JerryB said:
I tend to approach the subject from a different angle too - I'm interested in what people say/report, etc. and what the details are, more than anything else. It's something I find fascinating. And there are some things I genuinely think fom the get-go are of a mundane, misidentified source (i.e. orbs, rods, chmetrails) - but nevertheless it's still interesting to observe WRT how people discuss it all.
Whether it's true or not is another thing entirely. Some things appear easier to spot as having a mundane source than others. Other things are just so 'out there' that one can only wonder what sort of processes are going on to create such a thing/event.
I don't class myself as a Fortean tho', and don't refer to myself as one.
I find my self pretty much in accord with what JerryB has to say.
I am a scientist but some of the greatest input into my 'Fortean' thinking has actually come from good teachers I have had in science which in some ways show that Fort was right to outline the foolishness of Science (capital S for the establishment rather than the discipline) because once people get locked in with grants and reputations it can be very hard to retreat from a position/theory when true sciene should be sceptical but not just about information/positions that challenge it but also about our own theories and ideas and even our own ways and modes of thinking. Science (small s) can only operate properly if people are prepared to admit that they are wrong that theories may be iterations on a path towards 'the truth' but they may also be a false trail.
Although Fort largely focused his intelect on Science what he seems to have been doing (at least for me) is taking a broader swipe at 'received wisdom' or the easy answer. Possibly if he had been born earlier he would have rallied to the support of science in its battles against religion and pos. if he was around in the last 50 years he would also have aimed a few attacks on such easy answers as UFOs being aliens or all Bigfoot sightings being of some unknown hominoid.
I approach strange phenomena in three main ways:
1. No data is damned - you clearly can't have an overview of the subject if you pick and chose the data that you collect. Even if it turns out to be mistaken identification, hoaxes, madness, delusions, mass hysteria, etc. then that is as suitable an area of study as the true paranormal. Just the pure fact that someone has reported something makes it a valid piece of data it just might not apply to the field you intially think it does
2. That data needs to be analysed - if we can sift through the data and reclassify (rather than actually discard) the data still remaining may point us to some interesting or unusual conclusions or it may not but if you damn data you will never know.
3. That the accumulation of data may help provide a much roader picture - one Bigfoot sighting is interesting as is another but if you can draw them together you get a much more interesting picture of the whole topic (and often things are stranger and more unusual than individual reports suggest). I think this is what I love about Fort, FT and the FTMB - without being put in its broader context the reports/data become insubstantial and pointless (except for transitory 'titillation' if you are so minded) but ocne examined as part of a continuum of reports and related and connected data it may have something interesting to say about the human condition and/or the wider world we live in (as though there was any clear distinction between them both).
Anyway that tends to be my thinking behind things (at least at this moment in time but I reserve the right to discard and ignore what I've said above
) - I don't really explain myself a lot and anyway my ideas are nearly always shifting and mutating so what seemed a mighty fine idea (or just interesting at the time) may prove not to be.
Emps
You might as well say 'bloody peasants' and have done with it