Charles Fort: Dogma be Damned
by Skylaire Alfvegren
Continued...
Doubt died with Thayer, in 1959, but the tentacles of Forteana continued to slither. Two brothers, Ron and Paul Willis (who had published the sci-fi fanzine Anubis, and had corresponded with members of the original Society), created the International Fortean Organization (INFO) in 1965 to “reflect the fact that Fort’s influence was becoming more global,” according to Phyllis Benjamin, the flame-haired force of nature who currently presides over INFO.
The Willises began publishing the INFO Journal in 1962. From England, Bob Rickard began sending them so many clippings they suggested he begin his own magazine. “Fort, through his writings, pioneered the collection and discussion of anomalous data from contemporary sources. This is something I wished to continue with Fortean Times,” Rickard says, which he established in 1973. “Fort articulated what I was thinking, or beginning to think, about our phenomenal existence. I was steeped in oriental mysticism at the time and I immediately saw the parallels in Fort's ideas. In my view, Fort reinvented Platonism for the modern world.”
Fort also published his last book around the time Heisenberg was circulating his 'uncertainty principle,’ which is used to justify uncertainity in quantum mechanics. “Fort discussed, before Einstein, the incredible interconnectedness of two unlike things,” Benjamin says. “Fort saw all forms of phenomena and experience as part of a continuum, every part of which was connected to every other part simply by existing in the same universe,” Rickard notes.
“This is a philosophical view that is at odds with the authoritarian nature of modern institutional science. Eg: many scientific things are defined by experiments, which are designed to focus on a specific set of phenomena and exclude the influence of rest of the universe. Fort's view of good science was that it should be inclusive. It follows Occam's Razor naturally, in that the simpler, more elegant, solutions are those which account for the greatest range of data including their anomalies.”
The best scientists are skeptical in the old fashioned sense,” says Doug Skinner, a New York-based musician, magician and Fortean historian. “Classical skepticism… [is about] suspending judgement. As Bacon pointed out, the scientific method is based on observation and analysis, two things that humans are not so good at. But science is weird! It goes against common sense!”
Physicists who deal with quantum mechanics and string theory most represent Fortean thought in the world of science, and a great number of them can be found on the membership roles of INFO. “Their line of work is holographic, not linear, which is perhaps why they ‘grokk’ Fort.” says Benjamin. “They’re dealing with the suspension of natural laws… They’re forced into a world where all the rules are different.”
