Another Fortean who existed at the intersection of Forteanism, Humanism, and skepticism—more proof, if more proof is necessary—that Forteanism and skepticism did not begin as antagonists, but grew into them.
Edwin Henry Wilson is likely the most well-known of the early Humanists associated with the Fortean Society, his biography compiled by others and mostly just digested here; the best of these is Wesley Mason Olds’ entry on Wilson in John R. Shook’s “Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers.” Wilson was born 23 August 1898 in Woodhaven, New York, and raised in Concord, Massachusetts. He was the fourth child of James S. and Mary Grace Dana. James was a farmer, and either a prosperous one, or at least an industrious one: in 1900, the family had seven servants living with them—some undoubtedly farm hands, but still, more than one per member of the family. In 1918, when he filled out his draft card, Wilson was working with American Railway Express. He was 20.
Wilson grew up in the First Parish Church (Unitarian): many of the early Fortean Humanists and skeptics had church connections. His father was not particularly interested in religion, but his mother was a conservative Christian Unitarian, whose family members had also been active in Unitarianism. In line with his Unitarian upbringing, and his home area, Wilson was deeply influenced by Transcendentalism having read Ralph Waldo Emerson by the time he was 17, “Self-Reliance” becoming his “Declaration of Independence.” He joined the War effort as part of the Army Signal Corps and learned to fly. Afterwards, he went to business school at Boston University. By 1920, his parents were empty-nesters, all the servants and children gone.
Edwin Henry Wilson is likely the most well-known of the early Humanists associated with the Fortean Society, his biography compiled by others and mostly just digested here; the best of these is Wesley Mason Olds’ entry on Wilson in John R. Shook’s “Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers.” Wilson was born 23 August 1898 in Woodhaven, New York, and raised in Concord, Massachusetts. He was the fourth child of James S. and Mary Grace Dana. James was a farmer, and either a prosperous one, or at least an industrious one: in 1900, the family had seven servants living with them—some undoubtedly farm hands, but still, more than one per member of the family. In 1918, when he filled out his draft card, Wilson was working with American Railway Express. He was 20.
Wilson grew up in the First Parish Church (Unitarian): many of the early Fortean Humanists and skeptics had church connections. His father was not particularly interested in religion, but his mother was a conservative Christian Unitarian, whose family members had also been active in Unitarianism. In line with his Unitarian upbringing, and his home area, Wilson was deeply influenced by Transcendentalism having read Ralph Waldo Emerson by the time he was 17, “Self-Reliance” becoming his “Declaration of Independence.” He joined the War effort as part of the Army Signal Corps and learned to fly. Afterwards, he went to business school at Boston University. By 1920, his parents were empty-nesters, all the servants and children gone.
He graduated, went into accounting, and attended Unitarian services until, encouraged by his aunt, he entered the ministry. In 1923, he matriculated at Meadville Theological School, in Pennsylvania. There he came face-to-face with the current Unitarian conflict between humanism and theism—could one be a Unitarian, let alone a minister, without belief in God? Wilson answered, yes, rejecting theism for humanism. By his own account, it was a difficult decision. He graduated after writing a thesis that, in part, considered the humanism of the French positivist August Comte. He then traveled through England and Europe, associating with those who were promoting Comte’s “Religion of Humanity.” Wilson could not know it, but these themes—“religion of” and “self-reliance” would connect him to Forteanism later.
Returned to the States, Wilson worked some in Meadville, but more at the University of Chicago, and was also ordained to the Unitarian ministry, taking a position in Ohio from 1928 to 1932. He continued to puzzle over the relationship between positivism and Humanism, arguing at one point that Christianity was a pre-scientific religion; spirituality needed to be integrated with the new knowledge—this was another form of the problem with which T. Swann Harding wrestled, how to find meaning in an age of science. Secularism did not kill religion, but opened it to new possibilities. According to Olds, Wilson broke with Comte, whom he saw as still too rooted in Catholicism—not the metaphysics, but the hierarchy—while Wilson wanted a new Humanism, one based on naturalism, evolutionary thought, and organism. (It’s worth noting here, briefly, that evolutionary thinking also structured much of the esotericism and occultism that grew up in the 18th and 19th centuries.) Olds does not mention it, but there seems to be a touch of American pragmatism and (French philosopher) Henri Bergson’s ideas integrated here.
From 1932 to 1941, Wilson found a home in Chicago, where he was minister of the Third Unitarian Church. In 1933, he was on a committee that drafted a manifesto for the emerging Humanist movement—mostly quiescent since the end of the 19th century. The manifesto was published in “The New Humanist,” which he had been editing since 1930. He came to a (secular) solution to the dilemma posed by the theist-Humanist break within the church, arguing that the emphasis should be on ethics, and tolerance extended for a diversity of theological viewpoints. In 1941, he moved to Schenectady, New York, where he was minister of the All Souls Church and, that same year, helped to create the American Humanist Association, which published “The Humanist,” as a continuation of “The New Humanist.” Wilson was its editor. After World War II, in 1946, he moved to Salt Lake City for three years; he then became Executive Director of the American Humanist association, which was established in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He continued with Humanist activities—including helping to make it international—until retiring in 1963.
There followed a new split within the Humanist community—there were several, as Thayer well knew—this one between the secular humanists and the religious humanists; Wilson took the side of the latter, thinking “religious” was an important qualifier. He worked with this group extensively in the 1960s, acting as administrator and editor of its publication. He retired again, in 1970, this time to Florida, where he nonetheless remained active in the Unitarian Church. In 1973, he co-wrote the “Humanist Manifesto II” with philosopher Paul Kurtz. The connection is an important one, as Kurtz was exercised by the rise of what he saw as a new irrationalism: supernatural belief, the acceptance of the occult, a renaissance (which really wasn’t a renaissance) of practices such as astrology. Kurtz would go on to found the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, which eventually published “Skeptical Inquirer,” the main vehicle of a new version of skepticism that had little truck with Forteanism (in its more recent incarnations).
In his later years, Wilson was lauded for his work with Humanism and then, in 1988, moved back to Salt Lake City to be near family. Edwin Henry Wilson died 26 March 1993. He was 94. His obituary appeared, inter alia, in the New York and Los Angeles Times.
********
Wilson came to the Fortean Society in the middle of 1948, intrigued by a pamphlet that Thayer had been sending out to attract members. It was called “The Fortean Society Presents the Religion of Self Respect.” (For all his atheism, Thayer could not escape the rubric of religion any more than the early skeptics and Humanists such as Wilson.) This pamphlet adapted much of the material from an earlier advertisement, “The Fortean Society is the Red Cross of the Human Mind” (that one had caused a stir with the FBI, since Thayer claimed some G-Men were members; the Bureau demanded their names, Thayer refused, then stopped using the pamphlet. This one nonetheless repeated the claim of FBI members.) It started with the origins of the Society, listed prominent founders—Dreiser, Hecht, Tarkington, and Thayer himself—then gave a thumbnail sketch of Fort’s philosophy before enjoining the holder of the pamphlet to read Fort for a fuller understanding. There was much bragging—about the Society being a group of philosophers, from various traditions—atheists and jews, Communists and poets—all opposed to the modern dogmas, many embracing ideas “so new, fresh and novel that twelve Einsteins couldn’t understand them. (This last an inversion of the famous claim that only a few men in the world could understand Einstein’s abstract theories.) It went on to describe the Society’s aims—protect and promote the memory of Fort—and its work—Doubt, a new system of time-keeping—and the various types of membership, as well as a list of founders and honorary founders, accepted fellows, life members, and named fellows, with addresses for contact.
Undoubtedly, it was the title, as much as anything else, which attracted Wilson’s attention—“the religion of” a phrase he had become enamored with, and “self-reliance,” a call back to Thoreau. On 10 August 1948 he wrote Thayer at the Society’s Grand Central Annex address, asking to learn more about Fort, the Society and “especially” the religion of self-respect. He assumed that the Society was guided by ethical and naturalistic mores, not theological and supernatural ones—to which he was opposed. Wilson included in his letter a copy of the “Humanist” and an offer to publish an article on the Society if Thayer could provide one.
Thayer wrote back relatively quickly, pointedly using the Fortean dating system—he often translated this for non-members, but not here. It was 14 Fort 1948. Thayer thanked Wilson, and noted that they had some common ground. Vashti McCollum had received an “overwhelming vote” for the annual named fellowship, and she had accepted. McCollum had brought a case—from Illinois, no less—that resulted in the Supreme Court prohibiting religious instruction in public schools. I’m not sure how close McCollum was to the American Humanist Association at the time—though the Association did laud her—but she would soon enough join and, eventually, become president. Thayer further offered to make Wilson a member and suggested that they should exchange publications. He said that he would canvass the readership to see who would like to write an article on Fort for Wilson’s magazine.
Wilson took a while to respond, but on 12 November 1948 he replied, taking up Thayer on the idea of exchanging magazines, but hedging on the membership: “For purely financial reasons I am suspending all joining, subscribing, etc., until I recover from the shock of paying for a new car.” He warned him, too, that the winter issue of the Humanist would include “a facetious paragraph or two on your society.” I, however, have been unable to obtain a copy of these paragraphs, and am not even sure that they actually ran. I do have a draft, though, from Wilson’s papers, held at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale—a locus of some Fortean import, with Buckminster Fuller teaching there for a time, and Loren Coleman graduating from there. It reads,
“The Fortean Society
Mrs. Vashti McCollum has received an overwhelming vote by members of the Fortean Society for the annual Named Fellowship, [struck out: 17 F.S. {the equivalent of 1947 A.D. according to Fortean reckoning of time).] We rejoice in this honor for the brave champion of religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
“Our curiosity whetted by the event, we ascertained that the Fortean Society is devoted to the popularization of the philosophy of [one] Charles Fort, whose central doctrine was that of temporary acceptance (a with rather than a method). As mental anti-toxin to the poisons of the press, pulpit, and school, Fort and his disciples conspired to make people think for themselves and to cherish self-respect in opposition to the old idols and sanctified frauds. Eternal questioning is its program. Doubt is the name of its quarterly.
“Doubt’s new cover has a socratic looking individual with thunderbolts in hand thumbing his nose at the world. And they are talking about an old school tie for the Society. The editorial starts out, ‘With this issue of Doubt The Fortean Society actively assumes leadership of the entire human race. We have fiddled around long enough.’ While everybody—almost everybody—else os saying that salvation is to be found in education, the Forteans are devoting themselves to the unlearning process.
“We are all for a sizable degree of ‘the dissemination of healthy, enlightened doubt, informed skepticism, perpetual dissent from all dogmatic assumption.’ We agree with the Forteans that much ‘popular education’ is tenaciously opposed to enlightenment. With them we feel a complete sense of well-being without mystic grips, by-laws, initiation, or similar horseplay. But as the Forteans move forward behind their only symbol, an enormous question mark, we see moving on still further ahead our own symbol—which doubt is supposed to serve—an exclamation point, symbolizing the affirmative faith that doubt justifies itself best when it leads to new truth in the service of man. People cannot live on negations.
“When it comes to the Fortean scheme of dating the new era (17 F.S., etc.) we will nonetheless rest our case on doubt. The last man whose name was used as the dating point of history had his ethics buried by ritual and dogma so effectively that we wouldn’t want the same to happen to Charles Fort, or anyone else dedicated to the stirring of thought. The world has far too much unemployed cerebral cortex as it is.”
Doubt 25, issued in the summer of 1949, carried Thayer’s call for the essay. He offered $50 and advised that it must be kept to under three-thousand words. Given the prolixity of many Forteans, the word count was wise advice. I’m not sure how it went over, or if anything was offered, but there is some evidence that at least one Fortean had taken seriously Thayer’s formulation of Forteanism as “the religion of self respect.” Back in Doubt 12 (1945), the Buffalo bookseller and Fortean H. W. Giles wrote into the magazine, “The ‘second-hand bookstore’ in any town is the logical gathering place for Forteans. If our ‘Religion of Self Respect’ has churches and temples, those are they.” (And, indeed, it is fitting, a room where the damned are literally stored and sold.) Whatever the case—whether members submitted material and Thayer wasn't happy with it, or nothing came in—Thayer eventually decided to do the essay himself.
He submitted the essay with a letter on 7 January 1950—no Fortean Style dating this time. There was a little back and forth about editing and getting biographical information on Fort—Thayer sent Wilson to “Twentieth Century Authors” (the bit on Fort had been written by Fortean Miriam Allen DeFord, though I am not sure he knew that.) The article was eventually scheduled for a 1950 issue; it seems to have run on pages 58-60 of volume 10 0r 11but I do not have access. Thayer thought he’d said something big, though, quipping in the January letter, “I had not realized how much there is to say on this subject. Now I shall have to write a whole book.” The piece was titled “Charles Fort—And the Religion of Self Respect.”
Thayer announced the coup in Doubt 28 (April 1950), under the title “Los Humanists.” “At the time of writing, likelihood is that a piece entitled Charles Fort and the Religion of Self-Respect will appear in the quarterly, THE HUMANIST, Number Two, 1950. It is a first essay toward the realizing of Forteanism as a way of life, and it is the best YS could do in the space afforded. It was written to tell the Humanists why we Forteans are the way we are. Whether it accomplishes that or not, it has told this writer that a book is wanted to even begin to indicate the ramifications of the subject. Until that happy day, here is this essay. Send 35 cents to “The Humanist” 137 South Walnut Street, Yellow Springs, Ohio. If the paper is not in their Number Two, you will still get your money’s worth.”
He ended the squib with a note that Wilson was a member of the Fortean Society. Whether that was because he paid dues or—more likely—in return for the exchanging of magazines, is not known. Nor is it know how long Wilson remained a member. I do not see him mentioned in Doubt again, though the file he kept on the Fortean Society did include a copy of the cover from issue 57 (July 1958). That there wasn’t much contact is not really a surprise. The Fortean Society shared with skeptics and humanists a project of dismantling the power religious institutions held over American civic life. But just as the Forteans eventually split from skeptics over the issue of science, they split from humanists over the need for a progressive agenda. (Wilson also saw clearly what Thayer did not think through, that turning Forteanism into any kind of religion, of self-respect or otherwise, threatened the very skepticism that he professed.) So, it is no wonder that there was not much connection beyond a brief, early flirtation. They grew out of a similar social context, the Forteans and the humanists, but were building toward different (if occasionally overlapping) ends.
Returned to the States, Wilson worked some in Meadville, but more at the University of Chicago, and was also ordained to the Unitarian ministry, taking a position in Ohio from 1928 to 1932. He continued to puzzle over the relationship between positivism and Humanism, arguing at one point that Christianity was a pre-scientific religion; spirituality needed to be integrated with the new knowledge—this was another form of the problem with which T. Swann Harding wrestled, how to find meaning in an age of science. Secularism did not kill religion, but opened it to new possibilities. According to Olds, Wilson broke with Comte, whom he saw as still too rooted in Catholicism—not the metaphysics, but the hierarchy—while Wilson wanted a new Humanism, one based on naturalism, evolutionary thought, and organism. (It’s worth noting here, briefly, that evolutionary thinking also structured much of the esotericism and occultism that grew up in the 18th and 19th centuries.) Olds does not mention it, but there seems to be a touch of American pragmatism and (French philosopher) Henri Bergson’s ideas integrated here.
From 1932 to 1941, Wilson found a home in Chicago, where he was minister of the Third Unitarian Church. In 1933, he was on a committee that drafted a manifesto for the emerging Humanist movement—mostly quiescent since the end of the 19th century. The manifesto was published in “The New Humanist,” which he had been editing since 1930. He came to a (secular) solution to the dilemma posed by the theist-Humanist break within the church, arguing that the emphasis should be on ethics, and tolerance extended for a diversity of theological viewpoints. In 1941, he moved to Schenectady, New York, where he was minister of the All Souls Church and, that same year, helped to create the American Humanist Association, which published “The Humanist,” as a continuation of “The New Humanist.” Wilson was its editor. After World War II, in 1946, he moved to Salt Lake City for three years; he then became Executive Director of the American Humanist association, which was established in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He continued with Humanist activities—including helping to make it international—until retiring in 1963.
There followed a new split within the Humanist community—there were several, as Thayer well knew—this one between the secular humanists and the religious humanists; Wilson took the side of the latter, thinking “religious” was an important qualifier. He worked with this group extensively in the 1960s, acting as administrator and editor of its publication. He retired again, in 1970, this time to Florida, where he nonetheless remained active in the Unitarian Church. In 1973, he co-wrote the “Humanist Manifesto II” with philosopher Paul Kurtz. The connection is an important one, as Kurtz was exercised by the rise of what he saw as a new irrationalism: supernatural belief, the acceptance of the occult, a renaissance (which really wasn’t a renaissance) of practices such as astrology. Kurtz would go on to found the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, which eventually published “Skeptical Inquirer,” the main vehicle of a new version of skepticism that had little truck with Forteanism (in its more recent incarnations).
In his later years, Wilson was lauded for his work with Humanism and then, in 1988, moved back to Salt Lake City to be near family. Edwin Henry Wilson died 26 March 1993. He was 94. His obituary appeared, inter alia, in the New York and Los Angeles Times.
********
Wilson came to the Fortean Society in the middle of 1948, intrigued by a pamphlet that Thayer had been sending out to attract members. It was called “The Fortean Society Presents the Religion of Self Respect.” (For all his atheism, Thayer could not escape the rubric of religion any more than the early skeptics and Humanists such as Wilson.) This pamphlet adapted much of the material from an earlier advertisement, “The Fortean Society is the Red Cross of the Human Mind” (that one had caused a stir with the FBI, since Thayer claimed some G-Men were members; the Bureau demanded their names, Thayer refused, then stopped using the pamphlet. This one nonetheless repeated the claim of FBI members.) It started with the origins of the Society, listed prominent founders—Dreiser, Hecht, Tarkington, and Thayer himself—then gave a thumbnail sketch of Fort’s philosophy before enjoining the holder of the pamphlet to read Fort for a fuller understanding. There was much bragging—about the Society being a group of philosophers, from various traditions—atheists and jews, Communists and poets—all opposed to the modern dogmas, many embracing ideas “so new, fresh and novel that twelve Einsteins couldn’t understand them. (This last an inversion of the famous claim that only a few men in the world could understand Einstein’s abstract theories.) It went on to describe the Society’s aims—protect and promote the memory of Fort—and its work—Doubt, a new system of time-keeping—and the various types of membership, as well as a list of founders and honorary founders, accepted fellows, life members, and named fellows, with addresses for contact.
Undoubtedly, it was the title, as much as anything else, which attracted Wilson’s attention—“the religion of” a phrase he had become enamored with, and “self-reliance,” a call back to Thoreau. On 10 August 1948 he wrote Thayer at the Society’s Grand Central Annex address, asking to learn more about Fort, the Society and “especially” the religion of self-respect. He assumed that the Society was guided by ethical and naturalistic mores, not theological and supernatural ones—to which he was opposed. Wilson included in his letter a copy of the “Humanist” and an offer to publish an article on the Society if Thayer could provide one.
Thayer wrote back relatively quickly, pointedly using the Fortean dating system—he often translated this for non-members, but not here. It was 14 Fort 1948. Thayer thanked Wilson, and noted that they had some common ground. Vashti McCollum had received an “overwhelming vote” for the annual named fellowship, and she had accepted. McCollum had brought a case—from Illinois, no less—that resulted in the Supreme Court prohibiting religious instruction in public schools. I’m not sure how close McCollum was to the American Humanist Association at the time—though the Association did laud her—but she would soon enough join and, eventually, become president. Thayer further offered to make Wilson a member and suggested that they should exchange publications. He said that he would canvass the readership to see who would like to write an article on Fort for Wilson’s magazine.
Wilson took a while to respond, but on 12 November 1948 he replied, taking up Thayer on the idea of exchanging magazines, but hedging on the membership: “For purely financial reasons I am suspending all joining, subscribing, etc., until I recover from the shock of paying for a new car.” He warned him, too, that the winter issue of the Humanist would include “a facetious paragraph or two on your society.” I, however, have been unable to obtain a copy of these paragraphs, and am not even sure that they actually ran. I do have a draft, though, from Wilson’s papers, held at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale—a locus of some Fortean import, with Buckminster Fuller teaching there for a time, and Loren Coleman graduating from there. It reads,
“The Fortean Society
Mrs. Vashti McCollum has received an overwhelming vote by members of the Fortean Society for the annual Named Fellowship, [struck out: 17 F.S. {the equivalent of 1947 A.D. according to Fortean reckoning of time).] We rejoice in this honor for the brave champion of religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
“Our curiosity whetted by the event, we ascertained that the Fortean Society is devoted to the popularization of the philosophy of [one] Charles Fort, whose central doctrine was that of temporary acceptance (a with rather than a method). As mental anti-toxin to the poisons of the press, pulpit, and school, Fort and his disciples conspired to make people think for themselves and to cherish self-respect in opposition to the old idols and sanctified frauds. Eternal questioning is its program. Doubt is the name of its quarterly.
“Doubt’s new cover has a socratic looking individual with thunderbolts in hand thumbing his nose at the world. And they are talking about an old school tie for the Society. The editorial starts out, ‘With this issue of Doubt The Fortean Society actively assumes leadership of the entire human race. We have fiddled around long enough.’ While everybody—almost everybody—else os saying that salvation is to be found in education, the Forteans are devoting themselves to the unlearning process.
“We are all for a sizable degree of ‘the dissemination of healthy, enlightened doubt, informed skepticism, perpetual dissent from all dogmatic assumption.’ We agree with the Forteans that much ‘popular education’ is tenaciously opposed to enlightenment. With them we feel a complete sense of well-being without mystic grips, by-laws, initiation, or similar horseplay. But as the Forteans move forward behind their only symbol, an enormous question mark, we see moving on still further ahead our own symbol—which doubt is supposed to serve—an exclamation point, symbolizing the affirmative faith that doubt justifies itself best when it leads to new truth in the service of man. People cannot live on negations.
“When it comes to the Fortean scheme of dating the new era (17 F.S., etc.) we will nonetheless rest our case on doubt. The last man whose name was used as the dating point of history had his ethics buried by ritual and dogma so effectively that we wouldn’t want the same to happen to Charles Fort, or anyone else dedicated to the stirring of thought. The world has far too much unemployed cerebral cortex as it is.”
Doubt 25, issued in the summer of 1949, carried Thayer’s call for the essay. He offered $50 and advised that it must be kept to under three-thousand words. Given the prolixity of many Forteans, the word count was wise advice. I’m not sure how it went over, or if anything was offered, but there is some evidence that at least one Fortean had taken seriously Thayer’s formulation of Forteanism as “the religion of self respect.” Back in Doubt 12 (1945), the Buffalo bookseller and Fortean H. W. Giles wrote into the magazine, “The ‘second-hand bookstore’ in any town is the logical gathering place for Forteans. If our ‘Religion of Self Respect’ has churches and temples, those are they.” (And, indeed, it is fitting, a room where the damned are literally stored and sold.) Whatever the case—whether members submitted material and Thayer wasn't happy with it, or nothing came in—Thayer eventually decided to do the essay himself.
He submitted the essay with a letter on 7 January 1950—no Fortean Style dating this time. There was a little back and forth about editing and getting biographical information on Fort—Thayer sent Wilson to “Twentieth Century Authors” (the bit on Fort had been written by Fortean Miriam Allen DeFord, though I am not sure he knew that.) The article was eventually scheduled for a 1950 issue; it seems to have run on pages 58-60 of volume 10 0r 11but I do not have access. Thayer thought he’d said something big, though, quipping in the January letter, “I had not realized how much there is to say on this subject. Now I shall have to write a whole book.” The piece was titled “Charles Fort—And the Religion of Self Respect.”
Thayer announced the coup in Doubt 28 (April 1950), under the title “Los Humanists.” “At the time of writing, likelihood is that a piece entitled Charles Fort and the Religion of Self-Respect will appear in the quarterly, THE HUMANIST, Number Two, 1950. It is a first essay toward the realizing of Forteanism as a way of life, and it is the best YS could do in the space afforded. It was written to tell the Humanists why we Forteans are the way we are. Whether it accomplishes that or not, it has told this writer that a book is wanted to even begin to indicate the ramifications of the subject. Until that happy day, here is this essay. Send 35 cents to “The Humanist” 137 South Walnut Street, Yellow Springs, Ohio. If the paper is not in their Number Two, you will still get your money’s worth.”
He ended the squib with a note that Wilson was a member of the Fortean Society. Whether that was because he paid dues or—more likely—in return for the exchanging of magazines, is not known. Nor is it know how long Wilson remained a member. I do not see him mentioned in Doubt again, though the file he kept on the Fortean Society did include a copy of the cover from issue 57 (July 1958). That there wasn’t much contact is not really a surprise. The Fortean Society shared with skeptics and humanists a project of dismantling the power religious institutions held over American civic life. But just as the Forteans eventually split from skeptics over the issue of science, they split from humanists over the need for a progressive agenda. (Wilson also saw clearly what Thayer did not think through, that turning Forteanism into any kind of religion, of self-respect or otherwise, threatened the very skepticism that he professed.) So, it is no wonder that there was not much connection beyond a brief, early flirtation. They grew out of a similar social context, the Forteans and the humanists, but were building toward different (if occasionally overlapping) ends.
