November 17th 1882. The Royal Astronomer, Walter Maunder, witnessed an unidentified flying object from the Greenwich Observatory. He described it as a circular object, glowing bright green. Or so say some. The actual report by Walter Maunder was somewhat different. He wrote…
This “torpedo-shaped” beam of light was quite unlike any other celestial object that I have ever seen. The quality of its light, and its occurrence while a great magnetic storm and a bright aurora were in progress, seem to establish its auroral origin. But it differed very widely in appearance from any other aurora that I have ever seen…
The incident was as a result of a geomagnetic storm & Newspapers reported the events. For example Charles Fort, an American, wrote In the London Times, Nov. 20, 1882. "the Editor says that he had received a great number of letters upon this phenomenon. He published two. One correspondent describes it as “well-defined and shaped like a fish … extraordinary and alarming.” The other correspondent writes of it as “a most magnificent luminous mass, shaped somewhat like a torpedo.”
So yes, at that point in scientific terms probably not identified by most. But certainly not flying, or an object.
Ooo, Fort. Now there’s a character! He rejected scientific empiricism, researching and writing about things that could not be explained scientifically (though most of it was). In the end, he was known to say that he didn’t believe any of the wild ideas he proposed, like Martians observing and controlling human behavior on Earth, yet he also asserted that humans’ and specifically scientists’ reasoning as absurd.
Today we scoff at Fort, and we are living in myopically disappointing times. It seems that the only thing that matters societally these days is STEM, and contemplation of that which cannot be proven - souls, love, beauty, culture, beliefs… are all wasted energy. Empiricism states that if it can’t be proven, then it doesn’t deserve research or even attention. The observable matters; the unobservable does not. Fort proposed that we shouldn’t throw out the big questions and strange happenings because science won’t allow it.
I love science, but the assertion that it is the elite and the only correct way of considering “knowing” is myth and a mistake. Scientists operate without empiricism surprisingly frequently; just look at quantum physics where they use belief in the guise of statistics. You show me a quantum physicist and I will show you a philosopher! I’m not talking about little green men, but maybe a spoon of Forteanism with a big bowl of empiricism isn’t such a bad thing
