ABSTRACT
The last chapter looked at aspects of fringe science through the lens of Fortean discourse to argue that, despite its orientation towards the in principle knowability of reality, disenchantment actually engenders ‘mysteries’, a discursive space constituted as ‘the unknown’ within which a form of non-disenchanted and nonmundane reasoning persists in modern culture. A key role is played in this by the types of mundane self-preservation that characterize the disenchanted discourse of science, centred around accounts of error in the form of technologies of detection, psychologies of perception and sociologies of conception. These are designed to preserve the incorrigible propositions at the core of disenchaned mundane reasoning – that the world is determinate, coherent and non-contradictory – in accord with what is taken to be the prevailing Great Object of orthodox science. Defined negatively, this Great Object excludes the possibility of ‘other-worldly’ phenomena or entities and much fringe science is marginalized on the grounds that it might impute the existence of such things. However, accounts of error are taken up by both sides, enabling controversies to persist and grow in their speculative compass to account for sustained denial in the face of what is taken to be evident and rational. One outcome of this is a particularly wide-reaching form of the sociology of conception that has a niche position within Fortean discourse – conspiracy discourse.
