Contents
THE VELIKOVSKY AFFAIR
and
OTHER MUSINGS
Last Updated in 2002
Friday, June 19, 2009
read book now
HOME
VIEW
MAIL
From time to time I find I have things to say that don't quite fit the
standard VIEW format. The Velikovsky Affair surfaces now and again as
one of them. I no longer find it very interesting except as a kind of
sociopathy: neither Big Orthodox Science, nor Velikovsky's supporters,
nor the promoters of skepticism about Big Science come off very well
here.
Science, when done right, remains the best means of advancing human
knowledge, and the notion that we don't know anything, and can't know
anything, and everything we think we know is false, is bunkum: we all
know we live longer and better (in the physical sense) than our
ancestors; that we know more about the Universe than was known in,
say, the 13th Century; that we may still believe nonsense, but there
is less nonsense about the nature of the world than there used to be.
Spiritually we may not be so well off, and I suppose there are those
who say we'd be better off diseased and ignorant but with the right
spiritual beliefs, but outside cocktail parties and undergraduate bull
sessions there aren't many people I want to know who believe that. I
have my doubts about this era, but they don't involve regretting that
I have teeth and feel pretty good at my age.
_________________________________________________________________
For my concluding view on this affair as of January 2009, click here.
Updates and such, in reverse order: that is, newest first.
And a letter on paleoclimatology and Velikovsky that draws some useful
conclusions.
For a not unreasonable summary on this, see Morrison and my answer.
My latest addition to this (June, 2002) is a "bottom line comment" and
a quite definitive account of the AAAS meeting and Velikovsky's impact
on the sciences by David Morrison. And another recommendation of
Chapman and Morrison, Cosmic Catastrophes.
And there is more from Norman Levitt as a sort of footnote.
I append a letter received in March, 2000.
I have added a short error report.
This page generated a discussion of the First Dark Age that appears on
another page.
And a fairly long exchange of letters (December, 2000) on the subject
of, was Velikovsky an obvious fool, and if so, what should be done
about him? Because my correspondent in this has said that on
reflection he prefers not to be named. The conversation is still
worth recording.
Worlds Still Colliding by Leroy Ellenberger (February 2001)
read book now
HOME
VIEW
MAIL
Mail about this
Spring 2000:
I've just been over to http://www.monadnock.net/fanspaces/hogan/,
which has a number of essays by James Hogan on various subjects. He
has actually dared re-open the question of Velikovsky. That will win
him no friends at all. For those wondering what the Velikovsky Affair
was about, you can get something of an introduction over there from
Hogan, and it's well worth the ten minutes or so it will take. It will
also spare me summarizing the old man's theories, which were, well,
outlandish. But then no one is more outlandish than, say,
Heisenberg...
I recall many years ago Stefan Possony got me interested in The
Velikovsky Affair. Steve was a political scientist, and as he liked to
describe himself, an intelligence officer, not a scientist. He was
also a polymath, who had a grasp of the effects of technology; of the
people I have known, I think Marvin Minsky, onetime Donner Professor
of Technology at MIT, is the only person with a similar broad based
understanding of technology itself. Of course Possony and I wrote THE
STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY, a book available on line here.
In any event, Steve was interested in the Velikovsky affair not
because he really cared whether Velikovsky was right, but because of
the vehemence with which Big Science attacked the old man. As a result
I spent a good bit of time looking into Velikovsky's claims. In doing
so I found that in general of the scientists who made any attempt to
look at him with an open mind, the astronomers thought his astronomy
was whacko, but his archeology was sound; while the archeologists
thought his archeology pretty silly, but admired his astronomical
thinking.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that not only was Velikovsky
wrong, but he would stoop to something close to fraud, although I may
be the only person who noticed one of the instances of that:
Velikovsky "predicted" in one of his books that Linear B would prove
to be Achaean Greek, a startling prediction for the time. Now, I find,
he didn't make that claim in the original manuscript of his book, but
added it in galley proof: which is to say, he added it just after
Michael Ventris, who proved that Linear B was in fact Mycenaean, had
circulated his newsletter-formatted "Mid Century Report" -- and
Velikovsky had seen a copy although he never acknowledged that in any
way. Now it was astute of him to realize early on that Ventris was
right, but that's not quite the same as reaching the conclusion from
within his own premises, which in fact had to be mildly strained to
let him derive that conclusion.
[August 2000: that above paragraph contains a mistake. Ventris's
Mid-Century Report asked questions, and got a bunch of wrong answers
which were the consensus on the scholarly community on what Linear B
might prove to be. But in 1951 Ventris sent mimeographed copies of a
DECIPHERMENT of some Linear B tablets into Mycenaean Greek to his
scholarly mailing list. Then in summer, 1952, a new tablet was found,
and found to be readable as Mycenaean Greek. Thus by October 1953 when
Velikovsky made his "prediction" that Linear B would prove to be
Greek, he was saying nothing more than the general buzz of the
archeological scholarly community who had known it for a year; and it
is very difficult to believe that Velikovsky didn't know that. But
everyone was keeping quiet about it so that Ventris could make his
announcement himself and garner the kudos for it; a courtesy that
isn't so common nowadays.
I now have a copy of my February 1975 GALAXY column on this subject,
and I'll get someone to type it in or maybe I will try to use my new
HP scanner to read it. Then I will put it up here.]
There were other instances in which Velikovsky turned out to have
appropriated the conclusions of others without acknowledging them; and
some of his archeology turns out to be just plain dead wrong.
Which still does not invalidate his central conclusion, which is that
some bizarre astronomical event dominated history in the early Bronze
Age, bringing about not only the First Dark Age in which writing
itself was nearly lost, and much of civilization crumbled -- an event
not adequately explained by anyone I know. The First Dark Age is quite
real.
Velikovsky postulated that the planet Venus erupted from the planet
Jupiter, nearly hit the Earth, and eventually settled into its present
orbit. This is a pretty startling claim. It's not likely to be taken
seriously on its face, being considerably less likely than, say, the
claim that the odd events Ezekiel depicts in the Old Testament were
his attempts describe an encounter with an alien space ship. On the
other hand, Velikovsky wasn't entirely without evidence, and Hogan
summarizes that fairly well. Most was derived from archeological
astronomical records, but it has long been a principle of astronomy
that an observation is not negated merely by its age. Eventually,
Velikovsky persuaded enough people that Big Science had to pay
attention.
The attention they paid was shameful. One group of otherwise reputable
scientists actually threatened the MacMillan company, which had
originally published Velikovsky's book, with a boycott of their text
books on the grounds that a company that would publish a popular work
like Velikovsky's was probably so tainted that their textbooks were
contaminated and worthless. MacMillan took the extraordinary step,
unprecedented in my experience, of ceasing to publish a book on the
best selling list and allowing Doubleday, which had no text line, to
have a surely profitable book. The leader of this particular bit of
scientific inquisition was Harlow Shapely, Harvard astronomer and
otherwise respectable scientist.
Another bit of attention was arranging a 'debate' at an annual meeting
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Velikovsky, an aged psychiatrist with a thick Viennese accent -- he
was of Freud's generation and had been a junior associate of Freud --
was pitted against Carl Sagan, and if there was a referee or moderator
he didn't do much. Sagan wisecracked through the whole 'debate', never
once confronting anything Velikovsky said, and mostly using his verbal
skills to ridicule the old man. It was as shameful a thing as I ever
saw Carl do.
Alfred de Grazia, a political scientist at NYU did a book now out of
print on the whole affair; it was, I think, the reason Possony got
interested. I used to have a copy.
Hogan has some new thoughts on Velikovsky, but I think they are based
in part on faulty recollection of what Velikovsky actually said and
predicted. Taken as a whole, Velikovsky's specific hypotheses are, in
my judgment, quite beyond belief. On the other hand, his general
hypothesis, that there were astronomical terrors in the Bronze Age and
memories of them have come down to us in myths and legends, has always
seemed to me to be well worth taking seriously and is in fact very
probably true.
I once spent a week on Santorini with Spyridon Marinatos, the Greek
archeologist who concluded that the Atlantis legend arose from the
historical catastrophe of the Thera eruption -- Thera is the ancient
name for the island of Santorini -- and while he was ridiculed for his
views when he presented them, they're now pretty widely accepted.
Marinatos also found a number of archeological sites on Santorini that
support his views. The Thera eruption is now thought to be the largest
single energy event in the historical memory of mankind.
I forget whether Velikovsky incorporated any of Marinatos' hypotheses
into his own theories. People forget that Velikovsky had a number of
books in which he presented multiple theories, some contradicting
others he had made. He eventually tried to prove that Oedipus and
Ankhnaten were one and the same person, a rather extraordinary
stretch. As I said, many of his 'predictions' are pretty worthless,
and the way to take Velikovsky, in my judgment, is as an early
starting point for reconsidering what we know about both astronomy and
the Bronze Age; not as a specific source of hypotheses.
Hogan, on the other hand, does a pretty good job of drawing some
instructive conclusions from the Velikovsky Affair, and if you've read
all this, you certainly ought to read what he has to say. There's even
evidence, unconvincing to me, but evidence, that Velikovsky's most
bizarre theory had some merit.
Another thing that needs rethinking is the whole Darwinian notion of
gradualism vs. catastrophism: and that's another can of worms.
Catastophism is getting popular again, after a long period of being
denounced. I know some of that: I was, at one time, reviled as some
kind of primitive creationist for my view that Darwinian gradualism is
so contrary to the evidence that it need not be taken seriously. I
still believe that. Hogan has a good essay summarizing why. And of
course Lucifer's Hammer is a novel about a catastrophe.
Anyway, go read Hogan. You'll like him, whether you agree or not.
And now a thoughtful comment:
From: Mark Hollis [mhollis@onepine.com]
Sent:
Sunday, July 12, 1998 11:11 PM
To:
jerryp@jerrypournelle.com
Subject:
Velikovsky Affair
I, too read most of Immanuel Velikovsky's books in the 1970's and
1980's. Believed them for a while. From what I gather, Velikovsky only
proposed these books as theories and asked for scientists to help
corroborate them or to refute them using the science that they knew.
I recently spoke with a very distinguished astrophysicist at the
University of Chicago, Dr. Don York. I asked him what he thought about
Velikovsky and about the Shapley and Sagan incidents. Both are covered
in Velikovsky's book "Stargazers and Gravediggers." Dr. York expressed
sadness at the vehemence of the attacks from "Science" (note the
capital S). He also commented to me that nothing Dr. Velikovsky did
used the scientific method.
Of course, nothing Marshall MacLuhan (whom I also studied) used that
methodology either.
The end product of Dr. Velikovsky's work encouraged two things, which
were not encouraged in the 1950's and early 1960's when his more
controversial books were most popular.
First, he encouraged broadening educational horizons within university
curricula. This has resulted in the merging of several disciplines and
the creation of more general studies programs. This has also
encouraged students of the sciences to broaden their endeavors to
include other disciplines so that serendipitous discovery would become
a more regular occurrence in the various disciplines. The best
outworking of that ideal to date is the Human Genome Project, which
brings together molecular chemistry and biology into molecular biology
and further fuses that with cybernetics and computer programming, as
well as database design.
Interdisciplinary study has become more common.
Second, his theories, whether wrong or right, backed up by fact or
speculation, encouraged us to think of a planet that may have
experienced catastrophic changes in the past--and perhaps the "recent"
past. Present theories of dinosaur extinction presently include giant
meteor impact. No one would have ever thought to look for the evidence
found just off the Yucatan Peninsula of a large, glancing impact that
is included in the most recent theory of extinction if scientists were
determined to continue to assume a slowly-evolving never changing
planet Earth.
As Velikovsky wrote, "I lit many fires in the halls of science, but
the torch I carried was only for illumination."
Thank you for your commentary.
-Mark Hollis
I think this credits Velikovsky with more humility than I discovered
when I met him at that fateful AAAS Meeting. I interviewed him and
found him less articulate, but nearly as arrogantly convinced of his
correctness, as Carl Sagan. But I could have caught him at a
particularly bad time. But I agree, Velikovsky may have had a
beneficial effect on American Big Science. Certainly we now pay more
attention to odd views like Alvarez on the Dinosaur Killer.
==
JoatSimeon@aol.com
Interesting treatment of Velikovsky, and it's true that even a
scoundrel-- which is, I think, a fair description of someone who'd
appropriate Ventris' research without giving credit--isn't necessarily
always wrong.
As to the Dark Age that followed the 13^th-century BCE breakdown, it
was indeed very dark; literate civilization disappeared from mainland
Europe and most of Anatolia, and was gravely set back in the Middle
East. I've just finished books 1 and 2 of an SF series set in that
period, by coincidence, and have been doing a good deal of research
about it. ("Island in the Sea of Time").
My own theory is that the `systems collapse' was so total because of
the extremely centralized structure of the Bronze Age palace
economies.
Evidently most of them came to an almighty sharp peak; they were very
highly developed redistributive systems, enormously elaborated
versions of a single nobleman's household grown to the size of an
entire state. Money hadn't been invented, and the market played a
surprisingly small role; these were Oriental Despotisms of a starkly
elemental kind--in the time of the Ur III dynasty in Mesopotamia, the
death of a single sheep can be traced in many separate documents in
the central archives of a state that covered the whole of what's now
Iraq. That one even seems to have had labor camps and huge
slave-manned workshops as really important features in its economy.
This over-centralization was especially true in the peripheral areas
(like the Mycenaean sphere) where the collapse was worst. The Aegean
states were miniature second-hand copies of the Near Eastern
monarchies, a thin layer rather than a longstanding growth.
For example, the Mycenaeans don't appear to have used writing for
anything but palace account keeping; there may not have been more than
a hundred or two scribes/literate persons in the whole of Greece. The
Linear B writing system, like many Bronze Age scripts, was an
abortion--extremely complex, ambiguous, in some ways more like a code
than an alphabet. It was exceedingly difficult to learn, requiring
many years of tutoring under the guidance of an expert. (Some signs
had as many as _seventy_ alternative meanings, depending on context.)
When the palaces burned and the specialists were killed or scattered,
everything collapsed beyond hope of recall. The Iron Age cultures that
arose in the next millennium tended to be much more resilient, because
they were more decentralized and less dependent on bureaucratic
absolutism.
I pretty well agree with that analysis. I had a book contract to do a
story about the Fall of Atlantis, postulated as the Minoan
civilization, and I spent time tramping around the Greek mainland, and
the islands, and Crete, and of course Santorini. I spent several days
with Marinatos at his excavation on Thera. My problem was that the
Minoan Civilization was good, and it was destroyed by the gods, or by
a volcano, or natural disaster, through no fault of theirs, and I
didn't like that story. So I never wrote it. One day I may do one. The
First Dark Age was dark indeed.
Joat Simeon (who turns out to be my several times coauthor S. M.
Stirling) Replies:
The First Dark Age also provides an illuminating example of how
fashions in archaeological interpretation interact with actual
research.
For some time now, "diffusionist" and "migrationist" intepretations
have been in deep disfavor in archaeological circles, particularly in
the English-speaking world--Colin Renfrew's work comes to mind. Thus
evidence of folk-migrations in the period after 1250 BCE tended to be
interpreted away. (Eg., saying that Greeks just suddenly decided to
start making swords with Central European styles.)
However, even Renfrew has been reconsidering this lately. It now looks
as if the principle ancestors of the Philistines were actually Greeks,
later assimilated linguistically by the West Semitic peoples among
whom they settled. The Sea Peoples and the various hordes who were
washing around the eastern Mediterranean at the time certainly
included peoples from Italy and adjacent islands, and Anatolia was
equally certainly invaded on a massive scale by the proto-Phyrgians
and Armenians.
I'd say the pottery and metal-artifact evidence indicates that groups
from as far away as the Danube Valley were involved, or even northern
Europeans. There's no basic reason why not; you can walk from Denmark
to Greece in a month, and very large numbers of people have done it
with not much more technology than the Late Bronze Age had available.
The Cimbri of 100 BCE, judging from the number of their fighting men
in the last battle with Marius, must have numbered at least 250,000
all up, and they were only part of that horde. Julius Caesar turned
back a comparable number of Helvetii when they tried to leave what's
now Switzerland and enter the Roman domain.
I have known most of my life that the Philistines (Palestinians) were
the remnants of the Minoan Civilization, who were themselves a mixture
of Achaean and whatever people inhabited the islands before the Greek
invasion. Graves's theory of a Zeus (Ius Pater, Sky-worshipping)
invasion of people who revered the Great Military Family impacting on
a mother-goddess people has always seemed about right to me. There
isn't a lot left of the older people except in their myths, of course.
The Mycenaeans were very efficient until the collapse of their
culture.
_________________________________________________________________
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Back in the middle 1970s I too became very interested in Dr.
Velikovsky and his writings. I read all of them and still have three
of his books (Worlds in Collision, Earth In Upheaval, &; Ages in
Chaos).
Velikovsky's second published volume, "Earth In Upheaval", is really
the one that reestablished catastrophism as a respectable academic
concept. It's also the most noncontroversial of his books since it was
simply a compilation of long ignored and unexplained anomalous
archeological and geological findings (frozen mammoths in Siberia,
clay figurines from under lava flows in Idaho, etc.) To the extent
Velikovsky relegitimized Catastrophism, it was by refocusing attention
on these known but ignored data. The controversy surrounding Worlds In
Collision was what attracted attention to the second book.
I also notice that in the later books ("Ages In Chaos", "Ramses II and
His Time", and "Peoples of the Sea") Velikovsky mostly dropped the
controversial astrophysics and concentrated on reconstructing ancient
history and archeology.
You are quite right about Sagan and his disgraceful performance. I
didn't attend the AAAS meeting but Sagan replicated his non-refutation
in his book "Scientists Confront Velikovsky". A better title for it
would have been "A Scientist Refuses to Confront Velikovsky." I think
Sagan's oral and written non-response did as much as anything to lend
an aura of respectibility to the Doc's views and perpetuate the
controversy. It's as if he accepted the con side of the debate and
then defaulted on purpose.
At the time Velikovsky seemed very reasonable and even heroic to me.
But his pose as the "Lone Ranger crusading for scientific truth and
free academic inquiry" is very far from reality. Further study of
Velikovsky's works showed me that he had several hidden agendas at
work.
Velikovsky and His Agendas.
1. A Historical and Archeological Justification for Zionism. The
ultimate theme of his ancient history work is best summarized as: "An
Archeological and Historical Title Search for the Modern State of
Israel." He accomplished that by bringing the fields of archeology and
ancient history into complete concord with Exodus, Joshua, Judges and
through to II Kings.
Along these lines two points ought to be remembered by anyone
considering ancient history according to the Doc:
a. Velikovsky's father, Simon Yehiel Velikovsky was, with Theodore
Herzl, one of the founders of modern political Zionism and an early
Zionist pioneer in Palestine. He died there in 1937 aged 78. See the
Dedication in "Ages In Chaos".
b. One of Velikovsky's admirers interviewed him in the late 1960s at
Princeton. After a long discussion on several points this supporter
was directly and very forcefully reminded by the 'Doc' not to forget
what was really most important. And that was the modern State of
Israel.
Certainly the conduct of Shapely's campaign was not his finest hour.
Sagan definitely hit new lows without adding anything constructive.
Given the time "Worlds In Collision" first appeared (1950) and the
context of recent Holocaust, Israeli independence, Stalinist
Lysenkoism and other politicizations of science, Shapely &; Company's
response is understandable if unfortunate. I have no doubt Shapely and
others largely viewed Velikovsky's work as another attempt to distort
science to the service of partisan political goals. But contemporary
events made it impolitic for them to directly say so.
2. Anti-anti-Semitism. Among what I consider the Doc's 'stretchers'
was ascribing the origins of anti-Semitism to the 3d Century B.C.
Egpytian priest Manetho and an alleged scholastic error of Manetho's
that supposedly led to the identification of the Jews with the
Amalekites in the Greco-Roman world. This probably worked on anyone
who hadn't read the Book of Esther in the Old Testament.
3. Apologia for Freudianism. "Oedipus and Akhnaton" appeared in the
1970s when the entire concept of Freudian psychoanalytics was coming
under increasingly heavy attack in the psychiatric and general medical
field. As you yourself pointed out, the "Doc" was a junior associate
of Freud himself.
Velikovsky was far from the guileless crusader for Pure Academic Truth
he costumed himself as being. This guy had strong hidden agendas at
work and pursued them with vigor.
Yours Truly, Mark A. Gallmeier Port Charlotte, FL
_________________________________________________________________
From Leroy Ellenberger
Herewith, my letter commenting on David Morrison's review of the Sagan
biographies in current SKEPTIC:
Sagan and Velikovsky
David Morrison is to be commended for being the only reviewer so far
to include Velikovsky in his review of the two Sagan biographies by
Keay Davidson and William Poundstone (Vol. 7, No. 4). This is because
Velikovsky played a bigger role in Sagan's career as a critic of
pseudoscience than UFOs and the face on Mars and because Sagan's
treatment of Velikovsky holds lessons for skeptics which,
unfortunately, the biographers and Morrison seem not to appreciate.
No one who knows what Velikovsky actually wrote can agree with
Morrison's comment: "Sagan's critique of Worlds in Collision is
brilliant popular science writing" because it is replete with invalid
arguments, misrepresentations, inaccuracies, erroneous physics, and
his own knife-twisting brand of condescending ridicule. Hence Sagan's
analysis is hardly a proper vehicle with which "to reassure the public
of science's basic fair mindedness," as Morrison states. Dr. Jerry
Pournelle, a physicist, science fiction writer, and no fan of
Velikovsky's, who witnessed the encounter between Sagan and Velikovsky
in 1974, has written "Sagan wisecracked through the whole 'debate',
never once confronting anything Velikovsky said, and mostly using his
verbal skills to ridicule the old man. It was as shameful a thing as I
ever saw Carl do."
Sagan failed to explain why Velikovsky is wrong in a way that would
influence positively those, including many with PhDs in technical
fields, who find merit at some level in Velikovsky's ideas.
Sagan's biggest technical error is in his "Appendix 3" on the cooling
of Venus and it is worse than "a bit too glib and rhetorical," as
Morrison remarks. What Sagan shows has nothing to do with cooling, but
instead is the trivial identity that the amount of heat radiated to
Venus in about an hour at 6000 K equals the amount of heat radiated
from Venus in 3500 years at 79 K, as Dr. George R. Talbott explained
in Kronos IV:2, 1978, and as I reported in my April 1981 letter in
Physics Today, which was ignored by Sagan at the time and denied in my
last corresondence with him in April 1996.
The book Velikovsky and Establishment Science (1977), edited by L.M.
Greenberg and W.B. Sizemore, contains rebuttals to all of Sagan's main
points against Velikovsky. These rebuttals were never answered, not by
Sagan, and not even when Morrison and Donald Goldsmith, editor of
Scientists Confront Velikovsky, participated in the dialogue on
Velikovsky in Zetetic Scholar in 1979.
The encounter between Sagan and Velikovsky in 1974 at the AAAS session
titled "Velikovsky's Challenge to Science" cannot properly be called a
debate, as Morrison and others do, because their two papers were
written independent of each other and Sagan left the meeting before
the discussion session in order to appear on Johnny Carson.
Contrary to Morrison's account, Sagan did not organize the AAAS event.
He merely endorsed the suggestion first made by Walter Orr Roberts.
The organizers of record were Ivan King, Donald Goldsmith, and Owen
Gingerich. In addition, all the conferences and journals that
stimulated public interest in Velikovsky's ideas were in the 1970s,
not the 1960s as Morrison states.
Although Velikovsky withdrew his paper from Scientists Confront
Velikovsky over policy differences concerning the space allowed for
rebuttals, his paper WAS published in three other sources: Pensee VII
(1974), The Humanist (Nov/Dec 1977), and Kronos III:2 (1977) titled
Velikovsky and Establishment Science. Interestingly, Velikovsky's
paper was complete for distribution at the meeting in 1974 whereas
Sagan's paper was not completed until over two years later in 1976 by
which time its length had increased by 50%.
Support for Velikovsky existed in a context that most critics,
especially Sagan, ignored. If a skeptic wishes to influence the
beliefs of people having an interest in a topic, it is imperative that
the skeptic address the issues as perceived by them. Thus, it is
ironic that while many commentators applauded Sagan's slick and
facile, though thoroughly flawed, critique of Velikovsky it was the
rank incompetence of that effort that created a rallying point around
which support for Velikovsky flourished far longer than it would have
had Sagan produced an accurate and technically competent critique. In
1974 I was fully prepared to follow the arguments whereever they went,
but Sagan's AAAS paper went beyond the pale of responsible criticism
and made no attempt to address the issues as they were perceived by
the readers of Pensee, whose interest had sparked the need for the
AAAS session in the first place.
--Leroy Ellenberger, Author of "An Antidote to Velikovskian
Delusions", Skeptic 3:4, 1995, < abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html
>, St. Louis, MO, c.leroy@rocketmail.com
I am not sure what to make of this, but I have to agree, although I
think there are plenty of rational arguments in refutation of
Velikovsky, Sagan didn't make them; or if he did, they were so buried
in irrelevance as to hide them well. And I completely agree that a
valid confrontation of Velikovsky in 1974 would have ended the matter:
the slick job done which ignored Velikovsky's arguments in favor of
"trust me I'm a scientist and this man is mad, ho ho ho" did little to
reassure those who thought Big Science incapable of thinking outside
the box...
Mr. Ellenberger has a much longer article along these lines at
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html
My own views have not much changed. Velikovsky was dead wrong, but the
Velikovsky Affair showed some serious problems with Big Science's
abilities to cope with radical ideas. Velikovsky's value, such as it
was, was to get people thinking about catastrophe in the Bronze Age.
_________________________________________________________________
Here is what the letter refers to:
from SAGAN AND SKEPTICISM
by David Morrison
EXCERPT
Davidson writes [in Carl Sagan, A Life] that "Sagan believed he had to
do more than champion science; he had to attack its antithesis,
pseudoscience. He was an especially effective opponent of
pseudoscience because he was not an "establishment" figure. Sagan was
too young, light-hearted, and prolific a speculator to be dismissed by
pseudoscientists as just another academic party pooper. Hence, in the
mid-1970s as his writing and television career took off he came to be
perceived as the most effective critic of the pseudoscientific wave in
pop culture." Let's look briefly at [one example] of this
confrontation.
During the 1960s, the pseudo-cosmologist Immanuel Velikovsky developed
a substantial following, with "scientific conferences" and "technical
journals" devoted to examining his peculiar ideas about planets
spinning from their orbits and careering through the solar system
within historic times. There were also a number of scholars and
journalists who felt that Velikovsky had been badly served by attempts
made by Harlow Shapley and other influential scientists to discourage
the publication of his sensationalist 1950 book "Worlds in Collision".
Velikovsky and his followers taunted the scientific establishment for
its unwillingness to give his ideas a fair hearing. Against this
background, Sagan organized a public debate at the 1974 annual meeting
of the AAAS, with Velikovsky invited to present and defend his views.
As Davidson writes [in Carl Sagan: A Life]: "The debate would
constitute, in effect, an apology to Velikovsky [for previous slights
from astronomers], giving him the opportunity to submit his ideas to
direct scientific scrutiny. The debate's ultimate goal was not to
reassess Velikovsky's ideas (hardly any scientist took these
seriously), but, rather, to reassure the public of science's basic
fair mindedness."
The high drama of the event centered on the confrontation of the
octogenarian patriarch Velikovsky and his young, brash critic, Sagan.
It was a clash of immense egos on both sides. Sagan aimed his remarks
(published in extended form in "Scientists Confront Velikovsky" edited
by symposium co-organizer Donald Goldsmith) primarily at the public
and science journalists, and by most accounts he was hands-down
winner. Many people credit this debate as the beginning of the end for
the Velikovsky cult, which is today reduced to a handful of obscure
cranks.
Sagan's critique of "Worlds in Collision" is brilliant popular science
writing, not really a serious technical discussion of Velikovsky's
ideas (most of which hardly deserve such scrutiny). A few of Sagan's
arguments, especially concerning the probabilities of planetary
collisions, are a bit too glib and rhetorical. This infuriated the
Velikovsky supporters, who perceived that Sagan not only was attacking
their hero, but that he also did into take them seriously enough to
engage in what they would consider a true scientific debate. They
still damn Sagan for the "scientific inaccuracies" in his
presentation. Ironically, while many scientists criticized Sagan for
stooping to engage with an obvious crank, Velikovsky fans castigated
him for not engaging more seriously, for taking the easy way out by
making the old man look ridiculous.
Some academic critics from outside the physical sciences still
question how Sagan and other astronomers could reject Velikovsky
without reading his books and carefully studying his ideas. Perhaps
they don't understand how readily someone with sound technical
training and physical intuition can recognize pseudoscience like that
of Velikovsky. You don't have to consume an entire meal of spoiled
food to recognize the problem -- one or two bites is enough.
While I can agree with part of this, I think Morrison (who has done an
admirable job of making catastrophism a scientifically viable
hypothesis) misses the point. A AAAS meeting is supposed to be a
serious scientific confrontation, not a pop show. Sagan ought to have
been ashamed of himself.
For instance: "playing to the science press." Most of the science
press corps attending a AAAS meeting is composed of highly educated
and highly qualified people, some with scientific credentials. The
annual meeting of the National Association of Science Writers is held
at AAAS and for good reason. Sagan didn't play to us: he played to the
popular press corps, the naive types who were not looking for a
scientific discussion and wouldn't know how to cover one. He didn't
say one damned thing that was news to any of us who had done our
homework; he was looking for headlines and publicity, and got them,
and used the old man to help him draw a crowd.
It wasn't a debate it was pure showmanship, complete with gestures,
posturing, poses, and the rest.
As to this being the beginning of the end for Velikovsky, perhaps, but
I think this confuses cause and effect. It certainly wasn't the
beginning of the end, anyway: Velikovsky was well on his way out, each
successive book selling less well than the predecessor.
More to the point, Velikovsky had made his real point (even though he
didn't know what it was).
There were two parts to Velikovsky's theories. One was a bunch of
astronomical nonsense, that, if any large part were true, had fifty
Nobel prizes in it: if any large part of Velikovsky's specifics were
true, then not only is the history of the solar system different from
what we imagined then [it is] but all of celestial mechanics as we
thought we understood it was in a dreadful mess [it wasn't]. There
were other implications for relativity, the nature of gravity, and
electro-mechanical effects, all of which had to be different from what
we supposed if any specific parts of Velikovsky's cosmology had merit.
In a word, the old boy was wrong, wrong, wrong, and in some places
simply silly. That wasn't hard to show.
The second part of Velikovsky's theory was quite true. He postulated,
prior to 1960, that the solar system wasn't the quiet uniform place
most textbooks imagined, and the history of the earth wasn't the long,
quiet, almost uneventful progression that the Darwinists at that time
thought they needed to make their theories on the origin of species
work. Velikovsky postulated a series of catastrophes, some of them
taking place recently enough that they were remembered in myth and
legend and possibly even in written historical documents. Now he
wasn't alone in that postulate -- and he wasn't the only one ridiculed
for making it either.
It is hard for those who didn't live through the 40's and 50's to
realize just how firmly the uniformitarian hypothesis was rooted, and
just how much ridicule was heaped on those who rejected it. To
postulate catastrophes in history was to reject Darwin, and take sides
with the Biblical literalists. Now of course this is not true: my high
school science teachers at Christian Brothers believed in catastrophes
in history for very good scientific reasons, and neither they nor the
Roman church insisted on the literal truth of the Bible, Noah's Flood
as anything other than a local event, or Genesis in 7 literal days. I
learned the theory of evolution in a Catholic school in the state of
Tennessee (while the Scopes law was still on the books); I also was
introduced to the riddle of what happened to produce the First Dark
Age in the Bronze Age, to look underneath Exodus to see if there were
not historical counterparts to the Biblical history, and the like; and
I can guarantee you that people who had been taught that sort of thing
were not welcomed as undergraduates in the 1950's. Believe me. I was
thought a troublemaker for asking about such things.
Had Sagan chosen to read Velikovsky's work instead of merely skimming
to find dramatic points to make, he might have pointed out that while
Velikovsky was wrong about what CAUSED the catastrophes, he was right
about there having been such.
That would have made the whole fiasco worth while. As it was, by
ridiculing the old man and making a point of saying he had never read
him, Sagan lent new life to the conspiracy view, and slowed the
progress of real understanding. The irony is that Sagan, and Morrison,
were themselves pioneers in discovering the real history of the solar
system, which was hardly uniform, and Morrison has done some of the
best popular work on documenting just what catastrophes have happened
and some of their effects. For more from Morrison, see below
Back to letter.
DISCUSSION OF FIRST DARK AGE CONTINUED ON A NEW PAGE
We continue the discussion of Velikovsky
Regardless the perceived merits or demerits of Sagan's critique of
Worlds in Collision, the objective fact of the matter is that it did
not appeal to those who were partial to Velikovsky's ideas and
provided enough fodder for years of reaction, even obsessive
over-reaction, that has not stopped to this day.
Typically, Velikovsky and his minions replied to all criticism that
they perceived to be erroneous or otherwise actionable if they could
put a negative spin on it, as was the case in Pensee times with the
critics William Straka, prof of physics at U. Delaware, and William
Stiebing, prof of history at U. New Orleans. In retrospect, Stiebing's
archaeological criticisms were more on-point than those of Straka in
the physical sciences. Other critics, such as Martin Gardner, Isaac
Asimov, and L. Sprague de Camp, were always considered fair game for
reply since they made many careless errors.
However, Velikovsky and his troops never replied in earnest and in a
timely manner to Abraham Sachs' prepared remarks delivered in debate
with Velikovsky at Brown University in March 1965
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/vsachs.html . Sachs's critique shows
that a critic can be acerbic and have a bit of fun at the same time
making penetrating and valid points, in contrast to the farrago of
errors Sagan produced. Although Sachs' Address circulated in samzidat
fashion such that John North would quote it verbatim in his review of
Velikovsky Reconsidered in June 25, 1976 TLS, it was not published
formally until 1992 in Aeon 3:1 when it was an appendix in my
article.
Sachs' critique was so devastating that Velikovsky never completed his
rebuttal when he returned to Princeton at which time he prepared
final, typed rebuttals to the other three speakers on the panel at
Brown. Finally, in 1996 in Stephen J. Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky
(Ivy Press), Lynn Rose finally criticized Sachs posthumously with a
few distinctly peripheral points (e.g., does it really matter whether
or not Hommel was really senile when Sachs says he was?) that do not
undermine or discredit the primary thrust of Sachs' remarks. If
Velikovskians could really have refuted Sachs, they would have done it
long ago even though the Address was not formally published. In April
1979 when Peter James vetted Sachs' Address at my request, the only
criticism he mentioned was that current scholarship would opt for Lake
Urmiah, instead of Lake Van, for the "sea" into which Shalmaneser
pushed the opposing army.
Another critic whose valid analysis the Velikovskians ignored is
Michael Friedlander, prof. of physics at Washington University, who
confronted Velikovsky, Rose and Toni Paterson at Philosophy of Science
Association annual meeting at Notre Dame in Nov. 1974. In the event
Friedlander quoted several instances where Velikovsky had quoted
sources fraudulently (e.g., changing Lyttleton's "it is even possible"
to "must" concerning the origin of Venus from Jupiter by fission), but
Velikovsky would not concede a thing. When Pensee X reported on the
meeting, it said Friedlander did not have a prepared text; but his
paper was published in the conference proceedings along with those of
Rose and Paterson. Kronos later reprinted these latter two
pro-Velikovsky papers, but not Friedlander's, which considering the
tenor of the times after the AAAS would have been fair game for a
typical Velikovskian assault.
And I would be remiss were I not to mention Jerry Pournelle's article
on Ages in Chaos in the Feb. 1975 Galaxy science fiction magazine
which Velikovsky ignored despite the editor's explicit offer of space
for a rebuttal from Velikovsky; and make no mistake that Velikovsky
did not see this article because I got my copy from Velikovsky's
files. Readers of this posting may obtain a photocopy of this article
plus the reader comments for $1.00 to cover costs sent to Leroy
Ellenberger, 3929 Utah Street, St. Louis, MO 63116 USA.
So, while Sagan and other critics made easy targets for Velikovskian
rebuttals, there was a small number of critics whose comments were so
penetrating that they were ignored, thereby creating the false
impression among subscribers to Velikovsky publications that
Velikovsky was critic-proof.
Leroy Ellenberger, "Per Veritatem Vis"
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html
"An Antidote to Velikovskian Delusions"
Again I have little to add to this. Thanks.
DISCUSSION OF FIRST DARK AGE CONTINUED ON A NEW PAGE
_________________________________________________________________
Here follows a discussion triggered by the above (December 2000).
Dear Mr. Pournelle,
RE: The Velikovsky Affair.
I have been following this whole absurd exercise since I was 12 years
old when I read Ages in Chaos, and Worlds in Collision. I later read
Earth in Upheaval, and that silly book about Akenaton. All this
reading left me prfoundly convinced of the essential silliness of
Velikovsky's ideas.
I was twelve when I read both Ages ... &; Worlds ... I couldn't
believe how DUMB they both were. Nothing I have learned since has made
me cease to consider Velikovsky as anything but a high IQ fool, crank
etc..
The desire and need to believe explain Velikovsky's followers. After
all they are members of the TRUE FAITH and the rest of us sinners in
darkness. What amazes me is that even many who consider Velikovsky's
work worthless spend large amounts of time and spleen attascking those
who ridicule Velikovsky!
Chief among the sinners is the late Carl Sagan who committed the
wicked crime of not taking Velikovsky seriously. For this crime Mr.
Sagan has been repeatidly excommunicated and damned. Having read
Velikovsky's self induced idiocies, I fail to see the error in
laughing at Velikovsky and ridiculing him. Nonsense needs to be
laughed at!
Why Sagan is damned and Velikovsky protected in this manner is beyond
me. If a twelve year old boy can read Velikovsky and come away
thinking Velikovsky's theories are stupid and DUMB why should any
Scientist take him seriously at all.
The only mistake I see that Sagan and the others made was to talk
about Velikovsky at all. If Velikovsky had gotten into the public
sphere at all the proper response, in my view, would have been
deafening laughter.
As for the specific "errors" in Sagan's critique well they pale into
tiny trivia compared to Velikovsky's continual never ending errors
that seem to pack every page of his books. To mention just one example
Velikovsky refers to wars between the Aztecs and Toltecs in the late
eighth and early seventh centuries before Christ!
It is such a pity that silence did not greet Velikovsky's asine
endeavors sparing us the "persecution" of this alleged "victim" of
"Big Science". The only untold damage done was by Velikovsky to
serious study.
Pierre
What is all that supposed to demonstrate? Clearly you are far more
intelligent than I am.
Since Velikovsky was merely a fool, any tactics to suppress him are
fair, and laudable? I fear I cannot agree.
I will point out that a fair number of people have been thought fools
and clearly wrong. Most of those were. But not quite all, including a
Swiss patent clerk who said that there was something fundamentally
wrong with Newton. And others. There are rules for sorting out which
absurd propositions are truly absurd and which are something else.
The silly book about Ahnkanaton came out quite late in the game.
And Velikovsky was right about one thing that most of his critics
insisted was absolutely crazy: that there had been catastrophes, both
in history and prior to history. Impossible. All was smooth and
uniform, you know. Clearly.
Dear Mr. Pournelle,
Thank you for your prompt reply to my e-mail. I appreciate it.
Regarding your comments. In my e-mail I do not say that any and all
means to "suppress" Velikovsky's views were or are "laudable". I do
not in any way support efforts to suppress or limit the freedom to
publish or distribute para-science or paranormal nonsense. The right
to publish includes the right to publish "crap". My point is that a
much better or "proper" response to Velikovsky would have been to
ignore him, the same way the vast never ending stream of similar
para-science is ignored.
Regarding my reference to to Velikovsky as an high IQ fool I stand by
that characterization. In the book Beyond Velikovsky, Baur refers to
Velikovsky has an "ignoramous" and a "crank" in regards to science. My
characterization is similar.
When I read Velikovsky at the age of 12 I could not take him seriously
and I found him very funny. Like so many Creationists , Flatearthers,
Channelers, etc., Velikovsky is unintentionaly funny. Velikovsky if
noticed at all would have been better laughed at. I do not think that
beening ignored or laughed at is supression.
Sagan's chief mistake in this entire matter was to get involved at all
and waste his valuable time on it. I have similar concerns regarding
Scientists wasting time on Erich Von Danikin and Ancient Astronauts.
Regarding Newton and Einstein. This is a familar tactic of
Velikovsky's followers to draw a implied comparison with them. Two
points about this.
(1), For every Newton or Einstein there are 999 (or more) cranks, and
those people dead wrong. Velikovsky was one of the cranks.
(2), In Cosmos without Gravatation, Velikovsky tried to overthrow
Newton and replace gravity with electro-magnatism. Reading this piece
settled for me for all time my opinion of Velikovsky.
Velikovsky tried to "overthrow" Newton, Darwin and Einstein. He
failed.
Regarding the debate concerning Uniformism and Catastrophism. That
debate is centuries old going back and forth in terms of what school
is dominate. Certainly this debate goes back at least to the Greeks. I
do think that you may be exagerating the dominance of Uniformism 50
years. To give one example the theory of the moon being torn from the
earth due to centrifigal force and leaving the pacific basin goes back
to the 1930's if not earlier.
I note that you did not reply to my question about why so many
individuals are so hard on Sagan et al and so soft on Velikovsky's
much more serious errors of logic and science. Again why the need to
create an image of the wicked Sagan against the Velikovsky?
How about three more dubious Velikovsky contentions to illustrate why
I can not take him seriously. Hatshetsupts expedition to punt becomes
the Queen of Sheba's visit to Isreal. (Egypt is Sheba!). Velikovsky's
contention that the moon's craters are only 3000 years old. (very
dubious!).
Velikovsky's contention that the Greek's + Roman's identified Venus
with Pallas-Athena. (again very dubious!) One could go on and on but
what is the point.
Regarding the disgraceful attempt to pressure the publisher of Worlds
in Collision, and various other stupid attempts to supress Velikovsky,
I have only the most complete disaproval of such attempts at limiting
freedom of expression. Again a "proper" response would have been to
ignore Velikovsky not waste time supressing him. The effort to supress
him also spectacularily backfired and generated far greater fame and
sales then Velikovsky would have had otherwise.
Again I would like to thank you for your comments and prompt reply. I
realize that my rather supercilious tone may have struck a nerve with
you which is why I have tried to be more serious in this reply.
However I just cannot take Velikovsky seriously except in terms of
free speech.
Yours,
Pierre
No, the right response would have been to listen to what he said and
see if any of it made sense. Some of it did. His discovery of all
those ancient records of catastrophes both as history and as myth were
correct. He put the wrong interpretation on them and ended being
absurd; but his central thesis, that something happened that was not
accepted by the conventional historians was absolutely correct.
More than that, his rejection of the uniformitarian hypothesis, which
was what was at stake, was correct, and it was that challenge that set
off his critics. It was no more difficult for them to believe that
Venus swung about in its orbit than that there were catastrophes in
both historical, archeological, and geological times. THAT was what
had to be suppressed. And was.
As to high IQ fool, you are clearly a lot smarter than me. I read his
records, and they made a lot of sense. His physical explanations were
incorrect, but he called to evidence some real events that needed
explaining. No one was trying to explain them.
I am glad there are people smart enough to know the truth from age 12
after first reading. I am not one of them. I did, however, point out
that most people who challenge the scientific standards are wrong, and
I do not see why you act as if I did not say it.
The reply to this was another iteration of the above message, to which
I made a brief reply. Finally, with my reply being perhaps the only
reason to publish all this:
Thank you for your prompt reply to my follow up to your previous
reply. I think we have a real basic disagreement here. I see
Velikovsky as one of a long line of "fools" "cranks" etc., who have
made a huge popular splash. I just don't see the difference between
Velikovsky and the vast assortment of sellers of pseudo/para-science
of this age, past ages or the future. So lets agree to disagree.
Yours, Pierre
Even fools deserve elementary courtesy. To take the trouble to
schedule a debate at a AAAS meeting and then use that as a means of
being non-responsive and insulting to an elderly man certainly was
intended to inflate Carl Sagans ego (although that would be difficult
to do) but accomplished little else. What was the point?
If he was not worth taking seriously then he should not have been
taken seriously. Harlow Shapley should not have gone to his publisher
to get his book suppressed. The AAAS doesnt bother with debates over
the Flat Earth or the Hollow Earth or the Rosicrucians. Someone
decided Velikovsky was good enough publicity to draw crowds that the
AAAS apparently couldnt draw without him. Someone was jealous of his
sales and decided to get his publisher to cancel a best-selling book
(which was then published by Doubleday). If you believe that this is
the normal treatment to be given to fools and idiots then you are
probably not very cognoscente of the history of scientific debate. The
Velikovsky Affair is interesting for two reasons:
1 The extraordinary measures taken by Big Science to suppress him. Why
bother with just any old fool?
2 The hysteria on the part of the uniformitarians who simply could not
brook any challenge to their long time uniform conditions hypothesis
required for their theory of evolution by gradual stages. We now know
that in both historical and geological times there have been real
catastrophes wiping out whole species; those could not happen under
the theories of the then dominant camp of evolutionists. Now we know
better, and understand that evolution can and does take place in part
triggered by catastrophes which change conditions rapidly. The old
uniformitatian group which staged the ritual auto-de-fe for Velikovsky
(who was in fact an old arrogant man, but no one deserves that kind of
intellectual ambush) are themselves about as discredited as
Velikovsky. The old man was vilified for challenging
uniformitarianism. That challenge turned out to be vindicated. There
have been catastrophic events in both human history and geological
history. None of that was admitted at the time of the Velikovsky
affair.
I will probably publish this exchange.
_________________________________________________________________
(February 2001) Now some new material from Leroy Ellenberger:
I am looking forward to the publication in Skeptic of David Morrison's
article on the Velikovsky controversy which will contain the results
of his recent poll among scientists, "Velikovsky's Influence on
Science". While the results Morrison got from his sample were pretty
unanimous, it might have been instructive had there been two
additional questions:
Would you agree to be on the program for a Velikovsky-related
conference? Yes or No.
If "No", would you agree to be an invited speaker at a
Velikovsky-related conference with transportation, lodging and meals
paid by the organizers? Yes or No.
The reason I ask is that there was a time when it was appropriate for
scientists to engage Velikovskians at conferences in the hopeful
interest of "consciousness raising" missionary work, e.g., the June
1974 Symposium at McMaster University sponsored by Pensee magazine
where David Morrison, Derek York, James Warwick, Michael Nieto, and
Willis Webb were speakers at their own expense, along with a host of
Velikovskians, including Velikovsky.
However, times have changed and the Velikovskians and their successors
have shown that their only interest is to impugn the integrity of
mainstream science and explore "exotic" branches of science that might
be enlisted to support their planet-juggling fantasies. Thus, the
maverick astronomer Halton Arp with his supposedly non-cosmologic red
shifts and plasma physicist Anthony Peratt at Los Alamos National
Laboratory were invited speakers last September in Portland, OR, at
the Neo-Velikovskian "Saturnist" conference sponsored by David
Talbott's Kronia Group. Incredibly, both will be featured presenters
at Kronia's "Intersect2001" conference this July in Laughlin, NV,
<http://www.kronia.com/intersect.html>. Others who have enjoyed
Kronia's largess recently include astronomers Victor Clube (with his
competing astronomical catastrophic model) and Tom Van Flandern (with
his heretical exploding planet hypothesis), geologist Robert Schoch
(who claims a very early date for Egypt's Sphinx), and independent
scholar Zecharia Sitchin (of 12th Planet fame who also requires a
$12,000 appearance fee).
Many scientists believe cults such as Velikovsky and related ought
best be left alone to wither and die, but this can be an extended
process so long as Talbott has access to recently successful
entrepreneurs with more money than good sense so that real scientists
such as Arp and Peratt can be recruited to give these "alternative
science" conferences an undeserved veneer of respectability. Perhaps
some scientific Good Samaritan or two or three might be motivated to
spend a few days in Laughlin, NV, between July 6 to 9, 2001, in order
to keep the proceedings honest, considering invited speakers,
regardless their true beliefs, refrain from calling a spade a spade
when confronting Saturnist planetary fantasies at such meetings. The
following text provides more background by way of an expanded version
of my "Velikovsky Update" that will accompany Morrison's article.
David Morrison's survey article on the Velikovsky controversy, coming
in Skeptic magazine, will contain much new material, esp. the results
of his survey among scientists concerning how Velikovsky impacted (or
not) their education and careers and the first critical examination in
print of the progaganda in Lynn Rose's 1972 article in Pensee I
(reprinted in Velikovsky Reconsidered) "The Censorship of Velikovsky's
Interdisciplinary Synthesis". It will be accompanied by a sidebar
providing an update on developments since 1985, the terminus of
Morrison's discussion, which date marks the publication of Henry
Bauer's highly acclaimed Beyond Velikovsky (U. of Illinois Press) and
the disproof of Worlds in Collision on the basis of the evidence in
the Greenland ice cores. The following text is an enhanced and
enlarged version of this sidebar. Comments welcome:
Worlds Still Colliding
A Velikovsky Update
Leroy Ellenberger
The reaction by many Velikovskians to the litmus test in the ice is a
study in classic cultic delusion. One might have thought that the
Velikovsky movement would have ended with the crucial test in Kronos
10:1, 1984, of the Greenland ice cores  the absence of a visible
layer of debris specific to Velikovskys scenario - that disproved
Velikovsky's planet-juggling catastrophes, which had been proposed by
R.G.A. Dolby in SIS Review 2:2, 1977. Such a rational expectation
proved to be wrong, making all the claims to "interdisciplinary
synthesis" and urgings for "objective re-examination" of the evidence
a charade.
In Kronos 12:1, 1986, &; 12:2, 1987, Lynn Rose (then Prof. of
Philosopy at SUNY-Buffalo), one of many critics, granted the antiquity
of the ice, but, unable to find any trace of Velikovskys
catastrophes therein, claimed Velikovskys signal is the ice at
depth in the so-called brittle zones, deposited between the
Venus and Mars episodes when supposedly Earths axis had no tilt.
However, this ignores the fact that the ages of the brittle zones do
not coincide with Velikovskys dates; nor does it explain why the
ice should be brittle. Rose assumes Velikovsky was correct and ignores
the concordance of tree rings and ocean sediments with ice cores. In
1990, Rose refused to defend his ice core arguments against this
writer at the Reconsidering Velikovsky conference in Toronto.
In The Velikovskian 2:4, 1994, Charles Ginenthal rejected the
antiquity of the ice entirely, claiming that the bulk of it was
deposited almost overnight.
Sean Mewhinney, who does not suffer fools gladly, refuted Rose in 1990
with "Ice Cores &; Common Sense" in Catastrophism &; Ancient History
12:1 &; 12:2, and Ginenthal in 1998 with "Minds in Ablation"
<http://www.pibburns.com/smmia.htm>, exposing their absurdities in
exhaustive detail. Rose has yet even to acknowledge either Dolby or
Mewhinney.
Others who have at least resisted the litmus test in the ice include
Al DeGrazia, C.J. Ransom, Lewis Greenberg, Shulamit Kogan, Warner
Sizemore, Fred Hall, Clark Whelton, Alasdair Beal, Bernard Newgrosh,
Hugo Meynell, Dave Talbott, Irving Wolfe, and Gunnar Heinsohn. This
denial of the clear message from the ice cores is an example of
invincible ignorance, reminiscent of the flat earthers reaction
in 1870 to Alfred Russel Wallaces proof of the Earths
curvature on the Old Bedford Canal.
Most Velikovskians in America have also spurned the modern
catastrophist alternative to Velikovskys scenario proposed by
British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier. These
neo-catastrophists use myth to inform our understanding of
the ancient sky but reject Velikovskys colliding planets. For
them, humanitys archetypal fear of comets and the origin of
sky-combat myths result from Earths intermittent, energetic
interaction with the Taurid meteor stream during the past 10,000
years. Although not accepted by most astronomers, at least this
hypothesis does not contradict the laws of physics. Regardless,
Velikovskians reject it because they stubbornly cling to Velikovsky's
two most fatal flaws: (1) equating gods with planets when a planet was
only one of many visible manifestations of a deity and (2) believing
Venus was once a comet when it is too massive ever to have had a
visible tail as real comets do.
Most surviving Velikovskians now accept that Worlds in Collision and
Ages in Chaos are seriously flawed, if not completely wrong. Many
therefore propose that the real interplanetary catastrophes occurred
earlier than Velikovsky claimed, often in the context of the
Saturn theory, inspired by an unpublished Velikovsky
manuscript. The Saturn theory envisions Earth as part of the
polar configuration that orbited the Sun such that a nearby
Saturn loomed continuously over the north pole as a rotating crescent.
Saturnists claim mythology preserves the record of that alignment and
transition to the present Solar System by 2000 B.C.E. The rotating
crescent motif, unsupported by any independent, contemporary evidence,
is only a figment of the imagination. The ice cores also contain
information that contradicts the former existence of any "polar
configuration." Having failed to make a prima facie case
<ftp://ftp.primenet.com/pub/lippard/cle-antidote>, the Saturnists
shift the burden-of-proof by challenging critics to prove their model
wrong.
As an example of the malleability of myth, in 1910 in The Original
Garden of Eden Discovered, J.M. Woolsey explained the lunar theory of
mythology in which the Moon was "the throne of all the gods and the
key to all mythology." In his 1987 paper "The Bedrock of Myth,"
suppressed by Aeon, Roger Ashton showed that the major themes in the
"Saturn myth" can be explained by botanical forms.
Since conventional physics precludes any such arrangement of planets,
Velikovskians have adopted the plasma-theoretic electric
universe model, propounded by civil engineer Ralph Juergens, as a
deus ex machina. Supposedly the Sun is an electric discharge powered
by an influx of electrons. Based largely on various analogies, this
theory has no quantitative basis and is disproved by
everything known about the Suns behavior
<http://www.geocities.com/Tim_J_Thompson/electric-sun.html>.
Juergens work is carried on by the Holoscience project
<http://www.holoscience.com>, promoted by retired computer systems
engineer Wal Thornhill, now a "physicist" on the basis of his 1964
B.S.
What of Velikovskys revision of ancient history? Chronology
revisionists exist today in two schools: modest and drastic. The
modest revisionists shorten Egyptian chronology less drastically than
Velikovskys 500 year compression, eliminating only a century or
two by various schemata; e.g., <http://www.centuries.co.uk>. The
drastic revisionists claim, in essence, that the second millennium
B.C.E. of Egyptian and Near Eastern history is a fiction that
duplicates the first millennium. John Crowe provides a survey of
activities in this area <http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ancient.htm>.
Today, interest in Velikovskian studies resides primarily with four
groups: (1) Saturnists are the most visible with the journal Aeon
<http://www.tebra.net/~ev.cochrane> and Kronia Group
<http://www.kronia.com> (founded in 1988 by Dave Talbott whose earlier
efforts with Pensee arguably led to the 1974 AAAS symposium where Carl
Sagan clashed with Velikovsky), which publishes the electronic
newsletter Thoth, produces the Mythscape video series, and runs the
kroniatalk listserve. Their alternative-science conferences include
invited speakers with bona fide scientific credentials, such as plasma
physicist Tony Peratt and astronomer Halton Arp, who provide a veneer
of scholarly respectability. (2) Charles Ginenthal founded The
Velikovskian in 1992 and has produced several books and sponsored
annual conferences. (3) The diversified Society for Interdisciplinary
Studies in England, established in 1974
<http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/>, publishes Chronology and
Catastrophism Review. (4) The Velikovsky Archive is a web resource
<http://www.varchive.org> containing many manuscripts, lectures, and
correspondence. The journal Kronos, which folded in 1988 after twelve
volumes, is survived by its press, a publisher of Velikovskian and
related tracts. Catastrophism &; Ancient History ceased in the
mid-1990s.
The resistance of Velikovskys successors to all the contradictory
physical evidence mounting since 1977 and their failure to embrace
Clube and Napier's model indicate they are congenitally incapable of
changing their core belief, namely recent interplanetary
catastrophism. By contrast, the revolutionary terminal Cretaceous
impact 65 million years ago was accepted during this same time by most
scientists within a decade; see J.L. Powell, Night Comes to the
Cretaceous (New York, 1998).
Leroy Ellenberger is a chemical engineer with graduate degrees in
finance and operations research. He was Executive Secretary and Senior
Editor for the Velikovsky journal Kronos, confidant to Velikovsky, and
Devil's Advocate for Aeon. His "An Antidote to Velikovskian Delusions"
appeared in Skeptic 3:4, 1995 <
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html >. Mr. Ellenberger can be
reached at < c.leroy@rocketmail.com >.
I think I have said about all I want to on this. At AAAS this February
in San Francisco I happened to be reminiscing with some of the old
timers in the science press corps who had been at the AAAS meeting at
which Sagan confronted Velikovsky. I was rather surprised by the
unanimity among the press corps: Sagan grandstanded, and did not
address Velikovsky's points. He played to the popular press, ignoring
science, and trying for pro-Sagan headlines. And it was a bloody
shame. So say I and so say they all...
_________________________________________________________________
Think of this as a footnote. The Context:
Here is the story I was reminded of recently, while watching the film
"A Beautiful Mind", on how the distinguished mathematician Ralph
Abraham got interested in Velikovsky's orbital pin-ball back in the
mid-60s when he was teaching at Princeton.
Velikovskians and related denizens of the fringe have been trading on
Abraham's work for the past several years in an attempt to generate a
sense of legitimacy for Velikovsky's and related scenarios. Norman
Levitt sent me this story just over a year ago in response to my
sending him my "Velikovsky Still Colliding" <
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velstcol.html >, which was written for
Skeptic magazine, and that version contained a reference to Abraham.
For context, this interaction between Levitt and Abraham occurred at
the time when (1) the Velikovskian Cosmos and Chronos study group was
founded at Princeton, (2) Velikovsky was "ambushed" at Brown
University by Abraham Sachs
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/vsachs.html>, and (3) Velikovsky later
exorcised his demons against Princeton sophomore Kim Masters (see end
of text in URL above) in The Daily Princetonian.
Leroy Ellenberger
From Norman Levitt
The mention of Ralph Abraham in this context was somewhat jarring. I'm
afraid that I, personally, am responsible for bringing Velikovsky to
Abraham's attention, though I did so in the most casual way, with the
most innocent intentions. It happened about thirty-five years ago in
the common room of the Princeton Math Dept., when I was a grad student
there and Abraham on the junior faculty. I just happened to mention
Velikovsky because Abraham was then working on the qualitative
dynamics of classcal celestial mechanics, a subject that, through the
ideas of Smale, Moser, etc., was beginning to develop some of the
concepts that were to amalgamate into "chaos theory." Rather to my
surprise, Ralph said that Velikovsky's notion didn't strike him as
crazy because of such examples of violations of structural stability
in Newtonian mechanics such as Moser's "Moon Bus." I thought Ralph was
going out of his way to be generous because of his well known
enthusiasm (which most of us shared at the time to one degree or
another) for all things countercultural and antiestablishment.
Abraham has been a very astute and productive mathematician at times.
But, more than anyone I know from that era, he bought into the entire
60's mythos without reservation or skepticism. I still remember his
rapid transformation, within a couple of months, from Ivy League
preppy to full-blown hippie! I and most of my friends flirted with the
'60's culture (and more than flirted, so far as politics is concerned)
but Abraham plunged in headfirst, never emerged, and apparently has
been living out his life as a fossil hippie for all these many
decades. (I shall not regale you with Abraham anecdotes, but most of
my personal memories of '60's weirdness (pharmaceutically induced and
otherwise) are involved with Ralph and his circle of friends, with
whom I hung out from time to time.) In sum, I think it's somewhat
misleading to think of Abraham as a cynical mercenary in the fashion
of some of the professional "science heretics." He's more the
true-believer type.
I also note again my theory that the Velikovsky craze amongst some
sociologists, notably A. de Grazia, had something to do with the
emergence of contemporary "science studies," with its arrant hostility
to "official" science and its messianic conviction that sociology is
the Master Theory of Everything.
Norman Levitt, Math, Rutgers
Actually, de Grazia wasn't, as I recall, a Velikovsky believer, nor
was Possony: both were interested in the pathological reactions of the
science community. De Grazia's The Velikovsky Affair was much more
about Harlow Shapely and his people than about Velikovsky. It shows
that scientists can be subject to the True Believer syndrome...
_________________________________________________________________
[If you got here through a Wikipedia link, you probably want to go to
the TOP of this page and start there. This is one of many discussions
in the Chaos Manor web site.]
To repeat: The Velikovsky Affair was much more about Harlow Shapely
and his people than about Velikovsky. It shows that scientists can be
subject to the True Believer syndrome...
And here a very good (if long) account of the AAAS meeting and an
assessment of Velikovsky by David Morrison, whose book with Clark
Chapman, Cosmic Catastrophes, remains one of the best refutations of
the long-held uniformitarian hypothesis I know. Uniformitarianism was
a form of Political Correctness in science, and it was from its
defense that many of the frantic efforts to refute Velikovsky were
born.
Herewith David Morrison:
TEXT IS TAKEN FROM "VELIKOVSKY AT 50" BY DAVID MORRISON, PUBLISHED IN
SKEPTIC (2001)
THE AAAS DEBATE
Thanks to his claims of successful predictions, Velikovskys star was
rising in the early 1970s. He received many invitations to lecture at
universities, even at his old nemesis, Harvard. He also spoke at NASAs
Ames and Langley Research Centers. Quite a number of faculty and
students (mostly from the humanities and social sciences) took up his
cause, and a journal (Pensee) devoted to his ideas began publication.
Against this backdrop, Carl Sagan of Cornell University and other
astronomers decided to devote a symposium at the 1974 AAAS meeting to
Velikovsky. Sagan wrote that I and some other colleagues in the AAAS
have advocated a regular set of discussionsof hypotheses which are on
the borderlines of science and which have attracted substantial public
interest. The idea is not to attempt definitively to settle such
issues, but rather to illustrate the process of reasoned disputation,
and perhaps to show how scientists approach a problem. (23)
Donald Goldsmith of SUNY Stony Brook, one of the symposium organizers,
wrote that the stated commitment of the AAAS to the sharing of
scientific ideas with the public, together with the public interest in
his theories, provided sufficient reason to hold a symposium. (24)
Owen Gingerich of Harvard, another organizer, later recalled: I
remember two reasons for organizing it. First the Velikovsky
supporters were arguing that scientists were close-minded and
unwilling to listen to their good arguments, and we felt something
should be done to defuse this claim by giving them a public platform.
Secondly, and for me more important, my students were hearing a lot of
pro-Velikovsky news, and no respectable astronomers were willing to
take the time of day to explain to the general public why they didnt
take his scenario seriouslyI dont think there was any effort to
convert the hard-core Velikovskyites, but simply to make arguments
available to a broad general public. (25) Velikovsky himself, however,
took the invitation as a victory. He wrote that the astronomers are on
the defensive...They asked me to participate in the AAAS meeting. I
did not ask. (26)
The Velikovsky symposium was the most popular event of the 1974 AAAS
meeting, drawing a crowd of nearly 1500. Since the principal speakers,
Velikovsky and Sagan, both exceeded their time allocations, the
symposium was continued in a special evening session. Although there
were seven speakers, attention focused on Velikovsky and Sagan.
Velikovsky, then in his late 70s, projected a vigorous image, tall,
imperious, and confident. Sagan, little more than half as old, was
equally articulate, confident, and charismatic. Their papers and
subsequent comments provide an excellent overview of most of the
astronomical areas of dispute between Velikovsky and establishment
science, but little on ancient history or archeology. Velikovsky
presented a succinct summary of his theory, with emphasis on his
successful predictions. He received a standing ovation for his proud
assertion that not one word of his writings needed revision. Sagan
focused on 10 tests of Velikovsky taken from WIC. Their presentations
are in proceedings volumes. (27)
Velikovskys supporters took little satisfaction in the outcome. They
had come expecting to hear a reasoned scientific discourse conducted
among equals. Instead they were hit with Sagans debunking, aimed not
at them but at the general public. As Leroy Ellenberger later wrote,
Sagans analysis of WIC was not designed to appeal to the interested,
informed layman who was interested in Velikovsky, yet also amenable to
a reasoned, valid critique. Sagans analysis contained errors in
physics that were never corrected. (28) Velikovsky himself accused the
symposium organizers of bias, with no pursuit of scientific debate in
mind... The scientific and semi-scientific press showed by its reports
that it was orchestratedthe very sentences, and the very same errors
of fact and number, appeared simultaneously in many reviews. (29)
Sagan intended his 10 problems to provide a definitive answer to
Velikovsky as well as an example of how scientists analyze new
hypotheses. However, Velikovsky and his followers considered Sagans
paper to be an unforgivable catalog of errors. It may be useful,
therefore, to assess Sagans 10 problems from the perspective of 25
years later. In doing so, I will use two terms common in the space
sciences. One is back-of-the-envelope or rough order of magnitude
estimates, abbreviated ROM. These are simplified calculations to
obtain a very approximate numerical solution. Often a ROM estimate is
sufficient to reject an implausible hypothesis. Second is the concept
of the strawmana simplified version of an idea that is used as a first
rough estimate. Both ROMs and strawman arguments appear extensively in
Sagans critique.
Problem 1: The ejection of Venus by Jupiter. Velikovsky had not
explained how or when the Venus-comet got loose on a planet-crossing
orbit, but he did say it was ejected from the Jupiter system. (Later
he would suggest that Jupiter split apart as a result of interactions
with Saturn). Sagan analyzed a strawman in which Venus is ejected from
Jupiter like a bullet shot from a cannon. He used a ROM calculation to
show that the energy of such an expulsion is more than sufficient to
melt the proto-Venus and probably to splatter it all over the solar
system. Unfortunately, he used a slightly wrong value for the escape
velocity from Jupiter. This did not invalidate his ROM argument, but
it undercut the credibility of the entire exercise for the non-science
audience, who usually expect calculations by scientists to be precise.
Problem 2: Repeated collisions among the Earth, Venus, and Mars.
Velikovsky had asserted that multiple collisions occurred between
these three planets during roughly one millenium ending about 700 BCE.
Sagan performed a ROM calculation of the probabilities of repeated
planetary near-encounters. Since Velikovsky provided no information on
the orbital dynamics that would make these events happen, Sagan tested
a strawman in which the events are stochastic (unrelated), showing
that the odds against such a series of near-collisions are absurdly
high (one in 10^23). But Sagan did not consider coupled or resonant
orbits, which would invalidate his strawman. His is also a post hoc
probability calculationafter the fact, almost any specific sequence of
events seems improbable, as Velikovsky correctly stated in his
rebuttal.
Problem 3: The Earths rotation. Velikovsky asserted that the Earths
rotation changed dramatically about 3000 years ago; in his preferred
scenario it actually stopped, then began rotating again in the
opposite direction. Sagan raised many valid objections to the idea
that tidal or electromagnetic forces could have stopped the Earths
rotation, let alone start it up again. These are among the principal
flaws in Velikovskys scenario.
Problem 4: Terrestrial geology and lunar craters. In Velikovskys
theory, the Earth suffered extreme geological disruption from the
close passes of Venus and Mars. Sagan noted many contradictions
between Velikovskys scenario and the geological record. There was not
a general eruption of terrestrial volcanoes a few thousand years ago,
mountains were not thrown up, and the lunar surface was not melted.
Problem 5: Chemistry and biology of the terrestrial planets. Sagan
pointed out that Venuss oxidizing chemistry is inconsistent with its
supposed Jovian origin and noted many other problems in Velikovskys
chemistry, such as the composition of the martian polar caps.
Velikovsky responded by quoting old astronomical authorities in
support, but that is beside the point, since these references had
since been proved wrong.
Problem 6: Manna. Velikovsky concluded that manna (edible
carbohydrates) fell on the Earth from Venus, perhaps manufactured by
microorganisms out of the hydrocarbons of the comets tail. Sagan set
up a strawman in which the Venus-comet shed manna over the entire
inner solar system, and he used a ROM calculation to show that the
quantity of manna exceeded the entire mass of the Eartha reductio ad
absurdum. The exercise doesnt prove much, since Velikovsky never
postulated a model to explain the production of manna, but it went
over well with audiences and Sagan, like Velikovsky, was a showman.
Problem 7: The clouds of Venus. Sagan, who was one of the worlds
experts on the atmosphere of Venus, effectively demonstrated that
Velikovskys ideas on this subject were completely at odds with the
facts, concluding Velikovskys idea that the clouds of Venus are
composed of hydrocarbons or carbohydrates is neither original or
correct. Velikovskys reply stressed that hydrocarbon clouds had been
suggested by others, but again this is beside the pointby 1974 we knew
the clouds were sulfuric acid, although Velikovsky could not accept
that fact.
Problem 8: The temperature of Venus. Again Sagan was on solid ground,
speaking as one of the originators of the greenhouse model for the
atmosphere of Venus. (30) Velikovsky categorically rejected the
greenhouse model as contradicting the second law of thermodynamics
(31) and apparently believed it was a fabrication designed solely to
repudiate his theory. He also continued to assert, in contradiction to
the astronomical data, that Venus emitted more energy than it absorbed
from the Sun. There was no contest here, with all the facts on Sagans
side. Unfortunately, Sagan added a quantitative appendix on the
heating of Venus during a close passage by the Sun that makes no sense
to me and has been widely criticized, undercutting his temperature
argument.
Problem 9: The craters of Venus. Sagan noted that the presence of
craters on Venus (recently discovered by cloud-penetrating radar)
contradicted the claimed youth of Venus. This is at best a weak
uniformitarian sort of argument, based on an assumption of roughly
constant impact rates to form the craters. However, Velikovsky thought
the craters resulted from recent interplanetary electrical discharges
and did not accept the idea of widespread impact cratering in the
planetary system. Neither perspective is very edifying.
Problem 10: The circularization of the orbit of Venus and
nongravitational forces in the solar system. Sagan pointed out that
there is no evidence that electromagnetic forces play any role in
planetary dynamics, and that even if such other forces were at work it
would be extremely difficult to change an elongated orbit into a
circle (and Venus has the most circular orbit of any planet). These
are sound arguments, and neither Velikovsky nor his supporters
provided a coherent theory to rationalize the planetary motions that
were central to his theory.
My own judgment is that Sagans critique would have been stronger
without Problems 1, 2, 6, 9, and Appendix 3. (32) But I can understand
his use of strawman models and ROM calculations. One of the
frustrations of dealing with Velikovsky is his vagueness and lack of
quantitative reasoning. In the absence of any specific scenarios or
models from Velikovsky, Sagan substituted his own strawman versions
and showed how absurd they are. In their rebuttals, Velikovsky and his
supporters repeatedly said that Sagan had misrepresented their
positions, but they did not offer any real alternatives. Sagan wanted
to illustrate scientific thinking and show how hypotheses could be
tested quantitatively. But this meant nothing to Velikovsky. His
supporters delighted in finding minor errors in Sagans paper (and he
made quite a few), but they missed the big picture.
The AAAS debate and subsequent publication was successful from the
perspective of the scientist-organizers, but it infuriated Velikovskys
supporters. Instead of serious scientific discussion, Sagan aimed his
presentation at journalists and the public, seemingly delighting in
making Velikovsky look ridiculous. As a consequence, the AAAS debate
actually strengthened the stature of Velikovsky among his supporters.
>From the AAAS meeting until his death in 1979, Velikovsky presided
over a number of scientific symposia devoted to his work and saw the
publications of thousands of pages of scientific papers defending his
theory. . . . . . .
THE REAL CATASTROPHIST REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE
Ironically, the year of Velikovskys death, 1979, saw the keystone work
that heralded a new perspective on Earth history, one much more open
to catastrophist ideas. Already Gene Shoemaker and other planetary
scientists had established the important role of impact cratering in
planetary history, while Stephen Jay Gould and other biologists had
published evidence of punctuated equilibriuma stepwise history of
evolutionary change. In 1979 Luis and Walter Alveraz and their
colleagues made the critical identification of extraterrestrial
material at the KT boundaryevidence that the impact of a comet or
asteroid about 15 km in diameter had triggered the mass extinction
that ended the age of the dinosaurs. Within a few years the idea of
short-term, catastrophic changes in geological and biological history
had become acceptable, ending a century in which strict
uniformitarianism held sway almost unchallenged. In this new
perspective, the course of biological evolution on Earth was
critically linked with the planets astronomical environment.
Was this new acceptance of catastrophist ideas related to the
Velikovsky debates of the previous 30 years? Presumably the scientists
who were now leading this revolution were aware of Velikovsky and his
theory. Had he influenced them? Some of Velikovskys supporters argued
that he should be credited with success on the broad issues of a
catastrophic Earth history even if he was wrong in his specifics. The
suggestion was now made that Velikovsky had been the prophet of this
new attitude toward planetary history.
The opposite hypothesis is also possiblethat Velikovsky with his crazy
ideas tainted catastrophism and discouraged young scientists from
pursuing anything that might be associated even vaguely with him.
Velikovsky himself hinted at this interpretation in his AAAS talk when
he said I may have even caused retardation in the development of
science by making some opponents cling to their unacceptable views
only because such views may contradict Velikovsky. (36)
Rather than debate this issue on philosophical grounds, I decided to
ask a group of scientists who have been leaders in establishing the
new paradigms in which occasional violent events, such as asteroid
impacts, play a significant role in planetary and biological history.
I sent my questions to 25 of these scientists, and received 23
answers. As noted in the table, very few of them claimed any influence
on their own scientific careers, but nearly half thought that
Velikovsky had an overall negative effect by tainting catastrophist
thinking and holding it up to ridicule.
Results of poll on possible influences of Velikovsky on main-stream
science (23 of 25 replying):
1. At the time you began your research in these areas, were you
familiar with Velikovsky and his theory? Yes: 18 No: 5
2. At that time, had you read Worlds in Collision? Yes: 7 Partially: 8
No: 8
3. Did Velikovsky and his ideas influence your interest in research on
more catastrophist concepts in Earth and planetary science, either
positively or negatively? Positive: 1 None: 16 Negative: 5
4. Do you think that Velikovsky and his ideas had any significant
influence on the acceptance of catastrophist ideas in Earth and
planetary science over the past half-century, either positive or
negative? Positive: 0 None: 14 Negative: 9
Even more than these numbers, their individual comments illuminate how
these scientists, who have been on the cutting edge of recent
geological and planetary science, look on Velikovskys influence.
Following are representative examples: (37)
George Wetherill (Carnegie Institution of Washington geophysicist,
authority on planetary formation, dynamics, and evolution): I was a
graduate student at the University of Chicago at the time Worlds in
Collision was published, and I was asked my opinion of it by
nonscientific students whom I knew socially. I browsed through a copy
they showed me, and learned enough about his ideas to explain why I
felt them to be of no scientific valueVelikovsky and his ideas had no
influence at all on my thinking about scientific phenomena.
Walter Alvarez (UC Berkeley geologist, originator of the impact theory
of the KT extinction, author of T Rex and the Crater of Doom):
[Velikovsky did not influence science] in any positive ways. I
considered him part of the problem we faced in getting a hearing for
the KT impact hypothesis, because his ideas, which were incompatible
with the laws of physics, had confirmed many geologists in their view
that people working on extraterrestrial causes for events in Earth
history were not doing good science.
David Raup (U Chicago paleontologist, authority on mass extinctions
and evolution, author of Extinction: Bad Luck or Bad Genes):
[Velikovskys] reputation added to my general feeling of unease with
catastrophism. . . [For the field generally] I suspect his influence
was substantialbut almost entirely negative.
Richard Muller (UC Berkeley physicist, originator of the Nemesis
hypothesis, author of Nemesis): As someone who was deeply involved in
the controversies at the time, I feel very strongly that having
Velikovsky pave the path definitely did not help!It was an annoyance
to answer some colleagues who would bring up Velikovsky, and ask what
I thought about him. I tried reading some of his books at that point,
but found them so annoying (because of their apparent disinterest in
truth) that I never finished more than about 5 pages.
Jay Melosh (U Arizona geologist, authority on the physics of impacts,
author of Impact Cratering): I was fully aware (and embarrassed) by
his theoriesAny influence was purely negative. I had to continually
explain to audiences that, although some of the recent work I was
doing sounded a little like his ideas, there was no connection and the
time scales for the proposed catastrophes are totally different.
Peter Ward (U Washington paleontologist, authority on impacts and
craters, author of Rare Earth): I read parts of Velikovsky as a
sophomore in college. I remember not finishing it because I had a very
good astronomy background and knew bunk when I read it. I was busy
with more important stuff, so I read parts, laughed, and moved on.I
think it is so fringe that it had no effect on the positive
neocatastrophism that is so useful to our science today.
Norm Sleep (Stanford U geophysicist, authority on the impact
frustration of life on early Earth): His effect was, if anything,
negative.One of his followers was friends with an MIT student when I
was there. The follower seemed to be a true believer and kept citing
things from the Velikovsky book and demanding a conventional
explanation of poorly cited data that had once puzzled some geologist.
The reasoning went: if you cant find a conventional perfect
explanation in two minutes that satisfies me, then my crazy theory and
only it must be right.
Jack Hills (Los Alamos National Lab physicist, authority on planetary
impacts and dynamics): I [first encountered] Worlds in Collision in
the astronomy section of my public library in 1958, when I was in the
8th grade. I opened it up at random and read a section where he had
Venus passing near the Earth to produce the parting of the Red Sea and
other nonsense. I spent no more than 15 minutes reading the book. I
put the book back on the shelf. I recall being very indignant that it
should be in the astronomy section.
Don Yeomans (Jet Propulsion Lab planetary scientist, authority on
solar system dynamics, author of Comets): Within the scientific
community, I dont think his ideas were taken seriously enough to
directly influence any research directions. However, his ideas were
well known and endlessly discussed within the popular pressFor me, the
most memorable aspect of the Velikovsky affair was the zeal with which
those outside the scientific community attacked scientists who pointed
out the absurdities in Velikovskys ideas. I remember being struck by
how strident amateur scientists were in railing against what they
perceived as the narrow-minded, elitist, scientific establishment.
Michael Rampino (New York U geochemist, authority on terrestrial
impact cratering and extinctions): My general feeling is that
Velikovsky added nothing positive to the debates on catastrophism. No
reputable astronomers or geologists took him seriously. His geology
and planetary science were completely wrong, and I found that he used
mostly out-of-date references for geological mysteries that had long
since been cleared up. I have found that some scientists were
impressed by the historical references, but agreed that the science
was bunk, while historians criticized the history and chronology, but
thought that the science was exciting. He was primarily a negative
factor, often used to make the new catastrophism debates seem silly.
[As a put-down], some scientists would say to me, That sounds very
Velikovskian.
The statements of these scientists indicate that none of them saw any
value in Velikovskys theories, and that Velikovskys reputation
sometimes impeded acceptance of their own work, or at least was an
irritant when they described their work to the public. I am struck by
how easily these scientists (by their own report) rejected Velikovsky.
Note that these are not conservative, ivory-tower academics,
constitutionally prejudiced against new ideas. They have been among
the most creative and even revolutionary researchers in their fields,
and even lean favorably toward catastrophist ideas. Like all
successful scientists, however, they are used to making quick
judgments concerning which evidence is more likely to be accurate and
relevant, and which research directions more promising.
REFERENCES
23. Sagan in Scientists Confront Velikovsky, p. 44. 24. Goldsmith in
Scientists Confront Velikovsky, p. 23. 25. Personal correspondence
from Owen Gingerich to Leroy Ellenberger, 1997. In reviewing this
manuscript, Gingerich added a point about why the AAAS meeting started
over half an hour late (personal correspondence, December 18, 2000):
That was because Velikovsky insisted that he would not appear until
given a permanent seat on the platform and his own microphone so that
he could interrupt at any time. It took some persuasion to effect a
compromise so that the show could go on. 26. Quoted in Beyond
Velikovsky, p. 156. 27. An Analysis of Worlds in Collision in
Scientists Confront Velikovsky, Cornell University Press, 1977, and My
Challenge to Conventional Views in Science, in Velikovsky and
Establishment Science, Kronos Press, 1977. 28. Personal communication
from Leroy Ellenberger, 2000. 29. In Velikovsky and Establishment
Science, p. 19. 30. Sagans doctoral thesis at the University of
Chicago was centered on the calculation of the warming of Venus by a
thick atmosphere containing large quantities of carbon dioxide and
water. By 1974, a series of technical papers by Sagan and colleague
James Pollack had established this greenhouse mechanism on a solid
footing and provided a generally accepted basis to understand the high
surface temperature. 31. Velikovsky in Velikovsky and Establishment
Science, p. 17. 32. My own analysis at the time, Planetary Astronomy
and Velikovskys Catastrophism, was written after Sagans AAAS lecture
and reflected some of the criticisms noted here. It was originally
intended for the Velkovsky journal Pensee, but ended up being
published in Scientists Confront Velikovsky, pp. 145-176, when the
journal folded. . . . .
37. The author will send a more complete set of these responses in
reply to e-mail requests sent to dmorrison@arc.nasa.gov.
And a final (I hope) word:
My own view is that Velikovsky had more impact than appears from this:
some was negative in that he stirred up strong defensiveness among the
uniformitarians, and their old males to the outside, horns out last
ditch defense discouraged some younger scientists from rethinking the
uniform hypothesis. The younger people brooded, and perhaps more than
will admit it got interested through old Velikovsky. And perhaps not.
It's impossible to prove. It's also impossible to show, today, just
how firmly entrenched the uniform universe hypothesis was among the
people who controlled grants and tenure promotions: in that sense
Velikovsky is useful in showing to just what lengths otherwise
rational scientists will go in defending their orthodoxies.
But as the spacecraft got out there and the data flowed in, the
evidence against the uniform hypothesis became overwhelming.
And do recall that as late as Pasteur's time the French Academy of
Sciences rejected the notion that meteorites had any extraterrestrial
origins or that stones did or could fall from the skies.
Cromwell said famously, "Gentlemen, I beseech you in the bowels of
Christ, think you that you may be wrong."
I am not sure that anything useful remains to be said about this
subject.
This came in today July 18, 2006 and is useful:
Subject: Velikovskians & Paleoclimatologists
Dear Jerry,
Looking back at the Velikovsky Affair helps put perspective on the
modern paleoclimatology and global warming flap. Velikovsky had a main
central thesis. This was natural catastrophes of global scale caused
by extra-terrestrial agencies had occurred in the past and were
documented in Earth's physical structure. This was at a time when
uniformitarianism was still the 'consensus' view among astronomers and
most geologists. The scientific establishment of the time countered
this by stating Velikovsky's methods were unsound, could not support
his conclusions and were contrary in many places to well established
theory, such as Newtonian orbital mechanics. Velikovsky then put on a
hair shirt and spent the rest of his life posing as a wandering
prophet without honor driven out of his home town.
So what's happened in the interval? We've discovered that planet wide
cosmic catastrophes have happened in the past and continue to happen
today. The Chicxulub "Dinosaur Killer" crater has been found off
Yucatan and extensively explored, along with its global effects. It's
now held responsible for most or all of the Cretaceous-Tertiary
Extinction. Evidence accumulates another asteroid or meteor strike
triggered the Permian Triassic Extinction. We've even witnessed the
titanic event of the Shoemaker-Levy comet strike on Jupiter, in real
time on the Hubble ST.
Does any of this vindicate Velikovsky? No. Velikovsky's theories did
not predict any of these findings. None of them were the events
Velikovsky claimed had happened, such as Jupiter had extruded Venus,
which caused the events in the Book of Exodus and also caused Mars to
change its orbit, producing further disasters in the 8th - 7th
centuries BC. No subsequent developments of his ideas by the
Velikovskians predicted any of the modern discoveries, either. They
were discovered by people working according to the rules of hard
'science'. 'Hydrocarbons' have been found in many regions in space.
They just haven't been found in the one place Velikovsky predicted
they'd be found, which was Venus' atmosphere. Velikovsky's
multi-disciplinary findings drew strong attacks from many quarters.
Astrophysicists attacked his overthrow of Newtonian orbital mechanics
and archeologists and historians refuted his ancient history
interpretations. These were strong warning signs.
Paleoclimatology and its associated school of 'Global Warming Is
Caused By Industrial Man' is now exhibiting many 'Velikovskian'
symptoms. Leading statisticians say their math is junk and their data
is sparse. Leading meteorologists who really know something about
weather prediction say the Paleoclimatologists are clueless about how
the atmosphere really works. Paleoclimatologists explain tree ring
studies in ways opposite to the explanations supplied by the original
dendrochronologists and botanists who studied the trees ("bristlecone
pines").
Best Wishes,
Mark
TOP
birdline.gif (1428 bytes)