My wife started reading Fortean Times several years ago and, I have to confess, that ever since I have been quietly curious to flip through the pages each month. The thing about that magazine, however, is not the content but the origin of the title – Fortean Times.
Fortean?
When I was made redundant in 2006, I added to my CV an interest in Forteana. At each interview that I attended, which was quite a few, I was asked by the interviewer, “What is Forteana?”
Forteana is stuff that is Fortean in nature.
Fortean stuff is the kind of matter that would have interested Charles Fort.
Let me quote from the Fortean Times website:
Born of Dutch stock in Albany, New York, Fort spent many years researching scientific literature in the New York Public Library and the British Museum Library. He marshalled his evidence and set forth his philosophy in The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932).
He was sceptical of scientific explanations, observing how scientists argued according to their own beliefs rather than the rules of evidence and that inconvenient data was ignored, suppressed, discredited or explained away. He criticised modern science for its reductionism, its attempts to define, divide and separate. Fort’s dictum “One measures a circle beginning anywhere” expresses instead his philosophy of Continuity in which everything is in an intermediate and transient state between extremes.
He had ideas of the Universe-as-organism and the transient nature of all apparent phenomena, coined the term ‘teleportation’, and was perhaps the first to speculate that mysterious lights seen in the sky might be craft from outer space. However, he cut at the very roots of credulity: “I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while.”
Beware Your Preconceptions
The lesson that sticks most strongly with me is this idea that one can measure a circle starting at any point.
For me, the practical upshot of this slightly profound statement is that depending upon one’s preconceptions, our assumptions, we will tend to draw conclusions from the data we have… and those conclusions might be very different from someone else’s conclusions who, when faced with the same data but different preconceptions, will come to a very different ending point.
Fort has always challenged me to think about the conclusions that I am drawing. He asks me to consider that, given a different starting point, I might have come to a very different point of view. Yet… the data is the same… it’s still the same circle.
Beware Of Fashion
For many years it was the belief that the Earth stood at the centre of the Solar System, with the Sun going around it. It was also believed that at one time that the Earth was flat. And, even a few years ago, Darwinism was unquestioned.
Our ways of looking at the universe around us are very much coloured by our assumptions. Given the same data, the Creationist and the Evolutionist form very different conclusions about the age of the Earth… and perhaps both will be later shown to be wrong.
My worry is that ideas tend to go in and out of fashion. 50 years ago the fashion was what is now termed “Modernity”. Prior to that the Enlightenment, placing Reason upon the throne of life, was equally fashionable. And yet, here in 2010, many people would now consider both sets of ideas to have their limitations.
Give A Thought To The Alternate Assumption
Personally, I interpret much of the data that I receive through some quite specific and developed lenses that my own brain has constructed to help me navigate life. That being said, there are moments when someone else so clearly does not see things the way that I do that, frankly, I might be tempted to label them as “stupid”.
But then, as my most recent boss has helped me to realise, the problem is not that they are “stupid” but rather that they simply have a different pair of neural spectacles. When invited to understand the assumptions and preconceptions that underlie their conclusions I find myself increasingly fascinated by the difference.
My quest has become one of seeking to understand the ways in which other people view the same data that I do. This goal is doomed to failure and yet drives me with a passion to understand.
Some say that I am foolish, or that I am sitting on the fence observing but not taking part. The thing is, from where I am sitting, the view is so lovely and so engaging I cannot resist the perch.
But what about you? Are you fully aware of your preconceptions and assumptions?
If you are… well, you are a better person than I, my friend. Yet, as with all things human, I would encourage the effort to spot those starting points because, if you are not careful, they can blind you to your conclusions.
