Charles Fort (1874-1932) was a fascinating figure that dared to challenge the scientific status quo. Fort specialized in the collection data that he declared to be "damned" because it refused to fit in the acceptable range of scientific orthodoxy.
Here are some of the stated goals of his eponymous Fortean Society:
-
To remove the halo from the head of Science.
-
To make human beings think.
-
To destroy scientists' faith in their own works and thus force a general return to the truly scientific principle of "temporary acceptance".
-
To inform the general public of the political and self-preservative character of most work done under the ambiguous cloak of "pure" science, principally astronomy and physics.
-
To inform the general public that the "cosmic order" Science pretends to have established in the flux of existence is simply a mental discipline imposed upon mankind as an expedient to enforce social and economic "order" under what must be--at longest--an ephemeral status quo.
-
To prevent scientists from further development of any hierarchy, Brain Trust, Court of Wisdom, authoritarian dictatorship of intelligence or learning, which would--if permitted--lead to a more powerful domination and consequent paralysis of human mentality than any ever imposed by any Church or State or Press in history, not excluding any of the ideologies current today.
-
To destroy awe for Authority, as such, in the youth of the world at as tender an age as possible.
-
To provide the means for the perpetuation of dissent from any and all dogmas as long as time shall last.
What do you think? Are we not the spiritual successors, the very embodiment of the aims of the Fortean Society from a century ago?
They were heavily maligned in their time, as are we. We dare to challenge the $cientific orthodoxy, because it must be challenged.
Here are the published works of Charles Fort:
The Book of the Damned (1919)
New Lands (1923)
Lo! (1931)
Wild Talents (1932)
This is actually good for science. The consensus oriented, publish or perish cultured, funding-seeking, Institution of Science(TM) today actually gets in the way of breakthroughs (one recent example: https://www.reuters.com/article/nobel-chemistry-idUSL5E7L51U620111005)
You'd think mathematics was safe from this attitude since they are the most careful about assumptions. But nope. Look at what was done to Georg Cantor.
This rings a bell..can you elaborate?
Yes certainly. Up until almost the end of nineteenth century, mathematics was pretty much based on constructive methods (i.e. a mathematical proof could not use any object that couldn't be defined in a finite number of steps).
Cantor introduced the idea of working with objects that were infinite (could never be defined in a finite number of steps eg: the complete decimal representation of pi - we can only calculate it till a finite number of places). Today his ideas form the foundations of all of standard mathematics.
But at the time, there were strong objections to it. Basically one group of mathematicians were so sold on their "ideology" of math should be that they publicly made personal attacks against him ("charlatan", "corruptor of youth" etc.). Dude suffered mental breakdowns and left his work/job to start lecturing in philosophy instead. Died in poverty in a sanatorium.
Sounds like 2020 in some ways: group gets scared of "dangerous" idea, cancels propagator of idea, propagator's personal life is ruined.
Fascinating, thank you so much. Something happened at the turn of the 20th century when new paradigms were suggested and aggressively and often violently repressed. This seems to have affected multiple fields, as the "traditionalists" fought tooth and nail to defense their anachronisms and irrelevancy.
I think we're still in the aftermath of this clash, over a century later. The Cantor stuff is fascinating!
Well it were repressed earlier too,but academic science was not so strong and establishment.