Writing about Forteans necessarily brings up the question of skeptics--in modern American parlance, this term refers to those who defend a scientific approach, and sometimes the ideas of modern science, above and beyond the so-called scientific method. It's not that skeptics and Forteans are opposites--that's too simple. Certainly, they often do disagree on fundamental issues, but they also share certain ideas and commitments and so the relationship between the two is complex. And so, I think, it's impossible to write about Forteans without understanding the modern skeptical movement, which largely evolved over the same time period, the second half of the twentieth cetury.
All of which means I have been giving some thought to the sketpical movement.
I've also been thinking about it because, over teh last few months, I've had an on-going email discussion with a well-known skeptics about my book Bigfoot. That book also forced me to deal with skepticism, but on a more limited scale, since there was not a huge overlap between the Bigfoot story and the skeptics's story until the 1990s.
The skeptic took exception to my charactetization of the movement in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly the sentence, "ridicule was the skeptics' primary weapon." He--for the skeptic was a he--pointed out that recently the skeptical movement has not indulged in ridicule, and wondered what my evidence for the claim was. I argued, one, that ridicule was sometimes a useful tactic, and so the statement was more descriptive than normative, and two, to the extent that it was normative, I could cite a number of articles in Skeptical Inquirer written during the 1970s and 1980s that used ridicule to debunk Bigfootery.
He disagreed that the evidence I put forth was substantive. Fine. There was clearly a difference in reading between the two of us, and I don't want to deny him his interpretations, but it got me wondering about how one thinks as a skeptic (understanding, of course, that there is no one way, but many, probably related ways).
So, I've been thinking about skepticism, and want to do so in a way that parallels my "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fortean." That is to say, a series of hypotheses and posibilities, none of which I am necessarily wedded to.
Although, I do think that today's example, while possibly limited, is fundamentally correct.
It comes from Jonathan Marks Why I am NOT a Scientist, page 126:
Simply from the standpoint of considering science, I find it troubling that scientists [or, more broadly scientific defenders and skeptics] actually care what people 'believe in.' . . . After all, the principal reason for doing so is to exercise ideological power."
The skeptical movement, then, is a way of forcing people to agree with science. But why should we care what people believe? Who cares if people believe in UFOs or shape-shifting Sasquatches? Only proselytizers.
All of which means I have been giving some thought to the sketpical movement.
I've also been thinking about it because, over teh last few months, I've had an on-going email discussion with a well-known skeptics about my book Bigfoot. That book also forced me to deal with skepticism, but on a more limited scale, since there was not a huge overlap between the Bigfoot story and the skeptics's story until the 1990s.
The skeptic took exception to my charactetization of the movement in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly the sentence, "ridicule was the skeptics' primary weapon." He--for the skeptic was a he--pointed out that recently the skeptical movement has not indulged in ridicule, and wondered what my evidence for the claim was. I argued, one, that ridicule was sometimes a useful tactic, and so the statement was more descriptive than normative, and two, to the extent that it was normative, I could cite a number of articles in Skeptical Inquirer written during the 1970s and 1980s that used ridicule to debunk Bigfootery.
He disagreed that the evidence I put forth was substantive. Fine. There was clearly a difference in reading between the two of us, and I don't want to deny him his interpretations, but it got me wondering about how one thinks as a skeptic (understanding, of course, that there is no one way, but many, probably related ways).
So, I've been thinking about skepticism, and want to do so in a way that parallels my "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fortean." That is to say, a series of hypotheses and posibilities, none of which I am necessarily wedded to.
Although, I do think that today's example, while possibly limited, is fundamentally correct.
It comes from Jonathan Marks Why I am NOT a Scientist, page 126:
Simply from the standpoint of considering science, I find it troubling that scientists [or, more broadly scientific defenders and skeptics] actually care what people 'believe in.' . . . After all, the principal reason for doing so is to exercise ideological power."
The skeptical movement, then, is a way of forcing people to agree with science. But why should we care what people believe? Who cares if people believe in UFOs or shape-shifting Sasquatches? Only proselytizers.
