Science is merely the refinement of everyday thinking." Albert Einstein 
"Academic and Intelligent are very far from matching compliments. " Frank McLynn To reason, one must wonder.
Skepticism is perhaps one of the best and most rudimentary spirits in mankind. Without it we cannot search; without it we cannot reason; without it we cannot wonder; we cannot inquire; we cannot contemplate. Without it we are not intelligent. We are a stray and hungry dog, and we will eat anything fed us.
Skepticism is a two edged sword, both sides sharp, as pure as blue steel and just as clean. One side does not allow us to believe everything off hand; the other does not let us necessarily dismiss anything off hand.
Skepticism is, in a way, the mediating influence upon curiosity which guides it toward wisdom.
Curiosity has made us to inquire; and inquiring we have amassed an enormous catalogue of causes and effects; of species of plants and life. This is knowledge.
This is the bedrock of scientific reference. In Latin Scientia merely means To Know. Ideally, before a scientist can contribute to the world of knowledge, he must first learn all that has been compiled before him; what others have observed and cross referenced, many times back thousands of years. "I stand on the shoulder of giants," said Newton.
This is the world of a priori, which means the system of cross-referencing by accumulated knowledge. When you approach a zoologist with a report of a creature that has feathers, a bill, waddles on webbed feet and goes "quack, quack" there is an a priori reason for that zoologist to say "It's a duck." He doesn't have to go and observe it himself and waste time because there is an appropriate cross reference for such a phenomenon. It's a duck!
When you approach a zoologist and say "I saw something with scales, that was pink, has 5 legs and a bill like a bird but a tail like a fish." You are not going to get a good reply because there is an a priori reason for him to say there is not such creature. There is no catalogue for such an animal as you described. "Now, go see your doctor or get off the gin."
When a zoologist gets more reports of this type of creature from several people a world away, he begins to ponder if something new is not being discovered. Though he is skeptical, he begins to probe into it.
Skepticism, you see, is involved in everything that has to do with discovery, with inquiry and with intelligence.
Now, I doubt there will ever be any such creature as used in the above analogy. But there are still many things happening in this world for which we do not have as yet any appropriate cross reference. The complete disappearance of ships and planes in the so called Bermuda Triangle may be one, as well as stories about strange atmospheric phenomena and electromagnetic anomalies as reported by some pilots and ship captains that survived.
There is no a priori reason to dismiss the latter, since they are not speaking of things so completely unknown. The shape, mass, rotation, inclination and revolution of the earth play vital roles in some places of the globe as opposed to others. Because of this we know why hurricanes and typhoons strike along the same latitudes, why great winds frequent certain areas as opposed to others, and geology has taught us why earthquakes appear in some areas and do not in others.
The invisible forces of our earth may be subject and influenced in the same ways. The magnetic field is known to be effected by any number of events. It seems equally possible there are regions of the earth, again for a variety of reasons, which are more prone to these, as some regions are prone to visible catastrophes like typhoons and tornadoes.
One must approach the subject of CRYPTOZOOLOGY and these possibilities with the curiosity of skepticism. This is not an oxymoron. Skepticism set in motion is an integral part of curiosity!
But I'm afraid the world and the world wide web are not always like this. There are those whose minds are so open their brains have fallen out; then there are those whose minds are so closed, their brains have suffocated. They are no better than a bowling ball in mud.
As a heretic amongst heretics, I have taken criticism from both sides: those who want me to believe and endorse the most fantastic claims at face value and those gentlemen of the-bowling-ball-in-mud-club who go no where and think all has been discovered.
There are groups who have gone to Sedona Arizona in a chartered bus and held rituals over the alleged vortexes believing there is some stronger cosmic force here. They roll out stone and quartz phalli like dice and read the results. . . .Hmmm. I wont go on.
Possibly, the debunker is just as bad. What is truly sad is that they promote themselves to be the "skeptic" and promote themselves as the voices of science. They don't even know what the word means. I consider most of them little better than hucksters who saw a good way to get attention and make money by being "devil's advocate" to a popular subject. They stifle inquiry and make fun of those who inquire.
What is amazing is that debunkers are the primary source for most of the sensational claims made on behalf of the Sasquatch. They do this by taking out of context what other authors wrote, by making it look like there was a dogmatic assertion that some supernatural event occurred, and then they solve it by picking apart what they essentially created. An example comes from one noted debunker: "I had originally gotten hold of accounts by previous writers, threw them all together, and put a few transition sentences between them . . ." The quilt that emerged was truly not reflective of any one particular author's thesis on the subject. Their books had mediating influences that debunkers distill from their accounts.
There were many mistakes made by the "sensationalists;" that's true. I have not, however, found a higher degree of accuracy amongst the debunkers in their neat solutions to everything. But they always say their mistakes are never "intentional." This may be true. What is indigestible is that they often claim the "sensationalists" made intentional mistakes for commercialism to subvert the truth.
There are no more mistakes in John Keel's books, The Mothman Prophesies than there are in Loren Coleman's book Mothman. Coleman had inaccurate information upon which he based aspects of the theories. So did John Keel for his solutions.
I condemn neither. Coleman dealt very little with the incidents. His was more of a theories book. Keel dealt little with theory. His was more devoted to incidents. I believe, however, that Keel's mistakes were far more innocent that Coleman's.
When Loren Coleman thought it time to publish his book, he deferred to a large number of old newspaper accounts which he took uncritically as accurate information.
The surfer of this web site will hopefully get a better feel for what skepticism is. I try to list as much factual information as possible regardless of how unpopular it might be to some. Hopefully, the surfer will at least learn the difference between a skeptic, an eager believer, and a debunker.
I hope all become skeptics, skeptics of many things. Without it, your curiosity becomes self-deception. Probe and study with skepticism but also with intelligence.
"Scientific Method" is often painted as some dull routine that haunts a laboratory. In fact, 9 of the skills of the Method are used by all people everyday. These, the 10 Process Skills of Scientific Inquiry which comprise Scientific Method, are:
Observe; Classify; Infer; Interpret; Measure; Predict; Questions; Hypotheses, Experiment; Model Building.
Today, the academic and scientific world is made up of true skeptics, befitting their scientific training and discipline. They discuss such things as inter dimensional physics, supersting, wormhole, hyperspace, light and heat's travel on magnetism and any number of other theories in physics. As John Napier of the Smithsonian once observed: "Scientists are naturally gossipy people. They will tell all they know and alot they don't know at the drop of a chairman's gavel."
The opposite end of such an attitude might be found in debunkers who ridicule such curiosity and optimism, public inquiry and debate. "Most people I've talked to thought they were doing creative thinking ("stretching their minds" is the current cliché), but all I ever heard was a regurgitation of one liners from Berlitz, von Daniken, and the rest of the gang," .
Nevertheless, science has had far more esoteric debates and discussions that have yielded more than mind stretching, as can be seen in the work of John Hutchison and his Hutchison Effect, the search for new forms of energy; and Dr. Hans Grabber in his pioneering work in deciphering anomalies of the sea and rogue waves; and several astrophysicists regarding the relationship of Time to Gravity, the Event Horizon and black holes. Such things would no doubt have been condemned 25 years ago as paranormal pursuits or as heresy, as Relative Physics was by Classic Physics.
The paranormal is a vast world outside our daily endeavor. Many cannot imagine it is a different world. It continues to hold its mysteries into the 21st century, and will no doubt hold many into the 22nd. Though the greatest part of this planet, it is but a small token of its elements and of the potential interplay of power beyond our ability to consider. Those who have traveled it more than the rest of us have come out with strange tales of unexplained "forces," if you will.
I am going to be updating my website sections in the near future. The surfer will be able to decide for themselves on the stories. Doubtless, I will have to take criticism for merely placing them on the web. But the two first process skills are Observe and Classify. The rest can't even be done without this.
