Velikovsky's astronomy was a little wild, but his theory of cataclysms here on Earth have value. I know its heresy to revisit Velikovsky, but the intrepid writer James Hogan has reopened the debate.
Truth Under Tyranny by James P. Hogan
Catastrophe of Ethics — Velikovsky Revisited
In 1950, Immanuel Velikovsky published Worlds in Collision, the first of several books examining accounts of astronomic events and terrestrial catastrophes from all over the ancient world, and noting the striking parallels between them. The conventional view has always been to dismiss these stories as myths and cultural metaphors colored with superstition. Velikovsky, however, took the view that the similarities were far too many and too detailed to be coincidental. He put forward the revolutionary suggestion that the ancients might actually have known what they were talking about and have something to tell us. In particular, when such accounts all seem to corroborate and describe the same thing, they should be regarded as providing valid data against which we might wish to compare our scientific theories. The result of applying this, according to Velikovsky, shows that the conventional picture of uniformity and slow, gradual change is wrong — or, at least, incomplete. Major astronomical and geological changes have taken place within the timescale of recorded human history.
His main conclusion, briefly, was that around 3,500 years ago, humanity came close to being wiped out in a close encounter between Earth and a huge comet. In the process, the Earth's axis was shifted, its rotation altered, its surface devastated, climates and seasons changed — evidenced by changes to calendars and timekeeping, revisions to star charts introduced worldwide. He identified the comet as Venus, stating it to be a young planet, having originated by fission from Jupiter. The reason why Venus and Mars — insignificant pinpoints in today's skies — once inspired such awe and terror as to relegate even the sun and moon to minor roles in the cosmic scheme of things was that they formerly moved on more eccentric paths that brought them closer to Earth than is the case today. A final encounter between Venus and Mars, recorded graphically in mythologies from China to Peru, Lapland to Hawaii, Greece, Rome, and Babylonia, caused the threat of further close-passes to Earth to recede, and produced the circularized orbits that we see today.
Although entering the arena as an outsider (his training was in psychology and classical history), Velikovsky, in the best tradition of the sciences, offered a list of predictions against which his proposals might be tested.
The scientific community reacted with outrage and denunciation bordering on hysteria. Experts lined up at podiums and flew into print to castigate the intruder who had dared trespass on their territory; others fulminated at the mention of biblical quotations, seeing only an attempt to restore religion through pseudoscience (which wasn't true — Velikovsky used Scripture simply as a historical source, and then only parts that were substantiated by the records of other cultures). Organized boycotts of textbooks and salesmen intimidated the publisher (Macmillan) into breaking its contract by dropping Velikovsky's book, and the editor who had published it was forced to resign after 25 years with the company. The Director of the Hayden Planetarium and Curator of the Harvard Astronomical Museum was summarily dismissed and ordered to leave his office the same day for the crime of preparing a favorable review.
The assault continued with ad-hominem attacks; suppression or misrepresentation of facts; systematic misquoting, then attacking the misquotes and denial of space for rebuttals; and refusal to publish papers by scientists who were supportive. One line of objections was that if such events had taken place within human history, the terrestrial geological and biological record should show evidence of it. Velikovsky obligingly produced a book filled with such evidence, Earth In Upheaval, in 1952, making no appeal to anything written by humans, but providing just nature's records. It was then argued that historical chronologies, calendars, timekeeping methods would have been disrupted. Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos, 1955, showed that indeed they had — everywhere. The furor continued for decades, and Velikovsky died in the 1970s dismissed by the mainstream and branded a crank or charlatan, which in the minds of many he remains to this day.
And yet today, almost half a century after publication of Velikovsky's first book, it's stunning to note how accumulating findings from space missions, lunar landings, and planetary probes, along with more recent work in astronomy, geology, paleontology, and archaeology is consistent with his claims while flatly contradicting the assertions of the experts who maligned him. And all the time, his ideas have been quietly incorporated into subject matter discussed routinely in the scientific journals. Some examples:
Some astronomers are coming to the conclusion that none of the inner planets could have formed according to the traditional accretion or tidal models.
Fluid-dynamic analysis of Jupiter's core suggests that it will go unstable periodically and eject excess mass. Models of the minor planets originating by fission from gas giants are now a serious topic of astronomical theory.
Electrodynamic interactions between close-passing, planet-size bodies could have precisely the slowing-down, followed by speeding-up-again, effect on rotation that was dismissed as impossible (the experts took account of gravity only); indeed, such perturbations of the Earth's spin have in minor form been measured following large-scale solar storms.
Prediction of emission of nonthermal radio noise from Jupiter.
Prediction that Venus would be hot, its surface young, its atmosphere dense and rich in hydrocarbons — all ridiculed at the time, but subsequently verified. Attempts to explain Venus's temperature by a runaway greenhouse effect are failures. Every one of the US and Russian Venus probes returned data showing the heat to be coming from below, not above, and the atmosphere too dense to permit penetration of sunlight — i.e. the heat is coming from the planet, not the Sun.
Prediction that comets can be rich in hydrocarbons, and their tails highly energetic electrically. Both subsequently verified.
Prediction that the Moon would show evidence of recent surface melting and modification, seismic and volcanic activity, and a thermal gradient in the surface layers, none of which should be true for a body tectonically dead for 4.5 billion years. All subsequently found in the course of lunar exploration; described officially as "surprising".
Lunar regolith and cratering not consistent with conventionally assigned age of surface.
Anomalies on Mars are consistent with recent disturbances.
Earth records major geological and climatic upheavals in recent times, mass extinctions, features consistent with large stresses induced in crust.
Recent interpretations of Babylonian astronomical tablets show that Venus moved in a different path from that seen today.
Suggestions of comets having a major influence on terrestrial events (e.g., dinosaur extinction) are now published and debated routinely. Fragments have now been identified of a broken-up comet as large as Earth's Moon. The once undoubted long-term stability of the Solar System is being questioned by a growing number of astronomers. Yet nowhere in the citations or references is any debt acknowledged to Velikovsky's ideas.
Velikovsky's work was meticulous and sincere. Irrespective of whether the final verdict vindicates his theories or not, they deserved to be heard with more open-mindedness and respect than they were given by the scientific establishment. Lynn E. Rose, a professor of psychology at Buffalo, has some fascinating theories on the collective mindset that could stampede virtually an entire profession of objectively trained professionals into such a panic of irrationality.
[I had an illuminating experience not long ago, when I was on a panel dealing with dogmatism in science, along with a physicist and a geologist. Somehow we got onto Velikovsky, and I deplored the behavior described above, saying that it has no place in science. The geologist was puzzled. "Why not?" he challenged. "What else are scientists supposed to do when they know someone is wrong?" He was being quite serious. The audience was aghast. Well, they could always show him the thumbscrews and threaten an auto-da-fe, I suppose.]
And even if Velikovsky were, in the end, shown to have been mistaken, what an exciting and instructive introduction to science it would be for young people to have played a part in analyzing and critiquing such ideas. Science is the poorer for having excluded them.
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