Zeke Newbold
Carbon based biped.
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2015
- Messages
- 1,249
I read Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery (his updated version) much in the spirit of Carl Grove's initial post above. That is to say that I approached it with the assumption (which is widespread) that here we have the Acceptable Face of the Ancient Astronauts advocacy.
I have never been so disappointed! I found his writing to be abstruse to the point of deliberate obscurantism. (I haver read a fair few complex texts in my time and think I am able to distinguish between the complexity of a text which has to be so owing to the ideas it is proposing and that of a text which parades its complexity the better to impress. With Temple I was too often getting a hint of the latter).
The guy has some kind of numerological monomania and manages to find the number 51 (or is it 52?) in just about everything - using uncalled for mathematical computations. (This number being the length of time it takes Sirius B to rotate around Sirius A, or something).
In remarks added in the new edition he: gives credence to the `Face on Mars`, claims he is being harassed by KGB agents, hints at interest in a Sirius worshiping new age cult which pre-existed his interest in the Dogons, gives a detailed science-fictional account of the life and times of the amphibian race which he believes visited earth, and tells us that he co-operated with the infamous BBC Horizon programme about Daniken, knowing full well that it was to be a detonation job on Daniken - and in the hope that it would promote Temple's ideas instead.
Temple is clearly one bright guy (kudos to anyone who is not only fluent in Chinese but able to translate Western texts into that language). But being intelligent is no barrier to being kooky. Indeed, history is littered with highly intelligent people who have become trapped in their own delusions (it is as if their very cleverness prevents then from being able to be aware of the more obvious flaws in their thinking).
Temple's work has the veneer of credibility about it because it is conveyed in an academic manner - in contrast to the commercial plainspeaking of Daniken and many of the others. However, if you do not allow yourself to be dazzled by this you can see that there is an awful lot of whimsy behind it - as well as just a little conceit and self-grandeur.
The real irony is that Temple's latest claims involve the idea that ancient societies had much more advanced telesopic technologies than we now give them credit for. So has he forgotten his once oft-repeated insistence that the Dogons could never have been able to see Sirius B?
I have never been so disappointed! I found his writing to be abstruse to the point of deliberate obscurantism. (I haver read a fair few complex texts in my time and think I am able to distinguish between the complexity of a text which has to be so owing to the ideas it is proposing and that of a text which parades its complexity the better to impress. With Temple I was too often getting a hint of the latter).
The guy has some kind of numerological monomania and manages to find the number 51 (or is it 52?) in just about everything - using uncalled for mathematical computations. (This number being the length of time it takes Sirius B to rotate around Sirius A, or something).
In remarks added in the new edition he: gives credence to the `Face on Mars`, claims he is being harassed by KGB agents, hints at interest in a Sirius worshiping new age cult which pre-existed his interest in the Dogons, gives a detailed science-fictional account of the life and times of the amphibian race which he believes visited earth, and tells us that he co-operated with the infamous BBC Horizon programme about Daniken, knowing full well that it was to be a detonation job on Daniken - and in the hope that it would promote Temple's ideas instead.
Temple is clearly one bright guy (kudos to anyone who is not only fluent in Chinese but able to translate Western texts into that language). But being intelligent is no barrier to being kooky. Indeed, history is littered with highly intelligent people who have become trapped in their own delusions (it is as if their very cleverness prevents then from being able to be aware of the more obvious flaws in their thinking).
Temple's work has the veneer of credibility about it because it is conveyed in an academic manner - in contrast to the commercial plainspeaking of Daniken and many of the others. However, if you do not allow yourself to be dazzled by this you can see that there is an awful lot of whimsy behind it - as well as just a little conceit and self-grandeur.
The real irony is that Temple's latest claims involve the idea that ancient societies had much more advanced telesopic technologies than we now give them credit for. So has he forgotten his once oft-repeated insistence that the Dogons could never have been able to see Sirius B?
