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BOOK OF THE DAMNED
By Charles Fort
CHAPTER: 01,
02, 03,
04, 05,
06, 07,
08, 09,
10, 11,
12, 13,
14, 15,
16, 17,
18, 19,
20, 21,
22, 23,
24, 25,
26, 27,
28
IN the autumn of 1883, and for years afterward, occurred
brilliant-colored sunsets, such as had never been seen before, within the memory
of all observers. Also there were blue moons.
I think that one is likely to smile incredulously at the
notion of blue moons. Nevertheless they were as common as were green suns in
1883.
Science had to account for these unconventionalities. Such
publications as Nature and Knowledge were besieged with
inquiries.
I suppose, in Alaska and in the South Sea Islands, all the
medicine men were similarly upon trial.
Something had to be thought of.
Upon the 28th of August, 1883, the volcano of Krakatoa, of the
Straits of Sunda, had blown up.
Terrific.
We're told that the sound was heard 2,000 miles, and that
36,380 persons were killed. Seems just a little unscientific, or impositive, to
me: marvel to me we're not told 2,163 miles and 36,387 persons. The volume of
smoke that went up must have been visible to other planets--or, tormented with
our crawlings and scurryings, the earth complained to Mars; swore a vast black
oath at us.
In all text-books that mention this occurrence--no exception
so far so I have read--it is said that the extraordinary atmospheric effects of
1883 were first noticed in the last of August or the first of September.
That makes a difficulty for us.
It is said that these phenomena were caused by particles of
volcanic dust that were cast high in the air by Krakatoa.
This is the explanation that was agreed upon in 1883 --
But for seven years the atmospheric phenomena continued --
Except that, in the seven, there was a lapse of several
years -- and where was the volcanic dust all that time?
You'd think that such a question as that would make trouble?
Then you haven't studied hypnosis. You have never tried to
demonstrate to a hypnotic that a table is not a hippopotamus. According to our
general acceptance, it would be impossible to demonstrate such a thing. Point
out a hundred reasons for saying that a hippopotamus is not a table: you'll end
up agreeing that neither is a table a table -- it only seems to be a table. Well,
that's what the hippopotamus seems to be. So how can you prove that something is
not something else, when neither is something else some other thing? There's
nothing to prove.
This is one of the profundities that we advertised in advance.
You can oppose an absurdity only with some other absurdity.
But Science is established preposterousness. We divide all intellection: the
obviously preposterous and the established.
But Krakatoa: that's the explanation that the scientists gave.
I don't know what whopper the medicine men told.
We see, from the start, the very strong inclination of science
to deny, as much as it can, external relations of this earth.
This book is an assemblage of data of external relations of
this earth. We take the position that our data have been damned, upon no
consideration for individual merits or demerits, but in conformity with a
general attempt to hold out for isolation of this earth. This is attempted
positiveness. We take the position that science can no more succeed than, in a
similar endeavor, could the Chinese, or than could the United States. So then,
with only pseudo-consideration of the phenomena of 1883, or as an expression of
positivism in its aspect of isolation, or unrelatedness, scientists have
perpetrated such an enormity as suspension of volcanic dust seven years in the
air -- disregarding the lapse of several years -- rather than to admit the arrival
of dust from somewhere beyond this earth. Not that scientists themselves have
ever achieved positiveness, in its aspect of unitedness, among themselves --
because Nordenskiold, before 1883, wrote a great deal upon his
theory of cosmic dust, and Prof. Cleveland Abbe contended against the Krakatoan
explanation -- but that this is the orthodoxy of the main body of scientists.
My own chief reason for indignation here:
That this preposterous explanation interferes with some of my
own enormities.
It would cost me too much explaining, if I should have to
admit that this earth's atmosphere has such sustaining power.
Later, we shall have data of things that have gone up in the
air and that have stayed up -- somewhere -- weeks -- months -- but not by the sustaining
power of the earth's atmosphere. For instance, the turtle of Vicksburg. It seems
to me that it would be ridiculous to think of a good-sized turtle hanging, for
three or four months, upheld only by the air, over the town of Vicksburg. When
it comes to the horse and the barn -- I think that they'll be classics some day,
but I can never accept that a horse and a barn could float several months in
this earth's atmosphere.
The orthodox explanation:
See the Report of the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal
Society. It comes out absolutely for the orthodox explanation -- absolutely
and beautifully, also expensively. There are 492 pages in the
"Report," and 40 plates, some of them marvellously colored. It was
issued after an investigation that took five years. You couldn't think of
anything done more efficiently, artistically, authoritatively. The mathematical
parts are especially impressive: distribution of the dust of Krakatoa; velocity
of translation and rates of subsidence; altitudes and persistences --
Annual Register, 1883-105:
That the atmospheric effects that have been attributed to
Krakatoa were seen in Trinidad before the eruption occurred;
Knowledge, 5-418:
That they were seen in Natal, South Africa, six months before
the eruption.
* * *
Inertia and its inhospitality.
Or raw meat should not be fed to babies.
We shall have a few data initiatorily.
I fear me that the horse and the barn were a little extreme
for our budding liberalities.
The outrageous is the reasonable, if introduced politely.
Hailstones, for instance. One reads in the newspapers of
hailstones the size of hens' eggs. One smiles. Nevertheless I will engage to
list one hundred instances, from the Monthly Weather Review, of
hailstones the size of hens' eggs. There is an account in Nature, Nov.
1, 1894, of hailstones that weighed almost two pounds each. See Chambers'
Encyclopedia for three-pounders. Report of the Smithsonian Institution,
1870-479--two-pounders authenticated, and six-pounders reported. At Seringapatam,
India, about the year 1800, fell a hailstone --
I fear me, I fear me: this is one of the profoundly damned. I
blurt out something that should, perhaps, be withheld for several hundred pages
-- but that damned thing was the size of an elephant.
We laugh.
Or snowflakes. Size of saucers. Said to have fallen at
Nashville, Tenn., Jan. 24, 1891. One smiles.
"In Montana, in the winter of 1887, fell snowflakes 15
inches across, and 8 inches thick." (Monthly Weather Review,
1915-73.)
In the topography of intellection, I should say that what we
call knowledge is ignorance surrounded by laughter.
* * *
Black rains -- red rains -- the fall of a thousand tons of butter.
Jet-black snow -- pink snow -- blue hailstones --
hailstones
flavored like oranges.
Punk and silk and charcoal.
* * *
About one hundred years ago, if anyone was so credulous as to
think that stones had ever fallen from the sky, he was reasoned with:
In the first place there are no stones in the sky:
Therefore no stones can fall from the sky.
Or nothing more reasonable or scientific or logical than that
could be said upon any subject. The only trouble is the universal trouble: that
the major premise is not real, or is intermediate somewhere between realness and
unrealness.
In 1772, a committee, of whom Lavoisier was a member, was
appointed by the French Academy, to investigate a report that a stone had fallen
from the sky at Luce, France. Of all attempts at positiveness, in its aspect of
isolation, I don't know of anything that has been fought harder for than the
notion of this earth's unrelatedness. Lavoisier analyzed the stone of Luce. The
exclusionists' explanation at that time was that stones do not fall from the
sky: that luminous objects may seem to fall, and that hot stones may be picked
up where a luminous object seemingly had landed -- only lightning striking a
stone, heating, even melting it.
The stone of Luce showed signs of fusion.
Lavoisier's analysis "absolutely proved" that this
stone had not fallen: that it had been struck by lightning.
So, authoritatively, falling stones were damned. The stock
means of exclusion remained the explanation of lightning that was seen to strike
something -- that had been upon the ground in the first place.
But positiveness and the fate of every positive statement. It
is not customary to think of damned stones raising an outcry against a sentence
of exclusion, but, subjectively, aerolites did -- or data of them bombarded the
walls raised against them --
Monthly Review, 1796-426:
"The phenomenon which is the subject of the remarks
before us will seem to most persons as little worthy of credit as any that could
be offered. The falling of large stones from the sky, without any assignable
cause of their previous ascent, seems to partake so much of the marvellous as
almost entirely to exclude the operation of known and natural agents. Yet a body
of evidence is here brought to prove that such events have actually taken place,
and we ought not to withhold from it a proper degree of attention."
The writer abandons the first, or absolute, exclusion, and
modifies it with the explanation that the day before a reported fall of stones
in Tuscany, June 16, 1794, there had been an eruption of Vesuvius --
Or that stones do fall from the sky, but that they are stones
that have been raised to the sky from some other part of the earth's surface by
whirlwinds or by volcanic action.
It's more than one hundred and twenty years later. I know of
no aerolite that has ever been acceptably traced to terrestial origin.
Falling stones had to be undamned -- though still with a
reservation that held out for exclusion of outside forces.
One may have the knowledge of a Lavoisier, and still not be
able to analyze, not be able even to see, except conformably with the hypnoses,
or the conventional reactions against hypnoses, of one's era.
We believe no more.
We accept.
Little by little the whirlwind and volcano explanations had to
be abandoned, but so powerful was this exclusion-hypnosis, sentence of
damnation, or this attempt at positiveness, that far into our own times some
scientists, notably Prof. Lawrence Smith and Sir Robert Ball, continued to hold
out against all external origins, asserting that nothing could fall to this
earth, unless it had been cast up or whirled up from some other part of the
earth's surface.
It's as commendable as anything ever has been -- by which I mean
it's intermediate to the commendable and the censurable.
It's virginal.
Meteorites, data of which were once damned, have been
admitted, but the common impression of them is only a retreat of attempted
exclusion: that only two kinds of substance fall from the sky: metallic and
stony: that the metallic objects are of iron and nickel --
Butter and paper and wool and silk and resin.
We see, to start with, that the virgins of science have fought
and wept and screamed against external relations -- upon two grounds:
There in the first place;
Or up from one part of this earth's surface and down to
another.
As late as November, 1902, in Nature Notes, 13-231, a
member of the Selborne Society still argued that meteorites do not fall from the
sky; that they are masses of iron upon the ground "in the first
place," that attract lightning; that the lightning is seen, and is mistaken
for a falling, luminous object --
By progress we mean rape.
Butter and beef and blood and a stone with strange
inscriptions upon it.
CHAPTER: 01,
02, 03,
04, 05,
06, 07,
08, 09,
10, 11,
12, 13,
14, 15,
16, 17,
18, 19,
20, 21,
22, 23,
24, 25,
26, 27,
28
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