Zetetics, epistemology, ufology
Letter to Professor Henri Broch
Director of the Zetetics Laboratory of the Faculty of
Nice Sophia Antipolis
May 31, 2009
Dear Professor,
As I have not received a response to my email of May 7, 2009, I am reiterating my proposal via my website, hoping that this message will reach you this time, and that you will be able to respond, in one way or another:
Copy of my email of May 7, 2009 (where Professor Georges Charpak was copied):
Jean-Pierre Petit, PhD in physical sciences, to Professor Henri Broch, director of the Center of Zetetics at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.
May 7, 2009
Dear Colleague,
I hope my clumsiness in my first email did not offend you. I see that you have become very quiet. I hope I have not caused anything unpleasant. If that is the case, please tell me, very simply. Let us not let a regrettable misunderstanding take root.
I told you that I was sorry for having confused the Zetetics of Nice Sophia Antipolis, a prestigious birthplace of this discipline, with a so-called Zetetics of a not less pretentious "Zetetics Observatory," and you told me that you had nothing to do with those zetetics.
I did not understand, when you wrote me "while you are, address yourself to the zetetic theater," that this theater actually existed. I thought it was a joke. So be it, and additional apologies.
Let's admit that for someone who has just arrived, while zetetics has not yet acquired, as it will certainly do in the very near future, its letters of nobility, its doctoral council, its university qualifications, a link with the CNRS, the Ministry of Research and Education, its publications, with their indispensable review boards, its doctoral theses, and the creation of university positions for Zetetics professors, it is not obvious to figure it out.
To avoid such mistakes, the solution would be for you to give me once and for all a list of places or groups that offer the correct zetetics, which would allow me to stay away from the others, those who practice bad zetetics. There, I leave it to you, who I believe is the father-founder and reference of this new and exciting discipline.
I do not know if I am the author of this sentence, which I had put in one of my books twenty years ago:
- Science, like any form of thought, is an organized system of belief.
Would I be able to merit the title of zetetic by writing this?
I have thought about many things. Zetetics, which you call the art of doubt, seems to me an excellent approach. Provided, of course, that one can doubt doubt. But that goes without saying.
Although retired from the CNRS, former research director, I would like to join your Zetetics Center as an associate researcher. I saw that you have a whole range of courses, but there is nothing about UFOs.
Therefore, I propose, within the framework of these zetetics actions and courses, to offer the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis a course titled "Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon," whose content could obviously be included on the Zetetics Center's website, of course with your approval.
All of this in a healthy and critical approach.
If you want, I could send you a description of the content of this course, which I could give there, of course for free. I would cover the transportation and accommodation costs in Nice.
I would also be delighted, in the same context, to be introduced to other academic institutions mentioned on your website, such as the Center for Introduction to Higher Education in Grenoble, the CIES, where zetetics courses are also offered, and where I could also intervene, if these people are interested in the content proposed, to expand their range of teachings.
Of course, always on a gratuitous basis.
I am looking forward to your agreement on these two points: the integration into your Research Center and the possibility of having courses I would give integrated into a zetetics curriculum.
I assume, as the approaches are similar, that you must be in contact with the epistemologists of the philosophy department of the Faculty of Letters of Nice. I myself have given courses for a number of years (I was in charge of the "Exact Sciences" unit) in the philosophy department of the Faculty of Letters of Aix-en-Provence, and I have kept a very good memory of these contacts with "people from the humanities," who taught me a lot.
I fully agree with you when you say that the boundary between the humanities and the so-called exact sciences does not exist.
By associating with people like Professor Gilles Gaston Granger, an eminent epistemologist, and his collaborator Philippe Mihn, I believe I can say, after meeting Professor Souriau, a mathematician who also taught at the Faculty of Letters (DEUG MASS: Applied Mathematics to Social Sciences), that I had the opportunity to meet the brightest minds and the broadest range of knowledge I have ever encountered among academics.
I imagine that the symbiosis between your Zetetics Center and the epistemology section of the philosophy department of the Faculty of Nice has existed for a long time, forming a very enriching link.
I return to the subject of UFOs, for which there is currently no serious teaching at a methodological level in the university environment, a gap I would like to fill with your help.
To date, no quality conference on the subject has ever been held, that is, one where the participants' communications were, as a precautionary measure (and in my opinion indispensable, to avoid multiple and varied deviations), published beforehand in high-level scientific journals with a review board.
Indeed, the word "Ufology" has no meaning. There is no Center of Ufology, or Laboratory of Ufology, worthy of the name. There is also no Ufology journal. Ufology, self-referential, as a discipline worthy of the name, simply does not exist.
If not, I would like to hold a congress with the theme "Can the UFO dossier be approached according to a scientific methodology? And if so, how?"
During our telephone conversation, you objected that you did not have time to devote to such a project. Neither time nor means, which I can perfectly understand, given your multiple activities.
This is what I propose to you. One of the places where such a conference could take place is the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, just because the Nice Observatory includes many high-level scientists who could be invited to participate in this event.
But the university would never consider such a project without the endorsement of people like you, or Professor Charpak, with whom, I see, you have published books. I have copied him on this message.
The starting point of this project, which we would manage entirely in terms of logistics (assuming necessary the costs of room rental, equipment, all the organization and secretariat, the costs of publishing the proceedings) would be that Mr. Charpak and you yourself accept to form a patronage committee, further proceeding to the selection of participants, according to the proposed criterion. You would be the sole judges of the acceptance or rejection of the proposed communications.
In the hope of a positive response from each of you, please accept, dear colleague, the expression of my best regards.
I would even say: zetetically yours
Jean-Pierre Petit