Forteans as Scientific Anarchists
The varieties of Forteanism may not reflect an underlying unity, but sense can still be made of the diversity. To do so requires an analogy: Forteans are to science as anarchists are to the state. This analogy does not mean that all Forteans have similar political ideologies, although, at least in San Francisco, they tended to be leftists of various stripes. Rather, the comparison relies on the relationship between individuals to an overarching institution. In The Art of Not Being Governed, James C. Scott outlines what it means to be an anarchist in Upland Southeast Asia—not necessarily a bomb-throwing anarchist, but an anarchist in the sense of those who do not wish to be governed by the state. Too often, he says, these groups have been seen as holdovers, evolutionary remnants of a time before there was centralized government. This is wrong, though. The nomads and hill people who stand against the state are not relicts: rather, they co-evolve with the state. As the state grows and changes, so do those who wish to be free of it, altering their tactics, shifting between citizen and non-citizen, crafting lifestyles that allow them to live by their own codes—going so far, Scott suggests, as inventing new ethnicities and replacing literacy with orality to remain free. They are ever aware of the state and its machinations, however, trading with citizens when it is convenient.
The parallel with the Forteans is obvious from the start. It is easy to dismiss Forteans as those who refuse science and modernity, choosing instead to cling to outdated modes of knowledge—magic and superstition. But, of course, Charles Fort did not believe in superstition. And, also of course, his books would not have been possible without science: he read scientific journals, collected scientific facts, and argued with scientists—not that the world should retreat to an age of faith or superstition, but about restrictions scientists themselves put on the interpretation of their data. Forteanism was not relic. It co-evolved with science. And the parallels can be drawn out further. Science, like the state, had certain colonizing tendencies. States needed people for taxing, for labor, and for war. Science needed the public to accept its pronouncements as true—and other interpretations as false—in order to gain and then maintain cultural power—indeed, becoming inextricably intertwined with the state. In order to find refuge from scientific determinism, Forteans (and other scientific heretics) adopted similar tactics as Scott’s anarchists. They sought places where control was difficult to impose—the hills of Southeast Asia or the Bohemian enclaves of San Francisco. They constructed lifestyles that allowed them liberty from the state or from science: in the case of Forteans that meant careers where they were free to live without concern about scientific facts, identities that emphasized not material determinism but infinite possibilities. Like the hill people and tribes of Southeast Asia, the San Francisco Forteans created their own groups, their own language. But, that did not mean they were ignorant of science. There was trade, most obviously in the Forteans collecting data, but the trade went both ways, and Forteans injected ideas into the scientific mainstream, as well.
The varieties of Forteanism may not reflect an underlying unity, but sense can still be made of the diversity. To do so requires an analogy: Forteans are to science as anarchists are to the state. This analogy does not mean that all Forteans have similar political ideologies, although, at least in San Francisco, they tended to be leftists of various stripes. Rather, the comparison relies on the relationship between individuals to an overarching institution. In The Art of Not Being Governed, James C. Scott outlines what it means to be an anarchist in Upland Southeast Asia—not necessarily a bomb-throwing anarchist, but an anarchist in the sense of those who do not wish to be governed by the state. Too often, he says, these groups have been seen as holdovers, evolutionary remnants of a time before there was centralized government. This is wrong, though. The nomads and hill people who stand against the state are not relicts: rather, they co-evolve with the state. As the state grows and changes, so do those who wish to be free of it, altering their tactics, shifting between citizen and non-citizen, crafting lifestyles that allow them to live by their own codes—going so far, Scott suggests, as inventing new ethnicities and replacing literacy with orality to remain free. They are ever aware of the state and its machinations, however, trading with citizens when it is convenient.
The parallel with the Forteans is obvious from the start. It is easy to dismiss Forteans as those who refuse science and modernity, choosing instead to cling to outdated modes of knowledge—magic and superstition. But, of course, Charles Fort did not believe in superstition. And, also of course, his books would not have been possible without science: he read scientific journals, collected scientific facts, and argued with scientists—not that the world should retreat to an age of faith or superstition, but about restrictions scientists themselves put on the interpretation of their data. Forteanism was not relic. It co-evolved with science. And the parallels can be drawn out further. Science, like the state, had certain colonizing tendencies. States needed people for taxing, for labor, and for war. Science needed the public to accept its pronouncements as true—and other interpretations as false—in order to gain and then maintain cultural power—indeed, becoming inextricably intertwined with the state. In order to find refuge from scientific determinism, Forteans (and other scientific heretics) adopted similar tactics as Scott’s anarchists. They sought places where control was difficult to impose—the hills of Southeast Asia or the Bohemian enclaves of San Francisco. They constructed lifestyles that allowed them liberty from the state or from science: in the case of Forteans that meant careers where they were free to live without concern about scientific facts, identities that emphasized not material determinism but infinite possibilities. Like the hill people and tribes of Southeast Asia, the San Francisco Forteans created their own groups, their own language. But, that did not mean they were ignorant of science. There was trade, most obviously in the Forteans collecting data, but the trade went both ways, and Forteans injected ideas into the scientific mainstream, as well.
