SOCK IT TO 'EM, DR. VELIKOVSKY
intelligen...@gmail.com
< "Ridicule is the argument
< of the mob."
< -- Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
<
==========================================
<
It is fact -- not fiction -- that Immanuel Velikovsky
will forever rank as one of the most brilliant scientists
of the 20th century, actually an investigative reporter
if there ever was one.
<
Velikovsky didn't have the foggiest notion, when launching
his original research in the 1940s, that it would eventually
lead to his pair of mind-boggling books, "Worlds in Collision"
and "Earth in Upheaval."
<
It was simply a case of one thing leading to another.
<
Velikovsky did not manufacture the important pieces
of an incredible puzzle while on his fact-finding mission
over the expanse of many years. They were painstakingly
collected piece by piece and bit by bit from the pages
of dusty old scientific and historical literature, in various
languages, that quite probably hadn't been read in years.
<
It was ALL there -- facts and evidence compiled by honest
scientists for centuries -- based on their intensive study
of the mysteries both of man and earth but conveniently
ignored. And all Velikovsky did was fit the pieces of the
puzzle together to produce a paradigm-shattering package.
<
It eventually told a story that was far different and incredibly
more violent that the tiptoe-thu-the-tulips smooth-sailing
voyage of the Planet Earth that Scientific Establishment had
been shoving down the people's throat for many a decade.
<
Velikovsky uncovered evidence of horrendous geological
disturbances -- catastrophes -- that occurred many more times than
once and brought mankind to its knees, and he wasn't afraid to say it.
<
An investigative reporter, but much more than that, Velikovsky
recognized his duty to question "evidence,"
to ask questions, to question answers, to ask new questions, to
question those new answers.
<
His duty was to determine if the so-called "evidence" presented as
gospel by the Scientific Establishment
was truly evidence, or simply a compilation of many
men's imagination.
<
When answers did not match the facts and the physical
evidence, Velikovsky had the courage to say so. And, of course, the
scientific community didn't like it and resorted
to every dirty tactic to make him look like a nitwit and a boob.
<
It was so unfair, their misdeeds of gigantic proportions
to a true scientist whose bags none of them -- or together --
could even begin to carry.
<
Velikovsky, you see, did not launch his historical research
with a chip of any kind on his shoulder. He simply felt he
did what he had to do -- pushing forward with patience, integrity,
perseverance and intestinal fortitude -- and then, only then,
did his findings confirm beyond any reasonable doubt that the
Scientific Establishment wanted NO part of facts and physical
evidence, as it vigorously detests even today.
<
If there was any justice, the Pseudoscientific Community
should've been thrown on its ears a half-century ago.
<
It is a matter of current record -- Thank You, Google -- that
members of a feather-bedding, vested-interest, see-how-smart-I-am
Pseudoscientific Establishment still have quite
a chip on their shoulder in fruitless defense of their fact-less,
facetious theories.
<
More than 50 years later, sad to say, that tiny wooden chip has grown
to the size of a Sequoia.
<
==============================================
<
> WORLDS IN COLLISION
> By Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
< (Part of the Opening Chapter)
<
In an immense universe a little globe revolves around
a star; it is the third in the row -- Mercury, Venus, Earth
-- of the planetary family.
<
It is of a solid core covered over most of its surface with liquid,
and it has a gaseous envelope. Living creatures fill the liquid; other
living creatures fly in the gas; and still others creep and walk upon
the ground on the bottom
of the gaseous ocean.
<
Man, a being of erect stature, thinks himself the prince of creation.
He felt like this long before he, by his own efforts, came to know how
to fly on wings of metal around the globe. He felt God-like long
before he could talk to his fellow-man on the other side of the globe.
<
Today he can see the microcosm in a drop and the
elements in the stars. He knows the laws governing the living cell
with its chromosomes, and the laws governing
the macrocosm of the sun, moon, planets and stars.
<
He assumes that gravitation keeps the planetary system together, man
and beast on their planet, the sea within
its borders.
<
For millions and millions of years, he maintains, the planets have
rolled along the same paths, and their moons around them, and man in
these eons has arisen from a one-cell infusorium all the long way up
to the ladder to his status
of Homo sapiens.
<
Is man's knowledge now nearly complete? Are only a few more steps
necessary to conquer the universe: to extract the energy of the atom.
<
Since these pages were written (in the late 1940s) this
has already been done -- to cure cancer, to control genetics, to
communicate with other planets and learn
if they have living creatures, too
<.
Here begins Homo ignoramus. He does not know wha
life is or how it came to be and whether it originated
from inorganic matter.
<
He does not know whether other planets of this sun
or of other suns have life on them, and if they have,
whether the forms of life there are like those around
us, ourselves included.
<
He does not know how this solar system came into being, although he
has built up a few hypotheses about it. He knows only that the solar
system was constructed billions of years ago.
<
He does not know what this mysterious force of gravitation is that
holds him and his fellow man on the other side
of the planet with their feet on the ground, although he regards the
phenomenon itself as "the law of laws."
<
He does not know what the earth looks like five miles
under his feet. He does not know how mountains came
into existence or what caused the emergence of the continents,
although he builds hypotheses about
these, nor does he know from where oil came -- again hypotheses.
<
He does not know why, only a short time ago, a thick glacial sheet
pressed upon most of Europe and North America, as he believes it did;
nor how palms could grow above the polar circle, nor how it came about
that the
same fauna fill the inner lakes of the Old and the New
World.
<
He does not know where the salt in the sea came from.
<
Although man knows that he has lived on this planet for millions of
years, he finds a recorded history of only a few thousand years. And
even these few thousand years are not sufficiently well known.
<
Why did the Bronze Age precede the Iron Age even though iron is more
widely distributed over the world and its manufacture is simpler than
that of the alloy of copper and tin?
<
By what mechanical means were structures of immense blocks built on
the high mountains of the Andes?
<
What caused the legend of the Flood to originate in all the countries
of the world? Is there any adequate meaning to the term
"antediluvian"? From what experiences grew the eschatological pictures
of the end of the world?
<
In this work, of which the present book is the first part, some of
these questions will be answered, but only at\the cost of giving up
certain notions now regarded as sacred laws in science -- the millions
of years of the present constitution of the solar system and the
harmonious revolution of the earth -- with all their implications as
regards the theory of evolution ...
<
===========================================
<
> EDITORIAL IN THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
> (February 1964)
<
"While it could have been assumed that anyone
challenging the basic premises of Newton and Darwin
might be laying himself open to a certain amount of argument, the
personal vituperation, deliberate misrepresentations of facts, offhand
misquotations,
efforts at suppression of the books containing
the theories, and the denial of the right to rebut
opponents in professional journals that Dr. Velikovsky encountered
indicate that far more was going on than
'mere' challenge to established ideas.
"What the Velikovsky affair made crystal clear . . .
is that the theories of science may be held not only
for the truth they embody, but because of the vested interests they
represent for those who hold them."
<
=========================
<
> MAN AS OLD AS COAL
< Discoveries Between Coal Veins
>
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<
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Darwin123
> <
> < "Ridicule is the argument
> < of the mob."
> < -- Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
> <
> ==========================================
> <
> It is fact -- not fiction -- that Immanuel Velikovsky
> will forever rank as one of the most brilliant scientists
> of the 20th century, actually an investigative reporter
> if there ever was one.
> <
Reasons There is No Gravity." He listed 50 phenomena which
contradicted the Newtonian theory of gravity. He dismisses general
relativity in passing, but his real attack is on the Newtonian law of
gravity. He showed incredible ignorance of science, arrogance toward
real scientists, and a laziness toward research.
I am a physicist. He made at least 50 errors in this essay,
about 47 of which were known in his own time. He constantly claims
that scientists don't know or ever considered what he points out. I
don't think he even tried to research the current state of knowledge.
However, he mays contemptuous remarks throughout about scientists.
I once did a line by line criticism of Velikovsky's essay on
gravity. However, I'll mention one that was quoted to me many times.
He says that the fact that aerosolized water droplets remain suspended
in air (e.g., clouds) violate Newton's Laws of gravity. Since water
droplets are denser than air, he reasoned, they must fall. The
buoyancy can't keep the droplets suspended. Obviously Newton's Laws
are wrong here.
This would be a surprise to meteorologists in particular, since
they use Newtonian models to forecast the weather. He obviously did
not speak to any meteorologists, or do any background research in
clouds.
A cloud is really just the top of a convection cell. Buoyancy
generates air currents that move up and down. What rises in clouds is
water vapor, which is less dense than air. When the water vapor rises,
it meets a colder air mass. It condenses into droplets which we see as
clouds. The water droplets would always sink if there were no air
currents are pushing them upwards. However, at some point the the
convection cycle the droplets really do sink. When they sink to warmer
layers of atmosphere, they evaporate again forming water vapor. Water
vapor rises due to its low density, etc. Most of Velikovsky's errors
involve basic meteorology. Apparently, he didn't understand that
today's meteorology is a branch of physics.
I can't really blame him for not understanding comets. It was only
recently during a NASA experiment that we found out how much a comet
weighed. A large comet about the size of Manhattan island in New York
was found to have a density less than water. So the idea of Venus
being a comet seems very stupid. However, maybe it made sense at the
time.
However, comet tails were understood for a long time. In his
essay on gravity, Velikovsky claims that the fact comets point away
from the sun violates Newton's Laws of gravity. In fact, radiation
pressure pushes the comet tail away from the sun. The reason the
nucleus of the comet isn't pushed away by radiation pressure is
because the nucleus is so dense. The gas in the comet has a low
density, so radiation pushes it less than the comet nucleus. Again,
Velikovsky should have researched the background if only to prove the
model wrong. He did not even try to look into what astrophysicists
were saying. He jumps to conclusions.
He is totally ignorant of physics. However, he assumes that
other scientists are as ignorant as him. He reads about some
phenomenon that he doesn't understands, assumes that no one else even
tried to understand it, and then claims without any justification that
the phenomenon is unexplained. The models he uses are oversimplified
systems of his own devising. Basically, the essay is an army of straw
men theories.
I have heard of his "World's in Collision", of course. It has been
recommended to me that I read it. However, I can see what a stupid and
mean person he is just from his essay of gravity. If he reasons so
poorly with regards to physics, or basic meteorology, then his
reasoning on folklore isn't going very good.
Uncle Al
>
> <
> < "Ridicule is the argument
> < of the mob."
> < -- Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
> <
> ==========================================
> <
> It is fact -- not fiction -- that Immanuel Velikovsky
> will forever rank as one of the most brilliant scientists
> of the 20th century,
If angular momentum is conserved Velikovsky is wrong. Your choice.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2
Darwin123
> intelligent.design...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > <
> > < "Ridicule is the argument
> > < of the mob."
> > < -- Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
> > <
> > ==========================================
> > <
> > It is fact -- not fiction -- that Immanuel Velikovsky
> > will forever rank as one of the most brilliant scientists
> > of the 20th century,
>
> [snip 680 lines of crap]
>
> If angular momentum is conserved Velikovsky is wrong. Your choice.
>
believe in gravity. He doesn't even mention angular momentum in
anything he writes. He ignores physics entirely. He doesn't even get
his ancient history right.
Igor
> < of the mob."
> < -- Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
> <
They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, but they also
laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Benj
> > It is fact -- not fiction -- that Immanuel Velikovsky
> > will forever rank as one of the most brilliant scientists
> > of the 20th century,
>
> [snip 680 lines of crap]
>
> If angular momentum is conserved Velikovsky is wrong. Your choice.
Obviously the 681st line of crap also needs to be snipped!
This argument is totally stupid on ALL sides. It it totally irrelevant
as to whether Velikovsky or Unc. Swartz will forever rank as the most
brilliant scientists of history. It doesn't matter if "Unc. Al" is
always almost always "right" in his pronouncements and Velikovsky made
lots of errors.
Listen Children. Sit here at my feet and learn. EACH idea stands on
it's own. You judge EACH idea on it's merits. You Reject EACH idea if
it is "wrong". And oh yes, one more thing. "Wrong" means that it is
not substantiated by actual measurements. Flying in the face of
accepted dogma does not constitute any "proof" what-so-ever that an
idea is "wrong".
So if Velikovsky said some wrong things, then those things are
"wrong". That's all. If we were all judged by the standard you clowns
propose that if a person says ONE wrong thing, then clearly ANYTHING
they say can safely be rejected as "wrong", then there would be NOBODY
advancing ANY new ideas.
Unnoticed in the crap in this tread is Velikovsky's correct rejection
of the geological "Theory of Uniformity" dogmatically argued to me for
more years than I care to count by establishment scientists as
ultimate truth and now seen for the fraud it always was. And secondly
his correct prediction of the temperature of Venus.
It's so funny how when pompous "authorities" are shown to be fools how
quickly they change their stories and all memories of their previous
diehard assertions are suddenly non-existent. Velikovsky show a lot
of pompous asses to be fools and they are still pissed after all these
years. None has the common sense to figure out they did it to
themselves. Velikovsky only looked at the data and drew some logical
conclusions. They could have easily done likewise but instead chose to
follow the party line. And now they are still trying to blame
Velikovsky for their own deficiencies.
Darwin123
> On Aug 21, 12:37 pm, Uncle Al <Uncle...@hate.spam.net> wrote:
>
> Unnoticed in the crap in this tread is Velikovsky's correct rejection
> of the geological "Theory of Uniformity" dogmatically argued to me for
> more years than I care to count by establishment scientists as
> ultimate truth and now seen for the fraud it always was. And secondly
> his correct prediction of the temperature of Venus.
The model he used to predict this number has been proven wrong
because it leads too many wrong predictions. Thus, the temperature of
Venus can not be considered a "correct" prediction since there is
nothing else in Velikovsky's original model. His "correct predictions"
are based on the erroneous assumption that comets are hot.
For example, Venus can't be a comet because it is too heavy.
Comets don't have large rocky cores like planets have. A comet at the
temperature of Venus would evaporate.
Velikovsky claimed that Venus was blasted off from Jupitier by
some unknown process. The composition of Jupiter does not match the
composition of Venus in any way. Jupiter is mostly ice, methane,
ammonia and hydrogen. This does match the composition of most comets.
So I suppose it is reasonable that a piece of Jupiter could turn into
a comet, provided one accepted the "unknown mechanism." However, in
order for this material to stick together one would have to predict
the material was blasted off of Jupiter in a very cold state. Ice
heated to 800 degree Centigrade would not remain in the solid state
very long, it would boil off. So Velikovsky's prediction was "wrong"
enen from the beginning. He predicts a hot comet coming off of
Jupiter. The heat of this comet becomes the heat of Venus, the planet
that the comet turns into.
Velikovsky did not know the mass or composition of comets. The
shiny tail is made of vapors that evaporate from the comet only when
it gets close to the sun. Comets are cold. He just didn't know that
comets where made of frozen gases and ice. If a comet were to be
heated to the temperature of Venus, or above, the gases would
evaporate quickly. Venus could not have been a comet. Venus is made of
rocky materials, and has a large density. Thus Venus could not have
been part of Jupiter, which is not dense.
The atmosphere of Venus does not match the atmosphere of
Jupiter. Venus has a carbond dioxide atmosphere, while Jupiter has an
atmosphere made of methane and water vapor.
Velikovsky's theory is based on properties of comets that don't
exist. Therefore, the "heat of Venus" is a lucky guess.
You can not stand every prediction separately. If a model makes
more than one prediction, and most of those predictions are wrong, the
theory is wrong. Better yet: If a model is used incorrectly, so a
prediction is made that doesn't logically follow from the model, then
that prediction is wrong even if it turns out right.
>
> Velikovsky only looked at the data and drew some logical
> conclusions.
I read his essay on gravity, and Velikovsky was not logical about
anything. He did not look at the data. He seems to have intentionally
ignored data that was available in his day. I made a separate post on
this point. He did not even look at the data on the composition of
comets. He did not look at data on meteorology. He seemed to have
total ignorance of every physical science.
He couldn't even logically look at myths and legends. On one hand,
he claimed ancent peoples were great observers and could be trusted
word for word. On the other, he didn't take these myths and legends
literally. He just jumped to his own conclusions and then claimed that
the ancients made the statements. There was no logic in most of his
analysis.
Velikovsky did not draw logical conclusions, and he rarely looked
at the data. However, there is one prediction that I think he got 40%
right, and which he used about 30% correct reasoning.
When looking at archeological data, he came to the conclusion
that many of these disasters occurred about 1000 BC. He saw that many
Mediterranean cultures collapse at that time, so he concludes that one
of his comets swung by and almost destroyed the earth. So in that
case, he disagreed with a Uniformistism theory.
Only Mediterrannean cultures seem to collapse at this time. Most
of them are on a fault line that extends around the Mediterranean.
Therefore, it seems to be a good bet that some of these civilizations
collapsed due to a chain of earthquakes. The earthquakes and ensuing
social disorder may have contributed to the story of Exodus. The
island of Thera also seems to have exploded around this time. This
didn't help.
His model is right in that there were natural disasters that
kicked off many of these myths and social changes. In the early
twentieth century, few scientists believed natural disasters made big
and lasting changes. However, the nature of these natural disasters
were far more mundane than Velikovsky described.
Darwin123
> On Aug 21, 7:56 am, intelligent.design...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > <
> > < "Ridicule is the argument
> > < of the mob."
> > < -- Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
that case was dead serious.
> > <
>
> They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, but they also
> laughed at Bozo the Clown.
wanted to be laughed at.
c.l...@rocketmail.com
Worlds in Collision, allow me to make a few clarifications:
On Aug 23, 5:31 pm, Darwin123 <drosen0...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Aug 21, 10:42 pm, Benj <bjac...@iwaynet.net> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 21, 12:37 pm, Uncle Al <Uncle...@hate.spam.net> wrote:
>
> > Unnoticed in the crap in this tread is Velikovsky's correct rejection
> > of the geological "Theory of Uniformity" dogmatically argued to me for
> > more years than I care to count by establishment scientists as
> > ultimate truth and now seen for the fraud it always was. And secondly
> > his correct prediction of the temperature of Venus.
>
> The model he used to predict this number has been proven wrong
> because it leads too many wrong predictions. Thus, the temperature of
> Venus can not be considered a "correct" prediction since there is
> nothing else in Velikovsky's original model. His "correct predictions"
> are based on the erroneous assumption that comets are hot.
> For example, Venus can't be a comet because it is too heavy.
Venus can't be a comet because it is too massive ever to have had a
visible tail as ordinary comets do. It's gravity is so great that its
atmosphere cannot excape to form a tail.
> Comets don't have large rocky cores like planets have. A comet at the
> temperature of Venus would evaporate.
> Velikovsky claimed that Venus was blasted off from Jupitier by
> some unknown process. The composition of Jupiter does not match the
Not "some unknown process". Although not discsused in Worlds in
Collision, Velikovsky's later writings and defenses, uniformly ignored
by
critics such as Martin Gardner, Isaac Asimov, and Carl Sagan,
envisioned
the origin of Venus from Jupiter via a fission process as discussed
often
in the astronomical literature by McCrea and Lyttleton in the 1960s
and
1970s. The 1978 The Origin of the Solar System, edited by S.F.
Dermott,
contains papers by these men on fissioning. Lyttleton once wrote that
"it is even possible that the terrestrial planets originated by
fission from
the gas giants". Alas, when Velikovsky quoted Lyttleton, he changed
the
"it is even possible" to "must".
> composition of Venus in any way. Jupiter is mostly ice, methane,
> ammonia and hydrogen. This does match the composition of most comets.
However, in the fission process, it is the rocky cores of the jovian
planets
that are envisioned as fissioning and therefore the compositional
argument
evaporates, so to speak.
> So I suppose it is reasonable that a piece of Jupiter could turn into
> a comet, provided one accepted the "unknown mechanism." However, in
The "unknown mechanism" is NOT so "unknown", as explained above.
> order for this material to stick together one would have to predict
> the material was blasted off of Jupiter in a very cold state. Ice
This objection does not apply to the fission model. There is no
"blasting
off". When a rotational instability occurred, the spherical rocky
core would
deform into a dumbell shape, forming a neck between the two oval
ends.
Droplets would form along the neck as the separation proceeded and a
Venus would have been one of these droplets. There was even
speculation
in the scientific literature that the Moon was formed in such a
fissioning
process on proto-Earth. So, while fissioning was ignored by the
critics,
it was a topic for discussion in the origin of the Solar System
literature,
and one has to realize that Velikovsky did not discuss how a
fissioning
would have been feasible recently when the theoretical discussion
related
to conditions in the early Solar System.
> heated to 800 degree Centigrade would not remain in the solid state
> very long, it would boil off. So Velikovsky's prediction was "wrong"
> enen from the beginning. He predicts a hot comet coming off of
> Jupiter. The heat of this comet becomes the heat of Venus, the planet
> that the comet turns into.
> Velikovsky did not know the mass or composition of comets. The
Yes. Velikovsky discussed the visual size of comets, which failed to
distinguish between the size of the nucleus and the much larger
vaporous
envelope called the coma.
> shiny tail is made of vapors that evaporate from the comet only when
> it gets close to the sun. Comets are cold. He just didn't know that
> comets where made of frozen gases and ice. If a comet were to be
> heated to the temperature of Venus, or above, the gases would
> evaporate quickly. Venus could not have been a comet. Venus is made of
> rocky materials, and has a large density. Thus Venus could not have
> been part of Jupiter, which is not dense.
> The atmosphere of Venus does not match the atmosphere of
> Jupiter. Venus has a carbond dioxide atmosphere, while Jupiter has an
> atmosphere made of methane and water vapor.
There were notions bandied about on how a jovian atmosphere might
be converted to the present Venus atmosphere. However, the atmosphere
of Jupiter is mostly hydrogen and helium with far lesser amounts of
methane,
water vapor and other constituents. Actually, Jupiter has no surface
(not
counting the outer boundary of the putative inner rocky core). The
gaseous upper atmosphere just gets denser with depth until it becomes
a
liquid; but there is no "surface" as we on Earth are used to seeing
the
nitrogen-oxygen-argon-water vapor atmosphere interface with the ocean
surface.
> Velikovsky's theory is based on properties of comets that don't
> exist. Therefore, the "heat of Venus" is a lucky guess.
> You can not stand every prediction separately. If a model makes
> more than one prediction, and most of those predictions are wrong, the
> theory is wrong. Better yet: If a model is used incorrectly, so a
> prediction is made that doesn't logically follow from the model, then
> that prediction is wrong even if it turns out right.
>
>
>
> > Velikovsky only looked at the data and drew some logical
> > conclusions.
>
> I read his essay on gravity, and Velikovsky was not logical about
> anything. He did not look at the data. He seems to have intentionally
> ignored data that was available in his day. I made a separate post on
> this point. He did not even look at the data on the composition of
> comets. He did not look at data on meteorology. He seemed to have
> total ignorance of every physical science.
> He couldn't even logically look at myths and legends. On one hand,
> he claimed ancent peoples were great observers and could be trusted
> word for word. On the other, he didn't take these myths and legends
> literally. He just jumped to his own conclusions and then claimed that
> the ancients made the statements. There was no logic in most of his
> analysis.
On Velikovsky's handling of myth, see James Fitton's "Velikovsky
Mythistoricus" in Chiron 1974; I(1/2): excerpted at
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/vfitton.html>. Fitton was a grad
student
in Classics at McMaster University, Kingston, Ontario, at the time;
but
he has dropped off the radar.
> Velikovsky did not draw logical conclusions, and he rarely looked
> at the data. However, there is one prediction that I think he got 40%
> right, and which he used about 30% correct reasoning.
> When looking at archeological data, he came to the conclusion
> that many of these disasters occurred about 1000 BC. He saw that many
> Mediterranean cultures collapse at that time, so he concludes that one
> of his comets swung by and almost destroyed the earth. So in that
> case, he disagreed with a Uniformistism theory.
> Only Mediterrannean cultures seem to collapse at this time. Most
> of them are on a fault line that extends around the Mediterranean.
> Therefore, it seems to be a good bet that some of these civilizations
> collapsed due to a chain of earthquakes. The earthquakes and ensuing
> social disorder may have contributed to the story of Exodus. The
> island of Thera also seems to have exploded around this time. This
> didn't help.
It may be unwise to conflate the Exodus with the Minoan eruption of
Thera
because the latest scientific dating for Thera places it at the late
17th
century B.C., say 1628 B.C., based on tree ring dating and high
precision
C-14 dating of wood from bushes entrapped in the Minoan tephra and it
is
hard to date Exodus that early. This is a real quandry among
specialists in
ancient history and archaeology.
> His model is right in that there were natural disasters that
> kicked off many of these myths and social changes. In the early
> twentieth century, few scientists believed natural disasters made big
> and lasting changes. However, the nature of these natural disasters
> were far more mundane than Velikovsky described.
However, if the British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier are
on
the right track concerning the episodic interaction between Earth and
the Taurid-Encke complex all during the Holocene, then there may
well have been sky-borne, cometary based cataclysms that destroyed
civilizations, as they discuss in their books The Cosmic Serpent
(1982)
and The Cosmic Winter (1990), along with dendrochronologist Mike
Baillie
with his Exodus to Arthur (1999) and with Patrick McCafferty, The
Celtic
Gods: Comets in Irish Mythology (2005). See, too, my letter to Sky &
Telescope "Are Comets Evil?" from 1997
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html#ST>. Here's a comparison
between Velikovsky and Clube:
Velikovsky Versus Clube
Velikovsky's is not the only hypothesis connecting cosmic catastrophes
to
racial, or collective, amnesia. The formerly active, annual fireball
storms with
low-altitude detonations provided by the then-young Taurid meteor-
stream,
radiating from near the Pleiades in November (and peaking every 52
years),
which stars in Clube's model of coherent catastrophism, would serve
just as
well to scare the bejeebers out of out ancestors (Clube & Napier,
1990; Clube,
1992 &1994; Asher & Clube, 1993; Asheretal., 1994; Bailey, 1995).
Since an
armageddon did not accompany every return of the Taurids' progenitor,
now
defunct, it was an intermittent reinforcer, which behaviorists hold is
as good as
God (Dennett, 1994): hence, the archetypal fear of comets. But Mrs.
Sharon's
only interest in Clube is to chastise him for not giving proper credit
to Ve-
likovsky, by comparing the similar conclusions reached by both (pp.
140-44).
She is oblivious to the facts that (a) Clube was inspired initially by
Hoerbiger's
interpreter Bellamy; (b) Velikovsky denied his work owed anything to
Hoer-
biger (Velikovsky, 1950b); and (c) Clube read Velikovsky only after
his own
ideas had coalesced. From <http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cle/cle-
jose.txt>.
C. Leroy Ellenberger, St. Louis, MO
"An Antidote to Velikovskian Delusions" from Skeptic 1995; 3(4)
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html>
c.l...@rocketmail.com
> On Aug 21, 7:56 am, intelligent.design...@gmail.com wrote:> <
> > < "Ridicule is the argument
> > < of the mob."
> > < -- Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
> > <
> > ==========================================
> > <
> > It is fact -- not fiction -- that Immanuel Velikovsky
> > will forever rank as one of the most brilliant scientists
> > of the 20th century, actually an investigative reporter
> > if there ever was one.
> > <
Henry Bauer, author of the widely acclaimed Beyond Velikovsky (1984),
later wrote two sympathetic yet trenchant articles disagreeing on
Velikovsky's place in science:
Bauer, Henry H. (1995). Velikovsky's place in the history of science:
A lesson on the strengths and limitations of science. Skeptic 3 (4),
52-56. <http://www.henryhbauer.homestead.com/Skeptic1996.pdf>.
Bauer, Henry (1984). Velikovsky and Social Studies of Science. 4S
Review 2 (4), 2-8. <http://www.jstor.org/view/07380526/
ap020008/02a00010/0>.
Velikovsky was a very intelligent man, but he was no part a scientist,
at least no part a
20th century, post-World War II scientist. I think Bauer explains this
situation quite
nicely and I urge the reader to take a look for him/her-self.
C. Leroy Ellenberger, Formerly Senior Editor of Kronos and
Confidant to Velikovsky (4/78-11/79)
"Worlds Still Colliding" for eSkeptic, 2001
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velstcol.html>
Review of ABA: The Life of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
J. Sci. Explor. 1996; 10(4)
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cle/cle-jose.txt>
c.l...@rocketmail.com
(1978), I was
slightly in error, with the correction inserted below:
Dermott's book only contains a chapter by McCrea, "A Protoplanet
Theory" which develops the fission model for origin of terrestrial
planets while citing Lyttleton. It is also interesting to note that
the
fission model was first proposed by George Darwin in the late 19th
century, if memory serves, and in the mid to late 20th century a
fission origin for the Moon was defended by several astronomers
including Alan Boss, Ringwood, and John A. O'Keefe. I recall
at least two articles in Scientific American on aspects of the
fission model over the years.
> "it is even possible that the terrestrial planets originated by
> fission from
> the gas giants". Alas, when Velikovsky quoted Lyttleton, he changed
> the
> "it is even possible" to "must".
Michael Friedlander pointed this out to Velikovsky in Nov. 1974 at
the Philosophy of Science Association meeting at Notre Dame and
recounted it in his book At the Fringes of Science (1995) and in his
letter in Skeptic 2002; 9(3) replying to David Morrison's article
"Velikovsky at 50" in Skeptic 2001; 9(1). Here is Friedlander's
letter,
annotated for additional effect:
Begin Quoted Text:
Velikovsky on the Fringes
David Morrison's fine review of the Velikovsky
case (Skeptic, Vol 9, No. 1, 62-76) covers the
50-odd years since _Worlds in Collision_ appeared,
but there is a notable omission. Although
Velikovsky gave many public lectures, there were
very few occasions when he was willing to appear
on a panel with any mainstream scientist.
Morrison has described the 1974 AAAS symposium
where Carl Sagan was the scientist.
Another occasion was the Biennial Meeting
of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA),
held at the University of Notre Dame in November
1974. A symposium was arranged, with the title
"Velikovsky and the Politics of Science." [See
Pensee X, 45-46, for distorted report.] Appearing
with Velikovsky were Professors Lynn Rose [Rose
reprinted in Kronos 2:4, 1977, 56-63.] and
Antoinette Patterson [Patterson reprinted in
Kronos 3:2, 1977, 121-31.], both philosophers
of science at the State University of New York,
Buffalo, and me [Greenberg chose NOT to reprint
Friedlander.]. I am a physicist and my research
has been in cosmic rays and astrophysics. The
proceedings appeared in the 1976 PSA journal, and
the papers from our symposium appear on pages
469-498. Velikovsky declined to submit a paper
describing his contribution. I have described this
occasion in my book _At the Fringes of Science_
(Westview, 1995, 9-16), but because that journal
is not well known, I would like to give a very
brief summary of my main points.
In my presentation, I gave examples of
Velikovsky's distortion of the published scientific
literature in quotations that he used to support
his theses. For example, he quoted Lyttleton as
writing that "the terrestrial planets, Venus
included, must have originated from the giant
planets...." Lyttleton did not use the word "must."
[Lyttleton said "it is even possible".] In
another case, Velikovsky cited thermoluminescence
studies of Apollo 12 lunar cores, reporting that
"disturbances were of a thermal nature." Those
measurements were made by some of my colleagues,
and Velikovsky's description is, at best,
imaginative.
When I gave each example, his response was
"Where did I write that?" [So much for Velikovsky's
"remarkable memory".]; when I showed a photo copy
of the quoted pages, he simply switched to a
different topic. In all, I would not trust any
alleged citation by Velikovsky without checking
the original printed sources [n.b.: Velikovsky
would later exhort the epigoni to do no less than
"check the sources for yourself at firsthand".].
It was also clear that he had no understanding
of the scientific points I was making--for example,
the difference between thermal and synchrotron
radiation coming from Jupiter. There are many
aspects of this sad affair that continue to
attract attention and some present lessons still
to be learned, by both scientists and our critics.
--Michael Friedlander, Department of Physics
Washington University, St. Louis, MO
End quoted text.
> 1992 &1994; Asher & Clube, 1993; ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
C. Leroy Ellenberger
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Leroy_Ellenberger>