Circular Evidence

'Tis the season for crop circles, which is something I ought to know about, as I quite often pass through Wiltshire on my way to visit my Dad in Bath. When the thought of the motorway appals, we take the longer scenic route along the A4, through the rolling cornfields, past Silbury Hill and the Cherhill white horse. This is prime circles country, the scene of some of the earliest specimens to come to public notice in the early 1980s, and a main focus of activity ever since. The Waggon and Horses pub, which we also pass, was apparently a Mecca for week-end croppies.

I was vaguely aware of the circles when they first came to notice, but they have rather dropped off my radar. They still appear, obviously, but the controversy seems to have died down. As far as the world is concerned, they just happen. And they seem to be getting increasingly intricate, as this one which appeared in Wroughton in Wiltshire recently shows. It took an astrophysicist, Mike Reed, to explain that it shows the first ten digits of Pi -  the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter.

In fact I know almost nothing about crop circles. I remember stopping off one time with the family, and paying £1 each to enter a circle. The kids played tag while the two of us wandered round marvelling at the other-worldly geometry and having vaguely cosmic thoughts. The designs were eye-catching and appealed to our aesthetic sense. But neither of us had a fixed opinion about what caused them, whether whirling vortexes or UFOs or hoaxers, and when Doug and Dave made their famous revelations back in 1991 I don't remember feeling any sense either of letdown or illumination - I just couldn't work up much interest.

I find this relevant now that I have started to think about different responses to psi claims. Not knowing anything about it, and not caring much, I could put myself in a position of someone who knows nothing about psi. What does it feel like?

I'd read Jim Schnabel's book on remote viewing so I thought I'd give his earlier book Round in Circles a go. I enjoy his narrative style - it's entertaining, but also clear and informative. He dispassionately describes the rivalry between the 'weather' and the 'UFO' factions, the media frenzy and the toe-curling new-agery that followed in its wake. Only right at the end does he come out in favour of hoaxing as the explanation, and then rather diffidently, with an uncritical description of Doug and Dave's story and a description of his own apparently successful efforts at fabricating circles. 

I've never been much taken with ufology, except as a sociological phenomenon, and was happy to suppose that the circles are caused by a combination of the weather and human craftsmanship - with whirlwinds causing very basic circles, and hoaxers creating the more complex patterns. At the same time, I didn't really buy the idea of two guys, both in their late fifties and sixties during this period - serious beer drinkers and probably smokers too, to infer from Schnabel's account - doing so much of physical and nocturnal work. Hoaxers they undoubtedly were - reports say a newspaper paid them £10,000 - but I doubt they ever left the pub. And when Schabel says his favourite implement was a garden roller, I wondered, did he really lug the thing down farm-tracks and through cornfields, and if so, how did he manage not to leave any tracks? 

But I don't feel any dissonance about any of this. The explanations nicely balance each other out. My worldview doesn't rest on crop circles - I don't regard them as messages from another dimension, even if, considering my acceptance of psi, I have a feeling that perhaps they might be. I can leave the tiniest crack open for the idea that spirits or extra-terrestials are beaming down these fabulously complex vortexes to delight us, and encourage us believe, but at any time I can quickly scuttle to the safety of more mundane theories. For me, the significance lies not the origin but the thing itself. The design and the beauty and the surprisingness of the phenomenon are enough.

Isn't this pretty much how most people think about psychic claims? There is a sort of equilibrium between potential explanations. There's no real way of deciding where the truth lies, and no real need to. We learn to live with something which, when we really think about it, cries out for resolution. But our response is more aesthetic than philosophic, just as the idea of ghosties give most people a thrill of excitement instead of making them ask questions.

So I can go on admiring the craftsmanship of the circles, and perhaps also, in a moment of reflection, the heroic restraint of their makers in so rarely coming forward to identify themselves.

Comments

[Mark]

With all due respect, you would think that you of all people would realize that this type of uncaring attitude about the important aspects of a phenomenon while focusing on the unimportant "thrill" of it all gives the skeptics an advantage.

[Robert McLuhan]

Yes, I'm not saying I approve of my attitude, but simply acknowledging it, and its relevance to understanding how sceptics think.

Sceptics will always opportunistically use other people's remarks out of context, or to support their own views. Ideally we shouldn't provide openings for them. At the same time, we shouldn't let that cramp our thinking and discussions.

[Mark]

Yeah, I guess you're right. Sorry about that. Maybe I read too many implications into what you were saying. I do think it sounds kinda funny, though, to hear you say that you do not approve of your own attitude. Oh well, sometimes I get amused easily (and other times I don't laugh when everyone else does).

[Robert McLuhan]

Yes, I have to admit, I don't always identify with the stuff that goes on in my head. Don't always know how it gets there! But at least I've learned to be objective about it, or at least to try. Gut reactions may work for some people, but not for me - I have to think things through. With some things, like circles for instance, I can get so far and no further.

I get the impression that some of the more thoughtful sceptics are fleetingly aware of a congenital resistance, which they can sometimes observe dispassionately, but not really do anything about - which is why I got onto this subject.