Talk:Immanuel Velikovsky

Apologetics

I shudder to see how jam-packed with apologetics this page is. It is basically the NPOV that Velikovsky was a man of great learning and great literary talents, but that his books are, scientifically speaking, pure nonsense. This is in no conflict with the obvious fact that they are full of glorious, entertaining vistas. - Just a passer-by...

Hi passer-by, I agree with what you say about the apologetics. Opinions are so polarised that perhaps we need two separate pages, for and against IV's hypotheses. However condemning IV's books as pure nonsense is not NPOV! You may not be aware that Einstein and some other scientists of the highest repute treated his cosmological hypotheses with respect. Einstein had protracted discussions with him, & based on the evidence of space probes, came to support his concepts. 'Velikovsky Reconsidered' refers.

I think that if IV had published his chronological hypotheses first, they might have been generally accepted, gaining him academic respect. If you don't believe me, have a look at two academics who do now take his chronology seriously, and dare to say so:

http://www.ldolphin.org/alanm/chron1.html and http://biblicalstudies.qldwide.net.au/chronology_of_egypt_and_israel.html

Having thus established his reputation, IV's 'far out' cosmology might not have been condemned without a hearing, and with the infamous campaign of suppression and vilification orchestrated by a few influential scientists (on the basis of rumour only, they said they would never read the book). This reputation still prejudices and poisons scientists minds against him to this day.

As regards the validity or otherwise of his cosmological hypotheses, time will tell, as it did for other heretics who famously dared to publish hypotheses contradicting the then establishment view of the universe.

I disagree that: "It is basically the NPOV that ... his books are, scientifically speaking, pure nonsense." Having read most of the relevant books & a few of the papers, I feel your statement is highly POV, based on the establishment view. Scientists generally do not read his books thoughtfully and objectivly, as they already 'know' that they are 'pure nonsense'. I challenge you to check it out for yourself, starting with the Ages In Chaos series of books.

--GilesW 01:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Scientists generally do not read his books thoughtfully and objectivly, as they already 'know' that they are 'pure nonsense'. I challenge you to check it out for yourself, starting with the Ages In Chaos series of books. I realize that I am trying to convince a person with a true-believer mindset, and I know that it is entirely impossible to do that. The fact is, that I read Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision when I was eleven years old, and my elementary-school physics was enough to see that the book had no scientific relevance whatsoever, like stating that 2 + 2 = 5 has no scientific relevance whatsoever. At the same time, I found the book highly entertaining. However, the fact that Velikovsky was able to convert his 2 + 2 = 5 statement into a damn good yarn does not make it any more true. I am truly sad that Velikovskian true-believers have been able to infiltrate the Wikipedia, but the least that should be done would be warning the readers that the factual content is disputed. - The same passer-by.

That *has* been done, you trolling loon. Please do dry your wee baby eyes--feline1 16:24, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

On 25 February 1974, a symposium on Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision was held by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Yet most of the criticism were in error themslves. See for example, "Scientists Confront Scientists Who Confront Velikovsky" (Kronos Vol. IV, No. 2 Winter 1978). As just one example, Robert Jastrow writing in the New York Times on Carl Sagan's criticism on Velikovsky, found that "Velikovsky was the better astronomer" Despite Sagan's later protests, Jastrow pointed out Sagan's error once again in Science Digest (Special Edition) Sept/Oct. 1980, p. 96."

I am not saying that you are incorrect, nor am I saying that Velikovsky was correct, but many criticisms of Velikovsky are. Do you have a specific example in mind? --Iantresman 16:41, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with the above Passer-by that there is some rather obvious non-NPOV, pro-Velikovsky slant in the article. Witness the following quote from the (supposed) Criticism section, especially taking note of the last sentence: "Supporters contend that many of Velikovsky's key predictions have been validated, and that none has yet been disproven. Among the most prominent predictions was that the surface of Venus would be hot enough to melt lead. This was found to be so, contrary to the steady state theory of the solar system, referred to in the Velikovsky literature as the astronomers' dogma. Avoiding the obvious explanation, the high temperature is conventionally ascribed to the runaway greenhouse effect. Notwithstanding this and other space probe results that are compatible with Velikovsky's hypotheses and conflict with the previously known 'facts', critics continue to claim the opposite, devising new and sometimes dubious explanations." This sounds like something a Creationist might write: the almost gleeful reference to established "previously known 'facts'" having been invalidated or cast into doubt betrays a lack of understanding of the scientific method. Even a blind chicken can find a kernel of corn now and then, but Velikovsky's pseudoscientific astronomical hypotheses don't need to be defended, at least on this page. --Arto 17:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Velikovsky's chronology is utter nonsense, and his cosmological theories seem to be as well (I don't know as much about astronomy, so I can't speak with much authority there, but I'll trust the numerous experts who agree on that). But the chronology is completely ridiculous, and doesn't work. Even people like David Rohl, whose own theory is also complete nonsense, realize that Velikovsky's stuff is unworkable. john k 06:28, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Guys, this kind of bickering is a complete waste of time. Wikipedia is a place for neutral factual articles, which is why the page seeks to limit itself to some simple biographical info on Velikovsky, and a reasonably accurate summary of what his theories were. It notes dispassionately that they caused controversy and were largely rejected by mainstream academia. And it gives a bunch of useful links. The article CANNOT embroil itself it giving its OWN opinions on the correctness or otherwise of his ideas. It is NEVER going to contain phrases like "Velikovsky's ideas were rubbish and nonsense", neither will it seek to vindicate him. Your sniping at each about it here is just a waste of bandwidth.--feline1 08:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The Flat earth theory is considered by most to be utter nonsense, yet that does not prevent us from desecribing it accurately, and fairly. --Iantresman 09:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

We can discuss his theories fairly, but we can also discuss criticisms which people have made to show why they are wrong. john k 23:33, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

And then presumable others can also criticize the criticism, and so ad infinitum. Which is probably why Wiki policy on NPOV states that "Debates are described, represented, and characterized, but not engaged in" --Iantresman 00:00, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The Velikovsky Heresy

I'm convinced there is a serious problem with the Immanuel Velikovsky (IV) page in Wikipedia. This is due to highly polarised conflicting opinions about his controversial hypotheses.

I cannot see how there can be a NPOV position.

It is a provable fact that orchestrated campaigns of disinformation, vilification, and suppression have been waged against IV by “mainstream” scientists, starting even before his first book, Worlds in Collision(WIC) was published, that evidently continues to this day. “The Velikovsky Affair” & many other sources refer.

For example, in the main Wiki page there is this weasel-worded statement, “This radical reconstruction of ancient chronology has been universally rejected by mainstream scholars.” A well thought out web search shows that some serious scientists and scholars do indeed take IV seriously. Presumably, by taking IV seriously, scholars immediately cease to be mainstream by definition, so that though the derogatory statement is technically true it is misleading.

Elsewhere the statement is made: “His assertion that Minoan Linear B was an archaic Greek was indeed validated, but his announcement was predated by Michael Ventris' commitment to just that proposition.” This statement is true but misleading. IV credits Michael Ventris in a footnote.

There are numerous similar misrepresentations. The tone of the Wikipedia article indicates the continuing success of this campaign.

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In the AIC series of books and other documents, IV carefully analyses his chronological hypotheses in detail, point by point, document by document, exhaustively annotated. In preparing his books, he consulted specialists in the relevant fields for detailed information about historical events, and some of that correspondence is published on the internet.

In these and many other documents he demonstrates convincing agreement between the historical records of the contemporary civilisations over more than ten centuries, but only if the time-shifts and revised sequence of his Egyptian chronology are adopted in full. This amounts to 5 to 8 centuries relative to the chronologies in place when his books were published, though about 2 centuries less now, I understand.

When I first read the Velikovsky entry I was upset and depressed that I had been so taken in by Velikovsky, and felt that I must be very gullible. When I checked, I found serious misrepresentations that make it look like disinformation on behalf of the establishment position.

I wonder whether the appellation “Zionist” provides a clue, see the Wikipedia definition for insight.

My Background. I am a retired professional electrical engineer, with a good knowledge of physics, mechanics and electromagnetism, and a vague familiarity with the Old Testament from my school days. I have no religious or other axe to grind, and no vested interest for or against conventional chronological or astronomical hypotheses. However I think I can spot a conspiracy when I see one, and the continuance of the Velikovsky Affair looks like one to me. As a result, I am collecting and studying all IV’s books and various directly related works by him and others.

My only interest is in attempting to contribute in some small way to undoing what I perceive to be a serious injustice.

As a newcomer to Wikipedia please forgive me if I have done this the wrong way.

Any comments? I expect this will stir up a hornet's nest. Sorry folks.

Well I re-wrote much of the article, and I'm actually rather sympathetic to Velikovsky's ideas (and certainly well versed in them) - I thought the article is by and large pretty neutral and balanced. It's certainly pretty accurate and informative. Certainly Velikovsky was a passionate zionist, in thought and deed, this is well attested.--feline1 18:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback Feline1, I agree with what you say about your article, but my first impression was that it expressed a sceptical POV about his hypotheses.

One concern is that "Zionist" has become a term of abuse in some contexts, so should be used with due care. It is used at least twice on the main page, once would be enough.

Please review my edits, & feel free to fix anything.

The Criticism section seems heavily pro-establishment POV. Where it is not possible to be NPOV, perhaps it should be BPOV (Balanced or Both POVs?).

I found two papers providing corroboration of Velikovsky's revised chronology by googling "Egypt Israel Chronology Velikovsky":

http://www.ldolphin.org/alanm/chron1.html and http://biblicalstudies.qldwide.net.au/chronology_of_egypt_and_israel.html

What do you think of them? Do they deserve a name-check & link from the main page?

--G-W 12:07, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm no expert on chronology, there wouldn't be much point me reviewing those. If you read V's autobiography (online on the Velikovsky Archive site) you will read of the many activities he carried out to do with zionisms and the resettlement of Palestine by the Jewish people. His zionist ideas were also a prime motivation and guiding principle in his reconstruction of history.--feline1 14:15, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

In the para referring to Michael Ventris, the first sentence does not prove anything as it stands. The second sentence was incorrect (see R2AHT), so I have corrected it. In any case it was and still is a non-sequitur, please fix the paragraph or delete it. --GilesW 22:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

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Today I drafted a new section specifically on V's theories (to replace the munged material present in the stuff pinched from Leithbridge University address). It badly needs edited for typos and links etc. Further to that, I intend to prune out material that belongs under the 'Theories' heading from the 'Biography' and 'Criticism' sections.--feline1 16:12, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Re: opening paragraph I have re-instated my original opening (although thanks for fixing the Stekel link!) - I don't believe it makes sense to introduce the entire article calling V. a "Belarusian physchiatrist and psychoanalyst" - V lived what was then the empire "Russia", and left there by the age of 20, and never returned - he never practised his psychiatry or psychoanalysis there. He was an ardent zionist and regarded his nationality as "Jewish" rather than "Belarusian". Belarus was merely the place of his birth and childhood, and the rest of the biographical material in the article made this clear. The most important chapters of his life occured whilst living and working in Palestine, and living in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Also the way my paragraph was edited, it no longer flows logically on into the NEXT paragraph! --feline1 12:10, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Where the something did this come from? It looks awfully polished. No copyright problems?`

• It's C.J.Ransom, which is under the Cosmos and Chronos home page! However in absence of a copyright assertion I think it's in the public domain. Nevertheless blanket copying is not on - must become a Wikipedia External Reference. JC 10:50, 18 January 2005 (UTC)

• ... which turns out to be similar to the content of a speech given by the chancellor of Lethbridge U., Alberta in 1974, on the occasion of the awarding of an Hon. Doctorate in Arts and Science to Velikovsky. This is transcribed in Alfred de Grazia's site JC 12:45, 19 January 2005 (UTC)

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bearfabrique.org is Ted Holden's site - he won't have written that himself, it's taken from some of the old 1970s Velikovskian journals (Pensée, Kronis, SIS Review, etc - I forget exactly where)

This bio is probably a bit old hat now.

Although the detail of pretty much all of Velikovsky's specific theories is now discarded by even his sympathizers, it would be generally acknowledged that he was an important early advocate for such areas as: - comparative mythology (striking concordances between mythologies in every continent) - revised chronologies for Egypt and the near east (cf. current researches such as David Rohl) - extraterrestrial catastrophes having a large image on human civilisations and the biosphere prior to and within historical times (cf current ideas about cometary impacts and plague in the AD dark ages, the flooding of the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, extinction of the dinosaurs {KT boundary irridium} etc etc) - electricity playing a role in astronomy (role of plasma in cosmology)

Most of this stuff was beyond the pale in the 1940s and 50s when he was writing about it, but many of his general ideas are commonplace now.

Another biographical detail to bear in mind is that Velikovsky was an ardent zionist.

DAVID DAVIS

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it is almost literally from: http://www.bearfabrique.org/Velikovsky/biovel.html the link given in the article. The website in question does not specify that its owner holds copyright. But I do think a rewrite is necessary ??? (don't know the legal issues)

kh7 14:04 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

Copyright aside, it needs some serious NPOVing. Tannin 14:28 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

Whoa, this article is totally POV (pro-Velikovsky). I came over to add some stuff about Velikovsky's crazy reordering of ancient Near Eastern chronology, figuring that the page would be mostly on his astronomical theories, but it needs some serious rejiggering before anything like that ought to be done. I don't know enough about the astronomical stuff to write about it. Any takers? john 04:11 28 May 2003 (UTC)

• So really interesting that I think it's slightly ANTI! I'll take it up if there's no other takers in early Jan 2005. Please post your antis, maybe in discussion, and I'll go Pro to see if we can get a balance to put up. JC 12:58, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

NPOVing this will be quite a challenge. It's pro-Velikovsky as it stands, agreed, but there is every chance that Velikovsky was on to something about the Egyptian chronology, and even if he didn't get it all right he seems to have been the one to open up what was a wrongly closed subject and is worthy of an article on this and several other grounds. It remains controversial, but David Rohl and others have taken up the idea of revising the chronology. I thought the stuff about Venus had been discredited. I could be wrong and there are some POVs of mine in there. Difficult, even with a lot of research. Andrewa 01:27 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

• I think really REALLY difficult Andrew. The volume of material is boggling and to get it real requires a room full of VERY clever people. It's been one of the ultimate tests for open-mindedness for more than fifty years, and it has (proveably) not gone away. POV on whether it ought to have :) JC 12:58, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

The stuff about Venus is definitely discredited. The chronology is also pretty much entirely discredited, and I don't think any serious egyptologists (to say nothing of assyriologists - Rohl's revised chronology, like any such chronology, runs aground on the shoals of our firm chronology of Mesopotamian history) take Rohl very seriously either. john 08:01 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

• IMHO some if not all the issues are still open, but that's only half the story for V. Just as interesting is going back to see whether you are allowed to say the things the old bloke said, and the ultimate point is, what's science, what's pseudoscience, who judges, and how? What is deiscredited, and when is there enough of it? Is there a fair trial? This is really hard stuff, especially with something as wide-ranging as the V works. It isn't sufficient to knock down one point and call that done. Is it? JC 12:58, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this page does not represent an unbiased descrtption of Velikovsky. Alas, I'm too busy with other projects to rewrite it. Maybe we should just blank it on potential copyvio (above) grounds? Noel 16:23, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Gee whiz not, Noel. I'll try to NPOV and you fellers then hack it mod by mod; let's not just take it out and shoot it. JC 12:58, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

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Um, guys? I'm still pretty new to Wikipedia, but if I'm understanding the Neutral Point of View thing correctly, this article should present what Velikovsky's position was, right? If you criticize this article on the grounds that the card-carrying experts felt threatened by Velikovsky's ideas, isn't that a pretty POV position in itself?

As it happens, I always thought the Venus business was a laugh, but (as noted above) his reinterpretation of early Middle Eastern chronology made some interesting points. But "my experts can whip your experts" sounds a lot like the Creationism vs. Evolution issue, and the Ebonics issue, and any other more or less emotion-based (as opposed to science-based) disagreement you can think of.

I've made a couple of very minor POV changes on my own, trying to uncolor some of the original author's language, but I honestly don't see anything very rant-ish about this piece. . . . ---Michael K. Smith 21:50, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

We should present his views, but we should also present the views of other scholars who have discredited him. His "scientific" work is entirely discredited by pretty much every scientist who isn't a follower of him. And his chronological reconstructions are disagreed with even by people like Rohl who themselves want to revise the chronology. I don't think there's a single serious scholar who supports Velikovsky, and the article as originally written suggests that he's a legitimate intellectual figure, which he is not. So, by all means his views should be presented as he said them. But the idea of NPOV is that we present all views of the person, and let the information speak for itself. With someone like Velikovsky, presenting all the information pretty much complete discredits him. I've kind of stayed away, because I wanted the stuff in the article as present to get fixed by someone who knows more about the astronomy stuff than me, but I could very easily get into a fruitful chronology tussle if it comes down to it. And, come on, creationism vs. evolutionism is "emotion-based"? Maybe on one side, but the idea that evolutionary biologists don't believe in creationism because emotions cloud their judgment is too ridiculous to bear much examination. john 05:34, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)

• Will attempt to post the required serious scholars on the pro-, but more importantly on the "not fair" teams JC 12:58, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

I think your idea of a 'legitimate intellectual figure' is dangerous. Care to elaborate on it? Velikovsky is immensely entertaining if nothing else (as is David Rohl). The interest Ages in Chaos generated is probably one of the key factors that kept History departments supplied with students, and thereby paid the salaries of his critics. Food for thought?

Agree with you on NPOV. But I think you should speak respectfully to a few Creationists before dismissing them as you do. I agree they are wrong, see my personal web pages. NPOV can be trickier than you seem to think.

As a first step towards presenting the facts, I've put up a (possibly incomplete) list of V's books. Andrewa 18:06, 3 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Stuff to follow up is really good. I've just ahead a few refs but I see it looks very pro so will balance up shortly.JC 12:58, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

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If it is acceptible to the editors, I'd like to weigh in from a layman's point of view. Having read Velikovsky as well as many other scientific and not-so scientific sources of cosmological information; I think it is still fair to say the amount we don't know about the Universe, or even the Solar System, far outweighs what we do know.

That being said, I think you cannot probvide a completely NPOV entry on Velikovsky without giving his theories the same level of consideration you would to any other theory. If the anti-Velikovsky elements wish to rebutt the arguments here, let's see a section included with some substantiation of the research that discredits his theories.

I think, given the controversial nature of Velikovsky's theories, you cannot be accurate unless you deal with the controversy and I believe that is the road any changes should take. If, in the process of NPOVing the article you dilute the impact of Velikovski's theories you are merely replacing the pro-Velikovksy bias with and anti-Velikovsky one. No matter how vehemently you disagree with him, to be truly NPOV, you must allow his theories to be presented accurately and then refute them with logic and science, not with censorship. Remember, less that 250 years ago the majority of the western world still believed the world was flat and the center of the universe. Many were imprisoned and executed for going against that belief. Science is better than that. --RayB 20:42, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In 1754, I think it's fair to say that nobody in the western world believed the world was flat, and that nearly everybody knew that the earth revolved around the sun. In 1454, all educated people knew that the world was round... john 21:03, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

When did the Vatican say it was round and revolved is the major Q, because there was no more potent authority, and that had the paradigms neatly locked away. I dunno. JC 12:58, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

Point taken. I apologize for my hyperbole. I don't believe that it changes the fact that to be completely unbiased, we need to present both sides of this issue with as little dilution as possible. To do anything else would just be switching one bias for another. --RayB 21:09, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually, there was serious consideration given to the "flat earth" school of thought well into the 19th century. For example, see the "Famous Bedford Canal experiment" in 1870, involving Alfred Wallace. http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S162-163.htm

and rightfully so, since it was still contended, and the tests pro or con were containable. Fair trial, guilty. JC 12:58, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

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Comparing the entry for Immanuel_Velikovsky with that for the Big Bang, both are written from the point of view of the entry in question, and neither contain any criticism. So it seems that the neutrality of the entry for Velikovsky is similar as that for the entry on the Big Bang (which is not tagged as disputed).

Maybe you are misinterpreting the "disputed" tag. It is quite a technical thing, that says that discussions on the talk page did not result in any agreement. A quick glimpse through Talk:Big Bang showed no significant disagreements since February. Gadykozma 00:02, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• does disputed stop editing? JC 12:56, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

Several years ago in Reader's Digest

In the U.S. Reader's Digest many years ago there was an article about how it was quite likely that the Biblical "Ten Plagues of Ancient Egypt" were in fact the result of the explosion of a volcano cited as being where the Greek isles are now, and that they are in fact remnants of ancient "Atlantis", destroyed in this massive eruption/explosion, so that two ancient myths tied in nicely (and were mutually verified) in this scenario. Is this anything from Velikovsky, or just more theorizing from like-minded speculationists? Rlquall 04:04, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This doesn't sound like specifically Velikovskian material. john k 04:32, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Not Velikovsky: Carl Sagan. Later Thera research seems to contradict an effect wide enough. V says his comet did it. When the geophysics of the Thera eruption began to appear it was natural enough to comb the area to see who might have copped the blast, it being a biggie. So superheated discussion arose (still goes on) on the effects on Crete. The whole Ten Plages seems a bit of a stretch, but there I go POV, and we'll have to start quoting the contending authors!!! The good stuff in this connection is the tie in to the Claude Schaeffer (Stratigraphie Comparee) material on catastrophic destructions around the place, which does zoom straight into the V corpus. Both Thera and V give the Schaeffer material something to bite on, viz., here's someone coming up with a mechanism that at least might contribute to explaining some destruction seen in the stratigraphy {or not :)}

On Thera this article is good. JC 12:56, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

POV or Not: how to proceed

Contra John, in the balance of all the material about, the article is slightly to the anti side. Flagging it disputed is not yet necessary IMHO, and the fact that that's under discussion is really the whole point - vide the additional entry under PseudoHistory, which is as POV as you could wish. Debating the individual points in a short encyclopaedia entry is not going to happen. The essence is to look at statements of the form "no respectable scientist now believes" and "the .... material is entirely discredited". Was the author worthy of a listen, and did he get it? Who says so, and who not? Is his hypothesis or theme still the subject of worthwhile endeavour? Are there things to learn from the treatment of the man and his ideas? There is an ENORMOUS volume of tirade and an ocean of genuinely sincere research. Clearly there is also a sea of derision. I will add some notables on either side, but any vilification and POV in either direction needs to be in quotes, cited. Or here in discussion of course :) JC 12:40, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

Synchronisms

that there appeared to be no correlation in the written or archeological records between Jewish history (as recorded in Biblical and other sources) and the history of the adjoining nations (Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia etc).

This simply is not true. There is at least one notable Egyptian synchronism (Sheshonq I/Shishak's invasion in the 5th year of Rehoboam). There are numerous Assyrian synchronisms, notably a fight by Shalmaneser III against Ahab (and others) in 853 BC; tribute by Jehu to Shalmaneser III in 841 BC; Adad-nirari III mentions Jehoash of Israel in 796 BC; Tiglath-Pileser III mentions Menahem in 740 and 738 BC, Pekah in 733 and 732 BC; and Hoshea in 732 and 731 BC. Shalmaneser V and Sargon II both discuss the final destruction of the northern Kingdom. This can all be fit fairly well into the chronology provided by the Book of Kings, provided one admits that Pekah has been given an erroneous reign length. Beyond this, it is true that there are not too many external synchronisms with the Bible. But there are numerous Biblical descriptions which fit neatly into the standard chronology. Although "So of Egypt" is apparently unidentifiable, references to Pharaohs Tirhaka (Taharqa), Necho, and Hophra (Apries/Wahibre) are easily identifiable, and fit in exactly where they are supposed to. So do the Babylonian kings Merodach-Baladan , Nebuchadnezzar, and Evil-Merodach. So do the Assyrian kings Pul/Tiglath-Pileser III, Shalmaneser V, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. So does Cyrus. Given the paucity of records, in general, in the periods under discussion, I don't see how this can come out to "no correlation." Obviously, some parts of the Old Testament narrative have no correlation - the narratives of the Patriarchs, the Exodus, the wanderings in the desert (although one would not expect much record of them), Joshua's conquest, the United Kingdom period. But if we mean "the United Kingdom period and before" we should say that - and we clearly don't mean that, since we say there aren't any correlations with Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, when in fact there are many, and exactly where one would expect them to be. As usual, creeping misleading pro-Velikovsky subtlety appears in this article... john k 07:28, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

You are getting confused: that paragraph is talking about's V's MOTIVATION - and to him, in the 1940s, there certainly WAS a problem, which he was trying to address. Whatever acdemic consensus has been reached on these issues in the last half century is irrelevant to this point.--feline1 09:55, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I am not confused. The article is basically stating that Velikovsky was correct that "there appeared to be no correlation." All of the synchronisms I mention were well known in the 1940s. It is simply incorrect to state that there appeared to be no correlations between the ancient history of the Jews and the history of the larger Near East. There were numerous, quite well known, correlations for the whole divided kingdom and exile periods. They may not have been to Velikovsky's satisfaction, but they were there, and we can't just say that there weren't any just because Velikovsky asserted that there weren't any. john k 16:00, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

you are confused, as the article is basically stating (in that paragraph) what V's primary motivation for his theories was, not whether or not his theories were correct. And that WAS his primary motivation, it IS what he believed. You might wish to edit the text to further clarify that.... if so, be my guest..... (Perhaps you are right that V was more concerned with Jewish history 's archeological problems from Genesis to Solomon...sounds plausible - but please check before just hacking the text to add some unncessary "V was wrong" POV stuff)

I am not interested in getting into whether Velikovsky was wrong. That is unrelated to this issue. What the article said is that his motivation was that there did not seem to be any correlations between Biblical history annd near eastern history more broadly. I suppose it's possible that it did not seem to him that there were any correlations. But I find this hard to believe, given that there were, even in Velikovsky's time, numerous well known and obvious correlations between Biblical history and the history of the Near East as known to archaeologists. I don't know what Velikovsky was specifically concerned about, but I do know that we should not give the impression that Velikovsky was correct that there were none. john k 18:03, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Well I wrote that paragraph in the article myself, so I can assure you I was only intending to give Velikovsky's motivation, not whether he was "right or wrong"! (The key to a good V article is surely to just tell people know who he was and what he believed, and the reaction this provoked in others - any attempt to critique his ideas is doomed to POV hell and will not make for a good wikipedia entry...!). If you want to check what V's motivations are, he states them at length in his Ages in Chaos and a further wealth of biographical context is available from both his own autobio stuff and many hundreds of pages that people who knew him have written. I would be cautious about editing that paragraph without thorough knowledge of this material..--feline1 09:16, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't care what you were intending to say. What I am saying is that the implication of the sentence as it was was that Velikovsky saw that there were no synchronisms, and that this disturbed him. It does not say whether or not Velikovsky's theories were right, but it does imply that his perception that there were no synchronisms was correct. john k 20:23, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Ages in Chaos

The contents of this article ought to be merged sensibly with the contents of Ages in Chaos, I am open to suggestions how we go about it. PatGallacher 10:01, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Request for help at Carl Sagan

Please see the Carl Sagan discussion page if you are familiar with Sagan's critique of Velikovsky's work. --JWSchmidt 00:16, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Added a reference

I tried to add a Pro-V reference http://www.varchive.org/dag/ that has some interesting stuff. I think the big contribution V made was in disputing the 500 years of so-called dark ages. Here is some text from the reference summary, hope it is appropriate to put it here. I only do so because disputing the chronology is V's lasting legacy, IMO the wiki should make more mention of it:

"When the decipherment of the Mycenaean Linear B script proved the language to be Greek, the so-called Homeric problem grew more perplexing... How could a people that was already literate forfeit its literacy so completely for over four hundred years?

"And if such was the case, how is it that so many details of Mycenaean life, habits and armaments were well known to Homer though a Dark Age of several centuries’ duration intervened?

"The very fact that none of the Greek philosophers, historians, geographers, statesmen or poets ever referred to a Dark Age preceeding the Ionic Age and separating it from the Mycenaean Age, should have been enough to cast doubt on the soundness of the overall construction.

"The conclusion at which we have arrived is this: between the Mycenaean and the Ionian Ages there was no Dark Age, but one followed the other, with only a few decades intervening." tom 05:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Whatever Velikovsky's big contribution may have been, his chronology is absurd and completely unworkable. john k 06:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

But that's no reason not to describe Velikovsky's view, as long as we do so neutrally, accurately, and verifiably, and, don't present it as fact. --Iantresman 16:41, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Could someone please rewrite this

"Supporters contend that many of Velikovsky's key predictions have been validated, and that none has yet been disproven. Among the most prominent predictions was that the surface of Venus would be hot enough to melt lead. This was found to be so, contrary to the steady state theory of the solar system, referred to in the Velikovsky literature as the astronomers' dogma. Avoiding the obvious explanation, the high temperature is conventionally ascribed to the runaway greenhouse effect. Notwithstanding this and other space probe results that are compatible with Velikovsky's hypotheses and conflict with the previously known 'facts', critics continue to claim the opposite, devising new and sometimes dubious explanations."

That section makes no sense (and is POV, but I'll leave that for now) and desperately needs a rewrite. What "obvious explanation" is being avoided here? What are we supposed to take from this section? It's very sloppy and poorly constructed. And frankly, POV as hell with the not-so-subtle jabs. Could someone go over it?

Yes, articles like this one are bound to be a mess unless somebody actively takes charge of them and shepherds them, because they are bound to attract more cranks than normal editors. Unfortunately, I don't feel that I know enough about the astronomical stuff to write intelligently about it. I've tried to manage the ancient chronology stuff, but even so I don't really keep up with it nearly as much as I should - for all I know it's turned to pro-Velikovsky mush by now. john k 19:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, but this line is completely bogus: "In order to accommodate his identification of the Ipuwer Papyrus, from the beginning of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period, with the Biblical Exodus, Velikovsky was forced to conduct a massive revision of the chronology of the ancient Near East." That is not why V was "forced" to devise his revised chronology. In actual fact, he proposed it as an attempt to address some perceived problems with the orthodox chonology, mostly things like literary sources (Herodotus, The Bible) not seeming to agree with stratigraphy and archeology (Dark Ages in Greece, Jericho not actually seeming to possess any walls which could have fallen, etc etc)... generally, being rather a zionist, he took pleasure in trying to validate Old Testament as history. Currently the article doesn't come anywhere near to explaining that. I would plough in, but chronology's not my forté... --feline1 21:28, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, yes that line doesn't seem to be fair, but I think it is true that the dating of Ipuwer to 1450 BC was the cornerstone of the Revised Chronology. It probably ought to be reworked. What would you suggest? I'd add that the "Dark Ages in Greece" conform perfectly well to ancient Greek views of their own history, which dated the Trojan War to 1194 BC. john k 23:45, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

His Exodus date was one one "fixed date" at one end (fixed, tellingly, by Old Testament chronology) and his other fixed date that that of Alexander the Great (which he considered reliable). I'm beginning to remember more bits now: V contended that Herodotus were generally correct, and that our reconstruction of Egyptian dynasties, based largely on Manetho and Sothic dating, was at fault. He contended that if some Egyptian dynasties were considered concurrent, and that others were duplicates of each other, then all Dark Ages in Greece disappeared and Biblical History suddenly tallied with archeology.--feline1 10:13, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I've reworked the paragraph in question. Bubba73 (talk), 02:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The lines in the opening paragraph ...Indeed, the dubious conduct of many academics played into Velikovsky's hands, allowing him to use the 'suppressed genius' card to rally his laymen supporters, likening himself to martyred Renaissance scientist/heretic Giordano Bruno.... have some POV issues. However, it seems that the best way to remove the POV is to delete the lines. Perhaps they can be moved to the criticism section after making them a bit milder? Sheehan (Talk) 05:06, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

From what I've read, if the (POV) word "dubious" was omitted, the remainder of that sentence is pretty much what happened. One of the two references I cited in my revisions a few hours ago said that the book probably sold a lot more copies because of the actions of scientists against it. Bubba73 (talk), 05:34, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I wrote those lines, actually. The conduct of Shapley, Paine-Gaposchkin etc in 1950s was indeed "dubious". They organised a boycott of the publisher, got people sacked from their jobs, and wrote a load of "critiques" of WinC which were more phoney than WinC itself. This allowed V to use popular periodicals to tear their critiques to shreds, generating loads of favourable public sympathy for him.--feline1 10:13, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

This certainly needs to be fixed: However early space probes sent to Venus, Mars and Jupiter confirmed some of his predictions, most specifically that Venus would be hot. While the new results often came as a complete surprise to the scientific establishment, and required extensive revision of the "known facts" about the solar system, the probe data was compatible with Velikovsky's hypotheses. Some of Velikovsky's predictions that had been ridiculed were verified, and none were invalidated. However, scientists still claimed that the correct predictions were only coincidental, and that he made so many predictions that he was entitled to a few "near misses"(!). I'll try to do it tomorrow. Bubba73 (talk), 05:57, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The paragraph could be more neutrally worded, but its basic premise is a key part of the "Velikovsky Affair"... the furore over WinC had almost fizzled out by the end of the 1960s (20 years after its publication), however it is a fact that space probe results, particularly from Venus, reporting that it was hot and hellish and retrograde, were certainly unexpected by the astronomy community, and were seized upon by V's supporters as vindicating WinC. The thing snowballed, particularly on campuses, with the publication of the "Pensée - Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered" magazine, which talked up these "correct predictions", and led directly to the AAAS conference of 1974, as an attempt to hit the thing on the head. This backfired on them though too, as Sagan's sloppy smart-alec philippic just gave incensed V supported yet more ammunition.--feline1 10:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The Venus thing ought to be mentioned, but it should also be mentioned that there is a perfectly rational non-Velikovskian explanation for why Venus is hotter than expected. I'm also dubious about the extent to which the scientific community's response to Velikovsky can really be said to have "backfired." Aside from a few tiny groups on the internet, nobody takes Velikovsky or catastrophism seriously. john k 16:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

It did "backfire" in that the AAAS conference of 74 did not kill Veliksovskian groups stone dead as it intended - in fact, their numbers and activities increased, largely because sympathetic folk tended to regard Sagan's performance as yet more of the same from all that had gone before.--feline1 16:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

It is impossible to destroy fringe groups like the Velikovskians by attacking them, because they feed on the atmosphere of persecution, even if the attacks are completely fair (and I don't know enough about the attacks on Velikovsky to know if they were fair or not, except that his work was complete nonsense, which suggests that the attacks were probably mostly on the ball). What evidence do you have to support the idea that there was any expectation that events like this would "kill Velikovskian groups stone dead"? john k 01:06, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

"...they feed on the atmosphere of persecution" er yeah, it already says that V gained supporters by playing the martyr card, in the very first few lines of the article! (which I put in there myself) ..."...I don't know enough about the attacks on Velikovsky..." Then with all due respect, why bother trying to argue about it? Rectify your ignorance by reading some of the readily available texts on the matter (several of which are duly referenced in the article) eg American Behavioral Scientist's "The Velikovsky Affair" ... "...evidence do you have ..." er, ditto.

Plait

Oh dear, I really DON'T want to see this wiki page descend into the kind of "Yes it is!" "No it isn't!" blether which has characterized the Velikovsky affair for over half a century now! (which is why the article must strive to be neutral and avoid PoV, and CANNOT turn into a place which makes value judgements on V's ideas).

As such, I must respectfully yet robustly reject the inclusion of that lengthy Plait material.

For a start, wikipedia already cautions that the article is too long as is!

Secondly, the Plait article can be externally referenced if needs be, in fact it has no business being copied wholesale into wikipedia.

Thirdly, as my edit summary pointed out, it is full of misquotations and strawmen regarding what Velikovsky actually wrote. And it continually begs the question by simply giving the current orthodox scientific opinion and presenting it as fact, "therefore V's different idea must be wrong". This is not a neutral stance. In the 60-odd years since V first published his ideas in 1945, numereous scientific ideas relavent to the issues V raised have come and gone, and so they cannot be taken as givens. The correct approach is to mention whatever "problematic evidence" was in question, and present V's explanation of it, and "orthodox" academia's contrary explanation, all the while noting that the two parties do not agree. That's how the article must be!--feline1 16:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

No one is making any value judgements on V's claims, just factual ones. The science stays. Bubba73 (talk), 16:29, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

You are not addressing a single point I just made there. Please behave yourself or I shall have to attend to the rather tedious business of quoting all the wikipedia policies that you need to adhere to.--feline1 16:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

For example, let us all take a few deep breaths and examine the pagefuls of material to guide us on the Wikipedia Neutral Point of View policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV#The_neutral_point_of_view

A page attempting to summarize a dispute between two theories cannot and must not attempt to refute one theory! It must calmly present to positions of both protagonists. This is not open for discussion!--feline1 16:43, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

By the way, if it's any consolation ;) the better and correct methodology for demolishing Velikovsky is to address his use of literary sources. Basically the entire ediface of his theories was build on his use of sources and comparative mythology. He used these to make the case that "here is evidence which needs to be explained... and this is may theory to do so". Debunk his use of sources and it may often transpire that there was no supposed anomaly requiring an alternative theory to explain it in the first place, thus rendering these interminable "scientific" refutations entirely redundant. Bob Forrest's work (briefly mentioned already in the article) was the most comprehensive attempt at this. When I have a spare hour or two, I intend to work a lot more of this line into the article.--feline1 16:59, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

From POV:

• If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;

• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.

• The task before us is not to describe disputes as though, for example, pseudoscience were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view; and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. Bubba73 (talk), 17:24, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I see what those extracts from the policy are trying to say, but better contextualise their relevance to the present misunderstanding:

There IS a perfectly valid need for an article on Velikovsky, for those interested in finding out about him. This should have some biographical summary (so people can see who he was an contextualise where he was coming from), an ACCURATE summary of his ideas so (so people can see what it was provoked such a furore) - NOT a justification of them or an attempt to present evidence to prove them - and a discussion of what the reaction to these theories was (amoungst academia and lay people - as your quoted extract alludes to, it's interesting to note the different reactions in these camps and the reasons for this difference). As the policy says, the article does not need to "describe the dispute" i.e. it does not need to have an overly long badly paraphrased extract of some guy Plait attempting to pick holes in Velikovsky's ideas. The article just has to say that professional astronomers like Plait did critique and reject V.

AND the article is too long! AND we should reference external copyright material like Plait, not copy them into a wiki article. AND I can spot errors in nearly every one of Plait's points, misrepresenting what V's theories were! (Gah! I mean come on, you can check this easily, there's a copy of Worlds in Collision in every secondhand bookstore in the land!)--feline1 17:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

And another thing - checking out who Plait is - his critique of Velikovsky appears in Plait's recent populist debunking book, a spin-off from his website. It is just a 3rd hand rehash of the earlier critiques of V from the likes of Shapley in the 50s and Sagan in the 70s - it's not original work. Better to go back to the original stuff.--feline1 23:19, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Plait is not original work. We are supposed to use secondary sources: "A secondary source summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources. A tertiary source usually summarizes secondary sources. Wikipedia is a tertiary source. "

Yes but *Plait* is a tertiary source. He's adding nothing new that Shapley et al didn't say in the 1950s, or Sagan et al didn't say in the 1970s. So he is superfluous. Moreover, he is only critiqueing the physics implied by V's scenario, when it is more logical to critique V's use of sources which led him to propose the scenario in the first place - Forrest's is for that reason a much more important critique than that of Shapley/Sagan et al.--feline1 18:35, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not trying to refute Velikovsky. I'm reporting that scientists have refuted him.

You say make a link to Plait's website instead of listing the items. In all liklihood, wikipedia will be around a long time after Plait's website is gone. Wikipedia may be around for hundreds or thousands of years, and the link to Plait's website will probably be dead.

You claim that the refutations of Vel are "strawman" arguements. Let's look at his claim that insects came from Venus to the Earth. Insects can't fly through empty space, so for that to have even a remote possibility of happening, Venus would have to be close enough so its atmosphere would mix with Earth's. But we can prove that Venus was never that close, therefore Vel was wrong.

Excuse me?!? Can you give me a reference to where V claims that "insects" flew through space from Venus to Earth?! That's almost as ludicrous a strawman as Sagan's infamous jibe at the '74 AAAS that frogs did the same. It's a classic example of the sort of calumnies the Velikovsky woo-hoo set protest about. At most, V discussed the possibility of disease pathogens crossing space, a notion put forward others such as Fred Hoyle. --feline1 18:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

By wanting to say that "orthodox science says" you seem to think or imply that there is a scientific debate over the reason for the temperature of Venus. There is no scientific debate over the reason for the temperature of Venus. NPOV says that we can report facts without justification: assert facts, including facts about opinions — but don't assert opinions themselves. There is a difference between facts and values, or opinions. By "fact," we mean "a piece of information about which there is no serious dispute." In this sense, that a survey produced a certain published result is a fact. That there is a planet called Mars is a fact. That Plato was a philosopher is a fact. No one seriously disputes any of these things. So we can feel free to assert as many of them as we can.

No, you are wrong here, both in confusing empirical oberservation with theoretical explanation, and in not appreciating the significance of the issue for fanning the flames of Velikovskism. In 1950 (when WinC was published), the prevalent view in orthodox astronomy was that Venus would be a twin planet to earth, likely with some kind of carboniferous-era swamp climate. This wasn't pure guesswork, it was reasoned on the basis of ideas about how planetary atmospheres and climates worked. But Velikovsky however proposed it cometlike in 1450BC and would still be hot. In the 1960s, spaceprobes revealed Venus was indeed hot. Scientific method responded to this empirical evidence by changing its theoretical explanation for accomodate the new data. The episode is a good illustration of scientific method in practice, but also shows why V's supporters made such a big deal about his "correct prediction"... in 1950, the pompous Harvard scientists who villified Velikovsky were actually completely wrong in *their* ideas about Venus too.--feline1 18:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

and this may be relevant:The generally accepted policy is that all facts and majority Point of Views on a certain subject are treated in one article.

You said that none of Vel's rebuttals to the criticism are in the article. I found a few in the articles and books I've read. For instance, when it wsa proven that the high temperature of Venus was due to the greenhouse effect, and not as he said, he replied that he didn't believe in the greenhouse effect. Otherwise, Vel"s rebuttal was to state that "not a single word of my books needs to be changed". We can put some of these "rebuttals" in there, I suppose...

Well V was talking crap ;-) I have already added, for instance, the important fact that V was utterly unable to refute Sachs' demolishing of his use of cunieform.--feline1 18:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

If you like, we can say that Plait, Sagan, Oberg, Morrison, etc represent the view of virtually all scientists. Bubba73 (talk), 17:01, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd leave Sagan out of it, as his AAAS 74 paper was ripped to shreds by critics on both sides.--feline1 18:54, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

serious revision needed

Apologetics doesn't even come close to describing this page. Wow, this page is a joke. Velikovsky was nothing but a crank on par with guys like Shaver, just better read. His cosmological theories have been completely disproved. Seriously, you need to mention that Venus was not ejected from Jupiter in biblical times, that this is simply immpossible, nor is it a comet, nor is venus a comet trapped in orbit around the sun, nor are comets "ejected" from planets. He postulates that the "heat" of Venus TRAPPED IN EARTHS ORBIT caused vermin to reproduce wildly 3500 YEARS AGO. All his crazy theories would have left vast amounts of geological and cosmological evidence, of which there is none (not to mention an object the size of earth coming that close to earth would have come close to if not destroyed the earth and certainly would have eradicated all life on it). Nor could venus have arrived in its orbit 3500 years ago. He's a creationist in scholarly disguise. His "revised chronology" doesn't fit any modern dating techniques. His answer to that: "If, occasionally, historical evidence does not square with formulated laws, it should be remembered that a law is but a deduction from experience and experiment, and therefore laws must conform with historical facts, not facts with laws." What the hell!?! The "facts" he refers to is a literalist view of the bible. Science doesn't start with the answer and try to make the evidence fit it, charlatans do. The treatment he is given here, as a reputable scholar is utterly laughable. This by far the most POV page I've run across on Wikipedia. EDIT: sorry, i wasn't logged inCapeo 02:08, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

There are some others about this bad. I was working on this article several months ago, but most or all of my edits got reverted (check the history). I'm willing to work towards improving the article. Bubba73 (talk), 03:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Not tonight though, I'm beat. I'll start with suggestions to remove all the weasel words and also look to include current scientific models that bear mentioning since they invalidate most if not all his theories.Capeo 02:33, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The focus of the article has been to provide some biographical material on who Velikovsky was, give an accurate summary of what his theories were and why they proved so controversial, and to note that they have been utterly dismissed out of hand by nearly all serious scholars. It does say that quite unequivocably, and has been in a stable and mature state for many month now. I don't see why you think it is an "apologist" page. The article shouldn't be getting into "debunking" - you may find it useful to familiarize yourself with wikipedia policies such as Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view before starting some sort of over-zealous edit war.--feline1 08:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, in fairness, I was re-reading the "criticism" section, and noticed someone had inserted some rather flabby and weasley rhetorical sentences which fudged the bottom line that mainstream academia utterly reject V's ideas. I have deleted these. (The article is basically too long anyways, it is good to prune stuff, if nothing else). --feline1 08:53, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I would never start an edit war, worry not. I'm also quite aware of wikipedia policies. Where I think this needs work is in the ordering of some of the phrasing in the critiques sections that seem intentionally misdirecting and some of the phrasing in general. I also agree that trimming would be the best way to go. I would not make any changes without first posting it here and getting feedbackCapeo 14:49, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Just to note why I would argue "apologist" is that the critique sections backhandedly try to defend. This is a common problem in Wiki articles and a good place for trimming. Just leaving the critisms would be a good place to start. I won't be able to really look at it in earnest until tomorrow but that's some food for thought.Capeo 15:02, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Well I trust you'll approve of the edits you've prompted me to make. I would also like to do some editing on the "V's theories" section - the "Revised Chronology" bit is too bolted on and repeats some stuff.--feline1 15:06, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

"In the 1960s, some of Velikovsky's specific predictions appeared to be confirmed by space probe findings, for instance:

the high surface temperature of Venus. hydrocarbons in the atmosphere of Venus (this was later disproven). Jupiter's generation of radio noises. However in all such cases, the scientific community did not accept that these successful predictions could be used as proof of Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision scenario, preferring alternative explanations such as a "runaway greenhouse effect" on Venus." This is a good example of what I was talking about. There are many ways this passage is both apologetic and unencyclopedic. Firstly, just including these predictions wrongly implies Velikovsky arrived at these predictions through scientific means and that they should have had any credence in the scientific realm in the first place. Secondly, the second prediction was proven untrue yet included so its has no bearing to the conversation. The note after it doesn't warrant it to be there because it contradicts the point of the passage. The most weasely part though is the last sentence. It again implies that he arrived at these conclusions through scientific study, that they proved true for the reasons he predicted (which of course wasn't even close), that science was ignoring him for no reason and lastly and most weasely: the "preferring alternative explanations" line. This is vastly misleading. "Alternative" by most definitions implies "fringe", in effect this line reads: "and scientists ignored these correct predictions (of which there was only two) in favor of their equally unfounded suppositions". Also putting "runaway greenhouse gases" in quotes implies the same when in fact that IS the reason Venus is so hot and has been proven so. That passage should not be in an encyclopedia as is, if at all. Well, I gotta get back to work. In the next couple days I'll try to come up with a better passage. Peace.Capeo 16:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

well by all means, let's word it better - I have already edited it a fair bit along the lines you are suggesting, you should have seen it before! - however the whole "successful predictions" thing is an important part of the story of why V's notoriety refused to go away, and led almost directly to the AAAS conference in an attempt to debunk him, as a great many of the public were placing great strength in these "successful predictions". Also note the an important aspect of the "heat of Venus thing" is that the 1950s astronomy community predicted a temperate Venus and ridiculed V's unscientific inferno Venus. It was thus all the more embarrassing for them when it turned out to be so hot.

--feline1 17:43, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it needs to be ommitted, but it relates better to a contraversy/history section. What's misleading about the critique section is that it represents critiques from 50 years ago. The whole "affair" section to me more correctly fits into his career during that time. The critique sections should be short and sweet and relative to current scientific knowledge, not decades old debates. Rolling the contraversy in with his career could also formalize and shorten the whole article a bit, as would more straight forward critiques. The critiques section can say what it needs to say in one short paragraph. There seems to be a lot of redundancy. What do you think? As I said, I'll also try to formalize the sections suggestions a bit better sometime tomorrow. I'm supposed to be working right now;)Capeo 19:35, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Well to be fair, Velikovsky pretty much published all his ideas 50 years ago, and there hasn't been thank much new to critique them with since! Since his methodology was nearly all comparative mythology and use of literary sources, he stands or falls by that. Sachs demolished his use of cuneiform in the mid 60s. Bob Forrest published an epic examination of *all* his sources in the early 1980s, the verdict of which is far from favourable. Both these are discussed in the article already. As the article also points out (perhaps not clearly enough), this critique of methodology and the internal logic of V's ideas is more important the any critique of his theories conclusions/predictions - cos even when V's occasionally did predict some right (e.g. a hot Venus), his theory is still not vindicated by academia, since it's the right answer for the wrong reasons. --feline1 20:36, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree entirely with your point, which is why I think we can clean up the critique section. Before moving onto the meat of the article, I was just looking at the intro and propose a couple minor changes. See what you think. First, in the second paragraph in reference to the Greek Dark Ages I find term "so-called" to be very weasely. There is no archeological doubt about their occurrence, also "so-called" is a phrase that does not belong in an encyclopedia outside of someone's direct quote. This seems quite POV to me and superfluous. I would like to remove it. Also, beginning the third paragraph with "generally" I think is generous and less than specific. If you can show any peer-reviewed publication that seriously entertains his theories than I'd concede but I believe there to be none and simply stating that his theories were not accepted by academia is more honest. I know someone put up a couple links but I checked them out. One is self-published thus not meeting that criteria per Wiki rules and the other was only published in a pamphlet that has no peer review and is far from academic. I think "generally" should be removed. Finally, and I'm hard pressed to believe someone would disagree, the last sentence in the intro is certainly POV unless one someone has some qualification about the "controversy" still lingering today. Again very unencyclopedic (not a real word, I know). His theories are certainly not controversial, they have been thoroughly dismissed, so unless this controversy is referring to something unclear it needs to be clarified or removed. As it is now it's simply provocative, unfounded and POV. It would be in bounds, I think, to mention in the last paragraph that a large part of his lay appeal came from his extremely readable writing style and oratory skills though, as this is an admission of even his harshest critics and a large factor in his early popularity. So, anyway, let me know what you think. Hope this wasn't too long for such small changes but this would be my first attempt at making a substantial contribution to a Wiki article (though I've used it for years and read many discussion pages) and want to lay out my reasoning thoroughly before making changes. Any advice on simplifying this process is welcome. Thanks.Capeo 01:10, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I see what you mean about "so-called" - perhaps just cut that word - I think the idea is that it's there to convey that in V's paradigm, the dark ages are a phantom chronological artefact and don't actually exist.

This is the problem then, that portion is written from the point of view of V's paradigm. This causes confusion and is not impartial. It must be qualified that the opinion of dubious dark ages is V's and not the encyclopedia. As it's written now the point of view is unclear. I'll look to change the sentence without changing its meaning and see what you think.Capeo 15:50, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

V's The Dark Age of Greece does eloquently document the great *problems* these Dark Ages caused for archeologists and historians, with numerous stratigraphical anomalies and incongruous haituses in the record. The fact that mainstream academia rejects V's suggested solution to these problems doesn't detract from that.

Indeed it does! V is wrong, his evidence faulty. As eloquent as you may think it is, his reasoning and methods are faulty. An encyclopedia must represent mainstream academia, and this explicitly stated in Wikipedia's "Five Pillars". The concensus of mainstream academia, published in peer-reviewed journals, is that a greek dark ages DID occur. Don't have time to look over everything else you added right now so I'll get back with you later.Capeo 15:50, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you're misunderstanding me here - what I was getting at is that Dark Ages often did cause great consternation and confusion amoungst scholars in academia. A large part of V's writing on the subject was documenting that. The problematic nature of these Dark Ages are accepted. What isn't accepted is V's proposed solution to the problem.... but I think we're going down a rabbit-hole there - just remove "so-called" and you lose a lot of the problem - which I think I already did last night? --feline1 16:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

But still, yes, "so-called" may be unncessary.... as for "Generally", I don't think it's there to imply "but in 4.7% of cases, they conceded he was correct" - the sense of it is more "given that his theories touched on a plethora of interdisciplinary subjects, these disciplines have pretty much all rejected him in detail" - there are some broader brush general notions where his ideas, in a very "general" sense, seems less outlandish than they did in 1950 (there is a list of these in the article). All the "controversy continues to this day" is meant to mean is that there are still some societies who publish magazines and hold conferences and run websites and discussion forums, who still hold a candle for V's paradigms. There are links to several of these at the bottom of the article.--feline1 08:01, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Going further into the article in more depth I come across this "Commentators have also noted that Shapley was a liberal who had suffered under the McCarthyite witchunts against communism, whilst Velikovsky happened to be a Russian. " I'm not sure what the implication of this sentence is. First off, which "commentators"? Citation please. Shapley was a liberal and also a HUGE supporter of peace with Russia. He chaired the Waldorf Conference that brought together prominent Western academics and Russian governmental leaders, for which he took a lot of flak yet stood defiant the entire time. If someone has some evidence that Shapley's attack on V was motivated by some Russian-hate please point me towards it because it doesn't seem factual. If this is just some editors conception of the events then this constitutes their own research and I will remove it.Capeo 01:49, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

No, this is for real - it was documented in a guy's PhD thesis (Duane Vorhees) who researched the whole controversy (I remember reading it on microfiche on inter-library loan!). I will try and find the reference - also Leroy Ellenberger may have some material.--feline1 08:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Then we should find a reference definetely. Otherwise is sounds accusatory.Capeo 20:04, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Man, I know I'm harping on this but going further into the article this is in Criticism? "Ironically, some of the concepts Velikovsky originally put forward in the 1940s, which at the time were heretical, are in fact much more widely accepted within the mainstream today. These include:

The idea that global mass extinctions were caused by Earth colliding with an extraterrestrial body (particular the anomalous iridium levels at the Cretaceous boundary, which marked the destruction of the dinosaurs). The neo-Darwinist ideas of punctuated equilibrium in evolution. Velikovsky's arguments that electromagnetism must be given greater consideration in astronomy can be seen in the light of the subsequent discoveries such as the Van Allen belts, the sun and planets have extensive magnetospheres, and that the "vacuum of space" was in fact found to be permeated with charged plasma (the so-called "solar wind"). The idea that cometary impacts could have precipitated "dark ages" within historical times (eg the AD Dark Ages in Europe) "

The first point is false because V never stated that the "Venus Comet" ever struck earth but that it came close. Whoever wrote that is making the same mistake Sagan did. V, in fact stated that moon crater and Venutian craters were from "volcanic bubbling" and he himself discredited impact theory.

No, you're getting confused here. That's not from WinC, but in Earth In Upheaval, V presented a ton of geological and paleontological stuff, arguing for a catastrophist geology. Boundaries between geological eras, and mass extinctions, he proposed could be due to extraterrestrial impacts. This is very much KT boundary stuff (although obviously it was about 30 years before the anomalous irridium levels were detected - V would've had a field-day with that! :) --feline1 08:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, I mistakenly thought this was in the WinC Criticism section. I'm also not nearly as familiar with EiU as WinC.Capeo 20:04, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The second point, and gentics I'm fairly well versed in, is completely bogus. Someone please show me where PE fits in anywhere or in anyway was influenced by V. Niether Mayr nor Gould and Eldrege certainly ever mentioned V in their work, nor does V's work have any bearing on evolution or genetics.

Again, V does discuss these topics in Earth in Upheaval - I suspect you are not familiar with that book! There is plenty of stuff out there putting this in context, for example books by Prof Trevor Palamer (Cambridge University Press), and the "Stephen J Gould & Immanuel Velikovsky" book - I guess we need some references - SJG is definately "aware" of V's ideas - you'll note that the sentences after the bullet-list you're talking about make the point unequivocably that mainstream academia certainly don't accept V as being the one who directed them to their ideas though.

References would be good. The only Gould references concerning V are about the V Affair and nothing more.

The third point, again mischaracterization. V postulated electromagnetic fields held sway over orbits which is patently false. Also note "so-called" again in the second sentence.

Mmm, yeah, maybe just cut that "solar wind" (I think it's there in the send that it's not really a "wind" ;-) like you get on earth). Moreover I don't quite get your objection - V wrote various stuff saying that electromagnetic effects were active in space. Another one that could be added to the list was that the sun carries a net charge (I think that's from a Harper's Magazine debate? Or Yale Scientific Magazine? One of the ones with Prof Stewart, or Lloyd Motz). 1950s science ridiculed such notions, holding that space was just a vacuum and the only forces were gravity and "light pressure". --feline1 08:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Again though, not at all for the reasons he predicted. I think we can reconcile all this. The proper criticism is there, it's just that the order and presentation can be refined. (more below)

Last point, I don't even know what to make of this, again V was not a huge proponent of impact theory, his followers amplified this, but that's an aside. The question remains: what the hell idea is being talked about, V never said a comet impacted us in historic times and factually one never did nor did a comet impact ever percipate a dark age in europe. Is "could have" some sort of qualification here because I can garauntee he wasn't the first person to think "gee, if a comet hit the earth, yeah, not so good..."

No, you are confused. V does discuss impacts in pre-history (pre-Holocene) in Earth in Upheaval. And people today *are* looking at the AD Dark Ages in Europe possibly being caused by some kind of cometary event (tree-ring data, varves, and examing archelogical destructions sites/abandonments and literary records). I guess references need gathered for this. There's Mike Baille at Queen's University Belfast publishing on it, for example. I can assure you, a lot of these researches *do* see a continuity between their work and V's. That has little to do with the specifics of the Worlds in Collision scenario being true, granted (which the article already states), however it is also true that such notions would have been heretical in the 1950s. ....... notwithstanding, yes, it's not exactly "criticism", perahps we need a "legacy"? section for that stuff?--feline1 08:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Again, I show a lack of familiarity with EiU. I'm familiar with Baille, though, and the evidence in ice cores from both poles dislplays spikes in sulphates indicating as massive eruption not a comet or asteroid strike. It certainly couldn't be an asteroid strike because the evidence would be plain in a massive fresh (geologically speaking) crater or vast evidence of tsunami's 1000+ feet high, traveling miles upon miles inland in recent time. Something that definetly didn't happen. Baille brought to light the evidence of climate change but the mechanism he postualted isn't born out by the evidence. The idea of a legacy section may work though (more below).Capeo 20:04, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

And all this is in a criticism section?

Come this weekend, I'll attempt to clean some of this up. Input welcome, please.Capeo 02:40, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

So, reading the whole article a few times through in depth I fully agree the fair criticism IS fully represented. I think the presentation is the issue I'm having. Overall, I'm finding the article sprawling and at times repetitious. There are allusions to the fact that V's work is not accepted in mainstream academia in quite a few places. I think this can be consolidated. There are too many mini-paragraphs, these too can be joined. Also, I think more emphasis should be placed on the V Affair as this was a big an illuminating event in the way science was dealing with publication at the time. It's already mentioned is his bio, it could just be given full treatment there and not need the extra section at the end. So, I propose this: The changes I'd like to make in moving sections are too big and might render the page unreadable for a while. I'm going cut and paste it over to my user page and work it there. I know a lot of work has gone into already by people more versed in V than myself and I don't intend to remove ANY info just consolidate and clarify. I believe I could give the article better flow and remove some grammatical and voice issues. So if you would, Feline1 (and anybody else checking in), come over any give me your input. It should take me a few hours. After a few days of tweaking hopefully there will be changes that can be integrated in the actual article.Capeo 20:04, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I think the structure is more the problem than anything else (V's ideas themselves were so bloody sprawling, it's not easy to write a succint article on them! - also the current structure is a result of a lot of huge en bloc cut and pastes to try and salvage what was a very POV article) I don't have time tonight but hopefully I'll look again tomorrow.--feline1 21:12, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow, no kidding Cut and Paste. In looking for conclusive evidence for some Shapley political bias I've found whole sections of this article ripped from websites verbatem! Not quotes but somebody else, very likely copyrighted material. That's simply not acceptable. As I said, I'll be attempting changes on my user page. Join me if you care to.Capeo 23:14, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Lol, it's been pointed out to me that some sites (about.com, reference.com, etc) use GNU rights to print articles from Wiki. There are two sections that are still entirely cut and paste from private sites that I'm trying to fix but for a moment there I thought the vast majority of the article was. Anyway.Capeo 02:42, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Einstein

I remember reading that he was very close with Einsein, and that Einstein died with one of Velikovsky's books at his side. Ortho (talk04:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

His relationship with Einstein is described in Velilovsky's book, "Before the Day Breaks", online in full. When Einstein died, a copy of Velikovsky's book, Worlds in Collision, was open on his desk.[1] --Iantresman 19:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I think it should be added to the article--Ortho 01:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

If so, then it should be mentioned that Einstein didn't believe the book and pointed out some fatal flaws. Bubba73 (talk), 01:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• No, Einstein's views were not as dismissive as that. Einstein wrote to Velikovsky about Worlds in Collision that:

"[t]here is much interest in the book, which proves that, in fact, catastrophes had taken place, which must be attributed to extraterrestrial causes. However, it is evident to every sensible physicist that these catastrophes can have nothing to do with the planet Venus....It were best, in my opinion, if you would in this way revise your books, which contain truly valuable material."

• After reading Earth in Upheaval, Einstein commented:

"the proof of "sudden" changes...is quite convincing and meritorious. If you had done nothing else but to gather and present, in a clear way, this mass of evidence, you would have already a considerable merit. Unfortunately, this valuable accomplishment is impaired by the addition of a physical astronomical theory to which every expert will react with a smile or with anger."

• I believe that Einstein did reject Velikovsky's theories on "interplanetary collisions" (but I have been unable to find a source), though Einstein did also say:

"I have again read Worlds in Collision. It is a book of immeasurable importance and scientists should read it"

• All quotes from Before the Day Breaks, unpublished memoirs of Velikovsky's friendship with Albert Einstein.
• But yes, we should present Einstein views, accurately. --Iantresman 14:33, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You are selectively quoting. Einstein says that it is physically impossible:

However it is evident to every sensible physicist that these catastrophes can have nothing to do with the planet Venus and that also the direction of the inclination of the terrestrial axis towards the ecliptic could not have under-gone a considerable change without the total destruction of the earth's entire crust. It were best in my opinion if you would in this way revise your books, which contain truly valuable material. If you cannot decide on this, then what is valuable in your deliberations will become ineffective, and it would be difficult finding a sensible publisher who would take the risk of such a heavy setback upon himself.

In another quote he said that the book was "crazy". I'll have to look up the reference for that. Bubba73 (talk), 14:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

"It really isn't a bad book. The only trouble with it is, it is crazy." - Einstein. At the Fringes of Science, by Michael Friedlander, page 14. Bubba73 (talk), 15:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• Indeed, I did say that "Einstein did reject Velikovsky's theories on "interplanetary collisions" ", but as I have illustrated, that was not Einstein's only view.
• Good memory with the Einstein "crazy" quote, which originally appeared in the July 1955 issueof Scientific American. As Velikovsky himself pointed out:

"The word 'crazy' may have various connotations, one meaning 'most unusual,' the way Einstein used the [Yiddish] word 'meshugoim' in referring to himself and myself in one of our conversations"

• Now this could be just wishful thinking on Velikovsky's part, but Dr. Otto Nathan, executor of Einstein's estate wrote to Scientific American, and in a letter appearing two months later wrote:

"In `An Interview with Einstein', published in the July issue of your magazine, I. Bernard Cohen quotes remarks which Albert Einstein allegedly made about a recently published book and its author. Professor Cohen represents Einstein has having said that both the book and its author were `crazy,' but not `bad.'

"As executor of Einstein's estate, and as one who has the responsibility to protect his scientific and literary interest, I feel compelled to say that I deeply regret Professor Cohen's statements. The article was not submitted to me before publication. If it had been, I should have made every effort to prevent it from being published in its present form"

• Cohen replied in the same issue:

"Professor Einstein did not mention terms about the above mentioned issue and was using the book only as an example of work that was sufficiently unorthodox to appear `crazy' to a scientist. Thus, on the basis of the few words said, and reported by me in full, there is no basis for concluding that Professor Einstein might not have had a friendly feeling for the author in question or that he might not have had some interest in his work. As is plain from my article, Professor Einstein sympathized with the author when he was attacked and disliked the methods used by some of his attackers."

• So I. Bernard Cohen did indeed quote Einstein as saying that Velikovsky's book is "crazy", a phrase which Einstein's executor disputed, and which Velikovsky says also means "highly unusual" in Yiddish (like it can in English), and Cohen interpreted the meaning as "sufficiently unorthodox to appear `crazy'". (Ref: Carl Sagan & Immanuel Velikovsky, 1995, Charles Ginenthal. See also similar reports (but in less details), Cosmic Heretics (1984) by Alfred de Grazia --Iantresman 16:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It is worth noting that Einstein appears to have rejected Velikovsky's arguments specifically in the field in which he was qualified to judge them - physics. In commenting on the rest of Velikovsky's theories, one would imagine that it is the friend speaking, and not the scientist. john k 01:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, if you read that letter in its entirity and in context. Dr. V. sent his friend Einstein a preliminary draft to read and comment on. Einstein starts by saying something nice. Then he points out that (1) V's theory violates the laws of physics, and (2) the Earth's crust is direct proof that it didn't happen. Then he recomends that Dr. V take out the stuff about Venus if he wants to get the book published. Bubba73 (talk), 22:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Citations needed

Nice to see user "Science Apologist" tagging things for citations for once, rather than just deleting stuff. It may take a day or two to track some of these down, but I'm sure we can manage it...

-On occasions where astronomers did agree to printed debate in popular periodicals (most notably Prof. John Q. Stewart of Princeton University in Harper's Magazine, June 1951, and Prof Lloyd Motz of Columbia University in Yale Scientific Magazine, April 1967), Velikovsky's legal training, skill as a debater and polymath knowledge of the humanities generally left lay audiences with the impression that he'd left the astronomers floundering. -- are the refs for these ones not the Harper's and Yale issues cited in the sentence?? There may be more reaction in other meta-books (V.Affair, Stargazers&Gravediggers, further Larrabee in Harpers?.

-Velikovsky played on the conduct of many academics to make claims of "suppressed genius", in which he likened himself to martyred Renaissance scientist/heretic Giordano Bruno.[citation needed] - i forget where V writes about Bruno - S&G again? Or some of the manuscripts on the V.Archive site? Is his tactics for supporter rallying discussed by Ellenberger?

-The storm of controversy created by Velikovsky's publications may have helped revive the catastrophist movement in the second half of the 20th century; however it is also held by some working in the field that progress has actually been retarded by the negative aspects of the so-called Velikovsky Affair. Works with similar themes, such as those of de Santillana and von Dechend, Allan and Delair, and Clube and Napier (see References below), have met in part with an academic tolerance never experienced by Velikovsky himself, and even with acclaim by critics of the originals.[citation needed] - Anyone got any refs for positive reviews of Clube&Napier, etc? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Feline1 (talk • contribs) 21:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC).

Positive Clube & Napier refs include: Colin Keay favorably reviewed Cosmic Winter in a 1991 Australian Physicist. Endeavour also gave it a favorable short review; Martin Beech's review of their Cosmic Winter in a 1991 Astronomy Now.(refed in Ellenberger's "Antidote to Velikovskian Delusions"--feline1 21:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Accuracy issues

While there are now citations for these issues, I don't think these sentences are NPOV. To wit:

Henry H. Bauer noted that Velikovsky's legal training, skill as a debater and polymath knowledge of the humanities often gave lay audiences with the impression that he'd left the astronomers floundering.

Issue: Why is Henry Bauer a reliable source as to what lay audiences "often" had the impression of? Does he cite a survey of lay audiences? Does he interview them? Use sociological analysis? How does he know this?

regarding this, I had a reply from Leroy Ellenberger: "for his book 'Beyond Velikovsky' [Bauer] read damned near everything in the public record on, by and about Velikovsky up to 1980." Bauer is an authority, an expert. The article references his book, it's all in there. Why quibble about a the contents of a reference you clearly haven't read, Mr ScienceApologist? You've tagged the article as requiring the attentions of experts: listen to what they're telling you! :)--feline1 21:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Irving Wolfe recounts that while never conceding for a minute that he was correct in his ideas, he believes that the scientific community found Velikovsky's rhetorical skill at swaying public opinion exasperating.

Issue: I can't find in Wolfe's book where he finds the "scientific community" acting in such a monolithic and diametric fashion -- especially with regards to the latter claim that the scientific community found Velikovsky's skill "exasperating".

Wolfe related that Velikovsky played on the conduct of many academics to make claims of "suppressed genius", in which he likened himself to martyred Renaissance scientist/heretic Giordano Bruno.

Issue: While this one is probably the easiest poit to verify, it would be better to have an actual quote from Velikovsky likening himself to Bruno than Wolfe's book. I could not find the self-appellation to Bruno in Wolfe's book. Does someone have a quote they can provide me with?

--ScienceApologist 13:55, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

• Strange that you would question Prof. Henry Bauer as a reliable source, yet when David McCandless said that the Electric Universe was considered pseudoscience by scientists, you don't make the same question, nor seem to care how he arrived at his conclusions, and didn't attribute the statement either.
• If you read the cover of his book, it describes Bauer as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His publishing record appears to be extensive.[2]
• With respect to Wolfe's book, I guess you'll just have to look harder. Having asked you on several occasions for quotes that support statements in the Redshift article,[3] I am equally exasperated and trying to substantiate some of your statements. Heck, your references there don't even provide page numbers nor section details. Perhaps I'll go and check them again in more detail. --Iantresman 14:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I have asked tireless Velikovsky critic Leroy Ellenberger if he can help tighten up some of these references. Science Apologist, if you have any doubt about V's rhetorical skill in running rings round stuffy 1950s astronomers, take a look at the cited Harper's Magazine issues.--feline1 14:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Just a general comment: the "purpose" of the bits in the "Velikovsky Affair" section that Science Apologist is seeking to verify is to help explain *why* there was a Velikovsky Affair in the first place (e.g. why Worlds in Collision became a best-seller, why pro-velikovsky journals sprang up, why he had such succesful lecturing tours and conferences devoted to him on campuses; why astronomers felt it necessary to boycott his publishers, why the AAAS felt it necessary to hold a public meeting to debunk him etc etc etc) - all these things happened, and those lines in the article are trying to succintly summarize some of the factors which led to V's popularity at the time with lay audiences. Churlish (dare I say pathologically skeptical? ;-) editing trying to imply he had no popularity in the first place is daft.--feline1 14:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Some places in V's writing where he compares himself to Giordano Bruno:

• Essay called The Acceptance of Correct Ideas in Science http://www.varchive.org/ce/accept.htm
• Paper called My Challenge to Conventional Views in Science (Which V presented in person at the infamous AAAS 1974 conference) http://www.varchive.org/lec/aaas/challenge.htm
• The chapter Cicero and Seneca in the unpublished volume "The Orbit" http://www.varchive.org/ce/orbit/cicero.htm
• Musings on his dealing with archaeologist Claude Schaeffer http://www.varchive.org/cor/schaeffer/schaef.htm

--feline1 14:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: requests for citations on the bullet point list of concepts present in V's ideas which were rejected at the time but are now more accepted in academia: it was probably not felt that these needed "citations" because the sections of the article above explicity deal with where V himself promulgated these ideas, whilst the bullet points themselves contain links to wikiarticles on the concepts themselves (which explain what the concepts are and from where their modern academic status arose) - e.g. the irridium layer at the cretaceous boundary.--feline1 15:04, 11 January 2007 (UTC) Moreover, straight after the bullet points in question, the article continues However, mainstream academia contends that its acceptance of such ideas has little or nothing to do with Velikovsky's work, which is generally regarded as erroneous in all its detailed conclusions by academia. Moreover, Velikovsky's unorthodox methodology (for example, using comparative mythology to derive scenarios in celestial mechanics) is viewed by most orthodox scholars as an unacceptable way to arrive at conclusions. --feline1 15:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

It is a fact of physics that the moons circular orbit is evidence that there have been no planetary fly-bys. --ScienceApologist 20:38, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Tagging the article

Since User:Feline1 has seemed to have asserted some level of article ownership, I am tagging this article with cleanup, totally disputed, and expert tags. We need accurate sourcing of some of the more colorful prose if this controversial article is going to fulfill reliability, verifiability, and neutrality. --ScienceApologist 15:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Erm, right, if you really feel it's "totally" necessary :/ I don't think I "own" the article, but I was one of the editors who spent a lot of time turning it from an outrageous cut-and-paste hagiography piece from a velikovsky site, it something which tried to present V's sprawling theories concisely and accurately, note the controversy they caused, and explain that they remain almost wholly rejected by mainstream science...I've tried to show how some of the specific bits of the article that your queried fit into the structure of the whole piece, and googled up some Bruno references for you, and asked one's of V's most knowledgable and robust skeptics if he can chip in finding more citations.....I can certainly see why the arbitration committee admonished you to "remember to respect all policies and guidelines, in spirit as well as letter, when editing articles concerning some alternative to conventional science. This applies in particular to matters of good faith and civility"...--feline1 15:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I'll just assume we're getting off on the wrong foot. You don't step on my toes and I won't step on yours, okay? --ScienceApologist 16:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Fine! :) For what it's worth, I think it is good to make the article as robust and well referenced as possible, since a steady trickle of people to this day still encounter Velikovsky for the first time, and having a neutral and accurate article on the whole business on wikipedia is valuable. If someone reads one of his old books, their first question will usually be "where does this all stand now?" - well, the issues have been done and dusted to death over the years if you know the right circles to ask in, and I hope this article reflects that reasonably well. I fail to see how anyone could read the article as it stands now and think it somehow "vindicates" Velikovsky. (Neither does it take the mocking tone which characterises Shapley, Sagan or more recently Phil Plait's critiques, but we don't want that on wikipedia, do we?) I note the the article currently has a long bibliography of references, but these are generally not tied to specific parts of the text with the more new-fangled wikipedia numbered-footnotes way of doing things. I think it would be a valuable contribution to the article if it could be tightened in this way, tying specific statements to specific refs. Ian Tresman has made a start on this yesterday with his two numbered footnotes. Perhaps this is the best way forward to improve the article, as I guarentee you that nearly every thing you've put a tag beside is covered in that huge bibliography list.--feline1 16:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, I think the article right now is a bit too sympathetic to Velikovsky unapologetically assuming his maverick status, claiming that he made "predictions" that came true, and generally adopting an accomodationist tone that doesn't really belong in an encyclopedia. Velikovsky is notable because his ideas were rejected by the mainstream academy and accepted by a certain group of people who weren't in the mainstream academy. The tone of the article should be descriptive of Velikovsky's marginal status rather than adopting the overly-emotive language such as "astronomers floundering". Plait's tone, in my humble opinion, is closer to neutral than this article's tone except where he goes off in his colloquial diatribes (which can be referenced and described but shouldn't be used as a model for dispassionate writing).--ScienceApologist 16:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Well... it's "sympathetic" in that it doesn't indulge in ad hominem abuse, but not in the sense that it does categorically state that V's ideas have been disproven and rejected! I don't doubt there's still scope for improving the language but I think tightnening the referencing is more important. Astronomers *did* flounder, anyways, I watched 'em! :) - not least cos some of V's "predictions" did appear to "come true" in the public's eyes - that's why the AAAS had a conference about it to try and set things straight, and Sagan was reduced to making up childish strawmen about frogs raining down from Venus (?!) I am not very interested in Plait - he is a tertiary source, merely rehashing stuff from the 50s and 70s, with nothing new of his own apart from some new mistakes! it's not very helpful - moreover, undue weight should not be given to astronomy when debunking Velikovsky - Forrest's critique of his literary sources, and in particular Sach's demolition of his cunieform and Mewhinny's piece on the Al Arish tablets do vastly more damage that any quibblings about greenhouse effects...for example have you read the Sachs transcript? it's the very last link on the article page: unlike so many of the astronomical arguments, where you'll still find people arguing the details to this day, it utterly annhilates many of V's key uses of source material, and to my knowledge not one single rebuttal has been put forward in the last 42 years...--feline1 16:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Typical of some of the anti-science bias present in this milleu, you seem to be content that Sagan, Plait, etc. "floundered", made mistakes, and still debate Velikovsky's ideas when such is an obvious POV-interpretation. Velikovsky is noted in introductory astronomy classes for being a prime example of pseudoscience, and as Wikipedia is often used as a such a resource, we need to be very clear about his evaluation as such (his lack of training didn't help matter, neither). --ScienceApologist 17:35, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

That's not what I'm "content with" at all, you really seem to have a one-track mind with these things! Must you persist in perceiving people as your opponents and attributing them with bad faith and spam for brains? To clarify: Plait wasn't one of the astronomers I was referring to re: the "floundering" (that's talking about a particular set of exchanges with Velikovsky in magazines in the 50s & 60s, such as Harpers - all referenced in the article - a Prof. Stewart was one of the victims, as I recall - and it is a documented phenomenon). V's exchanges with Sagan demonstrably problematic and these two have been documented at length by commentators over the years all this is referenced in the article. I did read Plait's "Bad Astronomy" article on Velikovsky, but as I said, I didn't see any new criticisms of V's work in it (hardly surprising as V has been a little quiet with new ideas *to* criticise since his death in 1979!), but I did spot a few innaccuracies regarding what V actually wrote, so as such I'd view Plait as a tertiary source with little if anything to add to the whole affair............. the fact remains that Velikovsky wrote comparatively little on astronomy (around 20% of his output?), and even those ideas were almost entirely deduced from literary sources. Much of the behaviour of astronomers when critiqueing Velikovsky has been documented as problematic, and very little of their criticism was accepted straight off without a great deal of refutation and counter-refutation (again, go read the literature...) Conversely, critiques of V's literary and archeological material, which formed a much greater part of his output, have generally been much more devastating and unequivocable. Sachs probably provides the best example of this. We didn't hear one peep out of V in response. Ultimately, I don't believe there is much to disagree on: the end conclusion is still that "Velikovsky's theories have demonstrably been proven wrong" - however the article would be deeply flawed if it portrayed this as being all down to the US astronomy community (not least celebricty scientist Carl Sagan)- it is a notable strand in the "Velikovsky Affair" that the behaviour of the astronomy community was one of the main reasons that Velikovsky became a best-seller and celebrated cause on campuses in the first place...... --feline1 18:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ellenberger notes that "[Plait] is the first to explain why a Venus flyby where atmospheres touch would loose the Moon. And therefore the Moon's nearly circular orbit proves WiC did not happen"... to be honest, I'm half-sure I remember someone back in the 50s spluttering the same retort, but off the top of my head I couldn't tell you who...--feline1 19:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Problematic prose removed

I have removed problematic prose from the article. If anybody has any objections, enumerate them here. --ScienceApologist 22:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I have objections (whilst some of your edits are just trimming language that treads over the NPOV line. some of the things you have removed are important points of fact or content, others are things for which references were requested and I've been trying to get them for you all day, listing several suggestions on this talk page!) And why use pejorative labels like "editing out nonsense"? I do wish you'd take heed of the arbitration committee's admonitions regarding your conduct. However, he in the UK it is past my bedtime so I'll deal with this more tomorrow...--feline1 23:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted the changes by 216.125.49.252 for several reasons.

• This is clearly a controversial article. WP:BOLD tells us that "updating pages" does not mean that you should make large changes or deletions to long articles on complex, controversial subjects with long histories". This change clearly contravenes this guideline.
• The changes includes some serious abuses of NPOV, for example:

• "[Velikovsky] argued without analyzing scientific evidence or theories that electromagnetic effects played an important role in celestial mechanics." -- Unless there is a good references, the editor can't possible know whether this is accurate.
• ".. since Cosmos Without Gravitation contained pseudoscientific nonsense." -- Again, this is an appalling unsubstantiated statement of fact, and the editor should take the lead of ScienceApologist [4] and insist on attribution.

• Taken together, I feel this is the appropriate action, basing this on editors such as ScienceApologist who has reverted edits in other articles for similar reasons.[5] --Iantresman 23:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)