Jacques Vallee: Pursuing Unidentified Aerial Phenomena And ‘Impossible Futures’ – The Debrief
In the active autumn of a long, significant, and even controversial UFO career, Jacques Vallee reflects upon his life as well as the future of ufology. At Micah Hanks’ instance, Vallee hearkens back to what’s changed since his 2013 TEDx talk. The conversation is supplemented by a Chrissy Newton podcast interview of Vallee. (Eight of Vallee’s major works are available from Anomalist Books.) Mike Cifone takes on one of the modes of thought perceived in Vallee’s development in Interlude No. 2: On the ‘Gnostic’ Tendency in Vallee (and in UAP Theory More Generally). This is Vallee’s particular path to anomalies—away from the extremes of hardened skepticism and almost religiously reflexive belief. Cifone finds Vallee’s thinking is wrong and “does disservice both to reason and to true mysticism.” Cifone argues for his own construction “of a strong and creative ‘rationalism’ that is flexible, open and rigorous.” Cifone fleshes this out in Against Vallee’s “Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects” & An Initial Attempt at Rational Ufological Speculation. Having shown that each of Vallee’s “Five Points” against the ETH is based upon weakly supported theorizing, Cifone then sketches his own “wildly speculative” but “philosophically constrained” proposed route. (WM)
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