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Velikovsky Reconsidered
Talbott, Stephen L. Et Al., Velikovsky Reconsidered
- GenresNonfictionHistory
Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 24, 2017
A lot of details here which goes way beyond my level of science, however, there were some rewarding pages which kept me reading to the end. According to some "so called experts" Velikovsky knows how to talk the talk but his science does not match up to what they believe is real.
As for me, I try to keep an open mind. I can't argue either way about the science because I know my scope of knowledge in the field is limited. However, I can see the sense as to why mainstream academia and science would want to label Velikovsky as a charlatan and that in itself makes me want to investigate him further. I guess I just have a mistrust in what is mainstream and so called common knowledge.
I do believe all science and knowledge should take all things into consideration and limiting one's assessment of any topic to a given field without taking into consideration the bigger picture is narrow-minded and not the way to come to a fair and unbiased conclusion about anything. An interdisciplinary approach is the best way to go, as this book states in the very last chapter.
As for me, I try to keep an open mind. I can't argue either way about the science because I know my scope of knowledge in the field is limited. However, I can see the sense as to why mainstream academia and science would want to label Velikovsky as a charlatan and that in itself makes me want to investigate him further. I guess I just have a mistrust in what is mainstream and so called common knowledge.
I do believe all science and knowledge should take all things into consideration and limiting one's assessment of any topic to a given field without taking into consideration the bigger picture is narrow-minded and not the way to come to a fair and unbiased conclusion about anything. An interdisciplinary approach is the best way to go, as this book states in the very last chapter.
November 15, 2009
This book's title says it. This is made up of 10 articles basicly urging the reconsideration of Velikovsky's first work worlds in collesion. Whether you think the works are worth consideration or tripe the read is interesting. I give it 4 stars for interest.
May 24, 2024
A REPRINTED COLLECTION OF ARTICLES SUPPORTING VELIKOVSKY
The Introduction to this 1977 book explains, “This collection of papers from the pages of Pensée is but a sampling of an ongoing and expanding discussion of triggered a quarter of a century ago by the publication of Immanuel Velikovsky’s ‘Worlds In Collision.’ … On the basis of his historical researches… Velikovsky … was quite prepared to stake his work to a large extent of its implications for astronomy, and more particularly for newcomer Venus itself.” (Pg. 19-20) It adds, “Why is it that whenever Velikovsky’s ideas appear vindicated on one count or another, establishment scientists find it expedient to resort to every sort of ad hoc theorizing rather than concede that the available evidence lends credence to those ideas? The editors of Pensée have no satisfactory answer to this question to offer here. What we do offer is a record of the discussion to date of certain aspects of Velikovsky’s work and the reception it has received at the hands of scientists.” (Pg. 31)
David Stove recounts, “Immanuel Velikovsky … after various other occupations and places of residence he was to be found practicing psychoanalysis in Tel Aviv in the thirties. A book he projected on Freud’s heroes was the unlikely germ of all his later work, for it led him to think about Moses and the Exodus. Now, the Bible portrays the Exodus as taking place amid a series of extraordinary natural disasters; and especially when Velikovsky found an Egyptian document which seemed to refer to the same events, he began to wonder whether the disasters might not have been real.” (Pg. 37) Later, he laments, “But still no power on earth, apparently, is strong enough to oblige a single professional scientist to give Velikovsky the smallest footnote acknowledgment in a learned publication. The stony silence continues perfectly unbroken.” (Pg. 41)
Lynn E. Rose observes, “The irony is that both Velikovsky and his critics were drawing upon exactly the same evidence, namely, the Babylonian Venus tablets. But when you examine the content of those tablets, they turn out to support Velikovsky and not his critics. Those uniformitarians who do take the tablets seriously seem to be either unfamiliar with or oblivious to their contents… there is no way the tablets can be reconciled with the present motions of Venus, except by denying, in one way or another, that the Babylonians saw what they say they saw.” (Pg. 120)
C.J. Ransom and L.H. Hoffee suggest, “The participation of at least one other body besides Venus Earth, and Mars in the encounters that have occurred since Venus’ final departure from the vicinity of Jupiter could provide an easy solution to this energy-disposal problem. Although such a proposal might be described as ‘deus ex machina,’ the possibility should not be completely overlooked. To provide the desired effect, the additional body would have gained orbital energy from Venus, Earth, or Mars.” (Pg. 165)
Albert W. Burgstahler notes, “Not surprisingly, the basis on which Velikovsky anticipated properties of this nature---namely, his belief that Venus is a comparatively young planet, originating from Jupiter only a few thousand years ago, and that, within the span of recorded human history, it has had a series of enormously destructive encounters with the Earth., Mars and the Moon as an incandescent, hydrocarbon-rich protoplanet---has not been received with much favor among professional astronomers. In general, they have preferred to consider Venus to be about the same age as the Earth and to attribute its high surface temperature not to residual natal heat, as Velikovsky proposes, but instead to an extremely efficient greenhouse effect and/or a deep-circulation, convective solar heating mechanism.” (Pg. 214-215)
Velikovsky himself wrote, “Some authorities (Harold Urey among them) claim that the scars on the face of the moon are older than four and a half billion years. The lunar landings will provide the answer: Was the face of the moon as we see it carved over four and a half billion years ago, or, as I believe, less than three thousand years ago? If this unorthodox view is substantiated, it will bear greatly not only on many fields of science but also on the phenomenon of repression of racial memories, with all the implications as to man’s irrational behavior.” (Pg. 256-257)
Robert Treash argues, “Velikovsky’s ‘crime’ has been precisely not to ‘toss out all the excellent work of centuries.’ Instead, he has preserved and sifted and explained the thoughts of great men since antiquity, retaining also from early religious and mythical traditions those scientific facts which are now so needed and usable. How could he have SUCCESSFULLY predicted remanent magnetism on the Moon if he had discarded the sound evidence that Venus drastically shattered the old Earth-Moon system in historical times, as witnessed by all the Earth’s survivors?” (Pg. 272)
William Mullen states, “It is not so well known that in his correspondence and discussions with Einstein, which grew in complexity till the latter’s death in 1955, the relationship between electromagnetic and gravitational forces was the principal subject. That was only as it should have been, since Einstein’s own work in his last years was toward a unified field theory explaining the two orders of phenomena in common terms… Is it fair that a synthesis which Einstein after decades of work was not able to conclude satisfactorily be demanded of Velikovsky before his evidence from other disciplines is even considered?” (Pg. 281-282)
He continues, “Here… one touches a major premise of Velikovsky’s psychology, barely adumbrated in the epilogue to ‘Worlds in Collision.’ Referring to Freud’s idea of an archaic heritage of traumatic memories transmitted from generation to generation, and also to Jung’s concept of a collective unconscious… If biological experimentation offers concrete proof that instincts acquired under catastrophic circumstances might be transmitted genetically, then the whole psychology implicit in this [theory] is objectively grounded.” (Pg. 285)
He explains, “Velikovsky himself has given the most energy to revising ancient chronology: the first volume of ‘Ages in Chaos’ appeared shortly after ‘Worlds In Collision,’ … Insofar as his task there has been to align records left by the ancients, he has been engaged in an activity, historiography, which is in itself a mode of behavior… the conventional material out of which ‘history’ is made… often show human behavior at its most irrational, the art of historiography, by contrast, is a highly civilized manifestation. And in ‘Ages in Chaos’ the historiography of the ancients is always given first place as evidence by which to reconstruct the sequence of events.” (Pg. 288)
This book (note that the journal ‘Pensées’ went defunct shortly before this book was printed) will be of keen interest to those studying Velikovsky’s theories.
The Introduction to this 1977 book explains, “This collection of papers from the pages of Pensée is but a sampling of an ongoing and expanding discussion of triggered a quarter of a century ago by the publication of Immanuel Velikovsky’s ‘Worlds In Collision.’ … On the basis of his historical researches… Velikovsky … was quite prepared to stake his work to a large extent of its implications for astronomy, and more particularly for newcomer Venus itself.” (Pg. 19-20) It adds, “Why is it that whenever Velikovsky’s ideas appear vindicated on one count or another, establishment scientists find it expedient to resort to every sort of ad hoc theorizing rather than concede that the available evidence lends credence to those ideas? The editors of Pensée have no satisfactory answer to this question to offer here. What we do offer is a record of the discussion to date of certain aspects of Velikovsky’s work and the reception it has received at the hands of scientists.” (Pg. 31)
David Stove recounts, “Immanuel Velikovsky … after various other occupations and places of residence he was to be found practicing psychoanalysis in Tel Aviv in the thirties. A book he projected on Freud’s heroes was the unlikely germ of all his later work, for it led him to think about Moses and the Exodus. Now, the Bible portrays the Exodus as taking place amid a series of extraordinary natural disasters; and especially when Velikovsky found an Egyptian document which seemed to refer to the same events, he began to wonder whether the disasters might not have been real.” (Pg. 37) Later, he laments, “But still no power on earth, apparently, is strong enough to oblige a single professional scientist to give Velikovsky the smallest footnote acknowledgment in a learned publication. The stony silence continues perfectly unbroken.” (Pg. 41)
Lynn E. Rose observes, “The irony is that both Velikovsky and his critics were drawing upon exactly the same evidence, namely, the Babylonian Venus tablets. But when you examine the content of those tablets, they turn out to support Velikovsky and not his critics. Those uniformitarians who do take the tablets seriously seem to be either unfamiliar with or oblivious to their contents… there is no way the tablets can be reconciled with the present motions of Venus, except by denying, in one way or another, that the Babylonians saw what they say they saw.” (Pg. 120)
C.J. Ransom and L.H. Hoffee suggest, “The participation of at least one other body besides Venus Earth, and Mars in the encounters that have occurred since Venus’ final departure from the vicinity of Jupiter could provide an easy solution to this energy-disposal problem. Although such a proposal might be described as ‘deus ex machina,’ the possibility should not be completely overlooked. To provide the desired effect, the additional body would have gained orbital energy from Venus, Earth, or Mars.” (Pg. 165)
Albert W. Burgstahler notes, “Not surprisingly, the basis on which Velikovsky anticipated properties of this nature---namely, his belief that Venus is a comparatively young planet, originating from Jupiter only a few thousand years ago, and that, within the span of recorded human history, it has had a series of enormously destructive encounters with the Earth., Mars and the Moon as an incandescent, hydrocarbon-rich protoplanet---has not been received with much favor among professional astronomers. In general, they have preferred to consider Venus to be about the same age as the Earth and to attribute its high surface temperature not to residual natal heat, as Velikovsky proposes, but instead to an extremely efficient greenhouse effect and/or a deep-circulation, convective solar heating mechanism.” (Pg. 214-215)
Velikovsky himself wrote, “Some authorities (Harold Urey among them) claim that the scars on the face of the moon are older than four and a half billion years. The lunar landings will provide the answer: Was the face of the moon as we see it carved over four and a half billion years ago, or, as I believe, less than three thousand years ago? If this unorthodox view is substantiated, it will bear greatly not only on many fields of science but also on the phenomenon of repression of racial memories, with all the implications as to man’s irrational behavior.” (Pg. 256-257)
Robert Treash argues, “Velikovsky’s ‘crime’ has been precisely not to ‘toss out all the excellent work of centuries.’ Instead, he has preserved and sifted and explained the thoughts of great men since antiquity, retaining also from early religious and mythical traditions those scientific facts which are now so needed and usable. How could he have SUCCESSFULLY predicted remanent magnetism on the Moon if he had discarded the sound evidence that Venus drastically shattered the old Earth-Moon system in historical times, as witnessed by all the Earth’s survivors?” (Pg. 272)
William Mullen states, “It is not so well known that in his correspondence and discussions with Einstein, which grew in complexity till the latter’s death in 1955, the relationship between electromagnetic and gravitational forces was the principal subject. That was only as it should have been, since Einstein’s own work in his last years was toward a unified field theory explaining the two orders of phenomena in common terms… Is it fair that a synthesis which Einstein after decades of work was not able to conclude satisfactorily be demanded of Velikovsky before his evidence from other disciplines is even considered?” (Pg. 281-282)
He continues, “Here… one touches a major premise of Velikovsky’s psychology, barely adumbrated in the epilogue to ‘Worlds in Collision.’ Referring to Freud’s idea of an archaic heritage of traumatic memories transmitted from generation to generation, and also to Jung’s concept of a collective unconscious… If biological experimentation offers concrete proof that instincts acquired under catastrophic circumstances might be transmitted genetically, then the whole psychology implicit in this [theory] is objectively grounded.” (Pg. 285)
He explains, “Velikovsky himself has given the most energy to revising ancient chronology: the first volume of ‘Ages in Chaos’ appeared shortly after ‘Worlds In Collision,’ … Insofar as his task there has been to align records left by the ancients, he has been engaged in an activity, historiography, which is in itself a mode of behavior… the conventional material out of which ‘history’ is made… often show human behavior at its most irrational, the art of historiography, by contrast, is a highly civilized manifestation. And in ‘Ages in Chaos’ the historiography of the ancients is always given first place as evidence by which to reconstruct the sequence of events.” (Pg. 288)
This book (note that the journal ‘Pensées’ went defunct shortly before this book was printed) will be of keen interest to those studying Velikovsky’s theories.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews