Fortean Metaphysics

[Mountain Crown]

Has Charles Fort's Ontology which prefaces The Book of the Damned ever been discussed here or anywhere else?

Any thoughts?

 

[Laura]

It would help if you would transcribe it into your post so everyone would know exactly what you are talking about!

 

[PepperFritz]

Has Charles Fort's Ontology which prefaces The Book of the Damned ever been discussed here or anywhere else?

If you use the "Search" function at the top of the page, and enter "Charles Fort", you will find a number of threads/posts that either discuss and/or reference him.

 

[Mountain Crown]

Good idea, Laura. Why didn't I think of that?

[quote author=The Book of the Damned]
It is our expression that the flux between that which isn’t and that which won’t be,
or the state that is commonly and absurdly called “existence,” is a rhythm of heavens and hells:
that the damned won’t stay damned; that salvation only precedes perdition. The inference is that some
day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels. Then the sub-inference is that some
later day, back they’ll go whence they came.

It is our expression that nothing can attempt to be, except by attempting to exclude
something else: that that which is commonly called “being” is a state that is wrought
more or less definitely proportionately to the appearance of positive difference between
that which is included and that which is excluded.

But it is our expression that there are no positive differences: that all things are like a mouse
and a bug in the heart of a cheese. Mouse and a bug: no two things could seem more unlike.
They’re there a week, or they stay there a month: both are then only transmutations of
cheese. I think we’re all bugs and mice, and are only different expressions of an all-inclusive
cheese.

Or that red is not positively different from yellow: is only another degree of whatever vibrancy
yellow is a degree of: that red and yellow are continuous, or that they merge in orange.
So then that, if, upon the basis of yellowness and redness, Science should attempt to classify
all phenomena, including all red things as veritable, and excluding all yellow things as false or
illusory, the demarcation would have to be false and arbitrary, because things colored orange,
constituting continuity, would belong on both sides of the attempted border-line.

As we go along, we shall be impressed with this:

That no basis for classification, or inclusion and exclusion, more reasonable than that of redness
and yellowness has ever been conceived of.

Science has, by appeal to various bases, included a multitude of data. Had it not done so,
there would be nothing with which to seem to be. Science has, by appeal to various bases,
excluded a multitude of data. Then, if redness is continuous with yellowness: if every basis of
admission is continuous with every basis of exclusion, Science must have excluded some
things that are continuous with the accepted. In redness and yellowness, which merge in
orangeness, we typify all tests, all standards, all means of forming an opinion—
Or that any positive opinion upon any subject is illusion built upon the fallacy that there are
positive differences to judge by—

That the quest of all intellection has been for something—a fact, a basis, a generalization,
law, formula, a major premise that is positive: that the best that has ever been done has been
to say that some things are self-evident—whereas, by evidence we mean the support of
something else—

That this is the quest; but that it has never been attained; but that Science has acted, ruled,
pronounced, and condemned as if it had been attained.

What is a house?

It is not possible to say what anything is, as positively distinguished from anything else, if
there are no positive differences.

A barn is a house, if one lives in it. If residence constitutes houseness, because style of architecture
does not, then a bird’s nest is a house: and human occupancy is not the standard to
judge by, because we speak of dogs’ houses; nor material, because we speak of snow houses
of Eskimos—or a shell is a house to a hermit crab—or was to the mollusk that made it—or
things seemingly so positively different as the White House at Washington and a shell on the
seashore are seen to be continuous.

So no one has ever been able to say what electricity is, for instance. It isn’t anything, as positively
distinguished from heat or magnetism or life. Metaphysicians and theologians and biologists
have tried to define life. They have failed, because, in a positive sense, there is nothing
to define: there is no phenomenon of life that is not, to some degree, manifest in chemism,
magnetism, astronomic motions.

White coral islands in a dark blue sea.

Their seeming of distinctness: the seeming of individuality, or of positive difference one from
another—but all are only projections from the same sea bottom. The difference between sea
and land is not positive. In all water there is some earth: in all earth there is some water.
So then that all seeming things are not things at all, if all are inter-continuous, any more than
is the leg of a table a thing in itself, if it is only a projection from something else: that not one
of us is a real person, if, physically, we’re continuous with environment; if, psychically, there is
nothing to us but expression of relation to environment.

Our general expression has two aspects:

Conventional monism, or that all “things” that seem to have identity of their own are only
islands that are projections from something underlying, and have no real outlines of their own.
But that all “things,” though only projections, are projections that are striving to break away
from the underlying that denies them identity of their own.

I conceive of one inter-continuous nexus, in which and of which all seeming things are only
different expressions, but in which all things are localizations of one attempt to break away
and become real things, or to establish entity or positive difference or final demarcation or
unmodified independence—or personality or soul, as it is called in human phenomena—

That anything that tries to establish itself as a real, or positive, or absolute system, government,
organization, self, soul, entity, individuality, can so attempt only by drawing a line about
itself, or about the inclusions that constitute itself, and damning or excluding, or breaking
away from, all other “things”:

That, if it does not so act, it cannot seem to be;

That, if it does so act, it falsely and arbitrarily and futilely and disastrously acts; just as would
one who draws a circle in the sea, including a few waves, saying that the other waves, with
which the included are continuous, are positively different, and stakes his life upon maintaining
that the admitted and the damned are positively different.

Our expression is that our whole existence is animation of the local by an ideal that is realizable
only in the universal:

That, if all exclusions are false, because always are included and excluded continuous: that if
all seeming of existence perceptible to us is the product of exclusion, there is nothing that is
perceptible to us that really is: that only the universal can really be.
Our especial interest is in modern science as a manifestation of this one ideal or purpose or
process:

That it has falsely excluded, because there are no positive standards to judge by: that it has
excluded things that, by its own pseudostandards, have as much right to come in as have the
chosen.

Our general expression:

That the state that is commonly and absurdly called “existence,” is a flow, or a current, or an
attempt, from negativeness to positiveness, and is intermediate to both.
By positiveness we mean:

Harmony, equilibrium, order, regularity, stability, consistency, unity, realness, system, government,
organization, liberty, independence, soul, self, personality, entity, individuality, truth,
beauty, justice, perfection, definiteness—

That all that is called development, progress, or evolution is movement toward, or attempt
toward, this state for which, or for aspects of which, there are so many names, all of which
are summed up in the one word “positiveness.”

At first this summing up may not be very readily acceptable. At first it may seem that all these
words are not synonyms: that “harmony” may mean “order,” but that by “independence,” for
instance, we do not mean “truth,” or that by “stability” we do not mean “beauty,” or “system,” or
“justice.”

I conceive of one inter-continuous nexus, which expresses itself in astronomic phenomena,
and chemic, biologic, psychic, sociologic: that it is everywhere striving to localize positiveness:
that to this attempt in various fields of phenomena—which are only quasidifferent—we give
different names.We speak of the “system” of the planets, and not of their “government”: but in
considering a store, for instance, and its management, we see that the words are interchangeable.
It used to be customary to speak of chemic equilibrium, but not of social equilibrium:
that false demarcation has been broken down.We shall see that by all these words we
mean the same state. As every-day conveniences, or in terms of common illusions, of course,
they are not synonyms. To a child an earth worm is not an animal. It is to the biologist.

By “beauty,” I mean that which seems complete.

Obversely, that the incomplete, or the mutilated, is the ugly.

Venus de Milo.

To a child she is ugly.

When a mind adjusts to thinking of her as a completeness, even though, by physiologic standards,
incomplete, she is beautiful.

A hand thought of only as a hand, may seem beautiful.
Found on a battlefield—obviously a part—not beautiful.
But everything in our experience is only a part of something else that in turn is only a part of
still something else—or that there is nothing beautiful in our experience: only appearances
that are intermediate to beauty and ugliness—that only universality is complete: that only the
complete is the beautiful: that every attempt to achieve beauty is an attempt to give to the
local the attribute of the universal.

By stability, we mean the immovable and the unaffected. But all seeming things are only reactions
to something else. Stability, too, then, can be only the universal, or that besides which
there is nothing else. Though some things seem to have—or have—higher approximations to
stability than have others, there are, in our experience, only various degrees of intermediateness
to stability and instability. Every man, then, who works for stability under its various
names of “permanency,” “survival,” duration,” is striving to localize in something the state that
is realizable only in the universal.

By independence, entity, and individuality, I can mean only that besides which there is nothing
else, if given only two things, they must be continuous and mutually affective, if everything is
only a reaction to something else, and any two things would be destructive of each other’s
independence, entity, or individuality.

All attempted organizations and systems and consistencies, some approximating far higher
than others, but all only intermediate to Order and Disorder, fail eventually because of their
relations with outside forces. All are attempted completenesses. If to all local phenomena
there are always outside forces, these attempts, too, are realizable only in the state of com-
pleteness, or that to which there are no outside forces.

Or that all these words are synonyms, all meaning the state that we call the positive state—

That our whole “existence” is a striving for the positive state.

The amazing paradox of it all:

That all things are trying to become the universal by excluding other things.

That there is only this one process, and that it does animate all expressions, in all fields of
phenomena, of that which we think of as one inter-continuous nexus:
The religious and their idea or ideal of the soul. They mean distinct, stable entity, or a state
that is independent, and not a mere flux of vibrations or complex of reactions to environment,
continuous with environment, merging away with an infinitude of other interdependent complexes.
But the only thing that would not merge away into something else would be that besides
which there is nothing else.

That Truth is only another name for the positive state, or that the quest for Truth is the attempt
to achieve positiveness:

Scientists who have thought that they were seeking Truth, but who were trying to find out
astronomic, or chemic, or biologic truths. But Truth is that besides which there is nothing:
nothing to modify it, nothing to question it, nothing to form an exception: the all-inclusive, the
complete—

By Truth I mean the Universal.

So chemists have sought the true, or the real, and have always failed in their endeavors,
because of the outside relations of chemical phenomena: have failed in the sense that never
has a chemical law, without exceptions, been discovered: because chemistry is continuous
with astronomy, physics, biology— For instance, if the sun should greatly change its distance
from this earth, and if human life could survive, the familiar chemic formulas would no longer
work out: a new science of chemistry would have to be learned—

Or that all attempts to find Truth in the special are attempts to find the universal in the local.
And artists and their striving for positiveness, under the name of “harmony”—but their pigments
that are oxydizing, or are responding to a deranging environment—or the strings of
musical instruments that are differently and disturbingly adjusting to outside chemic and thermal
and gravitational forces—again and again this oneness of all ideals, and that it is the
attempt to be, or to achieve, locally, that which is realizable only universally. In our experience
there is only intermediateness to harmony and discord. Harmony is that besides which there
are no outside forces.

And nations that have fought with only one motive: for individuality, or entity, or to be real, final
nations, not subordinate to, or parts of, other nations. And that nothing but intermediateness
has ever been attained, and that history is record of failures of this one attempt, because
there always have been outside forces, or other nations contending for the same goal.
As to physical things, chemic, mineralogic, astronomic, it is not customary to say that they act
to achieve Truth or Entity, but it is understood that all motions are toward Equilibrium: that
there is no motion except toward Equilibrium, of course always away from some other approximation
to Equilibrium.

All biologic phenomena act to adjust: there are no biologic actions other than adjustments.
Adjustment is another name for Equilibrium. Equilibrium is the Universal, or that which has
nothing external to derange it.

But that all that we call “being” is motion: and that all motion is the expression, not of equilibrium,
but of equilibrating, or of equilibirium unattained: that life-motions are expressions of equilibrium
unattained: that all thought relates to the unattained: that to have what is called being
in our quasi-state, is not to be in the positive sense, or is to be intermediate to Equilibrium
and Inequilibrium.

So then:

That all phenomena in our intermediate state, or quasi-state, represent this one attempt to
organize, stabilize, harmonize, individualize—or to positivize, or to become real:
That only to have seeming is to express failure or intermediateness to final failure and final
success;

That every attempt—that is observable—is defeated by Continuity, or by outside forces—or by
the excluded that are continuous with the included:

That our whole “existence” is an attempt by the relative to be the absolute, or by the local to
be the universal.

In this book, my interest is in this attempt as manifested in modern science:

That it has attempted to be real, true, final, complete, absolute:
That, if the seeming of being, here, in our quasi-state, is the product of exclusion that is
always false and arbitrary, if always are included and excluded continuous, the whole seeming
system, or entity, of modern science is only quasi-system, or quasi-entity, wrought by the
same false and arbitrary process as that by which the still less positive system that preceded
it, or the theological system, wrought the illusion of its being.[/quote]

 

[Mountain Crown]

Consequently, his epistemological remarks:

As to the logic of our expressions to come—
That there is only quasi-logic in our mode of seeming:
That nothing ever has been proved—
Because there is nothing to prove.

When I say that there is nothing to prove, I mean that to those who accept Continuity, or the
merging away of all phenomena into other phenomena, without positive demarcations one
from another, there is, in a positive sense, no one thing. There is nothing to prove.
For instance nothing can be proved to be an animal—because animalness and vegetableness
are not positively different. There are some expressions of life that are as much vegetable as
animal, or that represent the merging of animalness and vegetableness. There is then no positive
test, standard, criterion, means of forming an opinion. As distinct from vegetables, animals
do not exist. There is nothing to prove. Nothing could be proved to be good, for instance.
There is nothing in our “existence” that is good, in a positive sense, or as really outlined from
evil. If to forgive be good in times of peace, it is evil in wartime. There is nothing to prove:
good in our experience is continuous with, or is only another aspect of evil.

As to what I’m trying to do now—I accept only. If I can’t see universally, I only localize.
So, of course then, that nothing ever has been proved:
That theological pronouncements are as much open to doubt as ever they were, but that, by a
hypnotizing process, they became dominant over the majority of minds in their era;
That, in a succeeding era, the laws, dogmas, formulas, principles, of materialistic science
never were proved, because they are only localizations simulating the universal; but that the
leading minds of their era of dominance were hypnotized into more or less firmly believing
them.

Newton’s three laws, and that they are attempts to achieve positiveness, or to defy and break
Continuity, and are as unreal as are all other attempts to localize the universal:
That, if every observable body is continuous, mediately or immediately, with all other bodies, it
cannot be influenced only by its own inertia, so that there is noway of knowing what the phenomena
of inertia may be; that, if all things are reacting to an infinitude of forces, there is no
way of knowing what the effects of only one impressed force would be; that if every reaction is
continuous with its action, it cannot be conceived of as a whole, and that there is no way of
conceiving what it might be equal and opposite to—

Or that Newton’s three laws are three articles of faith;

Or that demons and angels and inertial and reactions are all mythological characters;
But that, in their eras of dominance, they were almost as firmly believed in as if they had been
proved.

Enormities and preposterousnesses will march.
They will be “proved” as well as Moses or Darwin or Lyell ever “proved” anything.
We substitute acceptance for belief.

Cells of an embryo take on different appearances in different eras.

The more firmly established, the more difficult to change.
That social organism is embryonic.
That firmly to believe is to impede development.
That only temporarily to accept is to facilitate.

But:
Except that we substitute acceptance for belief, our methods will be the conventional methods;
the means by which every belief has been formulated and supported: or our methods will
be the methods of theologians and savages and scientists and children. Because, if all phenomena
are continuous, there can be no positively different methods. By the inconclusive
means and methods of cardinals and fortune tellers and evolutionists and peasants, methods
which must be inconclusive, if they relate always to the local, and if there is nothing local to
conclude, we shall write this book.

If it function as an expression of its era, it will prevail.
All sciences begin with attempts to define.
Nothing ever has been defined.
Because there is nothing to define.
Darwin wrote The Origin of Species.
He was never able to tell what he meant by a “species.

It is not possible to define.
Nothing has ever been finally found out.
Because there is nothing final to find out.
It’s like looking for a needle that no one ever lost in a haystack that never was—
But that all scientific attempts really to find out something, whereas really there is nothing to
find out, are attempts, themselves, really to be something.
A seeker of Truth. He will never find it. But the dimmest of possibilities—he may himself
become Truth.

Or that science is more than an inquiry:
That it is a pseudo-construction, or a quasi-organization: that it is an attempt to break away
and locally establish harmony, stability, equilibrium, consistency, entity—
Dimmest of possibilities—that it may succeed.

That ours is a pseudo-existence, and that all appearances in it partake of its essential fictitiousness—
But that some appearances approximate far more highly to the positive state than do others.
We conceive of all “things” as occupying gradations, or steps in series between positiveness
and negativeness, or realness and unrealness: that some seeming things are more nearly
consistent, just, beautiful, unified, individual, harmonious, stable—than others.
We are not realists.We are not idealists.We are intermediatists —that nothing is real, but that
nothing is unreal: that all phenomena are approximations one way or the other between realness
and unrealness.

His summary:

So then:
That our whole quasi-existence is an intermediate stage between positiveness and negativeness
or realness and unrealness.
Like purgatory, I think.
But in our summing up, which was very sketchily done, we omitted to make clear that
Realness is an aspect of the positive state.
By Realness, I mean that which does not merge away into something else, and that which is
not partly something else: that which is not a reaction to, or an imitation of, something else.
By a real hero, we mean one who is not partly a coward, or whose actions and motives do
not merge away into cowardice. But, if in Continuity, all things do merge, by Realness, I mean
the Universal, besides which there is nothing with which to merge.

That, though the local might be universalized, it is not conceivable that the universal can be
localized: but that high approximations there may be, and that these approximate successes
may be translated out of Intermediateness into Realness—quite as, in a relative sense, the
industrial world recruits itself by translating out of unrealness, or out of the seemingly less real
imaginings of inventors, machines which seem, when set up in factories, to have more of
Realness than they had when only imagined.

That all progress, if all progress is toward stability, organization, harmony, consistency, or positiveness,
is the attempt to become real.

So, then, in general metaphysical terms, our expression is that, like a purgatory, all that is
commonly called “existence,” which we call Intermediateness, is quasi-existence, neither real
nor unreal, but expression of attempt to become real, or to generate for or recruit a real existence.

Our acceptance is that Science, though usually thought of so specifically, or in its own local
terms, usually supposed to be a prying into old bones, bugs, unsavory messes, is an expression
of this one spirit animating all Intermediateness: that, if Science could absolutely exclude
all data but its own present data, or that which is assimilable with the present quasi-organization,
it would be a real system, with positively definite outlines—it would be real.
Its seeming approximation to consistency, stability, system— positiveness or realness—is sustained
by damning the irreconcilable or the unassimilable—

All would be well.
All would be heavenly—
If the damned would only stay damned.

Charles Fort obviously was not a "part-time" thinker.

 

[Mountain Crown]

Clearly, Fort isn't claiming that a limited perception faculty, or illusion, or false teaching precludes one from apprehending reality. He claims that the reality of individuated existence itself is relative:

That our whole quasi-existence is an intermediate stage between positiveness and negativeness
or realness and unrealness. . .

There is nothing to prove. . . that nothing ever has been proved. . .

Regarding the need for the objective, is there a slippery slope around the corner?