Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky

A review of Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky by Charles Ginenthal

The Solar System, at that time, was compared to a perfect watch. The positions of the planets were stable and secure and would remain that way for a very long time. In , Immanuel Velikovsky rocked the scientific assumptions of the time with Worlds in Collision. An extremely intelligent and well-educated man specializing in psychoanalysis but keenly interested and well read in many fields, Velikovsky came to the conclusion that some of the irrational myths of early civilizations might not be irrational after all.

They might be based on first-hand observation of cataclysmic events no longer occurring, especially the almost universal myths among early civilizations that the planets were gods, had battled in the heavens, and had influenced the destinies of these early cultures. These primitive cultures, all of them, formulated mythological explanations of the same events, namely that some of the planets had erratic orbits and nearly collided with each other. He proposed that Venus was ejected from Jupiter, nearly collided with the Earth, then nearly collided with Mars, thereby causing Mars to nearly collide with the Earth.

I remember how disillusioned he was trying to defend his position and explain how he came to his conclusions.

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Finally, drawing on his professional training, this eminent psychiatrist wrote Mankind in Amnesia , proposing that mankind witnessed traumatic experiences, the meaning of which subsequent generations repressed into their subconscious by redefining them as myths and legends. At that time, the theories of Carl G. It appears Velikovsky was not at variance with scientists in his own field. Velikovsky died in , still vilified and ridiculed by some very prominent members of the scientific community.

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Immanuel Velikovsky

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Lulu Staff has been notified of a possible violation of the terms of our Membership Agreement. Our agents will determine if the content reported is inappropriate or not based on the guidelines provided and will then take action where needed. Thank you for notifying us. The page you are attempting to access contains content that is not intended for underage readers. However, within his lifetime, whilst he continued to research, expand and lecture upon the details of his ideas, he released only selected portions of his work to the public in book form: Of all the strands of his work, Velikovsky published least on his belief that electromagnetism plays a role in orbital mechanics.

Although he appears to have retreated from the propositions in his monograph Cosmos without Gravitation , no such retreat is apparent in Stargazers and Gravediggers. Scott have claimed that stars are powered not by internal nuclear fusion, but by galactic-scale electrical discharge currents. Such ideas do not find support in the conventional literature and are rejected as pseudoscience by the scientific community. Velikovsky argued that the conventional chronology of the Near East and classical world, based upon Egyptian Sothic dating and the king lists of Manetho , was wholly flawed.

This was the reason for the apparent absence of correlation between the Biblical account and those of neighbouring cultures, and also the cause of the enigmatic " Dark Ages " in Greece and elsewhere. Velikovsky shifted several chronologies and dynasties from the Egyptian Old Kingdom to Ptolemaic times by centuries a scheme he called the Revised Chronology , placing The Exodus contemporary with the fall of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. He proposed numerous other synchronisms stretching up to the time of Alexander the Great.

He argued that these eliminate phantom "Dark Ages", and vindicate the biblical accounts of history and those recorded by Herodotus.

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These ideas were first put forward briefly in his Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History , but Ages in Chaos was his first full-length work on the subject. This was followed by Oedipus and Akhenaton , Peoples of the Sea and Rameses II and His Time , and two further works that were unpublished at the time of his death but that are now available online at the Velikovsky Archive: Though rejected by mainstream historians, these ideas have been developed by other historians such as David Rohl and Peter James , who have also attempted their own revised chronologies. Velikovsky inspired numerous followers during the s and s.

Alfred de Grazia dedicated a issue of his journal, American Behavioral Scientist , to Velikovsky, which was published in an expanded version as a book, The Velikovsky Affair — Scientism Versus Science, in The Skeptical Inquirer , in a review of a later book by de Grazia, Cosmic Heretics , suggests that de Grazia's efforts may be responsible for Velikovsky's continuing notability during the s.

The Society for Interdisciplinary Studies SIS was "formed in in response to the growing interest in the works of modern catastrophists, notably the highly controversial Dr. A Journal of Interdisciplinary Synthesis was founded in explicitly "to deal with Velikovsky's work". Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered appeared from to The controversy surrounding Velikovsky peaked in the mid s and public interest declined in the s, and by , erstwhile Velikovskyist C.

Worlds in Collision - Wikipedia

Leroy Ellenberger had become a vocal critic of Velikovskian catastrophism. Some Velikovskyist publications and authors such as David Talbott remain active into the s. Velikovsky's ideas have been almost entirely rejected by mainstream academia often vociferously so and his work is generally regarded as erroneous in all its detailed conclusions. Moreover, scholars view his unorthodox methodology for example, using comparative mythology to derive scenarios in celestial mechanics as an unacceptable way to arrive at conclusions. Stephen Jay Gould [34] offered a synopsis of the mainstream response to Velikovsky, writing, "Velikovsky is neither crank nor charlatan —although, to state my opinion and to quote one of my colleagues, he is at least gloriously wrong Velikovsky would rebuild the science of celestial mechanics to save the literal accuracy of ancient legends.

Velikovsky's bestselling, and as a consequence most criticized, book is Worlds in Collision. Astronomer Harlow Shapley , along with others such as Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin , were highly critical of Macmillan's decision to publish the work. The fundamental criticism against this book from the astronomy community was that its celestial mechanics were physically impossible, requiring planetary orbits that do not conform with the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of angular momentum.

However, this strategy did not protect him: By , the controversy surrounding Velikovsky's work had permeated US society to the point where the American Association for the Advancement of Science felt obliged to address the situation, as they had previously done in relation to UFOs , and devoted a scientific session to Velikovsky featuring among others Velikovsky himself and Professor Carl Sagan. Sagan gave a critique of Velikovsky's ideas the book version of Sagan's critique is much longer than that presented in the talk; see below.

His criticisms are available in Scientists Confront Velikovsky [35] and as a corrected and revised version in the book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. It was not until the s that a very detailed critique of Worlds in Collision was made in terms of its use of mythical and literary sources when Bob Forrest published a highly critical examination of them see below. Earlier in , James Fitton published a brief critique of Velikovsky's interpretation of myth ignored by Velikovsky and his defenders whose indictment began: The first of these is his proclivity to treat all myths as having independent value; the second is the tendency to treat only such material as is consistent with his thesis; and the third is his very unsystematic method.

Leroy Ellenberger , in his A Lesson from Velikovsky. More recently, the absence of supporting material in ice-core studies such as the Greenland Dye-3 and Vostok cores has removed any basis for the proposition of a global catastrophe of the proposed dimension within the later Holocene period. However, tree-ring expert Mike Baillie would give credit to Velikovsky after disallowing the impossible aspects of Worlds in Collision: Velikovsky was almost certainly correct in his assertion that ancient texts hold clues to catastrophic events in the relatively recent past, within the span of human civilization, which involve the effects of comets, meteorites and cometary dust But fundamentally, Velikovsky did not understand anything about comets He did not know about the hazard posed by relatively small objects This failure to recognize the power of comets and asteroids means that it is reasonable to go back to Velikovsky and delete all the physically impossible text about Venus and Mars passing close to the earth In other words, we can get down to his main thesis, which is that the Earth experienced dramatic events from heavenly bodies particularly in the second millennium BC.

Velikovsky's revised chronology has been rejected by nearly all mainstream historians and Egyptologists. It was claimed, starting with early reviewers, that Velikovsky's usage of material for proof is often very selective. While James credits Velikovsky with "point[ing] the way to a solution by challenging Egyptian chronology", he severely criticised the contents of Velikovsky's chronology as "disastrously extreme", producing "a rash of new problems far more severe than those it hoped to solve" and claiming that "Velikovsky understood little of archaeology and nothing of stratigraphy.

Bauer accuses Velikovsky of dogmatically asserting interpretations which are at best possible, and gives several examples from Ages in Chaos. Such was the hostility directed against Velikovsky from some quarters particularly the original campaign led by Harlow Shapley , that some commentators have made an analysis of the conflict itself. More recently, James Gilbert, professor of history at University of Maryland, challenged this traditional version with an account that focused on the intellectual rivalry between Velikovsky's ally Horace Kallen and Harlow Shapley.

The scientific press, in general, denied Velikovsky a forum to rebut his critics.