While I collect a little more information on Kenneth MacNichol, I'm starting a new series: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fortean.
The poet Wallace Stevens famously said that there were Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. I don't know much (read: anything) about Wallace Stevens, but the Wikipedia entry on him suggests that he had a Fortean flair. He wrote,
“The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them."
Charles Fort, I think, would have understood this. Stevens is saying that there are perceptions--things we experience and know about--that come before reason, or scientific understanding. And some of these things, then, might later be dropped out when reason is applied--experiences left unexplained. Damned facts. The entry explains,
[I]n Stevens's work "imagination" is not equivalent to consciousness nor is "reality" equivalent to the world as it exists outside our minds. Reality is the product of the imagination as it shapes the world. Because it is constantly changing as we attempt to find imaginatively satisfying ways to perceive the world, reality is an activity, not a static object. We approach reality with a piecemeal understanding, putting together parts of the world in an attempt to make it seem coherent. To make sense of the world is to construct a worldview through an active exercise of the imagination. This is no dry, philosophical activity, but a passionate engagement in finding order and meaning.
And thus we can see how there might be thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird: as the mind sorts through different ways of making reality.
Similarly, there might be thirteen ways of looking at anything.
Including Forteans.
I have yet to make up my mind about how exactly to structure a history of the Forteans. In large part that's because I am still engaging with the data. But there is also the act of imagination--or, to switch metaphors--the (intellectual) tools any of us has available, the ways of thinking. And so this series will explore different ways of thinking about Forteans, different intellectual tools for making sense of them, different historical approaches, different ways of looking.
The poet Wallace Stevens famously said that there were Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. I don't know much (read: anything) about Wallace Stevens, but the Wikipedia entry on him suggests that he had a Fortean flair. He wrote,
“The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them."
Charles Fort, I think, would have understood this. Stevens is saying that there are perceptions--things we experience and know about--that come before reason, or scientific understanding. And some of these things, then, might later be dropped out when reason is applied--experiences left unexplained. Damned facts. The entry explains,
[I]n Stevens's work "imagination" is not equivalent to consciousness nor is "reality" equivalent to the world as it exists outside our minds. Reality is the product of the imagination as it shapes the world. Because it is constantly changing as we attempt to find imaginatively satisfying ways to perceive the world, reality is an activity, not a static object. We approach reality with a piecemeal understanding, putting together parts of the world in an attempt to make it seem coherent. To make sense of the world is to construct a worldview through an active exercise of the imagination. This is no dry, philosophical activity, but a passionate engagement in finding order and meaning.
And thus we can see how there might be thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird: as the mind sorts through different ways of making reality.
Similarly, there might be thirteen ways of looking at anything.
Including Forteans.
I have yet to make up my mind about how exactly to structure a history of the Forteans. In large part that's because I am still engaging with the data. But there is also the act of imagination--or, to switch metaphors--the (intellectual) tools any of us has available, the ways of thinking. And so this series will explore different ways of thinking about Forteans, different intellectual tools for making sense of them, different historical approaches, different ways of looking.
