Charles Fort's famous Book of the Damned as free ebook
Manybooks.net has formatted The Book of the Damned ("1,001 attested phenomena that science cannot answer and deliberately ignores) into a bunch of different ebook, formats, including the new iPhone books.app format (which I'm really digging). Link
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the more that read even a pinch of this stuff, the better, i think, again, we'll all be. yup.
This is one of the best bathroom books of all time.
So "Damned" is synonymous with "bullshait"? What a country!
Not clear to me why reading a stream-of-consciousness rant of anti-scientific claptrap such as this would make anyone better off.
A quote from Chapter 3:
"...the science of chemistry is as impositive as fortune-telling."
Seems a little strange that a tech-savvy, (seemingly) reality-based place like Boing-Boing would promote this bizarre diatribe, which includes, in addition to its strange stance against fundamentals of chemistry and physics, anti-evolution diatribes that are still being mouthed by today's creationists.
The ultimate high tech oxymoron? Reading "The Book of the Damned" on an iPhone!
"Best books ever," indeed. Way more than a collection of anomalous facts (which is more than can be said for FT, unfortunately). Brilliant satirical exposition on the constraints of western scientific materialism. Required reading! Watch out for crumbling paradigms...
"My own acceptance is that ours is an organic existence, and that our thoughts are the phenomena of its eras, quite as its rocks and trees and forms of life are..." CHF
'brilliant satirical exposition on the contraints of western scientific materialism' I don't see the satire, I just see a text finding gaps in the scientific knowledge of the time to inflate mystical proclamations which pass as profound but are no more than nebulous and whimsical personal beliefs.
And those scientific-constraints you refer to are are using 'electricity' and survival of the 'fittest' (both of which CF said could not be defined) to share this tripe over the internet. Note that the contraints of western scientific materialism lets you caputre and communicate interesting new phenomena in an objective maner; e.g. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070829.html something CF never endeavoured to do systematically.
alas, some are not ready to be confronted w/ such challenging ideas. fort's response from the literati of the time was not so different as some of those nay sayers here. i certainly don't *believe* fort's ideas (and neither did he - he says so). it is very difficult to grasp what he is getting at, but oh so hilarious (though subtly).
fort's point, if i can be so bold, is summed up perfectly in the quote from heisenberg, "not only is the universe stranger than we think, its stranger than we can think"
how much of the universe do we understand? 95% or 5%? from what i understand, "dark" matter and "dark" energy make up 95% of the known universe.
fort's point was to show how limiting the *established, scientific dogma* can be in allowing new perspectives into the fold. and 'damning' data that doesn't fit the current model to a limbo of nonexistence.
the world is stranger than we think. a LOT stranger. we surround ourselves with comfortable assurances and wrap ourselves in a contemporary cosmology that excludes what came before in favor of the current fad. we believe this 'fad' is IT. this time we have got it all figured out...and whatever doesn't fit this model is excluded. he's not down on science, scientists or the scientific method. he's down on BELIEF.
forts books are as much about the pathology of human belief as they are about reality.
CAVEAT LECTOR
the reading of this book will change the way you think. still, it is possible to read it wrongly. i would recommend, that an ernest reader approach fort w/ a mind open, yet critical mind. w/ that, i assure you will find a sly, subtle whit, tongue deeply enmeshed in cheek and much writ between the lines.
When I start hearing things like "constraints of western scientific materialism" I know I should just leave well enough alone. You're either dealing with a religious nutjob or just a plain old nutjob. Get over yourself. "Science" isn't systematically ignoring evidence to favor a certain worldview. Scientists LOVE evidence, and we LOVE weird stuff...I don't see how all you Forteans, Christians, IDists, wackjobs, etc, etc come to this conclusion that if there was evidence for something truly weird and cool that any scientist would try to cover it up or ignore it. Fort's book is ignorant and self-serving, and as a previous poster stated it simply preyed upon weaknesses in data of the day. Science is all about learning new things...when new data arises it is processed and assimilated...and when need be old paradigms and viewpoints are revised. There is no such thing as scientific "fundamentalism" or a religion of science. Believe me, if half the stuff Fort harps on about had any supporting evidence or was even reasonable in the least he'd have one more fan in me...but it's not, so he doesn't. It's SO easy to nitpick the people that actually do all the research and work if you haven't done any yourself. Quit crying about how people don't understand Fort. He was a crank and a charlatan.
I also have to agree that although I loooove BoingBoing, for such a tech-y, science-y site they love to promote BS.
This, along with lots of Fort's other writings, has long been available online at http://www.resologist.net/index.htm .
Take in small doses, with a pinch of salt.
Anyone who hasn't realized that science has limitations just doesn't know much about it. Having majored in physics, read all the major 20th century figures' boooks, as well as those of J.W.N. Sullivan, Godol, Feyerabend, Kuhn, Popper, and many more, I resent being referred to as a nutjob by someone who obviously has a lot to learn.
Charles Fort wrote about anomalous phenomena, which are iffy, sporadic, rare -- and for various reasons aren't the subject of study by scientists.
For example: the first people who deduced that meteorites came from space -- Chladni among them -- were ridiculed. It was the *evidence* that proved otherwise.
Anyone who calls science 'dogmatic' and 'fundamentalist' obviously doesn't get it.
Science is not dogmatic. People, including scientists, can be dogmatic. That's what Fort is saying.
Aha! Fort should be famous for the incredible discovery that scientists are people!
And yet his legacy seems to be the dogged pursuit of the bizarre and repeatedly discredited (crop circles, The Face on Mars, mermaids, etc).
http://www.forteans.com/
and the fostering of a rather unhealthy ethos of anti-scientific conspiracy theory.
The Skeptic's Dictionary has a nice entry on him:
http://skepdic.com/fortean.html
which does fairly note that Fort himself opposed the formation of a Fortean Society would attract spiritualists and crackpots. About that, at least, he was correct.
Good points by Darrell above but I also agree with those who would say that there seems to be a kind of "gate-keeping" by the committee as to what subjects can be even approached by "legitimate" science (or risk losing funding)
The work of Dr.Gary Schwartz comes to mind.
I'd also point-out that Boing Boing has started giving more time to folks like Randi and debunkers of various kinds lately
"Anyone who calls science 'dogmatic' and 'fundamentalist' obviously doesn't get it."
Anyone who doesn't recognize the dogmatic and fundamentalist side of science just hasn't hung around scientists for a few years. Go read Thomas Kuhn, then come back and say that.
For those who want to open their minds, Fort's words, Fortean inspired literature, and a Fortean point of view have served many of us well for decades.
To share another piece of "free" sharing taking place with Fort's works, please note that Mr. X's excellent website
http://www.resologist.net/
has had free, searchable, online versions of all of the following for a dozen years, mostly ignored except by a minority of us. Mr. X (his legal name) has posted:
- Books by Charles Hoy Fort (The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents)
- Short stories, The Outcast Manufacturers (a novel and its serial edition), Many Parts (an autobiography), and unpublished writings by Charles Hoy Fort
- The correspondence of, and to, Charles Hoy Fort
- Notes written and collected by Charles Hoy Fort
- Articles about Charles Hoy Fort (including reviews of his books)
Still, it is always good to see high quality publishers reprint Charles Fort's books (as Cosimos did recently in paperbacks) and more access given, as per the varied e-versions mentioned in Mark Frauenfelder's blog.
Thank you for the information,
Loren Coleman
Should we congratulate Manybooks.net for copying the Ace edition of "The Book of the Damned"? Or, do we give credit to Project Gutenberg? This is a copy of a cheap paperback edition, filled with more errors than the Holt edition from which it was copied. Think of a document run thru a photocopier three times and getting distorted a little more each time. That's what this is.
If you are wondering about the missing line of text, (page 48 of the Manybooks.net version), here is my note upon it:
Fort marked a line in the margin next to this paragraph to indicate an error, which was a missing line of text between: "something of a" and "railroad station." From the source references, it appears possible that the missing line would read: "...something of a larval nature fell in the neighborhood of the Midland railroad station, at Bath."
http://www.resologist.net/damn04.htm#N_28_
If a quality publisher wants to produce a good edition, contact me.
Mr. X