Introduction

Dans son résumé du travail du projet Colorado, qui apparaît comme Section 2 de ce rapport, le Dr. Condon définit (à p. 13 supra) un ovni comme suit :

Un objet volant non identifié (UFO, prononcé OOFO) est ici défini comme le stimulus pour un signalement fait par un ou plusieurs individus de quelque chose vu dans le ciel (ou un objet pensé être capable de vol mais alors qu'il était posé sur terre) que l'observateur n'a pu identifier comme ayant une origine naturelle ordinaire ... (c'est SR qui souligne)

La définition du Dr. Condon reflète précisément le caractère inconcluant persistent et tentant de tous les signalements d'ovnis, modernes et ancients. Dans ce chapitre cette définition sera appliquée au passé d'où un échantilon de "signalements d'ovnis" récupérés de divers livres et écrits arrive facilement -- si facilement, en fait, qu'un rapport de l'ensemble des observations d'objets mystérieux qu'un observateur "n'a pu identifier" remplirait tout l'espace dédié au rapport du projet dans son ensemble.

Le trésor des anciens "ovnis" est dû à un fait de base de la perception de l'homme de son univers contemporain. Un regard concentré en arrière dans le temps révèle rapidement que tout au long de notre histoire connue (et à priori avant cela), l'humanité a toujours vu des ovnis et rapporté des "observations" restées inexpliquées même après un examen par des personnes considérées compétentes. Notre plus lointain ancêtre a contemplé honnêtement l'espace terrestre et extraterrestre pour observer une variété infinie de phénomènes et — n'en a virtuellement compris aucun. En fait, son univers entier, celui qui lui est "externe" comme celui qui lui est "interne", était largement hors de sa compréhension. Il n'avait que la connaissance pragmatique la plus rudimentaire et était totalement incapable d'expliquer factuellement ou conceptuellement rien de ce qu'il voyait clairement. En bref, pour lui tout était ovni.

Cela ne l'a en aucun empêché d'interprêter ce qu'il a vu ou d'utiliser ses interpretations d'une manière semblant to have been convenient to the needs of his contemporary society. A reminder of the social consequences of the ancient attitudes toward "things seen in the sky" may therefore be helpful in dealing with present-day reactions to UFO reports.

We know some of early man's UFO sightings as sun, moon, lunar halo, stars, constellations, galaxies, meteors, comets, auroras, rainbows, wind, rain, storm, tornado, hurricane, drought; others as sunrise, sunset, mirage, phosphorescence, lightning, etc., etc. In modern times, inductive scientists have given us rational explanations for a great many natural phenomena, or they have asked us to suspend judgments of the still vast unknowable, pending further investigation. But our inveterate impatience persists.

Perhaps the most persistent and dramatic early UFO sightings of the species that has with characteristic self-importance designated itself as Homo sapiens (intelligent man) were the "heavenly" lights he saw whenever he looked upward or outward into space. Without knowing what they were — and what wild guesses were made! -- man was still able to use the moving points of light for his navigating, hunting or migrating orientations. But our ancestors could not endure living without immediate explanations for all of the natural phenomena that surrounded them. So, in the absence of scientific explanations for what they saw, they conjured up other interpretations equally satisfying to them: the poetic, the dramatic, the supernatural, the mythological, and even the nonsensical, or comic. Any explanation was better than none at all, because man, a part of nature, abhors a (mental) vacuum. Indeed the need to establish orientation by means of hastily improvised hypotheses or fantasies appears to be a fundamental, almost instinctual biological adjunct.

Bits of the vast accumulations of intuitive rationalizations concocted by early man while he waited impatiently for more accurate answers, still continue to satisfy our craving for poetry, drama and other imaginative story-telling. Francis Thompson wrote: "Man was able to live without soap for thousands of years, but he could never live without poetry." So for multimillenia we have had poetry and allegory and all sorts of remarkably ingenious supernatural fantasies standing in for crucially needed, verifiable factual truth. Sometimes the interim quasi-sciences have served us pragmatically and have led to positivistic science and to some degree of environmental control. But, on balance, it becomes painfully evident from reading history that hasty, premature, wrong explanations — however pretty or ingenious — have led only to more wrong explanations, to a crippling of correct analytical functioning, to the substitution of dogma for fresh research, to the stifling of debate, to punishment for dissent — and to frequent disasters.

There were always some isolated scientific experimenters who worked in many fields (usually in secret), but they did not make much headway against the politically entrenched supernatural theoreticians and their MIFOs — mistakenly identified flying objects. It was not until the end of the sixteenth century that emerging nationalistic power-politics and the new mercantile and manufacturing demands of Western Europe made scientific methods highly desirable and profitable.

Before that, for hundreds of thousands of years, most human procedures were based on magical interpretations of environmental phenomena. From remote times, magicians and astrologers were consulted before any political or military decisions were made; and justice was administered according to magical formulae. Until a moment or two ago in man's long history all natural phenomena were devoutly believed to be gods, angels, spirits, devils, fairies, witches, vampires, succubi and incubi; or omens of fortune, good and evil. What remains today as semantic residues, or charming fairy tales or myths, were once life-and-death formulations acted upon with the utmost seriousness. In many of the so-called "primitive" societies still extant, the magical interpretation of the world still prevails. Even today, most American newspapers print magical astrological predictions. In 1962, all governmental business in India was suspended on the day when, for the first time in several hundred years seven of the major planets were lined up in conjunction. All of India heaved a collective sigh of relief when that fruitcake day ended.