Resumen
Resumen de The Book of the Damned
Go deeper: the whole of The Book of the Damned
About 7 h 30 min to read.Para quién es
For readers who love odd facts, mysteries of weather and sky, science history, and sharp, funny arguments against received wisdom. Perfect for anyone who enjoys a guide who collects the unexplained and asks sly questions.
De qué trata este libro
What happens when frogs, fish and blocks of ice drop from the sky, and science looks away? Charles Fort, an American collector of odd reports, gathered such cases from journals and newspapers into The Book of the Damned. He calls them damned because orthodox science excludes them. You get a tour of the strangest data he found and a challenge: who decides what counts as a fact? His first idea is that every line drawn between accepted and rejected is arbitrary.
En este resumen
- 1The excluded facts will march before youFree
- 2Every line that science draws is arbitrary
- 3Krakatoa cannot explain all of 1883
- 4Falling stones show how exclusion works
- 5Strange substances rain from the sky
- 6Living things fall and fall again in one place
- 7Worked objects fall from the sky too
- 8Relics turn up where they should not be
- 9Astronomers disregard the sky they claim to know
Idea clave 1 de 9
The excluded facts will march before you
Fort opens with a procession. By the damned, he means the excluded, the data that Dogmatic Science has shut out. He promises corpses, clowns, respectable witnesses and little rascals, all passing in an endless line.
He adds a twist to the idea. What is excluded today may do the excluding tomorrow. Fort thinks the damned do not stay damned, because every system of belief starts as an outcast before it becomes the establishment, and later it is displaced in turn.
For the listener, this sets the spirit of the book. Fort does not ask you to believe. He asks you to accept for now, to hold an idea lightly, and to see what happens when you read the rejected reports side by side instead of one at a time.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Go deeper: the whole of The Book of the Damned
About 7 h 30 min to read.About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 112,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 7 h 30 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 12 other languages
Questions about The Book of the Damned
What is The Book of the Damned about?
It is a collection of reports that science has set aside, such as rains of fish and frogs, strange falling substances, odd lights and carved stones, framed by Fort's argument that rejecting facts is never fully fair.
What does damned mean in Charles Fort's book?
Fort uses damned to mean excluded. The damned are data that orthodox science refuses to include, and he says that what is excluded today may become tomorrow's accepted knowledge.
What is the Super-Sargasso Sea?
It is Fort's name for an imagined region above the earth where gravity is weak. Things lifted up by storms stay there for months, and later disturbances shake them down again as strange falls.
Is The Book of the Damned a true story?
It is a work of nonfiction published in 1919 that quotes real journals and newspapers by name. The reports are real, while Fort's explanations are playful theories he asks you only to consider.
Is The Book of the Damned easy to read?
Fort writes with humor and short bursts. Each case stands on its own with its source named, so you can open anywhere and enjoy a vivid report and his sly comment.