notes its resemblance to a medieval story dating from 1100 or earlier. He quotes an old Irish story:

There happened in the borough of Cloera, one Sunday, while the people were at Mass, a marvel. In this town is a church dedicated to St. Kinarus. It befell that an anchor was dropped from the sky, with a rope attached to it, and one of the flukes caught in the arch above the church door. The people rushed out of the church and saw in the sky a ship with men on board, floating before the anchor cable, and they saw a man leap overboard and jump down to the anchor, as if to release it. He looked as if he were swimming in water. The folk rushed up and tried to seize him: but the Bishop forbade the people to hold the man, for it might kill him, he said. The man was freed, and hurried up to the ship, where the crew cut the rope and the ship sailed out of sight.

AI-generated image by GenCraft

Vallée further notes that “in Gervase of Tilbury's Otia Imperialia, the same account is related as having taken place in Gravesend, Kent, England. An anchor from a ‘cloudship’ became fastened in a mound of stones in the churchyard. The people heard voices from above, and the rope was moved as if to free the anchor, to no avail. A man was then seen to slide down the rope and cut it.”

Vallée concludes this part of his book by quoting Jerome Clark in the Flying Saucer Review as saying that “the 1897 wave indicates the futility of any attempt to divorce flying objects from the general situation in which they operate.” The reason, of course, is that the medieval accounts seem roughly consistent with medieval expectations of “cloudships,” while the 1897 accounts seem consistent with the technology of that era. Vallée adds: “This makes the study of such objects infinitely broader than the simple investigation, in scientific terms, of a new phenomenon; for if the appearance and behavior of the objects are functions of our interpretation at any particular time in the development of our culture, then what chances can we have of ever knowing the truth?”

Indeed, if some percentage of Forteana are valid, what chance do we have of making sense of it all? In Part Two, we’ll try to come up with an answer.