DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-039

University of Tartu, Estonia

JGrantGriffin@gmail.com

Abstract

What is a crop circle a sign of? Responding to this question from a semiotic standpoint requires no specific conclusions from us regarding crop circles' origins. What is interesting for us here are the multiple but mutually exclusive possibilities for understanding what a crop circle is a sign of. We find logical boundaries according to which different semiotic options arise, such as 'entirely human origin' or 'not entirely human origin'. Under such logical bifurcation, we find further bifurcations which also serve as mutually exclusive options. This logical geometry tells us, perhaps, nothing about the actuality of events, but it does tell us something important about possibility, which in this sense should be seen as semiotic possibility. That is, for this dimension of possibility, we see the irrelevance of judgments from present-day physics, modern cosmology, and the like. A semiotic way of looking uncovers this logical dimension for sign possibility that we negotiate as we navigate what we encounter of the universe and as we seek to understand it. In Peircean terms, within experience we seek to work out some interpretant which will fix the crop circle as representamen to some object. Since multiple ways to do this exist, we find semiotic choice in some sense. Depending on what choice we make, subsequent semiotic possibilities for our world of experience will arise – certain new ones opening up and certain others being precluded. That is, a kind of semiotic filter (what Kenneth Burke called a terministic screen) will then “color” our experience and establish what we might think of as a trajectory for it. While many of us already have such filters in place which preclude for us the semiotic possibilities available in crop circles (or any other percepts), we can still see broader sign pluralities in their logical dimension and how each of them has a particular geometry for shaping future experience. These semiotic choices we make form a greater terministic screen or interpretant according to which we order our worlds and direct our lives. We are speaking here of a form of analysis that we can use to look closely at the semiotic choices we make, the filters that arise from them, and the kind of lives that emerge as we sustain such trajectories.

Opening Remarks

What is a crop circle a sign of? This subject may set some teeth on edge by its very nature, but asking this question with a semiotic intent does not require us to speculate on the actual origins of such objects, or to be concerned about questions of alien life. While those may be worthwhile, our focus will be the sign possibilities for crop circles and how we go about making such a semiotic choice. So even though this subject is likely to be approached with either a passionate embrace or an automatically skeptical attitude, let us keep firmly in mind that we are not concerned one way or another with discovering crop circle origins. Regardless of our conclusions about that subject, the issue of semiotic possibility and how we navigate this may be relevant for us.

What is the current crop circle situation?

We should state early on what is meant by crop circle today for anyone who is unclear. In brief, the bulk of these formations began to appear in the second half of the 20th century, increasing in frequency during the progression from the 70s to the 90s, though precursor formations did appear earlier. While the term circle is still used following earlier patterns, these structures today often move beyond purely circular shapes. In fact, the complexity and the information content of these formations have increased significantly, apparent in the large 2001 Milk Hill formation comprised of 409 circles. Many people seem unaware of this complexity and have a much more basic idea of crop circles, which can lead to overly simple hoax explanations.

The epitome of such explanations came in 1991 when Doug Bower and Dave Chorley surfaced and publicly claimed that they were the ones behind more than a decade of crop circles. The method they hatched was to use wood planks, a rope, and a hat fitted with a wire to keep a straight line while pushing crops over. To demonstrate their method, they pressed out a rudimentary formation. This method can indeed account for some formations. Nevertheless, Bower and Chorley's claims (if true) are insufficient to cover either the sheer volume of such structures or the complexity and forensic evidence found in many.

One scholar with some interest in this topic is Richard Taylor, physics professor at the University of Oregon and director of their Materials Science Institute. In an article written for Physics World in 2011 (“Coming soon to a field near you”), Taylor mentions a “Triple Julia” fractal pattern formation that appeared overnight in 1996, and he says that even in the more than 15 years since, “scientists still do not know the answer” to how it was made (Taylor 2011: 26). After all, he says, contemporary “crop-circle designs are more complex than ever featuring up to 2000 individual shapes arranged using intricate construction lines that are invisible to the casual observer” (Taylor 2011: 29). He speculates that part of what makes this possible is access to computers, GPS, and lasers. In addition, some methods of bending stalks also appear to be inconsistent with simple force. Forensic evidence points to radiation exposure. The pulvini (or visco-elastic joints) on plant stalks “were elongated compared with undamaged crops in the same field” (Taylor 2011: 29), apparently the “result of superheating from electromagnetic radiation” (Taylor 2011: 30). Taylor's own position is that this phenomenon is a fascinating art movement that now uses microwaves. He once guessed in an article for Nature that masers or magnetrons may be involved. Given his concern that long-term damage is being done to crops and our food supply, his indication that scientists do not know what technology is behind these formations reveals a real indeterminacy in this phenomenon, which opens up the field of semiotic possibility.

Contributing even further to the indeterminacy in this case is the fact that whoever is behind these creations does not step forward. For whatever reason, those responsible do not claim these often masterful works, even though people tend to want credit for such. Accordingly, Taylor's confident conclusion that human artists are responsible is not at all a given from the field of possibilities itself. The nature of the agents and their motives is not certain in the absence of more direct observation. Taylor's conclusion is in some sense a choice, a guess from a range of possibilities. Certain conclusions may be ruled out for him in principle from the outset. After all, the indeterminacy automatically leaves open multiple possibilities at a logical level, and thus semiotic possibility is compounded.

Semiotic Possibility

Intersecting with this dimension of indeterminacy, though, is a plane of logical incompatibility or mutual-exclusivity that brings stability to semiotic possibility. When we ask the question, “What is this crop circle a sign of?”, we have a certain intelligible range of mutually-exclusive options. This is especially clear in relation to the crop circle's origin. Perhaps the first major plane of possibilities is Life or Non-Life, whose single case would probably be some natural force or process. On the other hand, the incompatible possibilities under Life are much broader. The first logical distinction, it seems, is between so-called Intelligent or Non-Intelligent life, with “intelligent” as shorthand for anthroposemiosic capacity. And so forth in further distinctions.

These origin possibilities have logical dividing lines between them and are thus incompatible or mutually-exclusive. In “Catalysis and scaffolding in semiosis”, Kalevi Kull describes this dimension of “incompatibility as a fundamental precondition for semiosis” and as “itself the source of indeterminacy” (Kull 2014: 118). He makes clear, too, though, that it also brings in logical clarity, for “the simultaneous application” of two exclusive possibilities “would lead to logical incompatibility” (Kull 2014:118). In this way, incompatibility gives a clarity to the semiotic possibilities without resolving any questions of indeterminacy. There remains the question, then, of how the various semiotic possibilities get collapsed into specifics – that is, how are meaning choices made? In the presence of various options that have not been collapsed by direct observation, how is it that we come to establish that a crop circle indicates one thing rather than its converse? Given the wide range of possibilities, how do humans actually affix some particular meanings rather than others that they exclude? Answering this question thoroughly would require more time than we have now, but hopefully we can make a good beginning.

Terministic Screens

We should recognize here that whenever we encounter even our first crop circle, we may already have certain semiotic possibilities excluded from our view. That is, in terms of logical possibility, the formation may have been created by a non-human, extraterrestrial life form. Nevertheless, if we have concluded against the existence of such life forms in our previous semiosis, no such sign possibility will appear to us. It will be, in effect, screened out from the beginning. No such option was even considered and then ruled out. Kull has described this process as “singularization”, saying that “a sign may become very rigid, which means that the plurality of meanings has decreased and can ultimately collapse into a single meaning. Then the process becomes automatic (mechanical)” (Kull 2014: 118). The resulting role such fixed meanings play in our subsequent semiosis overlaps with what Kenneth Burke means when he speaks of terministic screens. He tells us that every time we choose some terminology for understanding the world, we necessarily make “a selection of reality, and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality” (Burke 1966: 45). Burke has in mind the way a colored lens filters a photograph and reveals some textures rather than others, directing the attention in some specific way. Certain semiotic possibilities emerge for us while others are filtered out.

The semiotic choices we have previously made screen out other meaning possibilities, and these screens are in place even as we encounter new situations. Certain planes of meaning are no longer even options, and the meaning landscape morphs for us, thus also shaping experience--that is, what that experience will be like. And inasmuch as volition is always involved, the vast panoply of our motivations play a role in what semiotic decisions we make and what meanings then arise. Our desires, our commitments, what we refuse to see or not to see – all these play a role in how we build our own experiential world. So if we encounter a crop circle embedded in sufficient indeterminacy to support multiply incompatible conclusions, the semiotic choices from our life so far may at the outset restrict the field of potential meanings so that our present conclusion is a given – not from the present situation's evidence but with our terministic screens providing the primary evidence. If, perhaps, we encounter this crop circle without having made any relevant semiotic choices in the past, any choices we do make about what this crop circle is a sign of will then shape subsequent semiosis and color experience. For instance, once I have decided that all crop circles are the work of aliens (or hoaxers), I am likely to automatically filter experience accordingly. It will take a substantial challenge to my conclusions to cause a reworking of my filters. And the longer they are maintained, the more difficult they are to restructure.

Concluding Remarks

It should be clear, now, that we see here a general theme with implications far wider and more important than how we see crop circles. Rather, the way we make sign choices when given any semiotic indeterminacy and possibility will restrict what meaning can actually exist in our world. And this will shape what it is like to be in that world. But this will also have an impact on the semioses around us. When we make semiotic choices toward the most destructive possibilities, we help create that world. In so doing, we might even preclude all but the more destructive options for others, thus coloring their world of experience in darker terms. But for semiotic creatures, inward realities shape outward ones as we corporately build objective structures. In viewing a crop circle, some of us may find certain options of meaning excluded at the outset, and maybe that is okay. It is how we learn and grow as bounded-rational creatures. But since meanings shape both inward and outward experience for ourselves and for others, we have good reason to stand in vigilant watch over what kind of world our screens help to create.

References

BURKE, Kenneth. 1966. Language as Symbolic Action. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

KULL, Kalevi. 2014. Catalysis and scaffolding in semiosis. In: Kenneth R. CABELL & Jaan VALSINER, (eds.), The catalyzing mind: Beyond models of causality (Annals of Theoretical Psychology 11), 111–121. New York, Heidelberg, Dordrecht, London: Springer.

TAYLOR, Richard. 2010. The crop circle evolves. Nature 465(10). 693.

TAYLOR, Richard. 2011. Coming soon to a field near you. Physics World August 2011. 26–31.