Talk:Charles Fort

Citation Needed
"Fort also had a small circle of literary friends and they would gather on occasion at various apartments, including his own, to drink and talk, which was tolerated by Anna." This is a very peculiar phrase. Do we know that Anna "tolerated" these gatherings? For all we know she enjoyed hosting her husband's friends. Methinks whoever wrote this phrase might be injecting their own personality in a place where objectivity and NPOV is called for. Kerry (talk) 23:26, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

All the needed citations can be found in Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented The Supernatural, by Jim Steinmyer. Penguin 2008. 66.170.201.113 (talk) 20:14, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Untitled
I have added a bit to show the influence of Fort (usually subterranean) on contemporary philosophy of science. BScotland.

Fort as a "postmodern"
It seems to me that Fort was something of an early postmodern. Would this be a valid characterisation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.57.235.123 (talk) 04:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * No. Pernoctus (talk) 21:06, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

I think it's fairer and more accurate to typify Fort as a cultural visionary. He was interested in the same things that Umberto Eco or Thomas Pynchon would find interesting, but I don't necessarily think that he is "Post-Modern".67.0.213.91 (talk) 18:22, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

The guy who's whole thing was critiquing the cold objective pretense in the monism of science? Yeah, Fort was a huge postmodernist. Even had the polemic, meandering Continental style of writing. I don't know if it helps clean up this messy biographical article, but framing him as a postmodernist is definitely an accurate way to explain his critical philosophy. Titus Lucretius Carus (talk) 01:37, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Rain of fish
Actually, rain of meat, frog and fish are well stablished facts these days. They have happened recently, are documented and there are scientific explanations to account for them. The meat is basically cattle taken by a whirlwind and butchered in the sky. They are all frozen, which is indicative of the high altitudes they are taken to. 201.79.81.239 14:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

What? Gosh. But why are these "rains" so discriminating? Why don't we get rains of all sorts mixed together? And why not of frozen and butchered human beings rather than those hefty heifers? Wasn't it these puffed-up attempts at "scientific" explanation that Fort was in business to deflate? Squirrel Nutkin (talk) 00:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

POV?
This article has serious POV problems. Rather than claiming outright that Fort had a "poetic," or "passionate" style of writing (neither of which appear to be evident in the quotes you provided; mere epigrams), wouldn't it be preferable to indicate whether these claims are shared by his critics? Consistently throughout the article, fort's ideas are treated with opionated narrative rather than objective analysis. Case in point: "Sceptics and critics frequently misunderstand Fort in the face of these examples and consider him as credulous and naïve — he was not."

If someone does see this, I hope some relevant changes might be made. I am in no position to edit a page on which I am ill-informed on, but the article does need bit of neutralizing.

[aboved comment was unsigned but by User:68.126.211.12 ]


 * See my Browning example from the EB, below. You're really making a mountain out of a molehill, and I question the motives of some here who are so concerned that the article is "not NPOV".Pernoctus (talk)


 * I happened across this page and saw the statement you quoted above (before I even checked this page) and one other that I believe weren't even trying to remain object and changed them. There are probably lots of things like that that need fixing. I'll probably make some go throughs later. DreamGuy 02:35, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)


 * Still some serious issues with this article, but I don't know enough to fix it myself. Statements like "Curious and intelligent, the young Fort did not excel at school, though he was quite a wit and full of knowledge about the world – yet this was only a world he knew through books." are definitely not encyclopedic or NPOV. 67.189.75.44 (talk) 20:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, really? Let's have a look at the following brief example, on the poet Robert Browning: "In 1868–69 he published his greatest work, The Ring and the Book, based on the proceedings in a murder trial in Rome in 1698. Grand alike in plan and execution, it was at once received with enthusiasm, and Browning was established as one of the most important literary figures of the day. [...] Few poets have suffered more than Browning from hostile incomprehension or misplaced admiration, both arising very often from a failure to recognize the predominantly dramatic nature of his work."


 * That's from the Encyclopedia Britannica's current article on Browning. It makes the passage on Fort you object to look positively bland, by comparison. Does the Encyclopedia Britannica count as "encyclopedic"? Is it a "neutral" source, with adequately "NPOV" language?


 * Again, this "not NPOV" nonsense about the Fort article is just that, nonsense. What it really amounts to is a complaint that the article is not negative enough about Fort. Of course, like all Wikipedia articles, the article could be improved, but on the NPOV count, the editors should let it be. Pernoctus (talk) 21:22, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

I think that the Browning excerpt is a terrible example of biographical description in an encyclopedic style. It doesn't use quotes to demonstrate its assertions, it doesn't cite sources, and it indulges in glittering generalities instead of facts. However, it is a small excerpt that you have edited further. Those few sentences may have their place in a larger article.67.0.213.91 (talk) 18:30, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I did not cite the Browning excerpt as a sterling example of encyclopedic style, nor do I advocate that the Fort piece emulate it. I cited it to refute the notion that the Fort piece is egregiously "non-NPOV", especially in comparison to styles sometimes used in other, more reputable sources than Wikipedia. And yes, it is an excerpt, and is not representative of the piece as a whole. Pernoctus (talk) 17:40, 13 April 2014 (UTC)


 * A good critical approach to Charles Fort that could perhaps be quoted is the entry on CF in John Clute & Peter Nicholl's «Encyclopedia of Science Fiction», London: Orbit, 1993. It recognizes Fort's relevance (for SF and Fantasy writers) and justifies criticism of the author. The Wiki entry is really biased, and does need indeed "neutralizing!
 * JMMota, Coimbra, Portugal — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.81.69.71 (talk) 11:51, 4 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Translation: The article needs to be less neutral by being more critical of Fort. The complaints about neutrality here seem to me to be stealth attempts by Fort's detractors to attack him. Responsible editors should have none of it.


 * Further, aside from my comments, there's been no discussion or action regarding the alleged non-neutral POV nature of the article in nearly a year. I therefore suggest that the "neutrality" header on the main article be removed. If it isn't removed soon, and if there is no additional discussion, then I'll be glad to do it, once I've made closer acquaintance with Wikipedia's Byzantine array of rules and procedures. Pernoctus (talk) 21:17, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

I felt that the article was unnecessarily critical of Fort, particularly the section on his prose style.67.0.213.91 (talk) 18:24, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Fort, Forteana, Forteanism, Anomalous phenomenon and other Fortean topics
Coming to Wikipedia from a Fortean perspective, I believe it would be worthwhile to take a fresh look at taxonomy, because Forteana actually includes all of these areas (and many others) under its broader umbrella. Some things I would like to take on include: (1) Develop a new Forteana or Forteanism article and transfer some of the general Forteana amd Forteanism content sitting in Charles Fort there; (2) Consider merging Anomalous phenomena with new Forteana article; (3) create Category:Forteana and promote it above certain existing related categories such as Category:Paranormal phenomena. I anticipate community debate on this idea. Wikipedians coming from the classically skeptical perspective may not be very interested in Forteana and probably will not agree at all, for instance. For this reason I am interested in hearing input from other like-minded Forteans. &mdash; FJ | hello  20:10, May 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * I took it upon myself to create Category:Forteana and wrote my first official Forteana article called Medical oddities. I will venture into the Category talk:Forteana area and begin putting my feelers out to test the waters further, and would still appreciate any input. &mdash; FJ |  hello  20:30, May 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * Just to note that you haven't actually created the category - you've just categorised the articles. You actually have to edit Category:Forteana and put a brief description as to what the category is about first. --khaosworks 20:00, May 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * I've created the category. --khaosworks 21:16, May 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * Whoops, thank you for the catch! &mdash; FJ | hello  20:17, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Fort and Sherlock
See also a short story called "The Adventure of the Man Who Never Laughed" by J. N. Williamson (1997) in which, somewhat anachronisticly, Charles Fort and Sherlock Holmes correspond.

J.M.W.

Anna Filing
Shouldn't the Anna Filing article be merged with this one? She doesn't strike me as being notable enough to have a page of her own. —Meidosemme 01:37, 10 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Some of us believe that every soul who has ever lived is notable enough to have a page of their own, so long as that page remains purely NPOV. --Chr.K. 08:24, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Specious argument. If there is so little biographical information of note or relevance to the general public, then it is excess to include it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.0.213.91 (talk) 18:32, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Twin pages on books
A link provided in the page connects to The Book of the Damned; however, there is another, more detailed page concerning the same work, entitled Book of the Damned (more detailed, but inaccurate in title). These two should be merged. --Chr.K. 08:27, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Reorganization of "References" Section
I'd like to reorganize the "References" section along the following lines:


 * Books. Books primarily about Fort, or with chapters about Fort. Chiefly the books already at the top, with the addition of Bennett and Kaplan.


 * Articles. The two Kidd articles.


 * Others. Books such as Clark and Wilson, Chandler, and the comics.

I'd also standardize the appearance and information related to each reference (to the extent I can find the necessary information), and move the comments concerning Bennet and Kaplan next to those books (similar to Knight, Magin, and Pauwels & Bergier).

I'd appreciate anybody's thoughts before I undertake the reorganization. Thanks! — Malik Shabazz | Talk 20:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I've had a go at this section. Taken the comics out and created a "in popular culture" section with some other examples. It ha tightened things up nicely. I think your idea of splitting it up into books and articles makes sense (I'll look into getting the Ian Kidd "Who was Charles Fort?" online). I have moved Morning of the Magicians up to "Followers and fans of Fort" where it makes more sense but I don't like the title. Perhaps change it to "Influence" which seems more neutral.


 * Also I removed the following from that section:

The latter two books, by Bennett and Kaplan, are arguably not worth reading: Bennett's is so idiosyncratic as to be unrecognisable as anything resembling Fort, and Kaplan's book is a collection of extended quotations, with unprofitably brief and unhelpful 'introductions'.

The Science Fiction book Into the Alternate Universe (1964) by A. Bertram Chandler seems to be inspired by Fort's idea of the "Super-Sargasso Sea", and depicts an actual such "Sea" in space - where the protagonist discovers many lost spaceships and ocean-going ones, some fictional and some historical, which have "fallen through a dimensional barrier".


 * The former appear to violate WP:NPOV and the latter looks to be speculation unless someone can prove it. In place of the former there are reviews like this which could be referenced if people want to get an idea of what the book is like. (Emperor 12:41, 8 May 2007 (UTC))


 * The Ian Kidd article is online and I've linked it in from the entry. (Emperor 13:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC))


 * Just a note to say I have queried the removal of the Fortean Times references (here and elsewhere, but especially here as a lot was removed including non-FT material) on the grounds of spamming. If there was a majority of editors here that felt they should be removed then fair enough but this all seems rather arbitrary. (Emperor 19:50, 23 May 2007 (UTC))

Dennis Publishing spam on Wikipedia
IP addresses 194.205.219.0 - 194.205.219.255 are registered to Dennis Publishing.

Domains spammed:
 * http://www.bizarremag.com
 * http://www.pokerplayermagazine.co.uk
 * http://www.forteantimes.com
 * http://www.totalgambler.com
 * http://www.pcpro.co.uk
 * http://www.totalgambler.com
 * http://www.pcpro.co.uk
 * http://www.pcpro.co.uk
 * http://www.pcpro.co.uk


 * Spam sock accounts

--Hu12 19:55, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Or to summarise the above someone from a Dennis Publishing IP address has been adding a lot of links to Dennis titles and caused spamming concerns. Due to WP:COI reasons I can't add them back but the edit is - as mentioned another reference went, Kaplan The Damned Universe of Charles Fort. I don't know that one so can't really comment on adding it back in. As I said above it is up to the editors of the entry to decide what is relevant, however, could I just point out that the Fortean Times site moved the other day and the links are broken. I checked a couple and they are there but have moved. I have been told this will be addressed (I hope so as I have a lot of broken bookmarks at the moment) but bear it in mind if you do anything as it'd be pointless adding back a broken link ;) (Emperor 20:58, 23 May 2007 (UTC))

Spam filter
I have put nowiki tags around http://www.pokerplayermagazine.co.uk on this talk page because edits to this talk page were rejected by the spam filter.--Patrick (talk) 13:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Missing material - editing error?
There appears to be some missing material in the fourth paragraph of the Biography section. It looks like possibly a botched edit. I've put a note about it in the article. Maybe somebody will notice it and fix it. Lou Sander (talk) 15:57, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Well spotted - looking back through the edits it looks like a chunk was snipped out at random, along with other messy edits . Editors clearly stepped in to tidy it up but it should have been reverted. Your best bet is to take the original content and put it back in (just check for more recent additions - although it looks to be OK). (Emperor (talk) 16:13, 13 March 2008 (UTC))


 * I did a quick job of fixing it, though the whole section still doesn't look quite right to my non-expert eyes. Lou Sander (talk) 19:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that has done the job - good stuff. (Emperor (talk) 21:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC))

Fort's Notes
There seems to be a discrepancy here...

Last line of Biography: His more than 60,000 notes were donated to the New York Public Library.

Second paragraph of Fort and the Unexplained > Overview: ...he is said to have compiled as many as 40,000 notes, though there were no doubt many more than this. The notes were kept on cards in shoeboxes. They were taken on small squares of paper, in a cramped shorthand of Fort's own invention, and some of them survive today in the collections of the University of Pennsylvania.

It's been there since the September 6, 2006 edit.

Elmyr (talk) 06:06, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Recursive Link
The link "Forteana" under "See Also" refers back to this page; in other words, the page links to itself. I assume this isn't intentional for any reason? --DustFormsWords (talk) 23:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it's probably an old link to an article which became a redirect. Get rid of it if you like. Totnesmartin (talk) 10:21, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Done DustFormsWords (talk) 03:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Citation provided
In the Popular Culture section it says [citation needed] for the following passge, to which I've added two new sentences.

"Paul Thomas Anderson, the director and writer of the critically acclaimed film Magnolia, is a fan of Fort and many aspects of the film were inspired by his books. Character Stanley Spector has one of Fort's books in the library scene. Frogs falling from the sky at the film's climax is a phenomenon Fort wrote about.[citation needed]"

This can be verified by watching the film or visiting the trivia section of its imdb.com entry. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175880/trivia where it states:

One of the books Stanley is reading at the library is about scientist Charles Fort, who is noted for his work expanding the boundaries of scientific research to include strange phenomena such as those featured in the film.

The title "Magnolia" not only refers to Magnolia Blvd in LA, where much of the movie takes place, but is also similar to the term Charles Fort (who is referenced many places in this movie) coined for a hypothetical region where things that fall from the sky come from - "Magonia".

Paul Thomas Anderson has said that he was unaware that the story of frogs falling from the sky is in the Bible (he took it from Charles Fort's writing) when he wrote the screenplay. Christinebeatty (talk) 03:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)Christinebeatty —Preceding unsigned comment added by Christinebeatty (talk • contribs) 04:13, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

No closing square bracket to match "[Harry Leon Wilson".
Revision as of 15:41, 21 February 2009

TootsMojo

(founders of the Fortean Society)

(Difference between this and previous revision)

The board of Founders included Dreiser, Hecht, Booth Tarkington, Aaron Sussman, John Cowper Powys, the former editor of "Puck" [Harry Leon Wilson, Woolcott and J. David Stern.

There is no closing square bracket to match the open square bracket before "Harry Leon Wilson". If we remove the bracket, the sentence would say that Harry Leon Wilson was a former editor of "Puck". But the article on "Puck" does not mention Wilson. Where did TootsMojo get the board of Founders? --Cootiequits (talk) 18:26, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Life in the Bronx
"Like most good Bronx residents, Fort would frequent the nearby parks where he would sift through piles of his clippings."

I grew up in the Bronx, and I never frequented nearby parks to sift through piles of clippings. Perhaps I wasn't a good Bronx resident. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.147.119.14 (talk) 22:16, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps so, only you can judge. The parks in the Bronx serve as a backyard to most everyone, clippers or not. Fort often wrote about his excursions to the parks, which were as much a part of his latter daily life as was his forays to the New York Public Library. 216.240.101.40 (talk) 05:52, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Popular culture/legacy
I can see why the popular culture section was removed as it had got horribly bloated with some very trivial mentions but some of those (the much earlier core, that I had a hand in) seem worth mentioning but possibly as part of his legacy rather than simply a pop culture section (which are largely discouraged: WP:POPCULTURE). Thoughts? (Emperor (talk) 02:48, 8 January 2010 (UTC))


 * Great idea, if they can be tied into the text. --Malleus Fatuorum 02:57, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Books Written
This article says Charles Fort wrote four books, but the info about him in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal_phenomena#Anecdotal_approach says he wrote seven, but only four survived. Which claim is true, or are they both wrong?--TechnoDanny (talk) 18:13, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Spurious quote
In the section "The Forteans," there is a line that reads "In Chapter 1 of Book of the Damned, Fort states that the ideal is to be neither a 'True Believer' nor a total 'Skeptic' but 'that the truth lies somewhere in between'."

This might be a reasonably fair summary of Fort's position, but that quote appears nowhere in The Book of the Damned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.111.162.65 (talk) 22:37, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I have a Kindle version of The Book of the Damned and did a search for "skeptic" and there were no occurances. I also tried searching for other words in the sentence, in case there was some quote that was more or less like that but with different spelling or other minor differences and didn't find anything so I think the appropriate thing to do is just remove that paragraph which I just did. Thanks for spotting it. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 16:49, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Possible Citation
Under: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fort#Biography

The last sentence of the fifth paragraph seems to require a citation:

"The title referred to "damned" data that Fort collected, phenomena for which science could not account and was thus rejected or ignored.[citation needed]"

Such a citation may be:

"When The Book of the Damned was completed, wary editors read the opening lines and held their noses: A procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded. Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed, will march. You'll read them – or they'll march. Some of them livid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten."

From:

Disneyland of the Gods, Copyright © 1988 by John A. Keel

Spiffytoad (talk) 09:38, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

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