"a circle has no end"

The last post prompted a connection I had never made before.

One of the key lines in Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation is, "a circle has no end."  When I read the original Foundation Series, I thought this was a really clever line.  Of course, I did most of my Asimov reading in 8th and 9th grade, so maybe I wouldn't be as impressed if I went back now.  (Or maybe I would.)

At any rate, that line's always stuck with me.

Now, I wonder if there's not a Fortean connection.

Later in life, Asimov was a pronounced skeptic, a member of CSICOP.

But, some of his early stories were Fortean in flavor.  This makes sense.  One of Asimov's writing gurus was John W. Campbell, editor of the magazine Astounding Science Fiction, considered the most important of the sci-fi pulps in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  Asimov belonged to Campbell's stable of writers, publishing many of his early stories--including parts of the Foundation series--in Astounding.  And Campbell, as Moskowitz--among others--notes, was recommending Fort to his writers as a source for plot ideas.

Did Asimov read Fort?  It seems almost certain since, again as Moskowitz notes, Fort's third book Lo! was serialized in Astounding (a few years, in fact, before Campbell became editor).  And Lo! had the famous line, "One measures a circle, beginning anywhere."

Still, another lead to follow . . . How much did Asimov know of Fort?