Charles Fort

[owen j mcgrann]

has it ever bothered anyone else that there can logically be no such thing 
as a true skeptic?  a pure anti-dogmatist is still dogmatic in his 
anti-dogmatism.  a skeptic in the tradition of pyrrho would simply reduce 
himself to a state of equipollence and cease doing anything at all, thus 
pushing himself into an esoteric and solipsistic reality and cutting 
himself off from interaction and discourse with his fellow human 
beings.  that there is written evidence of pyrrhonian skepticism is proof 
enough against it.

as far as anti-dogmatism goes, i think the most articulate advocates could 
be kierkegaard and nietzsche, both of whom were rebelling against hegelian 
dogmatic idealism.  as far as i can tell (i've read through all of pynchon 
but once), pynchon would endorse their stance on dogmatism: a firm stance 
against systemization and codification and the acceptance of the 
provisional status of knowledge.  thus, the question of "real" or "unreal" 
need not be addressed in terms of an ultimate, final answer - an answer we 
might never know given human epistemic ability.  skepticism, then, only 
works as far as this moderated doubt of dogmatics.

just a thought.


At 05:31 PM 8/19/2002 -0400, Terrance wrote:
>http://skepdic.com/fortean.html
>
>Charles Fort (1874-1932) fancied himself a true Skeptic, one who
>opposes all forms of dogmatism, believes nothing, and does not take a
>position on anything. He claimed to be an "intermediatist," one who
>believes nothing is real and nothing is unreal, that "all phenomena are
>approximations one way or the other between realness and unrealness."
>Actually, he was an anti-dogmatist who collected weird and bizarre
>stories.
>Fort spent a good part of his adult life in the New York City public
>library examining newspapers, magazines, and scientific journals.

- owen

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