Kevin Knuth is a professor of Physics at the University of Albany, and a former NASA scientist. For some time he’s been actively involved in the UFO topic. He’s a member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU).
Kevin’s ideas about UFOs are very centered in what is called the “nuts and bolts” approach; so I wasn’t expecting much from his presentation at the 2025 Archives of the Impossible Conference. In fact I wondered what he was even doing there, since that event is more focused on the Humanities’ approach, i.e. listening to the experiencers, studying the sociological/religious impacts of the phenomenon in our society, etc.
But I gotta confess, he knocked it out of the park! In fact I don’t even know why he chose to name his presentation ‘Astronomy, Physics and Ontology’ when he went on to speak of broader subjects.
The thing that really knocked my socks out was when he mentioned the work of Italian physicist Eduardo R. Caianiello, who started his career studying quantum mechanics, but later in life he switched to cybernetics and began to be captivated by the hierarchical structure of natural languages; “a certain manifestation, in his view, of the hierarchical organization of all biological and social systems” [source: iiassvietri.it].
This was wonderfully demonstrated by Knuth in his presentation, when he used one chapter in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince to show how every word, sentence and paragraphs followed a defined, mathematical structure regardless of the author’s intention(!).
This got me thinking about what Greg and I discussed with our friend Joshua Cutchin about how reality seems to be linked to language somehow (something all magical traditions make use of). And Caianiello’s work—which I wasn’t aware of until now—shows a further connection between natural languages and mathematics. Does that mean the whole structure of the Universe could be summed up into one single formula, like scientists fantasize about since the days of Einstein?
Knuth’s presentation finished by making a series of statements which were cheered by a hall full of humanities academics: “Matter matters. Consciousness matters. Experiences matter. Experiencers matter! Are all experiences physical? Some are. Some involve states of systems—Still Real!!“
I think it is valid that scientists remind us of the ‘physicality’ of transcendent experiences, just as long as they acknowledge the ‘psychicality’ of the UFO phenomenon.
