mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ 
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================
THOTH
A Catastrophics Newsletter

VOL IV, 7
April 15, 2000

EDITOR:  Amy Acheson
PUBLISHER:  Michael Armstrong
LIST MANAGER:  Brian Stewart

CONTENTS
CONCEPTUAL CHROMATOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . .  by Mel Acheson
MEMORIES AND SYMBOLS OF PLANETARY UPHEAVAL . . . . by Dave Talbott
PARADIGM PORTRAITS III: Galactic Ejections. . . . . by Amy Acheson
THE IMPACT OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE  . . by Wal Thornhill and Mel Acheson
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

CONCEPTUAL CHROMATOGRAPHY
By Mel Acheson

Chromatography has been quite a useful invention.  The high-
school-science demonstration of it is to place a drop or two of
ink in a beaker of water and to suspend a length of filter paper
over the water with the bottom of the paper barely immersed.  The
various pigments in the ink will travel up the paper at different
speeds, producing a "spectrum" of colors.  This technique can be
used with various mixtures to detect the particular compounds
composing them.

But an analog of this process can occur with theories, and the
results can be misleading instead of enlightening.

Let's start with an example from cosmology.  The "paper" of the
Doppler effect is dipped into the "beaker" of redshift
measurements of galaxies and quasars.  The Doppler paper imposes a
distance proportional to redshift on the measurements.  Low-
redshift galaxies don't get far; high-redshift quasars
"chromatograph" into the farthest reaches of space.  Hence, what
could be a relatively nearby cluster of mixed galaxies and quasars
becomes a "spike" or "finger" of objects stretching away from the
Earth.

What does this have to do with reality as we imagine it?

On page 69 of Seeing Red, Arp plots all the galaxies in the Virgo
cluster at their Doppler-interpreted redshift distances.  The
galaxies stretch out in a long, narrow strip exactly along a
radius vector from Earth.  The same effect can be seen in other
clusters.  If quasars were to be included in the plots, the entire
universe would look like spokes of a wheel with Earth at the hub.

Is the Earth at the center of the universe after all?  Or is the
Expanding Universe an artifact of conceptual chromatography?

Well, that was an amusing exercise.  Let's look for some more
"paper theories".

"Time," some wag has said, "is what keeps everything from
happening all at once."  But what if some things DID happen all at
once, and a geologist came along with a "geologic record?"  Single
episodes of flooding have been known to build up many layers of
sediments, sorted according to fluctuations in the velocity of the
water.  Afterward, dipping the concept of geologic record into the
strata would stretch out each layer in time, marking off thousands
of years at each stratum.  Obviously, the flood would have to be
slowed considerably.  Equally obviously, the easy way to do that
would be to freeze it.  Our conceptual chromatography has created
an ice age.

But this is just idle speculation, right?  Well, there is the
matter of the Bretz floods in Eastern Washington.  It took a long
time and much careful argumentation, but it's now accepted that
Eastern Washington was shaped by monstrous floods instead of by
ice.  One entire lobe of the Ice Age has been conceptually melted.
Now I hear talk of similar floods coursing into the Atlantic from
central Canada.  The conceptual climate of the Ice Age just got a
bit warmer, and a few things have started happening all at once.
What if we "melted" the entire Ice Age and recalled the mythical
stories of the collapse of the World Mountain or Tree that
resulted in global floods from the north?

This is fun.  Let's play the game with plate tectonics:  Instead
of counting to a million years with every magnetic stripe on the
Atlantic sea floor, let's use smaller numbers.  Just to up the
ante, let's use smaller units, too.  How about a few minutes!
We'd have to imagine SOMETHING ripping the Americas away from
Europe and Africa all at once.  It would have to be something so
big that the continents and the energy to move them would be small
potatoes in comparison.  It would have to be something of
astronomical proportions.

Velikovsky already proposed other planets sweeping by and causing
somewhat similar commotions.  Let's take a clue instead from the
Electric Universe:  Instead of moving the Americas, we can leave
them be.  A "thunderbolt"--an interplanetary electrical
discharge--just a bit more energetic than that alleged to have
machined Valles Marineris out of Mars' surface arcs along the
Earth from pole to pole.  It blasts out and lifts large chunks of
lithosphere along each side of the more sinuous central channel.
It melts the bottom and leaves stripes of reversed magnetism every
time the oscillations in the discharge channel reverse polarity.
The pinching of the discharge channel confines the excavation to a
parallel-sided gouge in the Earth that afterward fills with water.

A few thousand years later, a geologist comes along with a strip
of geologic record. . . .

If modern theories of astronomy and geology are vulnerable to
chromatographic suspicion, can biology be far behind?  Speciation
and extinction color large areas on the paper of evolution.
Natural selection works slowly but surely to bleed colorful
moments into pastel millennia.  A bit of color has been restored
to moments of extinction with proposals of impacts from asteroids
and comets.  It's fairly easy to kill off large populations
suddenly, but building up those populations surely takes time.
The J-curves and S-curves of population growth have long initial
tails.  Gestation times and birth rates (for mammals-reproduction
parameters in general) keep initial increases low.

That is, if you start with only a few individuals.  If it all
happens at once--replacement of one population with another--the
new population must be created ex nihilo, right?  But what if the
parents were another species?  There have been several proposals
for mass mutation.  But their requirement for some direct linkage
between genetic and environmental parameters is too Lamarckian for
comfort.  As long as we have chromatographic evolution, we don't
need Lamarck.

But if natural selection is augmented with forces of extinction
that can be confined to extraordinary events of short duration,
why not also augment the forces of speciation?  The direct linkage
between genes and environment would become a kind of "driven"
genetics in which active groups of genes are "switched on and off"
by extraordinary environmental changes.  This leads to something
like metamorphic evolution:  If butterflies do it today, why not
other creatures under other conditions?  Ninety percent of our
genes don't seem to do anything.  What are they waiting for?  A
full moon?

Let's perform one more thought experiment with this conceptual
chromatography.

Modern linguistics postulates a development of language gradually
over thousands of years.  A band of "oral color" spreads out
before the band of "written color".  But the earliest expressions
contained in this linguistic "spectrum" testify that both
utterance and symbol were given all at once by the gods.  In the
beginning was the word, and it was both an audible and a visual
emanation from a planetary deity.  Perhaps a prior language was
obliterated and forgotten in the wake of the terrors and traumas
accompanying the "sacred word."  But linguistics is not concerned
with the forgotten; it's concerned with the remembered.  And
languages remember "sacred sounds" that are tied to "sacred
symbols" by way of "sacred stories" that memorialize an all-at-
once creation witnessed by and imposed upon humankind.  Linguistic
chromatography dissociates the sound from the symbol and misses
the story.

Mel Acheson
thoth at whidbey.com
******************************************************************

MEMORIES AND SYMBOLS OF PLANETARY UPHEAVAL
By David Talbott

[Editor's Note:  The following paragraphs are excerpted from 
the Introduction of the forthcoming volume, WHEN SATURN WAS KING; 
co-authors David Talbott and Ev Cochrane]

OF PLANETS AND GODS

It seems that a great gulf stands between the textbook profile of 
the planets and the descriptions given by the first sky-worshippers. 
It is known that ancient cultures of both the New World and the 
Old honored the planets with much pomp and zeal, including human
sacrifices on a horrifying scale. And when the priestly astronomers
invoked these points of light, they summoned memories of heaven-
shattering catastrophe. What was it about these planetary specks 
that so preoccupied our ancestors, or prompted such pervasive 
fears?  From ancient Babylon to China, from the Mediterranean to 
the Americas, planets loomed as the dominating powers of the 
universe. Among the Greeks and Romans we meet planets with 
remarkably well-defined personalities--old Saturn, the ancient
ruler of the heavens; Mars, the impetuous warrior thundering in 
the sky; Venus, the temperamental goddess with the long-flowing 
hair, and Jupiter, presiding over the renewal of a world which 
had fallen into chaos. But the "personalities" of these planets 
are rooted in much earlier traditions, tracing to the origins of
astronomy. 

In ancient literature the planetary gods are a quarrelsome lot--
and often violent. Wars of the gods not only disturb the heavens 
but threaten to destroy humankind. The planets wield weapons of 
thunder and fire and stone. Their behavior is not only capricious 
and unpredictable, but dangerous to human health!  What a stark 
contrast to the placid solar system portrayed in our astronomy 
textbooks. For centuries now, science has regarded stable and 
predictable planetary motions as a bedrock principle, to which 
no credible challenge is conceivable. Yet ancient testimony IS 
a challenge to modern theory insofar as the testimony is both 
consistent and worldwide. There is a point at which ancient 
accounts, by their agreement, WILL weaken one's faith in 
established doctrines. 

In these volumes we present global evidence for an alien sky, 
recorded in pictures and words and ritual reenactments. It was 
apparently only a few thousand years ago that several planets 
moved extremely close to the Earth, appearing as massive spheres 
above us. This was a time of celestial splendor and chaos, of 
human wonder and overwhelming fear, the measure of which cannot 
be gauged by anything presently witnessed in the heavens. 

But now, having lived for millennia beneath a tranquil sky, we 
are deceived by appearances. It is easy to fall into a trance, 
easy to assume that natural processes observed today can be 
projected backwards indefinitely. Indeed, all well-known 
theorists in the sciences assume without question that observed 
cycles of the Sun and Moon and planets are virtually identical 
to the cycles witnessed by our early ancestors. A mere guess has 
become a dogma--not even a theoretical issue for official science.  

But have you ever wondered why ancient races insisted, with one 
voice, that the Sun and stars and planets do not move on their 
original paths?  That was Plato's message more than 2300 years 
ago. It was also the message of the philosophers Democritus, 
Zeno, and Anaxagoras.  The historian Diodorus of Sicily noted 
this belief among the Chaldeans.  The Babylonian priest-
astronomer Berossus said it too: the planets now move on 
different courses. The same statement is made in the Persian 
BUNDAHIS, the Hindu PURANAS, and the Chinese BAMBOO BOOKS. 

But these are only the more familiar voices amid a chorus of 
ancient witnesses. For the truth is that every culture on 
earth recalled a prior time of celestial discord, when the 
sky collapsed violently. To this disruption of the heavens 
the Greeks gave the name SYNODOS, a word meaning, in its original
contexts, "a collision of planets" and "the destruction of the 
world."   

PLANETARY UPHEAVAL AND HUMAN MEMORY

For many years the leading scientific theorists assumed that 
evolutionary principles have worked by slow and imperceptible 
degrees to produce an upward movement over great spans of time--
the formation of galaxies, suns and planets, the evolution of
a habitable earth, the first appearance of life, arrival of 
Homo sapiens, emergence of civilization, and the final victory 
of rational science over myth and superstition.  

But recently much of this scientific confidence has given way 
to uncertainty.  With the arrival of the space age, we turned 
our attention--and highly sophisticated technology--to our 
neighboring planets, and the remote landscapes revealed the 
unmistakable signature of large-scale violence. We have seen 
close-up photos of the torn and disfigured surface of Mars, 
its every square mile littered with freshly-strewn rubble. We 
have mapped the surface of Venus, a super-heated cauldron now 
said to have been "turned inside out" by a global catastrophe 
of unknown origin. And we have observed the devastated moons 
of Jupiter and Saturn, testifying to celestial encounters more 
dramatic and unusual than any astronomers had anticipated.

Who could deny that earlier theoretical frameworks, predicated 
on nearly imperceptible linear evolution over many millions of 
years, are being eroded by an avalanche of new data and new 
theories? The new theme is evolution by catastrophe, and here 
the Earth is not the safe place we once imagined. Cometary 
disasters, global floods or tidal waves, tropical climates giving 
way to ice ages, sudden extermination of species--once the 
province of science fiction, the new speculations have given 
rise to the field of "catastrophics"--the study of EARTH-CHANGING
catastrophe.

But when did the hypothesized disasters occur?  Just twenty years 
ago the familiar theories, such as the dinosaur-exterminating 
asteroid claimed by the Alvarez team, placed the catastrophes 
in a very distant past, many millions of years before the arrival 
of Homo sapiens--not something we should be particularly concerned 
about  More recently, however, the look of catastrophics has 
changed dramatically, as one theorist after another has invoked
global upheaval within the span of human history. These theorists 
include the noted astronomer Fred Hoyle, the British astrophysicist 
Victor Clube and astronomer William Napier, astronomer Tom Van 
Flandern (former head of the Naval Observatory), archaeologist 
Mike Baillie, geologist Robert Schoch, geologist C. Warren Hunt, 
and many others as well.

Given the present scientific and scholarly interest in recent 
catastrophe it is no longer possible for the scientific mainstream 
to ignore human testimony on these matters. Memories of 
catastrophe pervade the ancient cultures, and a great wealth of 
evidence suggests that the eye-witnesses did not invent these 
stories: they used all of the means available to them to record
extraordinary experiences. But historians have not understood the 
ancient words and symbols because they only listened superficially, 
then looked to our familiar heavens and found no correspondence.
Nothing in the archaic language made sense to them.

ARCHETYPE AND SYMBOL

Our investigation will concentrate on the patterns of human memory. 
Mythology, we will seek to show, means things remembered, however 
clouded by the language of magic and superstition. Since the 
investigation rests on cross-cultural comparison, a crucial level 
of evidence will be the archetypes, those deep structures of 
thought evident in the earliest writing systems and ritual 
practices, patterns so powerful as to find continuing--even 
global--cultural expression across thousands of years. 

It was the distinguished psychoanalyst Carl Jung who first used 
the term ARCHETYPES in connection with the origins of myth and 
symbol, suggesting universal patterns too often ignored in prior 
studies of myth. An archetype is a model or first form, a 
prototype. In connection with world mythology, it means the 
original idea or structure of thought--whether it is the root 
idea behind the "goddess" image, the model of a "good king" 
or "hero," or the ideal form of a sacred temple or city.  To 
recognize the archetypes in the ancient world is to open up 
a new and crucial field of investigation. 

A considerable debt is also owed to the distinguished student of
comparative religion, the late Mircea Eliade of the University 
of Chicago, author of numerous books on the subject and editor 
in chief of the Encyclopedia of Religion.  Perhaps Eliade has 
done more than any other scholar to show that world mythology 
rests upon a coherent substratum. It is not the mere 
collection of disconnected fragments traditionally assumed 
within the western world.

So too, the late Joseph Campbell has probably done the most to 
awaken  popular interest in myth. Following a comparative 
approach, Campbell brought to light a large number of global 
themes--the "hero with a thousand faces," the "angry goddess," 
the "world mountain," renewal through sacrifice, and dozens of 
other motifs.

Each of these impressive researchers came to discern certain 
unified layers of myth, layers never anticipated by mainstream 
scholars laboring under traditional cynicism about myth. Perhaps 
the greatest contribution of these pioneers is their acknowledgment 
that the common view--seeing myth as random absurdity--will not 
suffice to explain the layers of coherence. 

It is vital that the reader keep in mind, however, that by 
"archetype" we do not mean the unconscious structures of thought 
to which Jung referred, so much as the original patterns of 
conscious human experience, to which numerous unconscious ideas 
and tendencies may indeed trace. It can now be stated with 
assurance that any one of the acknowledged archetypes, if explored 
in its full context, will open the door to incredible discovery. 
But it is also clear that the pioneers of comparative study could 
not account for the content of myth in terms of any verifiable 
human experience. And they stopped short of asking the most 
important question of all: if the natural references of the 
myths are missing, is it possible that they were present in a 
former time?  
Campbell, for example, recognized the worldwide doomsday theme--
the idea of a prior age collapsing violently. But he did not 
relate the memory to anything that may have actually occurred 
in our world to inspire the universal memory. We, on the other 
hand, will take a firm stand on behalf of concrete experience. 
When widely dispersed memories point to an underlying natural 
event, those memories constitute evidence deserving rigorous 
study.

When we speak of the archetypes as the "substratum of human 
memory" we refer to the underlying patterns shared by far-flung 
cultures.  In a comparative approach these themes will appear 
as "points of agreement" shining through despite wildly 
divergent interpretations, fragmentation, dilution, and 
localization of myth over time. Were it not for the integrity 
of the original human experience, these patterns as a whole 
COULD NOT BE THERE. 

The mythmakers are telling us we've forgotten what they 
considered most worthy of remembrance. We've forgotten the age 
of the gods.  By assuming that the sky has remained unchanged 
over the millennia, we failed to discern the underlying agreement 
in their testimony. The only appropriate answer to that error is 
to hear the witnesses without prejudice and to invite the mythic 
nightmares into the light of day.

Dave Talbott
******************************************************************

PARADIGM PORTRAITS III: Galactic Ejections
By Amy Acheson

Don Scott announces:
The latest output from the Chandra x-ray space telescope
is out.

In "Seeing Red...", Halton Arp discusses this galaxy [NGC 5548] in
great detail. On page 145 he says, "Because of the new evidence
that some faint 'galaxy clusters' are in fact ejected from active
galaxies, the cluster adjoining NGC 5548 becomes a crucial case
for further investigation."  Arp, in his figure 6-5, shows a ROSAT
image of the faint bridge between 5548 and the z = 0.29 cluster
next to (ejected from) it. He pleads for further investigation of
that object.

Amy comments:
Wonderful website.  First of all, the photos:  The first picture
shows the whole galaxy with the area from which the spectrum was
taken indicated. The second website has the article explaining the
conventional interpretation -- gas clouds ionized and accelerated
outward by x-rays from a hidden black hole -- and includes a photo
of the spectrum.

http://xrtpub.harvard.edu/photo/cycle1/0170/0170_composite.jpg
http://xrtpub.harvard.edu/photo/cycle1/0170/index.html

This picture crops off the link between NGC 5548 and the z = 0.29
quasar.  It doesn't show the galaxy's jet, either. They're all
cropped off. To see all that, you have to look at page 145 in
Halton Arp's SEEING RED.

I'm not suggesting that the cropping was malicious (although I
can't claim to know for sure.)  The goal of astronomers is to get
the best possible photo, and in this case, that means narrowing
the field in order to bring out the features of internal structure
at the core of the galaxy.  The hypothesized black hole is the
target.  "Coincidentally" adjacent quasars, even those attached by
faint bridges of light, are annoying background objects to remove
and save for another photo session (and on the day when the
quasars are photographed, it's expedient to crop out the annoying
foreground galaxy.)

While going through old posts, I came across this comment of Wal
Thornhill's from two years ago:

"All criticism about the physics of Velikovsky's scenario have
been based on application of gravity and inertia alone because, to
astronomers,  the universe is amazingly electrically sterile!
Everywhere there are exactly equal numbers of positive and
negative charges. They frighten themselves in postgraduate plasma
physics studies by using the same spurious argument . . . about
the enormous energy required to separate all of the electrons from
all of the nuclei in a teaspoon of matter. But that has nothing
whatsoever to do with the real universe."

Amy again:
Now compare this to the observations -- in this Chandra image of
NGC 5548 we see more than one teaspoon of matter.  We see a whole
nebula of gas, made up of Magnesium XII (with one electron left)
Neon IX and X (with one and two electrons left) oxygen VII and
VIII (two and one electrons left), Nitrogen VII (one electron
left) and Carbon VI and VII (one and two electrons left.)

As to the redshift (blueshift, actually) of the ionized cloud at
the center of NGC, the website said this:

"The exact position of the lines relative to laboratory standards
shows that the lines are shifted systematically to shorter
wavelengths by a fraction of a percent. This shift is due to the
gas moving away from the source (Doppler effect). It indicates
that the blanket of absorbing gas is flowing away from the black
hole at about a million kilometers per hour (600,000 miles per
hour), probably because of the enormous amount of energy radiated
by the extremely hot gas very near the black hole."

Amy again:
They expressed it in km/hr, perhaps to make it sound more
impressive than it actually is. When you convert to km/sec, the
velocity is less spectacular: only slightly faster than the sun's
orbit around the Milky Way.  (sun: 220 km/sec, NGC 5548's
"envelope of expanding gases": 278 km/sec).

What I'm thinking is this: Halton Arp and Wal Thornhill both say
that galactic ejecta will be intrinsically redshifted, and that
the redshift will be highest when the ejection is closest to the
galaxy.  Arp also shows that we can obtain a radial motion
component (the velocity toward or away from us) of some quasars'
redshift by comparing the difference between the redshifts of
paired quasars on opposite sides of the same galaxy (_SEEING RED_,
pg. 212.)  In the case of NGC 5548, we're looking at the galaxy
face-on, practically straight down the spin axis. Its jet is
foreshortened, its quasar offspring are close by.  So I'm
suggesting that this knot of highly ionized gases that we're
looking at could be NCS 5548's the most recent ejection. It may
have a very high intrinsic redshift, but, since it's being ejected
at high speed directly at us, the Doppler motion (blueshift) is
even higher than the intrinsic redshift, resulting in a slight
blueshift.

Amy Acheson
******************************************************************

THE IMPACT OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE
By Wal Thornhill and Mel Acheson

This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of an
astonishing and controversial book - Worlds in Collision. The
provocatively titled 1950 book was written by Immanuel Velikovsky
and caused an unprecedented furor in scientific circles. It led to
the transfer of the book from the hurting academic publisher and
dismissal of those who publicly supported the work. Among those
summarily sacked was the distinguished Gordon Atwater, curator of
the Hayden Planetarium, who planned to dramatize the book using
the planetarium.

In 1974, the AAAS held a session in San Francisco which was
supposed to allow Velikovsky a forum to answer his critics. It
was, as it transpired, a disgraceful ambush.

Now, some quarter century later, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) has discussed a similar topic but
without Velikovsky's presence. The subject was "unpredictable
events of extra-terrestrial origin and their impact on humanity".
It was an occasion for the sensationalists to parade their
predictions of doomsday by impact from a comet or asteroid. It
also became another opportunity for academics to rewrite history
and indulge in yet another miserable attack on Velikovsky. As
reported in the WhyFiles: "...there are some neo-catastrophists,
located mainly in Britain, who have an almost Velikovskian pseudo-
scientific take on this matter and have argued that such impacts
are more frequent..."

Velikovsky, of course, is the guy who gave asteroid impacts such a
bad name back in 1950." See:
http://whyfiles.news.wisc.edu/106asteroid/index.html

It seems unlikely that Velikovsky's historical reconstruction of
planetary catastrophes is correct and it is the British neo-
catastrophists rather than academia who we have to thank for their
scholarly work on the subject. However they have not argued for
more frequent asteroid impacts. None of this denies Velikovsky
priority in identifying the major destructive influence in the
Earth's past as the near approaches of the planets Mars and Venus.
His reconstruction of awesome celestial events in the dimly
remembered past follow the laws of physics and the rules of
evidence. His model is a good one when measured by its prediction
score against that of conventional models. Conventional models are
woefully deficient to pronounce upon impacts ands their effects.
To begin with, planetologists have admitted they are unable to
experimentally reproduce the features of so-called impact craters.
So, what are the craters? If they are not a result of impacts,
what possible use are they in predicting future impacts? Is the
science of impacts a pseudo-science?

Amazingly, Mars was often sculpted by ancient artists as a sphere.
How could it be if Mars has always occupied its present orbit? The
list is very long of other striking anomalies that have to be
ignored by astronomers to maintain the status quo. A science that
willfully disallows the documentary evidence for planetary
encounters amassed by Velikovsky, and others since, is itself a
pseudo-science.

One point I will concede to the astronomers. Velikovsky's book
title is misleading. It is not about colliding planets or
asteroids. It seems there is an intrinsic avoidance mechanism
involving cosmic electric discharges. But no astrophysicist on
this planet is taught anything about electric discharges in space.
Proof of that can be seen in the Tethered Satellite debacle. Yet
the ancients reported planetary thunderbolts that wrought
destruction on a global scale. That is where we must begin to look
for the cause of cratering. Jupiter's thunderbolt is said to have
created the colossal scar of Valles Marineris in a moment on Mars'
face. Planetologists, in their limited view, have attributed it to
water erosion.

Photo caption: Valles Marineris [with nearby] . . . craters (some
with terraced walls). Crater chains and scalloped canyons are all
characteristic of electrical scarring.  See this and other photos
photos of this article at:
http://www.holoscience.com/news/pseudo_science.html

As Sir Fred Hoyle wrote, "... could it be that Velikovsky had
revealed, admittedly in a form that was scientifically
unacceptable, a situation that astronomers are under a cultural
imperative to hide? Could it be that, somewhere in the shadows,
there is a past history that it is inadmissible to discuss?" The
answer is obviously "yes". But Hoyle shows his own Achilles heel
when he mentions Velikovsky's documentary evidence as being
"scientifically unacceptable". He is not alone when he writes "...
we believed in the primacy of mathematical rules...". But who is
to say what the rules were when Jupiter hurled thunderbolts?
Certainly not the rules of Sir Isaac Newton, who knew nothing of
electricity. It is inadmissible to discuss Velikovsky's work
because it requires a revolution in science. Astronomy would have
to leave the gas-lit Victorian era and enter the era of the
electric light. But science does not welcome revolution. Hoyle
again: "Slender progress means that the sheep cannot be separated
from the goats. Nothing happens to threaten existing
establishments... When there is near zero progress, slight steps
can be misinterpreted (or misrepresented) as large steps,
governments can be urged to throw immense sums of money into the
air in the vain hope that something of value will be forthcoming,
and, above all, establishments can perpetuate themselves."

I leave the last word on the subject to Mel Acheson........

Mel:
When the Hebrews prepared to invade the land of Canaan, they were
given the imperative to kill all the inhabitants, including the
cattle. They didn't kill all the cattle, and they were punished.
But they did write the history so God was on their side.

What brings this historical anecdote to mind is a "history" of
catastrophics at the WhyFiles. After listing a series of events
that are now considered catastrophic from ancient times to modern,
the WhyFiles says this:

"1950 -- Immanuel Velikovsky publishes "Worlds in Collision", a
pseudoscientific warning about impact hazards. In equal parts
bogus and frightening, Velikovsky casts the entire field of impact
studies into disrepute."

[You remember "impact studies": that ancient discipline which was
a paragon of scientific inquiry until Velikovsky single-handedly
demolished its respectability.]

Now that the data have become so compelling that catastrophic
events can no longer be ignored, the Uniformists need to invade
catastrophist territory. But what they wish was uninhabited virgin
wilderness turns out to be occupied. After centuries of denial
that catastrophic events occur, after volumes written to disparage
the idea, after calumnies composed to bury investigations under
the headstone of pseudoscience, the invaders are embarrassed by
the indigenous catastrophists.

So the indigenes must be eliminated and history re-written to make
the invaders into the good guys: Velikovsky is blamed for the
centuries of disrepute, and the invaders can claim to have rescued
"impact studies" from the depredations of crackpots.

The unsavory truth is that Uniformists since the time of Lyell
have done all they could to derogate ideas containing any hint of
catastrophism. And they largely succeeded: No scientist would
mention catastrophic events or their proponents (else he would
quickly find himself no longer a scientist: Where, pray tell, is
Gordon Atwater?). Catastrophists were shunned as superstitious
crackpots or religious fanatics. No small part of Velikovsky's
greatness was his courage and genius in presenting such a well-
researched and well-argued case that the wall of silence was
breached, even if only to scream vituperations at him. Had he not
done what he did, it's likely the wall would still be standing,
and the ungrateful inhabitants of "impact studies" would be just
more crackpots. It was VELIKOVSKY who rescued catastrophics.

These little men who trail far behind Velikovsky and who make
snide remarks with fabricated "history" while trying to cash in on
his accomplishments are devoid of both grace and gratitude. Such
continuing displays of malice are what give science its bad name.

~Mel Acheson

Note: Worlds in Collision is planned to be reprinted later this
year on the 50th anniversary of its first printing.

~Wal Thornhill
See the home of The Electric Universe
at http://www.holoscience.com
**************************************************************