Earth In Upheaval, Worlds In Collision

[Dover]

Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision and Earth In Upheaval (c. 1950's)



I'm interested in the subject of earth's historical as well as current cosmic/geological changes, particularly as it has been passed down through oral history and myth within various cultures. So someone recently mentioned and then offered to loan me these books. I was just scratching my head about how I managed to remain in the dark all these years relative to this explosive little episode of literary/scientific theory?

They were published in the 1950's and I'm told they created quite a stir at the time among scientists and non-scientists alike due to the controversial theories put forth. Though I've yet to read them I'm intrigued already. I was told that the research done and reference material used for the books was deep and very thorough. And given the benefit now of hindsight relative to current scientific evidence and theoretical trends, apparently it got it right on many fronts despite ridicule from the more dogmatic scientific community. And judging by some of the feedback by readers at Amazon books, they report the same thing. Like this:

"Reading this book gives the open minded reader the opportunity to view the history of the Earth in a completely new way, and some of our favorite mysteries of the past may be decoded in conjunction with Velikovsky's "theories". The scientific discoveries of the 49 (now 55) years since the book was first published have been very kind to Dr. Velikovsky, but not so kind to scientific dogma of the same period.

Velikovsky dares to read ancient works literally, and to look for proof of their accuracy, even when they appear flawed. If a document states that the sun rose in the west, Velikovsky is willing to search for proof that it did, instead of presuming the text is flawed. Velikovsky's ideas help to unravel mysteries which cannot be decoded until we are willing to challenge the scientific dogma which presumes that ancient documents are incorrect whenever they disagree with our perceptions of what they ought to say."


I'm going to read and judge for myself, but would love to hear from anyone who has actually read them for feedback, pro or con.


He has written other books as well, such as Ages In Chaos and Peoples Of The Sea.

More history on this man and his writings at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky


Immanuel Velikovsky

[Warpy]

1. I read them when they first came out and I was a little kid

and they were great fun. Then I progressed through school and realized they were a load of crap. Reading allegorical and mythic works as fact is always a mistake and Velikovsky is foremost among the contemporary mistake makers. While it's fun to look for coincidences in mythic traditions separated by time and geography, it's a mistake to think they're anything but coincidences, especially when the majority of those traditions contradict each other.

A fairly neutral discussion of the man and his career is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky

He's an interesting read, especially if you're under 15, but there's a good reason he published his books as entertainment rather than as scholarly works.

[MineralMan]

2. Velikovsky and Science do not mix.

I read all of his books at one point. Then, I read a great deal from people who disagreed with him. Science ended up always being on the side that said that Velikovsky was incorrect, and demonstrated that incorrectness scientifically.

Read the books if you wish. They're actually fairly entertaining. They are not, however, science. They are fantasy. All part of the Fortean view of things. All based on mythology, just like creationism is based on mythology.

Have fun.

[laconicsax]

11. +1

[groovedaddy]

25. I would disagree with that assessment. While Velikovsky's theories themselves were shot down by

prevailing science, he presented a fair amount of evidence that remains unexplained. His theories were interpretations of a body evidence compiled by a number of geologists. One of the most interesting bits of history I got from reading these books was the fundamental differences in prevailing geologic theories that lead to a split among the scientists themselves around 1900.
It basically was an argument between those scientists who saw geologic process as extremely slow, evolving over vast periods of time vs. those who claimed that there had been a cataclysmic global change in the past 10 - 15 thousand years. Around 1900, a worldwide symposium of geologists was held during which a vote was taken and by a slim margin, the geologists who believed in recent cataclysm were voted "out." Geologists who held such views were marginalized, no longer receiving tenure or funding for research. But they left behind a huge body of evidence, which Velikovsky researched and founded his theories on. For the most part, the "slow process" geologists ignored that body of evidence, as it did not fit with their prevailing theories. Also, any geologist who wanted to work in the profession, particularly as a teacher, would necessarily have to ignore this body of evidence. Kudos to Velikovsky for bringing it back to the attention of science, even though his theories mis-intrepeted that evidence.
That cataclysmic geologic events have occured on earth on a global scale (i.e. polar shifts) is not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether or not such an event happened relatively recently.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. Polar shift? You mean a magnetic polar shift?

Not 'cataclysmic'. Not responsible for any extinctions (yes, migrating animals survive them quite happily - they're not a complete change from one year to the next). And we know when they happened, and it wasn't within the past 15,000 years. http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/reversals.html

If you mean some other sort of 'polar shift', then no, they are, again, not 'cataclysmic'. I'll stick with linking to Wikipedia, because I don't think any science sites take a sudden polar shift seriously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataclysmic_pole_shift_hypothesis

And the idea of an ice age was accepted in the 19th century, in case you meant that: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Glacier_experiments_helped_define_ice_age_theory.html?cid=2130732

The geological controversy around 1950 was plate tectonics. Some established geologists still didn't accept it. But that's very slow.

[groovedaddy]

27. Not a magnetic shift but a molten core shift. I also realize that this is controversial, at least

in the amount of time this occurs and its effects. I remember a program, I believe on NOVA, about this. I make these comments without ready access to the material, so please take it with a grain of salt.
One item I remember from the V books was the frozen mastodon found in the Tundra in Siberia by an expedition sent to the Tunguska region attempting to find the possible meteorite that cause the large explosion in 1908. The expedition had run out of food. The saw what appeared to be a rock sticking up out of the tunrda, noticing that wolves were going into a trench or ditch that surrounded it. When they investigated, they found out why the wolves were going there. The "rock" was no rock at all, but the skull of a mastodon. The wolves were eating frozen flesh. The expedition crew also ate it. When excavated, the carcass of the mastadon revealed that it still had flowers in its mouth, flowers that no longer grow in that region because of the climate. How did this happen?
That's just one example that I remember. I do highly recommend checking out Velikovsky's foot notes in his books. Interesting stuff.

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. How did this happen? It fell through some ice, probably

When you find a body frozen to death, why assume there was a catastrophic change in weather over a period of a few days that caused it, when an accident explains it better? Yeah, flowers that no longer grow in the region. It's called an ice age. There's an explainable mechanism for it, and it has nothing to do with 'molten core shifts', which, by the way, are connected with the magnetic reversals - from the site I already linked to:

The source of the magnetic field is the iron-rich liquid outer core of the Earth. This liquid moves in complex ways as a result of the convection of the heat deep within the core and of the rotation of the planet. The motion of the core fluid is continuous and never stops, even during a reversal. It can only stop when the energy source fails. Heat is produced at least partly because of the solidification of the liquid core onto the solid inner core that sits at the centre of the Earth. This process has operated continuously over billions of years. At the top of the liquid core, some 3000 km beneath our feet and below the rocky mantle, the fluid may travel at horizontal speeds of tens of kilometres per year. The motion of this metal fluid across existing magnetic field lines of force produces electrical currents and these, in turn, generate more magnetic field. This is a process known as advection. To balance any growth of the field, and thus stabilise what we call the 'geodynamo', we need diffusion, where field 'leaks' away from the core and is destroyed. Ultimately, the core fluid flow produces a complicated magnetic field pattern at the Earth's surface with a complicated time variation.

Why do you think molten core shifts have something to do with where flowers grow, or them being undigested in a mammoth?

[groovedaddy]

29. In the program I saw on PBS, they explored some of the possibilities of what could happen

IF a molten core shift happens relatively fast. The truth is, they don't know if it would and the prevailing science still says it happens slowly.
If the mastodon fell through the ice, it would have to have been cold enough for it to get onto the ice where it was deep enough to go through. Probably wouldn't have been any flowers around in that case. And they definately didn't grow there when the expedition was passing through.
I have heard that frozen mastodons "calve" out of glaciers in Alaska occassionally and the meat is still edible.
Mass die offs of species have occurred on earth a number of times, more often than not, attributed to meteor strikes (i.e. dinosaurs).
"The causes of these mass extinction events are unsolved mysteries."
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/prehistoric-world/mass-extinction/

I will have to go back to the Velikovsky books to research his footnotes and see what's out there on those. Otherwise, I'm relying mostly on my memory!

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. Go to a glacier in summer

There can be flowers beside it, and snow bridges above crevasses in it, that animals (or people) can fall into. A body may then be in there for a few hundred years, which is enough for an ice-age-related change in flora in the area.

[groovedaddy]

31. But there are no glaciers in Siberia. n.t

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. Huh?

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/4/045017/fulltext

[groovedaddy]

35. My bad. No glaciers in the tundra region of Siberia, where this frozen mastodon was found. n.t

[Posteritatis]

33. This is what we call the opposite of a true statement. (nt)

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. The quote from Stephen Jay Gould sums it up:

"Velikovsky would rebuild the science of celestial mechanics to save the literal accuracy of ancient legends"

If you do want to say that the Old Testament must be read as an accurate history from the time of Noah, and that the basic laws of physics that astronomers have used since Newton are hopelessly wrong, then Velikovsky is your man. I'd be interested to know if he looked at what Babylonian astrologers thought Venus and Mars did, and whether he thinks they were all wrong too, because as far as I'm aware, they claimed all the planets have been following the same motions in the sky all the centuries they looked at them.

For that matter, if one culture, that of ancient Judaism, claims there was a day in which the Earth stopped rotating, so that Joshua had the time to complete his massacre, and other cultures of the time don't mention this amazing occurrence, why should we trust the Old Testament account of that day over the many ones that fail to mention a literally earth-changing event?

I suggest, however, that the Science forum is not the correct place for this discussion, but Religion and Theology, instead.

[Dover]

4. An interesting little side story -

Robert Henry Pfeiffer (b.1892 Bologna d.1958)<1> was the Chairman of the Department of Semitic Languages and History, and Curator of the Semitic Museum, Harvard University, and one of the first people to read Velikovsky's manuscript to Ages in Chaos. Reporting on a lecture Velikovsky gave at Harvard University in 1972, Stephen Talbott reported:

" did not even mention his sometimes libelous Harvard critics, but instead praised the late Robert Pfeiffer, former chairman of the Department of Semitic Languages. Pfeiffer, the first person to read Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos, retained an open and fair mind, publicly conceding that this dramatic historical reconstruction could be correct."<2[br />
cont'd

http://www.velikovsky.info/Robert_Pfeiffer

[Speck Tater]

5. Read Grimm's Fairy Tales instead. There's more truth in them than in Velikovsky. nt

[Dover]

6. Some youtube videos about Velikovsky and a brief summary of his theories:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hNje6W7NWo


A website on the man and his work:
http://www.ruthvelikovskysharon.com/immanuel.html


He arrived at a body of radical inter-disciplinary ideas, which might be summarised as:

-- Planet Earth has suffered natural catastrophes on a global scale, both before and during humankind's recorded history.
There is evidence for these catastrophes in the geological record (here Velikovsky was advocating Catastrophist ideas as opposed to the prevailing Uniformitarian notions) and archeological record. The extinction of many species had occurred catastrophically, not by gradual Darwinian means.

-- The catastrophes which occurred within the memory of humankind are recorded in the myths, legends and written history of all ancient cultures and civilisations. Velikovsky pointed to alleged concordances in the accounts of many cultures, and proposed that they referred to the same real events. For instance, the memory of a flood is recorded in the Hebrew Bible, in the Greek legend of Deucalion and in the Manu legend of India. Velikovsky put forward the psychoanalytic idea of "Cultural Amnesia" as a mechanism whereby these literal records came to be regarded as mere myths and legends.

-- The causes of these natural catastrophes were close encounters between the Earth and other bodies within the solar system — not least what were now the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Mars, these bodies having moved upon different orbits within human memory.
To explain the celestial mechanics necessary to permit these changes to the configuration of the solar system, Velikovsky thought that electromagnetic forces might somehow play a greater role to counteract gravity and orbital mechanics.

Some of Velikovsky's specific postulated catastrophes included:

-- A tentative suggestion that Earth had once been a satellite of a "proto-Saturn" body, before its current solar orbit.

-- That the Deluge (Noah's Flood) had been caused by proto-Saturn entering a nova state, and ejecting much of its mass into space.

-- A suggestion that the planet Mercury was involved in the Tower of Babel catastrophe.

-- Jupiter had been the culprit for the catastrophe which saw the destruction of the "Cities of the Plain" (Sodom and Gomorrah)

-- Periodic close contacts with a cometary Venus (which had been ejected from Jupiter) had caused the Exodus events (c.1500 BCE) and Joshua's subsequent "sun standing still" incident.

-- Periodic close contacts with Mars had caused havoc in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE

[nashville_brook]

9. iirc, he actually predicted a lot about celestial mechanics that was right on.

i embrace our radical thinkers b/c we're better off with them than w/o them.

oh...and space smells like electricity. something to think about.

[Dover]

10. How refreshing. Thanks. I concur....

Very curious about your last statement. Where did you hear/read that space smelled like electricity? Was it something reported by astronauts?

[nashville_brook]

13. yes, actually.

a friend of a friend in Texas. he mentioned this to me apropos of nothing. said you smell in the air lock in the space station. unmistakable, he said. i thought it was a strange and wonderful statement to come out of nowhere.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Which bits of celestial mechanics?

This is important. You're saying Velikovsky was the originator of more than one thing that has since been shown to be correct. If so, this would rescue his reputation. So, what were his correct predictions?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. Name one.

The man had no understanding of even basic celestial mechanics.

[nashville_brook]

16. radio waves and surface temps (that's two)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/issue_pdf/frontmatter_pdf/138/3547.pdf#page=1350

On the Discoveries Concerning Jupiter and Venus

In the light of recent discoveries of radio waves from Jupiter and of the high surface temperature of Venus, we think it proper and just to make the following statement.

On 14 October 1953, Immanuel Velikovsky, addressing the Forum of the Graduate College of Princeton University in a lecture entitled "Worlds in Collision in the Light of Recent Finds in Archaeology, Geology and Astronomy: Refuted or Verified?," concluded the lecture as follows: "The planet Jupiter is cold, yet its gases are in motion. It appears probable to me that it sends out radio noises as do the sun and the stars. I suggest that this be investigated."

Soon after that date, the text of the lecture was deposited with each of us . Eight months later, in June 1954, Velikovsky, in a letter, requested Albert Einstein to use his influence to have Jupiter surveyed for radio emission. The letter, with Einstein's marginal notes commenting on this proposal, is before us. Ten more months passed, and on 5 April 1955 B. F. Burke and K. L. Franklin of the Carnegie Institution announced the chance detection of strong radio signals emanating from Jupiter. They recorded the signals for several weeks before they correctly identified the source.

This discovery came as something of a surprise because radio astronomers had never expected a body as cold as Jupiter to emit radio waves (1).

In 1960 V. Radhakrishnah of India and J. A. Roberts of Australia, working at California Institute of Technology, established the existence of a radiation belt encompassing Jupiter "giving 1014 times as much radio energy as the Van Allen belts around the earth."

On 5 December 1956, through the kind services of H. H. Hess, chairman of the department of geology of Princeton University, Velikovsky submitted a memorandum to the U. S. National Committee for the (planned) IGY in which he suggested the existence of a terrestrial magnetosphere reaching the moon. Receipt of the memorandum was acknowledged by E. O. Hulburt for the Committee. The magnetosphere was discovered in 1958 by Van Allen.

In the last chapter of his Worlds in Collision (1950), Velikovsky stated that the surface of Venus must be very hot, even though in 1950 the temperature of the cloud surface of Venus was known to be -25°C on the day and night sides alike.

In 1954 N. A. Kozyrev (2) observed an emission spectrum from the night side of Venus but ascribed it to discharges in the upper layers of its atmosphere. He calculated that the temperature of the surface of Venus must be +30 C; somewhat higher values were found earlier by Adel and Herzberg. As late as 1959, V. A. Firsoff arrived at a figure of +17.5°C for the mean surface temperature of Venus, only a little above the mean annual temperature of the earth (+14.2°C) (3).

However, by 1961 it became known that the surface temperature of Venus is "almost 600 degrees " (4). F. D. Drake described this discovery as "a surprise ... in a field in which the fewest surprises were expected." "We would have expected a temperature only greater than that of the earth ... Sources of internal heating will not produce an enhanced surface temperature. Cornell H. Mayer writes (5), "All the observations are consistent with a temperature of almost 600 degrees," and admits that "the temperature is much higher than anyone would have predicted."

Although we disagree with Velikovsky's theories, we feel impelled to make this statement to establish Velikovsky's priority of prediction of these two points and to urge, in view of these prognostications, that his other conclusions be objectively re-examined.

V. BARGMANN
Department of Physics,
Princeton University,
Princeton, New Jersey

LLOYD MOTZ
Department of Astronomy,
Columbia University, New York

References

See also the New York Times for 28 October 1962.
N. A. Kozyrev, Izv. Krymsk. Astrofiz. Observ. 12 (1954).
Science News 1959, 52 (Summer 1959).
Phys. Today 14, No. 4,10 (1961).
C. H. Mayer, Sci. Am. 204 (May 1961).

[nashville_brook]

17. also (contained w/in the second) atmosphere of Venus would contain high levels of hydrocarbons

instead of CO2, which would account for the high temps.

not saying he's has the TOE -- but, he successfully predicted (in the 50s) a few items that were borne out in later NASA flights/research.

[Orsino]

21. Venus' atmosphere does not contain high levels of hydrocarbons. n/t

[Orsino]

22. Is this anything more significant than an accident?

Do we know why Velikovsky thought Jupiter should be a radio source? Just because it's a ball of gas like the sun and stars? Did he have a theory as to the mechanism at work? I mean, Bode's Law made some predictions, too, but that doesn't make it astrophysics.

Ditto for Venus. Was his idea that Venus must be hot under the cool cloud-tops indicate some deep understanding, or was it pure contrariness? Or simply the notion that closer to the sun must mean hotter? I'd like to hear about Velikovsky's process before I credit him with "predicting" anything.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. That's not celestial mechanics

Celestial mechanics is the study of how objects move through space. Central to Velikovsky's claims is that the accepted theories of gravity, momentum etc. have changed within recorded history, to allow the planets to move around in radically different orbits than they have now. This is, of course, complete hogwash.

[Orsino]

34. It appears that he wasn't able to predict much of anything.

http://www.saturn-myth-delusion.net/Catastrophism.htm
Carl Sagan wrote that the high surface temperature of Venus was known prior to Velikovsky, and that Velikovsky misunderstood the mechanism for this heat.<11> Velikovsky believed that Venus was heated by its close encounter with the Earth and Mars. He also did not understand the greenhouse effect on Venus, which had earlier been elucidated by astronomer Rupert Wildt. Ultimately, Venus is hot due to its proximity to the sun; it does not emit more heat than it receives from the sun, and any heat produced by its celestial movements would have long dissipated. Sagan concludes: "(1) the temperature in question was never specified ; (2) the mechanism proposed for providing this temperature is grossly inadequate; (3) the surface of the planet does not cool off with time as advertised; and (4) the idea of a high surface temperature on Venus was published in the dominant astronomical journal of its time and with an essentially correct argument ten years before the publication of Worlds in Collision" (p. 118).

Carl Sagan also noted that "Velikovsky's idea that the clouds of Venus are composed of hydrocarbons or carbohydrates is neither original nor correct."<12> Sagan notes that the presence of hydrocarbon gases (such as petroleum gases) on Venus was earlier suggested, and abandoned, again by Rupert Wildt, whose work is not credited by Velikovsky. Also, the 1962 Mariner 2 probe was erroneously reported in the popular press to have discovered hydrocarbons on Venus. These errors were subsequently corrected, and Sagan later concluded that "either Mariner 2 nor any subsequent investigation of the Venus atmosphere has found evidence for hydrocarbons or carbohydrates" (p. 113).

Perhaps there was a rush to claim credit for Velikovsky following incorrect reports on Venusian hydrocarbons. Presumably, that fact that the reports (and Velikovsky) were wrong was soon forgotten.

I think it's hilarious to see legends of Velikovsky debunked by the Saturn Myth site.

[Confusious]

39. Two of how many?

like the tower of babel and mercury?

A broken clock is right twice a day too.

[nashville_brook]

18. Also, he predicted that the existence of the magnetosphere (higher magnetic force above ionosphere).

later to be called the Van Allen Belt.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. The magnetosphere and the van allen belts are two different things.

Choose one.

[Confusious]

38. really? he predicted them before newton? nt

[Confusious]

37. why not just say it was magic?

that's a lot easier.

don't try to wrap bullshit in science, it doesn't work.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Odin2005]

12. KOOK

[Posteritatis]

20. Velikovsky is the opposite of science, like von Daniken and similar idiots. (nt)

[NickB79]

23. The Michael Crichton of his day.

A teaspoon of science and a bucket of fantasy go a long way.

[Confusious]

36. So you'd like to return to the age

when people thought everything was because of evil spirits or gods?

we're just coming out of that age. I don't want to go back.