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[snip]

In retrospect, we can see that scientists (and other experts) easily
perceived [21]how wrong Velikovsky was, but they were ineffective in
setting forth a valid refutation that was convincing to Velikovsky
partisans ([22]Ellenberger, 1986, [[23]1987], and 1992b). [This
applies especially to [24]Carl Sagan's vaunted critiques "An Analysis
of _Worlds in Collision_" (1977) and its revised version "Venus and
Dr. Velikovsky" (1979), abridged versions of which appeared in The
Humanist (Nov/Dec 1977) and Biblical Archaeology Review (Jan/Feb
1980), respectively, together with Isaac Asimov's criticisms which
have been dissected by Frederic B. Jueneman, "pc," Kronos I:3, 1975,
73-83, (on Asimov's "CP", Analog, 10/74) and Dick Atkinson,
"Interdisciplinary Indiscipline," Chron. & Cat. Review XII, 1990,
24-30 (on Asimov's "Worlds in Confusion" in _The Stars in Their
Courses_".]

Although Velikovsky's mythological interpretation and methodology have
been widely criticized ([[25]Ellenberger, 1993], Forrest, 1983/84;
[[26]Forrest, 1983;] [27]Fitton, 1974; [28]Mewhinney, 1986; [29]Sachs,
1965; [[30]Lorton, 1984/1999], and Stiebing, 1992), his followers are
unimpressed and blindly follow their exemplar as naive, literal
interpreters of myth who fail to provide, much less even look for,
independent physical, as opposed to textual or iconographic, evidence
supporting their model. They ignore George Talbott's sage counsel in
Kronos V:3, "The basis of any historical inference must be physical
evidence." As literalists, they do not allow mere metaphors to becloud
their research. [As implied by Burns' quote above, they deny the
distinction made by our ancestors between Mythos and Logos.] [In
projecting modern concepts onto records of ancient perceptions, they
fail to appreciate (a) the perilousness and subtleties of translating
ancient texts (e.g., correspondence in nine issues of Nature from Feb.
16 to Oct. 25, 1984 shows we do not really know what Homer meant by
"wine-dark sea") and (b) the consequences of a culture's transition
from orality to literacy which changes how the external world is
perceived (Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, 1982).]

[snip]

_Sagan and Velikovsky _

Sagan's AAAS critique of Velikovsky in Feb. 1974 (completed with
revisions by 1976 and published in Donald Goldsmith (ed.), _Scientists
Confront Velikovsky_ (Cornell Univ. Press, 1977) whereas
[78]Velikovsky's finished text was distributed at the event), while a
rhetorical tour de force, was a failure as an example of "reasoned
argument, celestial mechanics, and the best physical science to
counter [Velikovsky's] sensational claims" (Skeptical Inquirer,
Nov/Dec 1999, p. 4). This is because (1) a large portion of Sagan's
"reasoned argument" is against straw men and red herrings, as with,
e.g., the manna after the Exodus which Sagan criticizes Velikovsky for
accepting the biblical account that it did not fall on the Sabbath
when Velikovsky explicitly denies this as unrealistic, while
manna-like stories come from many widespread cultures, e.g.,
"ambrosia" of the Greeks, "madhu" of the Hindus, and "sweet morning
dew" of the Scandinavians, (2) Sagan's critique contains NO celestial
mechanics since the celebrated great odds against Velikovsky's
scenario are derived from "ergodic theory", i.e., ignoring
gravitation, as Sagan replied to Dr. Robert W. Bass after his address,
and (3) Sagan's physical science is riddled with errors considering,
for example, his Jupiter escape velocity is too great (70 vs. 60
km/sec, which, together with other minor errors, was corrected for the
version in _Broca's Brain_) and, as revealed by George R. Talbott in
Kronos IV:2, 1978, the cooling calculation in Sagan's Appendix 3 is
nothing but a trivial identity: the heat radiated to Venus by the Sun
in about one hour at 6000K equals that radiated from Venus in 3500
years at 79K. This was reported in my letter in April 1981 Physics
Today which Sagan ignored at the time and claimed ignorance of it in
our final correspondence in April 1996. (Talbott's notions about
ongoing, massive volcanism on Venus, however, are contradicted by the
stagnant atmosphere below the clouds and the existence of 35+ km.
diameter craters.)

Interestingly, the letter by S.F. Kogan (Velikovsky's older daughter)
in Sept. 1980 Physics Today (sponsored by Freeman Dyson "in the
interest of fair play") showed how Sagan's odds would be drastically
reduced if parameters favorable to Velikovsky's intended scenario were
used in the calculation. This analysis was modified and expanded for
Kronos VI:3, 1981, 34-41, with a follow-up note by R.C. Vaughan in
Kronos VI:4, 91. Contrary to Sagan, the collisions are not independent
events, as Velikovsky pointed out in rebuttal. Astronomer Robert
Jastrow endorsed this criticism of Sagan in New York Times (12/2/79,
p. 22E) and repeated it, despite Sagan's protest in 12/29/79 New York
Times, in Science Digest (Special Edition) Sep/Oct 1980, p. 96.

Furthermore, Sagan's eruption/escape velocity version of the claimed
origin of Venus from Jupiter is irrelevant insofar as Velikovsky
traded on the planetary fission work of physicists McCrea and
Lyttleton in the 1960s which circumvents this criticism; but Sagan
ignored this alternative and later took special delight in "Cosmos"
lampooning Velikovsky over this red herring origin of Venus from
Jupiter. (Regarding the fission model for Venus' putative origin from
Jupiter, the point is not that it is realistic, for it is not, but
that no critic ever addressed its relevance to Velikovsky's scenario
and explained why it is not applicable when fission was widely used by
Velikovsky in his defense and many supporters took unjustified
consolation from this supposed possibility.)

Many such failings of Sagan's are recounted in Kronos III:2, 1977 (144
pp.), reprinted as Greenberg & Sizemore (eds.), _Velikovsky and
Establishment Science_ (Glassboro, NJ, 1977), and Kronos IV:2, 1978.
Of special note is Velikovsky's reply in 1977 to Sagan's spurious
claim, following Payne-Gaposchkin and Asimov, that Velikovsky did not
know the difference between hydrocarbons and carbohydrates, which
Velikovsky first answered in June 1951 Harper's and which K.K. Wong
had discussed in Pensee III, 1973, 45-46. The conversion of
hydrocarbons to carbohydrates, contrary to Sagan's spin, can be
accomplished in the atmosphere by a number of chemical reactions.
Earlier, with great delight, Sagan had ascribed the falling of mice
and frogs from the clouds of Venus (Cornell lecture, 3/28/73) or frogs
(NASA press conference, 12/2/73) which violates Velikovsky's explicit
text. (The ponderous and tedious _Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky_,
1990/1995 (448 pp.), compiled by [79]Charles Ginenthal borrows heavily
from the earlier Kronos volumes while adding little of merit to the
discussion.)

Sagan biographer Keay Davidson, while revealing many of Sagan's
foibles and failings (e.g., see his p. 106 where "Sagan's imagination
utterly failed him" in early 1960s when as editor for Icarus he
rejected as "impossible" the discovery of the superrotation of Venus'
upper atmosphere by amateur astronomer Charles Boyer (Sky & Telescope,
June 1999, 56-60)), chose not to portray Sagan inferior to Velikovsky
in any aspect of their [80]AAAS encounter.

It should also be noted that refuting Velikovsky's recent scenario of
colliding planets does not invalidate Velikovsky's interest in the
meaning or origin of the world's sky-combat myths, which have recently
been explained by the British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier
in scientific papers and their books _The Cosmic Serpent_ (1982) and
_The Cosmic Winter_ (1990), in terms of Earth's intermittent and
energetic interaction with the Taurid meteor streams and their parent
comet during the past 10,000 years. Sagan's insensitivity to the
possibility of such an alternative, another failure of imagination, as
it were, is revealed by a change in his text that occurred between
1977 and 1979 when his "...even if twenty percent of the legendary
concordances which Velikovsky produces are real, there is something
important to be explained" became "But I believe that _all_ [Sagan's
italics] of the concordances Velikovsky produces can be explained away
in this manner", i.e., by coincidence. _[81]Sic transit gloria_.

CLE, 12-27-99

_________________________________________________________________

_ARE COMETS EVIL?_ _(text of my Sky & Tel letter, April 1997)_

Bradley E. Schaefer's survey "Comets that Changed the World" (May, pp.
46-51) does not go back far enough in history to give a satisfying
explanation for mankind's archetypal fear of comets. To answer that
question requires reconstructing the sky our ancestors experienced in
the third and second millennia B.C. According to the British
astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier in _The Cosmic Winter_
(1990), that epoch was dominated by the spasmodic disintegration of a
particularly impressive comet with low inclination, the progenitor of
the Taurid meteor streams.

When the Taurids were young, a dense portion accompanying the parent
comet, proto-Encke, contained Tunguska-class bolides and larger. Every
3.35 years or so when the comet came round the Sun our ancestors
noticed that 40 days or so later an armageddon _might_ happen if Earth
intercepted some heavy debris causing monsterous fireball storms and
worse. So much debris would have been injected into the stratosphere
on occasion that the Sun, Moon, and stars would be darkened. Such
events may be the inspiration for the "day of the Lord" described in
Isaiah 13:10, "For the stars of heaven...shall not give their light,
the sun shall be darkened...and the moon shall not cause her light to
shine."

Proto-Encke, then, was an _intermittent reinforcer_ which behaviorists
recognize as being as good as God. In its hey-day, proto-Encke may
have been identified as a visible manifestation of the goddess
Innana-Ishtar, along with Venus and Sirius, judging by the cometary
and martial imagery in her hymns.

This comet was probably responsible for a series of disasters in
Mesopotamia and Egypt in the third millennium B.C. and then again for
a subsequent series of disasters inflicted upon the Minoan and
Mycenean worlds in the second millennium B.C.  Clube and Napier note:
"Catastrophes of this sort, delivered by visible celestial gods, are
completely outside modern experience, but it is clear that they could
have been a major reason for the preoccupation with, and dread of, the
sky manifested by the earliest civilizations."

During this early epoch, the sky was dominated by a prominent zodiacal
light that contained structure. Clube and Napier identify it as the
"central fire" of the Pythagoreans and propose it was the original
"Milky Way" whose early descriptions by, for example, Aristotle and
Anaximander, do not conform to today's Milky Way. By the mid-first
millennium B.C., around the time of Socrates, the sky had quieted down
requiring that the astronomical lore that no longer matched experience
be rationalized. By Roman times, Schaefer's earliest reference, the
modern view of the world had arisen, although it would be challenged
when cometary encounters or enhanced fireball activity would revive
memories of a prior regime.

When proto-Encke faded and the Taurids declined in activity, the fear
inspired by a particular comet was transferred to comets in general.
Clube has also shown that all epochs of millenarian, eschatological
concerns in the past 2000 years, prior to the 19th century, coincided
with periods of enhanced Taurid fireball activity, according to
Chinese astronomical records. Interestingly, early descriptions of
Satan and angels are patently of comets as indicated in Neil Forsyth's
_The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth_ (Princeton, 1987), although
he does not make the connection.

Are comets evil, as Bradley Schaefer asks? Not according to our
present experience; but in an earlier age our ancestors almost
certainly had reason to think so. Issues related to the role of comets
in the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations will be the subject of a
conference at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, this July 11-13 where
Clube, his co-workers, and other scholars will preside.

C. LEROY ELLENBERGER
3929A Utah Street
St. Louis, MO 63116
_________________________________________________________________

Here is the section from the cancelled Part 2 of my Aeon memoir, as
distributed on the 11-V-96 diminutive, didactic, desultory dispatch,
i.e., postcard, showing that an entire section of Worlds in Collision
is so erroneous that it should be retracted according to the criterion
advanced by Lynn Rose:
ALTERED TEMPLE AXES: Rose Refuted
Where ever one turns in Dr Velikovsky's works, one finds a
wasteland strewn with uncritically accepted evidence that turns to
dust at the slightest probe.
Abraham Sachs, March 15, 1965
At the present time, it appears to be possible to account for the
evidence that Velikovsky quotes in alternative ways that do not
require any major scientific revolutions.
D. Walton, Science Forum, 6/74
According to Velikovsky in the section "Temples & Obelisks" in
Worlds in Collision, ancient temples "were built facing the rising
sun," and many show changes in the direction of the foundations, e.g.,
Eleusis. Velikovsky took this for evidence "of the changing direction
of the terrestrial axis" during his cataclysms with the temples
"rebuilt each time with a different orientation." Velikovsky cites the
field work of Lockyer, Nissen, and Penrose.
*Incredibly*, Velikovsky's own sources do not support the
interpretation he gives. Velikovsky ignores the *fact* that ancient
temples were also oriented to the heliacal rising of bright stars
whose function was to give an advance warning of sunrise. Certain
temples with altered axes were explicitly oriented to the heliacal
rising of specific stars. Velikovsky never reconciles his bald
assertion with this situation which is fully explained by precession,
the explanation invoked by Lockyer, Nissen, and Penrose. Penrose
explains that orientation to a heliacal rising or setting for an epoch
at a site always gave a unique star; chance never produced a second
possibility.
Owing to precession of the equinoxes, which Velikovsky never
discussed,^1 this orientation drifted
-----
_1. Although Velikovsky neither discussed nor mentioned precession in
"Temples & Obelisks," he did mention it in "East & West." It is
interesting to note that the assertions of Plato and Herodotus about
the Sun now rising where it once set, discussed in "East & West," make
sense in terms of precession when the frame of reference for the Sun
is the ecliptic instead of the horizon. Due to precession, the sign of
the zodiac in which the Sun rises on the date of the equinox shifts at
a rate of one degree every 72 yrs. In A Guide to Velikovsky's Sources,
Bob Forrest plausibly explains the supposed reversal of east & west in
terms of calendar drift (pp 58-60)._
-----
slowly out of alignment until the temple was altered or rebuilt to
reacquire the cult orientation. Lockyer and Nissen show this for
Egyptian temples; Penrose, for Greek temples. Gunter Martiny, who was
not cited by Velikovsky, does the same for Mesopotamian temples in
Architectura I, 1933, pp 41-45 (Martiny's work was mentioned by Harald
Reiche in his review of Hamlet's Mill in Classical Journal, Oct/Nov
1973, pp 81-83). At Eleusis, ironically, the temples were not oriented
to the rising sun, as Velikovsky implies. The rites at Eleusis were
celebrated at night. The Temple of Ceres was oriented for the midnight
rising of Sirius on Sep 13 (Penrose, pp 823-25); the Temple of Diana
Propylaea, for the midnight rising of Capella on Feb 19 (Penrose, pp
831-32).
On August 8, 1978, while I was driving Lynn Rose from Pelican Island
to Newark Airport, we talked about Velikovsky's fallibility. Rose told
me that while Worlds in Collision contains many minor errors, none is
serious enough to warrant retracting any single section of the book.
This is the position he stated at the 1980 Princeton Seminar (SIS
Review VI, p 103). On the basis of my research, it would appear that
the section "Temples & Obelisks" warrants being retracted because the
temple axis material does not conclusively support Velikovsky and
nothing written about obelisks is specific to the events in Worlds in
Collision. For example, the discussion of Pliny's account of the
obelisk that was moved from Egypt to Rome has nothing to do with its
functioning in Egypt during the alleged catastrophes. In all
probability, the problem in Rome was due to inadequate support on
soggy ground--Pliny's last alternative.
Would Rose, at least, agree that this section warrants being
retracted? Is this section hi-lited for any reason in Rose's Delta
edition of Worlds in Collision? When I met Lewis Greenberg in late Dec
1977, he told me that both he and Rose had marked up their Delta
editions with all the errors they had detected. However, they
preferred to keep these errors secret lest their publication be used
as a pretext to discard even the valid aspects of Velikovsky's work.
The preference was to subject Bob Forrest and other critics to
picayune criticism in KRONOS over select items to foster the illusion
that Velikovsky's work does not deserve the criticism it receives.
End "Altered Temple Axes: Rose Refuted"
From: Leroy Ellenberger, "Of Lessons, Legacies, &
Litmus Tests: A Velikovsky Potpourri (Part 2)", AEON
3:2, 1993, (cancelled by Cochrane).
_________________________________________________________________

Martin Beech's review of Victor Clube and Bill Napier, THE COSMIC
WINTER (1990) from April 1991 Astronomy Now, p. 14 (reprinted with
permission of author):
THE COSMIC WINTER is a superbly crafted book.  It has cast its net
both wide and deep, and leads the reader through a labyrinth of
ancient history, religion, astrology, galactic astronomy,
palaeontology and psychology.  The list could go on.  For all its
interdisciplinary diversity, however, the text has been skilfully
shaped into a coherent and well argued thesis.
THE COSMIC WINTER is not a book for the faint hearted or
conservative.  It is a challenge to orthodoxy, and its pages pull no
punches.  The central issue of the text is Earth catastrophism past,
present and future.  This (in the present intellectual climate) is not
particularly contentious -- the evidence for terrestrial impacts is
now clear and conclusive.  Where the authors break away from the norm
is in their interpretation of cometary cloud dynamics and comet
formation.  Their views are not so much physically untenable but
simply non-standard. This, of course, makes the authors a target for
the orthodoxy camp, whose viewpoint is considered central by the
majority count.  As the authors correctly point out, however, just
because a majority of people support the same idea does not mean that
it must be true.  Certainly the questions relating to the formation of
comets and cometary clouds are far from being answered at the present
time.  The book, as such, does not dwell on these issues for long,
indeed the subject would make a book in itself.  Rather, the authors
adopt the viewpoint that comets form somewhere in the galaxy (in
spiral arms, or molecular clouds) and that the Earth has lost and
gained several cometary clouds through its history as a a result of
passages through spiral arms and encounters with giant molecular
clouds.  It is the authors' contention that the dynamic building and
destruction of these cometary clouds drives a 15 million year
bombardment cycle in the inner Solar System.  This periodicity is
derived from data culled from mass extinctions in the fossil record,
changes in the climate and sea level, known crater ages, geomagnetic
reversals and galactic dynamics.
The main issue at stake in THE COSMIC WINTER is the idea that
interwoven between the pages of human history is evidence for the
existence of spectacular cometary displays and terrestrial impacts.
Indeed, it is suggested that human society and religion were organised
around celestial displays related to a giant comet which adorned the
skies some 4 to 5,000 years ago.  The debris from this comet, it is
argued, is still with us today, and resides in such entities as the
Taurid meteor complex, comets Encke nad Rudnicki, and a whole host of
asteroids.  All these objects are identified on the basis of their
comparable orbital characteristics.  In support of their argument, the
authors reinterpret several ancient Babylonian, Greek and Egyptian (to
name a few civilizations) myths and religious beliefs.  Clearly this
is not an easy task to perform, but the text does present a consistent
and believable argument.  If nothing else the authors have opened up a
whole new field of research, and one suspects that it could be a rich
field of study.  Time will tell.
The book begins and ends with a well placed, if not alarming, reminder
that there is a one hundred percent certainty that the Earth will be
struck again.  Some day, it may be today, a large comet or asteroid
will darken the skies.  Our complacency and complete lack of planning
for such an event has indeed to be questioned.  Once again, one
suspects that the lessons from history will not be learnt.  The
results of such an impact would be devastating not only locally but
globally.  It is not too far fetched, as the authors point out, that
the consequences of an impact with a large celestial body could
trigger the demise of human civilization.  Sobering isn't it?
THE COSMIC WINTER is a very good book.  Its thesis may or may not be
correct, but it does something very important -- it challenges
orthodoxy. I can say little more than read this book and rise to the
challenge.
Note: The reviewer is a professor of astronomy who in 1991 was at the
University of Western Ontario. Presently, he is at the University of
Regina.

_________________________________________________________________

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References

1. mailto:c.leroy at rocketmail.com