The Book of the Damned

This careful, exhaustive, often astonishing chronicle of anomalous phenomena dismissed by conventional science is Charles Fort’s groundbreaking foray into the field of ＂weird science.＂ Fort looked at science as a dogmatic attempt to explain phenomena in prefabricated and often constrictive terms. It was the anomalies, the excluded, or what Fort called ＂the damned＂ at the fringes of science that offered the most intriguing windows to the future of human insight.To tweak stodgy scientists, Fort’s Book of the Damned recounts hundreds of strange situations that he felt eluded scientific explanation-from black rain to six-legged lambs-many of which were reported in mainstream scientific publications of the time. Scientists, he asserted, often argued according to their own beliefs rather than the rules of evidence and ignored inconvenient facts that conflicted with their preferred theories. In this view he anticipated some of the arguments that Thomas Kuhn would later advance in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.While holding the distinct position of being called both an enemy of science and an enemy of dogma, Fort challenged the ＂closed minds＂ of established scientists and created a popular classic that has inspired legions of admirers.

Charles Fort (1874-1932) was an amateur naturalist and a reporter who spent many years in the New York Public Library and the British Museum researching scientific literature. He coined the word ＂teleportation,＂ promoted early theories of the universe as an organism, and was among the first to study the reported sightings of ＂unidentified flying objects.＂