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Immanuel Velikovsky / Worlds in Collision

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Cult_of_Mana

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I'd like to know more about seismic and meteorological events that may have contributed to the collapse of megalithic cultures. Disease epidemics may have also played a part - passed on by passing seafarers perhaps.

Lets have some suggestions, no matter how kooky. My time is limited and I've still got a massive pile of books to wade through along with studies and work.

I'll start by mentioning the grandaddy of catastrophe - Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision. Velikovsky puts forward an explaination for the world-wide flood stories and the events surrounding the story of Exodus. I'll provide a precis later if someone would like more details or I'd be happy to delegate to Rynner as I know that he's familiar with Velikovsky.
 
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Velikovsky was quite far out as I remember.

If you look at the climate models for the last few thousand years, you will see a decline about a thousand years ago. I'd guess this would also have caused some things. Luckily it seems now to be going back to normal temps again.
 
Xanatic said:
Velikovsky was quite far out as I remember.
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He was very far out - he proposed that all the Biblical catasatrophes and major events could be explained by a comet coming out of Jupiter, skimming close to Earth, then turning into Venus (a curious theory for a devout Jew, as V. was). Carl Sagan devoted a section of one of his books to him, explaining exactly how and where he was wrong.
 
Annasdottir said:
...he proposed that all the Biblical catasatrophes and major events could be explained by a comet coming out of Jupiter, skimming close to Earth, then turning into Venus
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I must admit to enjoying Velikovsky's stuff - perhaps working on the assumption that someone who pisses off so many people can't be totally wrong!

Admittedly his planetary dynamics was a bit whacky, but some professiona astronomers also think that many of the strange things in ancient history could be descriptions of the passage and break up of a very large comet. (eg, Clube and Napier, "The Cosmic Serpent", and the "The Cosmic Winter". They are the first professionals I know who quoted Velikovsky's work favourably.)

The legend of Jupiter giving birth to Venus (from his forehead) is an old Greek myth, and may have been connected with a giant comet splitting up as it passed Jupiter, much as happened on a lesser scale with Shoemaker-Levy 9, and continuing into the inner solar system.

Marion: I remember the TV show you mentioned - there was also an associated book, which I remember getting from the library.
 
rynner said:
I must admit to enjoying Velikovsky's stuff - perhaps working on the assumption that someone who pisses off so many people can't be totally wrong!
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Oi, Rynner, let's get something straight here - you're the astronomer and skeptic, I'm the astrologer and gullible idiot!
 
Annasdottir said:
Oi, Rynner, let's get something straight here - you're the astronomer and skeptic, I'm the astrologer and gullible idiot!
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Skeptic? MOI! Je suis Bane of Skeptics!

I don't support all Velikovsky's ideas, but I found the academic rage that was directed against him very strange. (Ironically, if his critics had been less voluble, few people would have heard of V. - it was the notoriety that gave him the publicity and propelled him up the best-seller lists!)

People seemed to wilfully misunderstand him, claiming that he had a religious agenda, but I read most of his books and failed to detect it. I'm sure many of these critics had never read his work, and were simply quoting each other.

In fact, V. was researching a historical problem - why the histories of the Jews and the Egyptians don't seem to match up; names and events that were supposed to be contemporaneous hardly agreed in any of the details.

V. came to the conclusion that conventional Egyptian chronology was wrong (an idea that is now being pursued by others, based on archeological evidence). V. attempted to synchronise the histories by looking for records of large-scale ancient catastrophes, which might have been reported over a wide area, and his studies included Greek and other mythologies. And this is how he came to his (admittedly) strange theories. But his stuff is worth reading for the width of ancient history and legend covered, all well referenced.
 
My library angel has been hard at work for the last couple of weeks with all manner of things connected with the year 536AD.
As I mentioned in a previous post I have been re-reading “The Holy Kingdom” by Gilbert, Wilson and Blacket about the real King Arthur and how he was Welsh, (as most of us were in Britain at the time before the conquest). The parts that interested me most were about the 536AD “Yellow Pestilence” and how large numbers of Britains died or emigrated to the continent because of lack of food.
There are many ancient documents to back the claims. ...

Next, I come across a NASA classified scientific paper about Venus dated 1960 by – would you believe? the late, great, Carl Sagan written in 1960 (Two Unreleased Reports by Carl Sagan The memory Hole http://www.thememoryhole.org/) confirming what was denied at the time; namely the works of Velikovsky. Worlds in Collision, in 1950, He blamed past catastrophes on the close approach of the planet Venus and gave dates including the one of 540AD (The sixth century of the present era) as the last in the series. He also said that Venus was hot because it had been expelled from Jupiter and it’s observed high temperature was due to internal heat – hence the strange connection with the Sagan paper – that also says the same - and the fact that Sagan was one of his detractors. (See: Carl Sagan & Immanuel Velikovsky by Charles Ginenthal, 1995)

In the message board of the site below someone asks if this date “was mentioned by Igor” (Velikovsky) and is told that is the reason that mainstream scientists will not touch it.
Cambridge Conference Network - MORE ON THE AD 540 EVENT
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc061098.html

More at:
Jupiter gave birth to Uranus and Neptune http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/555473.stm

Etc.
 
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According to the papers Venus is hot due to a runaway greenhouse effect, not due to being expelled from Jupiter.

Sagan opposed Velikovsky because of Velikovsky's belief in Cosmic snooker within historical times, not because of the 'hot Venus' model.

In addition, Velikovsky had to do some horrible things by rewriting history as well revising astrophyics to make his theories even begin to work.

If there was a metor or impact around 540 CE that caused disruption to the climate, it's nothing to do with Velikovshy's model. Also the was an erution of Vesuvius around the same time (read your link) which could have contributed to climate disruption.
 
There is no suggestion whatever in Carl Sagan's paper that Venus was ejected by Jupiter, or that it was ever close to Earth, or that it had ever been a 'comet'.
Sagan did a rather good job of anticipating the high temperature of Venus from first principles; he was still a little over optimistic with respect to the water content of the atmosphere. Remember tha before Sagan's time Venus was often thought to be covered in water clouds and have a carbonated hot-water ocean, as depicted in C.S. Lewis's Perelandra.

Velikovsky's ideas were, and are, utterly impossible. Sagan got it right because he worked out realistically the past four billion years of Venus's history; if the events described by Velikovsky had ever happened they would have resulted in a compeletly different solar system. One without a Venus, for a start.
 
Not sure why this is in the new science' forum; it should be in the 'old and long discredited pseudoscience' forum.

But just try to imagine what would happen if Jupiter were to 'spit out' an object with the mass of Venus. In order to lift such a masss entirely free of Jupiter's two gees of gravity you would need to expend about 10e33 joules of energy; About the full power given out by the Sun in three or four full days concentrated on a small area of Jupiter's equator.

How long would this expulsion last? Jupiter rotates every ten hours; if the expulsuion of Venus lasted more than an hour or two that would mean it would be smeared out into an ever-widening spiral of white hot mass across the Solar System, as if you were spraying napalm from a rapidly rotating carousel.
And if the expulsion was short in duration, the energy invvolved would all be expelled at once- Jupiter would shine up to a hundred times as brightly as the Sun-
all the icy moons of Jupiter would melt and sublime away.

Sorry, it just couldn't happen.
 
Actually the idea of catastrophe in the study of ancient history is quite widespread in archaeology and ancient history studies today. The explosions of Tambora, Hecla, Vesuvius, Santorini, climate changes such as the Medieval Warm period /little Ice Age transition and the flooding of the Black Sea all add an element of catastrophism to the rich tapestry of events in the distant past.

Before Velikovsky started banging on about catastrophes the main events in human history were always considered to be cultural in nature. Nowadays there is plenty of evidence that ancient man, like modern man, was at the mercy of forces much greater than just culture. So he was right in a way- but he was just wrong about the causes of the catastrophe. (note that Santorini is a good candidate for much of the shenanigans in the natural world descibed in Worlds in Collision).
 
eburacum said:
Before Velikovsky started banging on about catastrophes the main events in human history were always considered to be cultural in nature. Nowadays there is plenty of evidence that ancient man, like modern man, was at the mercy of forces much greater than just culture. So he was right in a way- but he was just wrong about the causes of the catastrophe.
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Yes, he has been almost deliberately misunderstood.
His main interest was ancient history, but without an international calendar to synchronise events, it was difficult to understand the histories of different peoples because they all used their own time scales (usually based on which king ruled when X happened).

Veliskovsky realised that large natural catastrophes would have been experienced by many peoples, so his work was basically an attempt to synchronise history by linking together different accounts of what might have been the same events.

So his celestial mechanics were a bit imaginative, but they grew out of his other historical research. He didn't have the idea of cosmic snooker first, and then try to make history fit that theory.

A lot of his historical ideas about the anomalous datings of the kings of Egypt are being followed (without acknowledgement) by modern researchers.
 
According to the papers Venus is hot due to a runaway greenhouse effect, not due to being expelled from Jupiter.

Sagan opposed Velikovsky because of Velikovsky's belief in Cosmic snooker within historical times, not because of the 'hot Venus' model.

In addition, Velikovsky had to do some horrible things by rewriting history as well revising astrophyics to make his theories even begin to work.


I think you guys made good contributions to the thread; it was just the tone that I objected to.

It seemed condescending and I didn't want to see Almond13's feelings hurt
Don't wory about me I'm flame-proof
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I seem to have rattled your cage eburacum, what exactly is your problem? Do you want to destroy the reputation of the great man all over and then go on to steal his ideas as well?

Quo Vadis Velikovsky?

Or is it?
It’s rubbish
It may be interesting
I thought of it first

I read the book in the sixties and I must admit that I was a little confused. I then started to read the reactions of main stream scientists; people that I respected at the time. It was this that burst my bubble and I began to see science in a new light - me and a multitude of others. Then I read the book more closely......

“”There is no suggestion whatever in Carl Sagan's paper that Venus was ejected by Jupiter, or that it was ever close to Earth, or that it had ever been a 'comet'.””
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I don’t recall saying that Sagan said that; he is saying that the surface is the source of much of the heat and that’s all. As I remember this was part of the denial; or are we sanitising history now?

Jupiter gave birth to Uranus and Neptune http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/555473.stm

Is this the cosmic snooker that scares you so much?
It’s like Worlds in Collision II, the sequel.

As for rewriting history, this is whole new ball game that I will play at some later date. Again, the archaeologists don’t mind pinching his work.
It’s OK as long as you don’t mention that name.

Perelandra – Now there’s a thought

"It's like religion. Heresy [in science] is thought of as a bad thing,
whereas it should be just the opposite." - Dr. Thomas Gold


“You don't know what its like, I'm the one out there everyday putting his ass on the line, and I'm not out of order! You're out of order! The whole freakin' system is out of order! You want the Truth? You want the TRUTH?! YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!” – Homer Simpson
 
rynner said:
...

Yes, he has been almost deliberately misunderstood.
His main interest was ancient history, but without an international calendar to synchronise events, it was difficult to understand the histories of different peoples because they all used their own time scales (usually based on which king ruled when X happened).

...
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That reminds me, a bit, of the work of Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901), in more ways than one. Although, he was less of a scientist and more of a 'visionary'.

.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Donnelly

.....

Atlantis: The Antideluvian World (1882) "in which he attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from its high-Neolithic culture":

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4032 (Gutenberg E-Text)

.....

Ragnarok: The Age of fire and Gravel (1883) "in which he proposed that a comet hit the earth in prehistoric times and destroyed a high civilization.":

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5109 (Gutenberg E-Text)

:yeay:
 
Quote:
“”There is no suggestion whatever in Carl Sagan's paper that Venus was ejected by Jupiter, or that it was ever close to Earth, or that it had ever been a 'comet'.””


I don’t recall saying that Sagan said that; he is saying that the surface is the source of much of the heat and that’s all. As I remember this was part of the denial; or are we sanitising history now?
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Hmm.
Looking at your original post it looks as if you are claiming that Sagan was backing Velikovsky in a 'classified' (actually an unclassified) paper.

Try reading this paragraph again;

a NASA classified scientific paper about Venus dated 1960 by – would you believe? the late, great, Carl Sagan written in 1960 (Two Unreleased Reports by Carl Sagan The memory Hole http://www.thememoryhole.org/) confirming what was denied at the time; namely the works of Velikovsky. Worlds in Collision, in 1950, He blamed past catastrophes on the close approach of the planet Venus and gave dates including the one of 540AD (The sixth century of the present era) as the last in the series. He also said that Venus was hot because it had been expelled from Jupiter and it’s observed high temperature was due to internal heat – hence the strange connection with the Sagan paper – that also says the same - and the fact that Sagan was one of his detractors. (See: Carl Sagan & Immanuel Velikovsky by Charles Ginenthal, 1995)
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The ambiguity is in the word 'he', which you are using to refer to Velikovsky, but I read as refering to Sagan. Apparently a missaprehension.

Nevertheless, the events described by Velikovsky could not have happened as he described; he quite simply spoilt a good theory (catastrophism) by including some stuff he didn't understand and was outside his area of expertise.
 
I'm repeating myself when I mention that the astronomers Clube and Napier constructed a theory about the break-up of a large comet in the solar system during ancient times. This would have given rise to many strange sights in the skies, combined with some impact events on Earth, which would have been witnessed by early civilizations.

C & N's interpretation of many Velikovskian type events is backed by sound orbital dynamics, and they actually quote V. several times.

For more info, search here on 'Clube Napier' (posted by rynner), or better yet, read their books!
 
rynner said:
I'm repeating myself when I mention that the astronomers Clube and Napier constructed a theory about the break-up of a large comet in the solar system during ancient times. This would have given rise to many strange sights in the skies, combined with some impact events on Earth, which would have been witnessed by early civilizations.

C & N's interpretation of many Velikovskian type events is backed by sound orbital dynamics, and they actually quote V. several times.

For more info, search here on 'Clube Napier' (posted by rynner), or better yet, read their books!
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Must have missed it, last time around.

Thanks, Rynner! :)
 
Looking at your original post it looks as if you are claiming that Sagan was backing Velikovsky in a 'classified' (actually an unclassified) paper.

The ambiguity is in the word 'he', which you are using to refer to Velikovsky, but I read as referring to Sagan. Apparently a missaprehension.

Nevertheless, the events described by Velikovsky could not have happened as he described; he quite simply spoilt a good theory (catastrophism) by including some stuff he didn't understand and was outside his area of expertise.
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Abstract from the site below that is not Vel. orientated – there are hundreds of such pages.

“The Velikovsky symposium was the most popular event of the 1974 AAAS meeting, drawing a crowd of nearly 1500.
Velikovsky’s supporters took little satisfaction in the outcome. They had come expecting to hear a reasoned scientific discourse conducted among equals. Instead they were hit with Sagan’s debunking, aimed not at them but at the general public. As Leroy Ellenberger later wrote, “Sagan’s analysis of WIC was not designed to appeal to the interested, informed layman who was interested in Velikovsky, yet also amenable to a reasoned, valid critique. Sagan’s analysis contained errors in physics that were never corrected.”

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/v ... #Morrison2

It seems that Sagan didn’t understand either.

The fashion at the time among scientists and sceptics was to debunk the books without actually having read them. This trend seems to have continued up to the present day. The plain fact is that astronomers poo their pants at the mention of a serious discussion on the subject.
 
Sagan’s analysis contained errors in physics that were never corrected.”
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I have never read Sagan's 10 criticisms of Velikovsky; I see his number one objection is exactly the same as my own major objection.
From your link
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/v ... #Morrison2
Problem 1: The ejection of Venus by Jupiter. Velikovsky had not explained how or when the Venus-comet got loose on a planet-crossing orbit, but he did say it was ejected from the Jupiter system. (Later he would suggest that Jupiter split apart as a result of interactions with Saturn). Sagan analyzed a strawman in which Venus is ejected from Jupiter like a bullet shot from a cannon. He used a ROM calculation to show that the energy of such an expulsion is more than sufficient to melt the proto-Venus and probably to splatter it all over the solar system.
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exactly what I have said; it is such a glaring mistake in the 'theory' that anyone with a little knowledge of physics and astronomy can spot it a mile off.
But this is the response of the Velikovsky apologists;
Unfortunately, he used a slightly wrong value for the escape velocity from Jupiter. This did not invalidate his ROM argument, but it undercut the credibility of the entire exercise for the non-science audience, who usually expect calculations by scientists to be precise.
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Bolding mine. Note that the argument was not invalidated.

Well, I have to admit my own ROM calculation is even more imprecise, but it is enough to show that the energy required would be phenomenal and prohibitive. As for the idea that 'Jupiter split apart as a result of interactions with Saturn'; those two planets are four astronomical units apart at their closest approach; there is quite literally no way for them to interact sufficiently to produce the (rough order of magnitude) 10e33 joules required to lift Venus out of Jupiter's gravity field. Even if they exhange magnetic or electric energy or whatever nonsense Velikovsky might have dreamt up then the energy required remains the same.
 
I mostly agree with this statement from that link you gave;
some scientists were impressed by the historical references, but agreed that the science was bunk, while historians criticized the history and chronology, but thought that the “science” was exciting.
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I know the science is bunk, but find the historical stuff vaguely interesting, even innovative.
As I have said, 'coherent' catastrophism is much more acceptable in arcghaeology and ancient history nowadays; how much of that is due to Velikovsky I really can't say.
 
I just asked my wife, who is an archaeology graduate, if she thought that
the 'the history and chronology (in Velikovsky was wrong), but thought that the “science” was exciting'
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and she said 'No, he's just crap.'
O well...
 
and she said 'No, he's just crap.'
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Oh well if that’s what she says then that’s the last word on the subject?
I like the way you answer your own questions, are you a barrister by any chance?

As for Venus “splitting off” from Jupiter, this is something that I have never given any serious thought to and is a brand of knit picking. I don’t think the old boy actually said anything of the sort. As I remember it was the quote from some ancient writing – which I’m not going to look up – “Venus came from the head of Jupiter”. This could mean any number of things; it may have been a satellite or a wayward body that was caught in the influence of Jupiter’s gravity. This is typical of the type of criticism that he received at the time of the controversy. Velikovsky was human and no one except an astronomer would expect him to be anything else. I recall one such complaining that he had no results from what would have required his own personal radio telescope. This kind of “crap” does nothing to further knowledge and only emphasises the degree of insecurity that is endemic in the scientific community.


Just for your wife, bless her
http://www.thunderbolts.info/velikovsky-ghost.htm

The preeminent French archaeologist Claude Schaeffer certainly saw SOMETHING in Velikovsky's claims. Their communication spanned years. On the vital issue of dating ancient cultures, Schaefer wrote to Velikovsky, "You will be the first among those who get the information before my publication I am not concerned with opinions and chronological schemes, but only with the advance of our knowledge."
The distinguished Harvard historian Robert Pfeifer, former chairman of the Department of Semitic Languages at Harvard, showed a strong personal interest in Velikovsky's work and took personal initiative on his behalf. Well before the publication of Velikvosky's Ages in Chaos, Pfeiffer wrote in 1942, "I regard this work--provocative as it is--of fundamental importance." And in 1945: "I am firmly convinced that the publication of this book would be of immense value to historical studies."
Velikovsky's ability to anticipate scientific discovery produced a surprising statement from the renowned geologist Harry Hess, chairman of the Department of Geology at Princeton, with whom Velikovsky conversed continuously. In an open letter to Velikovsky in 1963, Hess wrote: "Some of these predictions were said to be impossible when you made them. All of them were predicted long before proof that they were correct came to hand. Conversely, I do not know of any specific prediction you made that has since been proven to be false. I suspect the merit lies in that you have a good basic background in the natural sciences and you are quite uninhibited by the prejudices and probability taboos which confine the thinking of most of us."
 
Well, with a bit of a foot in both camps, I can see where the archaeologists and the asronomers are coming from when they criticise Velikovsky. It is an utterly absurd idea to start making pronouncements about solar system dynamics purely on the basis of a few reports in ancient texts; the degrees of uncertainty are too large.
The people who wrote these texts often used poetic or religious language to descrive anything they saw; if they saw a comet in the vicinty of Jupiter that could become an object that 'came from the head of' Jupiter.

Basically we can't take any of these observations as being scientifically accurate; it is difficult enough corellating the names of Babylonian stars to their Greek, Arabic and modern day counterparts. Certainly these reports are interesting, but they are not detailed enough to cause a paradigm shift in astronomy, and I suspect they never can be.

Personally I am suspicious of a lot of archaeoastronomy- a lot of supposition and pattern recognition dressed up as science.
There is. for instance, a resemblance between the alignments of the Giza Pyramids (and of Thornborough) and the alignments of the stars in Orion's Belt; but it cannot be proved that this resemblance was deliberate.

And so it is with the observations referenced by Velikovsky. They are neither accurate or unambiguous, and certainly no basis for a new science of planetary dynamics.
 
nissemus said:
almond13 said:
Just for your wife, bless her
http://www.thunderbolts.info/velikovsky-ghost.htm
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That page contains a link to a discussion on plasma formations in rock art (it's more interesting than it sounds, and there are pictures!)
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Yes, it is interesting, and the inspiration behind rock art is largely unknown.
But beware!

from that page;
Plasma scientists are now comparing electrical discharge formations in the laboratory to rock art images around the world. Results in 2005 should confirm that immense and terrifying plasma configurations were seen in the sky of our ancestors.
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(my bolding)

Sorry, but this is not something that any amount of research in an electrical lab will ever 'confirm'. It is merely interesting supposition.
 
Personally I am suspicious of a lot of archaeoastronomy- a lot of supposition and pattern recognition dressed up as science.
There is. for instance, a resemblance between the alignments of the Giza Pyramids (and of Thornborough) and the alignments of the stars in Orion's Belt; but it cannot be proved that this resemblance was deliberate.

And so it is with the observations referenced by Velikovsky. They are neither accurate or unambiguous, and certainly no basis for a new science of planetary dynamics.
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Who let the Hancock crowd in? typical ploy of the seasoned debunker.
I would like to remind you that Velikovsky was a scientist in his own right, a friend of Einstein, whom he worked with at one point and asked advice from concerning his theories throughout the latter part of his life.
He was a respected psychologist.
Comparing him with the likes of the New Age scribblers is unfair and unworthy.
Are we no longer required to be honest when it comes to debunking?
 
I notice that you do not add 'friend of Freud' as well. But of course Freud's theories have been largely debunked themselves. I am afraid that being a respected psychologist in the early twentieth century is not really much of an accolade...
Together with his legal training, this background only qualifies him as a supreme bullshitter.
 
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