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*The Last Days of The Earth
**A Fear of The Dark and A Denial of The Unknown**
**A re-introduction to Victor Clube's _The Problem of Historical
Catastrophism_
by gary d. goodwin*

There aren't many that like to swim in the open ocean. It's dark and
cold - and full of sharks. And even though wandering in the wilderness
does indeed appeal to a few, it does remain dangerous. However, these
adventurers openly acknowledge the danger and make approriate
preparations prior to activities in these areas. Since the beginning of
The Millennium Group, we have been concerned about the issue of near
earth asteroids and comets. More specifically, that issue is the denial
by the status quo at NASA concerning the danger of literally thousands
of near earth and earth crossing asteroids and comets. This open
ignoring and even documented denial of the obvious has crippled our
ability to develope an adequate response to these sure-to-come
attackers. We have been robbed as a civilization of the appropriate time
to prepare ourselves.

It's incredible how we accept the Wild on earth to be filled with
danger, yet even with documented historical experience, we continue to
deny the dangers of space. The universe is not just a beautiful expanse
above our heads to behold, it is in reality a violent and unforgiving
frontier. Everyday brings more discoveries of earth crossing asteroids
and comets. Yet these speeding bullets that are zipping past our heads
are given less press coverage than the stock market. That surely doesn't
come as a shock to anyone, especially to those that read this page with
any regularity.

It has been suggested that if the truth were widely known about this
looming and impending danger, the stock market wouldn't exist very long
anyway. Afterall, who would invest in futures if there wasn't going to
be any? The stability of our society may just rest on the denial of
percieved chaos and the acceptance of these falsehoods. At least that's
what our government would have us believe. We've all been asked, or at
least pondered ourselves, what would I do if I knew that I would die
tommorrow? Would I go out and spend all of my money, would I take a
vacation to Hawaii, or would I try and climb Everest? For myself, I
would spend my last days with my family and friends! They are the most
important thing to me.

But the reasons for this denial appear pretty obvious. As long as we go
to our jobs, work hard, pay our taxes - stay locked into that prime
interest rate, the system rolls on. The rich get richer and the poor get
poorer. The focus of *their* existence - wealth, control and power is
maintained. The working class - the Smiths and Jones' of the world are
not a threat. But let me give our benefactors a few threatening words of
advice concerning that threat that will even bring them down - a threat
that is much more dangerous than myself and this webpage -

There are lions and tigers and bears out there.....

*THE PROBLEM OF** **HISTORICAL CATASTROPHISM*
*S.V.M. CLUBE*
*OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS, KEEBLE ROAD, OXFORD, UK &
ARRNAGH OBSERVATORY, COLLEGE HILL, ARRNAGH, UK *

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*First... A few Introductory Quotes from the following article:*

*"Thus, by seeking to suppress, ridicule, or eliminate the fear of
cosmic disaster (instead of seeking to explain its origin, nature and
dynamics), the purveyors of an elitist doctrine [NASA et al] come to be
merely the centrally placed advocates of a "modern enlightenment" which
prolongs widespread ignorance as to the actual nature of the cosmic and
terrestrial environments. Moreover by incorrectly claiming there is
nothing to worry about in the sky, these advocates cultivate an
intellectual and cultural climate of irrationality...The resulting risk
to civilization is nothing short of a scandal."*

*"The space age evidence for apocalyptic threats has already put limits
on the extent to which the principle of uniformitarianism can be
admitted. The scholarly issue at stake therefore is nothing less than
the survival of civilization in the face of such threats. However there
remains a particularly vehement tradition within modern scholarship
which not only seeks to eliminate apocalypticism from the course of
classical, medieval and modern history but also, as a consequence, seeks
to impose a highly distorted view of the cosmic environment upon the
untutored public."*

*"...modern astronomers and historians have been able to construct a
largely uneventful history for mankind which is in keeping with the
perceived absence of any future trauma [57]. Government and society can
take a good deal of comfort from this beguiling scheme, of course, but
the disintegration of comets is also an established physical property of
these objects [60] and it has been known for some thirty years that a
recent giant comet is necessary to explain the extreme over-abundance of
sub-cometary material in inner Solar System space [81]. It is clear that
the full implications of comets to society and civilization can no
longer be ignored."*

*"It is easy to understand, therefore, why many astrophysicists were
provoked by the writings of Velikovsky [78, 79] who, as a psychoanalyst,
was justifiably very interested in the origins of apocalypticism but who
unfortunately laid himself open to easy condemnation through his
advocacy of an irrelevant and certainly inadequate "planetary" theory
for some past comets. Normally, of course, astrophysicists would display
some forbearance in the presence of theoretical inadequacies of this
kind but, in this case, it was all too obvious that they had failed to
address the historical evidence for apocalypticism and were merely
intent on creating a cover for their own deficiencies."*

*CONCLUSION
It has been shown here that the approximately centennial rise and fall
of fireball streaming sometimes associated with Earth-approaching comets
or asteroids is also the historical source of apocalyptic "signs". This
streaming is a proxy for hazardous swarms of sub-cometary debris
representing a higher flux to Earth than normally conceded of bodies in
the mass range~10 12 -10 15 g. Largely overlooked since early modern
historical time (and even flatly proscribed by some authorities [113,
58]), this hazard appears most commonly to take the form of global
climatic recessions, involving high-level dust albeit low-level
multi-megaton explosions associated with the most robust debris are by
no means excluded. These recessions are a feature of the general flow of
"Taurid" material to Earth recorded in polar ice-cores and ocean
sediment-cores, now recognized as being responsible for a basic 5000
year doublecycle alternately producing global warming and global
cooling. During the course of the Enlightenment, mankind has singularly
failed to come to terms with this apparently centennial threat, having
become strangely preoccupied during the Space Age with a very much less
frequent threat (roughly a thousand times less frequent!) which is
directly due to comets and asteroids. Whether or not mankind recognizes
the approximately centennial threat is tantamount to choosing between
apocalyptic and antiapocalyptic outlooks on the environment. This
question as I have shown, is of deep historical and political
significance being intimately bound up with the origins of Christian
doctrine and with the elitist desire to perpetuate anti-apocalypticism
along with its appropriately distorted cosmological setting. In view of
the intellectual and cultural climate of irrationality which arises
thereby, it is a moot point whether mankind will meet the challenge
posed by this question before the next bout of apocalyptic terror
descends. Such a situation represents an intolerable risk to civilization. *

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*And Now... The Article:*

*SUMMARY**
Astronomers at the dawn of civilisation perceived danger in the sky and
society was notably unsettled [61]. Later, astronomers were to perceive
order in the cosmos and society was to become notably less unsettled.
The perception of danger never entirely disappeared however and there
was considerable pressure on astronomers by the elite of society to
uphold a model of the celestial environment in which celestial calm was
very much the order of the day. This pressure still exists and leads to
an elitist doctrine in which the biosphere's supposedly anti-apocalyptic
environment is an essential feature of the cosmological setting. The
latest version of this doctrine to acquire favour is largely the work of
a single, dominant, intellectual influence, namely that of J H Oort [64]
during the central years of the present century when there was a
critical break in the general administration of astronomical affairs due
to the Second World War. His unavoidable starting point, based upon the
most accurate orbital measurements available for comets, was the
cometary cloud around the Solar System and its critically valued
dynamical isotropy. To preserve this condition against any serious
perturbation, thereby avoiding any substantial changes in the near-
Earth cometary flux during the course of geological and human history,
there had to be very few stars moving slowly past the Sun. This
condition was readily upheld if the primary (or mainstream) circulation
of the Galactic disk was much the same as the observed (or so called
"standard") motion of spiral arm material in the solar v aconite. Oort
essentially preserved the required condition therefore by ignoring two
prominent asymmetries known to be present in the large-scale motion of
the disk. The first of these asymmetries, orthogonal to the Solar
Galactocentric axis, meant disregarding a set of potentially very
serious perturbations of the cometary cloud that would arise with a more
probable mainstream circulation which included the Sun. The second of
these asymmetries, along the Solar Galactocentric axis, meant
disregarding a potentially gross hubble parameter within the Galaxy in
absolute conflict with the standard cosmological redshift. These
deliberate evasions, never justified at the time nor since, have become
the established basis of a highly distorted cosmic environment which is
now systematically imposed upon the untutored public by uninformed
specialists and commentators with a view to upholding the
long-established anti-apocalyptic tradition. However these evasions are
no longer valid since a substantial population of nearby slow moving
stars has been detected by the Hipparcos Astrometry Satellite and
distant galaxies having purely cosmological redshifts evidently reveal
gross concentrations of the hubble parameter (known as "quanta") in the
vicinity of the intervening galaxies. By explaining rather than evading
the prominent asymmetries therefore, the motion of the local spiral arm
and the mainstream circulation of the disk are now clearly distinguished
and it becomes more probable that successive, centrally injected, "grand
design" spirals which condense into dark (or sub-stellar) bodies and
undergo dynamical friction through the disk are intermittently
replenishing the mainstream circulation. It follows in accordance with
the geological and historical records that the cometary cloud
perturbations giving rise to the near-Earth cometary flux are modulated
by a vertical oscillation of the Sun which is predominantly under the
influence of a "dark matter" mainstream circulation of the disk. It
turns out in effect that the biosphere's anti-apocalyptic environment
can no longer be preserved. Thus, by seeking to suppress ridicule or
eliminate the fear of cosmic disaster (instead of seeking to explain its
origin, nature and dynamics), the purveyors of an elitist doctrine come
to be merely the centrally placed advocates of a "modern enlightenment"
which prolongs widespread ignorance as to the actual nature of the
cosmic and terrestrial environments. Moreover by incorrectly claiming
there is nothing to worry about in the sky, these advocates cultivate an
intellectual and cultural climate of irrationality in which the socially
most damaging versions of apocalypticism and anti-apocalypticism (e.g.
fundamentalism and millenarianism), those involving an appeal to
mystical, incorporeal or spiritual influences in Nature, continue to
flourish. The resulting risk to civilization is nothing short of a scandal.*

*1. THE ANTI-APOCALYPTIC TRADITION**
The space age evidence for apocalyptic threats has already put limits on
the extent to which the principle of uniformitarianism can be admitted.
The scholarly issue at stake therefore is nothing less than the survival
of civilization in the face of such threats. However there remains a
particularly vehement tradition within modern scholarship which not only
seeks to eliminate apocalypticism from the course of classical, medieval
and modern history but also, as a consequence, seeks to impose a highly
distorted view of the cosmic environment upon the untutored public. This
tradition, to do with comets, is only less vehement amongst the public
at large on account of a general presumption, based on historical
precedent, that the anti-apocalyptic tradition will nevertheless
prevail. A 'scholarly' tradition under these circumstances which again
ceases to prevail can only be regarded as a 'scholastic' tradition in
due course. On the other hand, the public greatly values the freedoms
which have come with the achievements of science and the current
anti-apocalyptic tradition, in keeping with uniformitarianism, has been
an increasingly established feature of science since its seventeenth
century inception under the auspices of the Royal Society in England
[69]. This ultimately means that our understanding of planets, stars and
galaxies has broadly developed during the past three centuries without
any reference to apocalypticism and that the public does not therefore
fully appreciate the significance of comets. The reason for this
distortion was better understood during the early stages of
enlightenment when the anti-apocalyptic tradition was more clearly
perceived as a matter of political expediency. Even the Society's most
hallowed president Newton, for example, could only preserve his
scientific reputation by publishing a posthumous apocalyptic tract [62].
The point here is that a revived anti-apocalyptic tradition did then
prevail and was as much an imperial issue as a scholarly one, connecting
the aspirations of an emergent Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment with those of
Papist Rome and Hellenistic Greece. The tradition indeed can be traced
back at least two millennia to Alexandria, the main Near-Eastern conduit
through which the recorded knowledge of past apocalypticism first
reached the West, and to a then highly distorted (i.e. Aristotelian/
Ptolemaic) view of the cosmic environment which eventually needed all
the powers of a medieval witchhunt and Inquisition to keep in place. In
short, the history of Western civilization points to a continuous
tradition of anti-apocalypticism and distorted cosmology whose advocates
do become irrepressibly savage from time to time. This vehemence, it is
clear, marks a ready determination on the part of bourgeois society to
quell apocalypticism whenever it takes root. This mostly happens not
only on account of the successive revelations which cause cosmic
catastrophe to be anticipated (as the original Greek word implies) but
also on account of the highly degenerate condition into which society is
then commonly plunged as a result of its increasingly abject state of
terror. But while it is perhaps easy to understand that bourgeois
society might seek to impose a distorted view of the cosmic environment
for the purposes of avoiding a degenerate condition of society whenever
apocalypticism emerges, it is not so obvious in modern times that
mankind can afford to allow such distortions to be introduced when there
is a practical need to judge what should be done about the future state
of the cosmic environment. It would appear that there is a particularly
vehement tradition within modern scholarship which is no longer
required! The Greeks in fact were principally concerned to adapt eastern
knowledge to the needs of empire and were the first to press for an
essentially teleological account of apocalypticism which also carried
the assurance of ecumenical (i.e. Christian) rather than nationalistic
(i.e. Judaic) salvation. This priority is perhaps less certain nowadays
since similar ecumenical principles were developed by the Zoroastrians
[24] and the Greeks may have borrowed their ideas from another nation
with imperial ambitions (the Persians). One way or another, the Greeks
(i.e. the gnostics) ultimately took over a 2500 year old apocalyptic
record originating from Chaldea and critically introduced incorporeal
(i.e. spiritual) elements to what would otherwise have been a purely
corporeal (i.e. material) account of the cosmos. These ingredients would
eventually imply a tradition of anti-apocalypticism and distorted
cosmology founded upon a supposedly partisan, or "providential",
divinity. This "deus ex machina" ultimately served no deeper purpose
than a lucky mascot or guardian angel but as a pervasive influence
folded into the most obscure workings of the observable cosmos (see
gnostic cosmology in particular [80]), the reassurance on offer through
such sophistry evidently went beyond the everyday reach of bar-room
critics and provided an inherently stronger social glue in times of
urgent cosmological debate (note the acceptance of Christian cosmology
in particular by the Roman administration). As such, the tradition would
survive since it appeared to counter the otherwise terminal character of
the highly degenerate condition engendered by apocalypse, basically
removing core bourgeois societies at the heart of nations and empires
from contention. Indeed, such a tradition would understandably be
favoured by feudal "ancient regime" societies in the past. For the same
reason, it would also be favoured by the narrow elites of academe
business, military and government at the heart of democracies today. The
space age in other words, like past revelations, was bound to provoke a
traditionally vehement response albeit the latter was also bound to be
subdued to the extent that a suitably distorted cosmology remained
adequately entrenched. Historically of course these periods of complete
breakdown in society, often involving extreme hedonistic tendencies are
also characterized by extreme anti-apocalyptic tendencies e.g.
millenarianism. When these conditions arise, in the absence of a strong
grip on reality, perfunctory government is often given to placing a
wildly optimistic slant on the future state of the environment. Wise
government on the other hand, retaining a strong grip on reality, does
not reject apocalypticism per se. All the same, such government in the
past has frequently resorted to the likes of prayer, sacrifice and moral
exhortation in the presence of apocalyptic threats apparently in the
vain teleological belief such actions may have some direct influence on
the supposed powers that give rise to cosmic catastrophe. Nowadays
though, as long as teleology is expunged from science, the perceived
obligation on hard-headed government is more to take such practical
measures as are within its scope both to avert such catastrophe and to
mitigate its effects. The main requirements evidently are (a) a proper
understanding of the apocalyptic process, past and future; (b) a proper
acknowledgment of its utter pertinence; and (c) such preparations as are
essential to face up to the likely form future apocalypticism will take.
Stages (b) and (c) are of course still barely with us at the present
time and the dual purpose of this presentation, with (a) particularly in
mind, is (i) to focus upon the perceived problem of cosmic catastrophism
during the past 2000 years, and (ii) to outline its most probable
explication in terms of the latest giant comet from "deep space" to
penetrate and settle in the inner Solar System (i.e. our understanding
of the world around us (and our reaction to it) is limited to a greater
or lesser extent by certain conventions and paradigms which may, for
example, cause us to downgrade historical facts at the expense of
scientific facts, or vice versa, to the potential detriment of society
generally. The modern tendency in fact is to write apocalypticism out of
cosmology altogether with the result that neither government nor society
has much awareness of the history of interaction between our planet and
the cosmic environment. Indeed it is no longer widely appreciated that
apocalypticism has always been the paramount perception since the dawn
of civili-zation (i.e. since cuneiform records began) and that, while
the Roman Catholic Church (in line with gnostic teaching generally)
sought to impose an anti-apocalyptic outlook from about the second
century AD onwards, its successful imposition was only spasmodic and not
finally achieved until the European Enlightenment ca 1650-1850 AD. As it
happens, it was during this period that the balance of opinion in favour
of apocalypticism rather than anti-apocalypticism was finally reversed.
Thus we now recognise three critical interludes of revived
apocalypticism and extreme social upheaval during the course of modern
global history (ca 1650, ca 1790, ca 1850) when those who would emerge
to fashion the antiapocalyptic environment and its cosmological setting
would find it necessary to invoke a material cosmos and yet keep
mystical, incorporeal or spiritual influences in place. The fundamental
empirical fact to be recognized here nevertheless is a disintegration
and collapse of society as a result of celestial traumatization which
has been a seriously recurring problem throughout the course of history
[23]. The traumatization commonly involves a perception that the "last
days" are at hand or that the "end of the world" is coming. The
association of this problem with prophecy based on revelation is of
course well known [72]. However, in so far as the relevant astronomical
knowledge is usually limited to a very small group of experts with<
relatively little historical knowledge, and vice versa, there has been
and still is a very strong tendency to associate such prophecy more or
less exclusively with comets [73]. This unfortunately results in a
grossly simplified perception as to the general nature of revelation,
causing the whole issue to become hopelessly clouded and seriously
misunderstood in modern times. Thus despite the major technological
advances which have taken place during the course of the twentieth
century, it can hardly be said that civilization is any the less at risk
on account of the apocalyptic process.*

*3. THE INTERRUPTION OF HISTORY BY REVELATIONS**
Fear to the point of absolute terror as a consequence of revelation,
then, has been a feature of certain periods during the course of history
when, as a result of specific observed phenomena in the sky, it was
accepted that a cosmic catastrophe was imminent. Although these
occasions did not necessarily materialize locally in the form that was
ultimately feared, this was evidently not regarded as a serious
reflection on the quality of the prediction since a longer term
regularity in cosmic affairs was also widely perceived which meant that
society as a whole would undoubtedly experience a calamitous cosmic
bombardment at some stage in the possibly not so distant future. Thus
historians of the Christian era whose ideas can now be traced back
through Hellenism and Judaism to as early a source as Zoroaster during
the second millennium BC [24], for example would clearly characterize
history by a sequence of lesser upheavals at intervals of a few
centuries and by more serious upheavals at longer intervals of one or
several millennia. This "millennial" perspective on the historical
continuum was of course to be further modified in the hands of
teleologically minded anti-apocalypticists who, as "millenarians", would
be inclined to see their time or that following the next upheaval as a
final, divinely ordained millennium. This overall perception of the
physical environment has in fact been deeply ingrained in the general
consciousness of Western civilization and has substantially weakened
only during the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries AD. It
does not follow of course that the past perception is therefore
necessarily correct but no more is our present point of view validated
by ignoring the past perception. In accordance with this overall
perception the underlying or essential reality of the evidently
terrifying process described in the Christian Book of Revelation was
never seriously in doubt. However the precise sequence of events
relating to the successive upheavals has undergone several modifications
during the course of history, no doubt reflecting the difficulty our
ancestors had in determining the precise celestial process. One notes
for example that the Book of Revelation is a product of the latter half
of the first century AD being the accepted Christianized version of the
previously existing Jewish Book of Daniel. The latter was originally
composed during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BC and
underwent considerable revision during the Antiochan persecution in the
second century BC before its adoption by the Christian movement at the
turn of the millennium. This recurring interest in apocalypse evidently
corresponds to new periods of revelation and a quickening sense of
foreboding throughout the civilized nations of the Near East and the
Mediterranean [68] which was eventually perceived as reaching some kind
of nadir [75] during a new and rather serious period of revelation
coupled with the fifth century decline and fall of the Roman Empire [7].
This period of revelation appeared sufficiently serious for a time
thereafter to be taken to mark the start of a new world calendar (i.e.
with 0 AM I = 500 AD), but the turn of events marking the subsequently
perceived relationship between Rome's successor civilization in the West
and its cosmic environment, after considerable dispute and a father
"false start" (i.e. with 0 AM II = 600 AD), was not officially resolved
until the adoption of the Christian calendar in 800 AD, supposedly with
the ultimate Christian millennium by then well advanced [74]. Even then
the pattern of events remained uncertain and with the arrival of further
significant periods of revelation during the eleventh and fifteenth
centuries AD, the pace of expectation quickened remarkably during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with increasingly serious attempts
to establish when the final cosmic bombardment was due [76, 5O, 37].
These efforts culminated with the supposedly definitive studies of
revelation by Newton [8] only to be more or less immediately abandoned
by the whiggish ascendancy in England; then by its counterparts in
Anglo-Saxon America at the end of the eighteenth century AD and in the
rest of Europe towards the middle of the nineteenth century AD (see
Section 6 below). By this time, there was widespread appreciation of the
fact that each period of revelation provoked a revival of historical
knowledge and future prognostication based upon the records of earlier
revelations. Thus the Book of Daniel took its lead in many respects from
the Book of Jubilees, often attributed to Moses, and from the even
earlier First Book of Enoch attributed to a patriarch around the
beginning of the second millennium BC [24]. It follows that the Book of
Revelation was widely seen as preparing the way for a major celestial
bombardment some time beyond 100 AD in accordance with a past experience
which involved both a significant revelation and a global catastrophe
during the third millennium BC and a series of lesser revelations since
which was chronicled by the Jewish Old Testament (covering some
2000-2500 years in modest detail) and the Christian New Testament
(covering the subsequent 50 years in great detail). As it turned out,
Christians were not the only ones by the fifth century AD to be
convinced of an impending catastrophe and of the need to prepare for the
final millennium [23]. Thus it was during this period and its lengthy
aftermath that successive waves of invaders (barbarians and Vikings)
penetrated the Roman Empire and settled in the so-called "deserted
lands". These arose under conditions that were evidently alarming enough
to be perceived as indicating the arrival of the forthcoming millennium
[31]. These invaders, as often as not, were confronted only by an
imperial administration whose appeal to Christian principle meant
turning a blind eye to powerful squatters. By such means the Holy Roman
Empire emerged, making up a patchwork of territories under the control
of aristocracies naturally inclined to cooperate in the application of
Christian principles. It has to be appreciated of course that while the
ancient testaments provided a record of dramatic historical events
(including revelations) by way of illustrating how the long interaction
between cosmos and mankind affected a particular people, the main
contemporary purpose of the testaments was to achieve a standard of
social behaviour throughout Western Europe in the continued presence of
such events that not only matched the intentions of a supposed cosmic
authority but sustained the pre-eminence of an original Roman
administration by appealing to its corresponding human authority and to
its apostolic succession. It is reasonable to suppose these more secular
aspects of "Christian policy" would have been of at least as much
significance as the perceived teleological aspects of revelation. Thus
the Holy Roman Empire to be originally moulded in association with
"barbarian" aristocrats by 800 AD was to be penetrated and further
moulded in association with "Viking" aristocrats, thereby laying the
foundation for a deeply schismatic Christian church in the West whose
Protestant and Catholic establishments increasingly polarised around
doctrinal issues to do with the nature and purpose of revelations.
Indeed there is little reason to doubt that Newton, for example, would
have seen himself as but the latest in a long line of European
scholars-still essentially within the general ambit of the Holy Roman
Empire-who sought to give physical meaning to revelations both before
and since the decline and fall of Rome itself (see Section 8). To
separate out issues of secular power and teleological catastrophism thus
is to do not so much more than Seneca did for the Roman people when he
drew upon the knowledge and experience of their Greek and Etruscan
neighbours and presented his analysis of the situation around the same
time as the author of the Book of Revelation. Seneca's great fame is
that of a philosopher and adviser at the very heart of the Roman Empire
during its ascendancy. He has been described as one who "disapproved of
the world in which he lived [while playing] a leading role in it, as was
appropriate for a tough Roman pragmatist" [25]. Whilst addressing the
Natural Questions perceived to be of the greatest public significance,
starting with "Lights in the Sky", he was to emphasise the two branches
of knowledge, moral philosophy and cosmology, which in his opinion
evidently mattered most to mankind: "one teaches us what ought to be
done on Earth, the other what is done in heaven". It evidently followed
that "the mind possesses the full and complete benefit of its human
existence only when its spurns all evil, seeks the lofty and the deep,
and enters the innermost secrets of Nature". There can be little doubt
that the principal focus of Seneca's attention prompting such
pronouncements was the longer term regularity (i.e. fixed intervals)
that emerged in the observed incidence of a particular celestial
phenomenon which corresponded to the unveiling of "advanced
announcements of death by the universe". The celestial phenomenon
involved is evidently the multiple incidence of "fiery shapes or
so-called boards, balls, torches and blazes", various categories of what
have later been classified as "blazing stars", "providences" or
"fireballs" and which can now only be attributed to the hosts of defunct
cometary debris which are intermittently encountered by our planet (see
below). It is well known of course that the "fireball" phenomenon is not
intrinsically dangerous and it is clear that Seneca looked upon these
serious occurrences as involving rather modest "lightning bolts" which
did us no harm. This however was not to deny their significance for the
explicit warning provided by a regular series of such events was that of
further events involving quite extreme fireballs which might sometimes
bring about some good by causing damage to another party. Modest bolts
did not therefore exclude the possibility of mightier bolts at the next
occurrence in a revealed series of occurrences. Specifically relying
upon the knowledge of the Etruscans, Seneca was evidently aware of far
more calamitous bolts such as would "destroy whatever it strikes and,
particularly, alter the state of private and public affairs".
Revelation, it is clear, presented the possibility of large scale
destruction but Seneca is at pains to provide relief for his oppressed
fellow citizens by placing a positive slant on such happenings e.g. by
setting an example through stoical resolve in the presence of such
menace and by emphasising only the possibility of harm to others. This
apparent tendency towards deviousness to place a positive (or
teleological) slant on catastrophe, to pour oil on what otherwise might
be seen in wholly negative terms, to impose order on chaos, to override
cosmological action with public morality, was evidently as much at home
amidst the imperial ambitions of Augustan Rome as amidst those of
Alexandrian Greece. The Greek approach to the problem however, as we
shall see (Section 8), was altogether more subtle. It is perhaps
interesting to reflect that both Seneca and Newton attained academic
distinction through their ability to place comets and fireballs in
clearer perspective than their predecessors. Both furthered their
careers and influence as thinkers and advisers at the heart of fledgling
empires in their ascendancy. Both went on to write at length on the
matter of lights in the sky and what they revealed. In both cases, the
new glimmer of celestial understanding was to be set aside while the new
parsimony which had expressed itself nationally in stoical and
puritanical resolve was to be abandoned in favour of a liberal outlook
and the new cosmically untroubled mil-lennium.*

*4. NEAR-MISS COMETS AND THEIR APOCALYPTIC HOSTS**
The facts of revelation tell us there are few grounds for sing the
leaders of nations and empires in the past, together with their advisers
(astronomers), were in the habit of regarding encounters with comets as
either the only or the most likely celestial threat to civilization.
Ordinary comets do of course happen to be the commonest independent
bodies of interplanetary space to be readily seen from Earth as well as
being the smallest independent bodies (at typical speeds of encounter
with the Earth) capable of producing globally significant damage. It is
certainly permissible therefore to suppose that perhaps one or even two
cometary disasters of global extent may have chanced to be widely
observed, experienced and remembered since the dawn of civilization i.e.
during the past 5000 years. However active comets do not normally strike
the Earth more than once per~l0 7 years and even defunct comets and
asteroids, which were never readily seen in the past and which are still
considered therefore to be irrelevant, do not normally strike the Earth
more than once per~10 5 years. It follows that it is really quite
implausible to suppose that direct cometary encounters could have
continued for millennia to be perceived as a common apocalyptic threat;
or that direct asteroidal encounters will be so perceived today. On the
other hand, comets which travel in association with defunct or invisible
subcometary debris and whose orbits are such as to bring about an
occasional close passage by the Earth may give rise to lesser
apocalyptic events whose effects are less likely to be global in extent.
Under these circumstances, the range of phenomena known as blazing
stars, providences or fireballs will sometimes be associated with
cometary apparitions and it would be reasonable-without any knowledge of
cometary orbits-to regard all comets as potential "signs" of impending
disaster. Historical comets would then have sustained a public awareness
of apocalypse just as their specific calculated influence nowadays tends
to sustain the reverse! More interestingly though, any concentration or
host of similar sub-cometary debris (with or without its parent comet)
in suitably periodic orbits commensurable with the Earth-i.e. permitting
the repetition and prediction of such encounters-would be justifiably
regarded as an even more pressing apocalyptic threat than a random
comet. Contrary therefore to a general impression which seems to have
arisen in the aftermath of Halley and Newton's findings during the
seventeenth century, although the perceived threat from comets was then
considerably reduced, the sub-cometary apocalyptic threat still remained
very much in place. Indeed, if the perception of cometary "signs" was
essentially rational, it is most likely to be explained in terms of a
valid sub-cometary apocalyptic threat involving a host of debris. In
spite of these fairly obvious facts however, and notwithstanding the
modern evaluation of encounter frequencies based on impact craters, some
astronomers in modern times have continued to identify what might be
called a significant low frequency/high energy "apocalyptic threat" as
the one which now justifies the development of a full survey programme
to discover all the potential near-Earth objects of cometary and
asteroidal size ([157;cf 35]). It seems that they regard the nearest of
these objects in future (say, during the next century) as the individual
hazards requiring possible preemptive elimination on the grounds that
their orbits would be too close for comfort! Neither governments nor
public have been particularly impressed however by the suggested urgency
of such a project since the presumed frequency of actual encounters of
this kind is still low. Indeed it is clear that the primary factor of
concern in relation to these near passages in the near future is not at
all the likelihood of a directly or asteroidal encounter but the
likelihood of a sub-cometary or sub-asteroidal apocalyptic threat
arising in conjunction with a relatively nearby "sign". By failing to
take account of this matter of historical perception, therefore, these
astronomers have failed to appreciate a basic reason for conducting the
survey and the project has been seriously undersold. A similarly
perverse consequence of this confusion over "low frequency" apocalyptic
threats is the belief that the historical fear of comets [36] is trivial
on account of its being based on an inaccurate or primitive
determination of the hazard's frequency. There is no justification for
this view which is evidently based on a profound ignorance of history.
Indeed the comparative absence of any direct damage from comets has
almost certainly been generally accepted since the beginnings of
Sumerian civilization ca 5000 BP. This was probably well understood by
Newton 300 years ago though not, as it happens, by his distinguished
acolytes Halley and Whiston [15]. If then we credit the leaders of
significant nations and their leaders in the past with the historical
understanding that is realistically their due and if we accept the
frequency with which nations and empires have been seriously traumatized
in the past (see below), then it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that
the sub-cometary apocalyptic threat must have been the one generally
perceived. We do not have far to look in order to quantify this threat.
We need only consider the independent bodies of interplanetary space at
least 10 times smaller in linear size than ordinary comets and capable
of causing biospheric damage on the scale of nations and empires (i.e.
with the potential to produce multimegaton events), and those at least
100 times smaller than ordinary comets and capable of producing harmless
atmospheric fireballs around the globe (i.e. with the potential to
generate multikiloton events). Neither of these categories of
interplanetary body is ever readily seen in space and so our
understanding of such objects is very largely derived through the
recorded encounters with our and other planets and their satellites.
Based on the Tunguska and Shoemaker-Levy events this century for
example, and the integral flux of such bodies recorded by Lunar craters
formed during the course of Earth history, the average global rate of
such encounters causing damage on the scale of nations and empires is on
the order of about one per century. This however is a simple long-term
average which does not do justice to the known disintegration of comets
and the actual swarms of debris that give rise to apocalypticism. If
most of this debris originates from giant comets and we take account of
the known variations in the cometary flux during galactic and human
history [22] then the integral flux during apocalyptic spells is more on
the order of about one per decade to one per year. This rate is unlikely
to be overestimated especially if we extend our perception of cometary
hazards beyond simple explosive effects. First, it is often in the
nature of cometary material to retain its (porous) physical structure
whilst undergoing slow devolatilisation in space. Secondly, such
interplanetary bodies having a mass sufficient to produce multimegaton
events close to the ground can also be so fragile as to undergo
premature disintegration during the final approach to Earth [33]. Under
these circumstances there is something of a global threat to
civilization since the incident dust resulting from such premature
disintegration may in turn rapidly envelop the Earth, and a temporary
veil (lasting years to decades) may then have a significant influence on
the climate [19]. When the premature disintegration results in
exceptionally fine particles, there is also the possibility of complex
cometary chemicals surviving entry to give rise directly to virulent
biospheric damage[42] albeit the study of such effects must still be
regarded as being in its infancy. If the bulk of these characteristic
events is cometary in origin (necessarily reflecting the history of
hierarchical disintegration which we associate with the largest cometary
bodies settling in inner Solar System space), then it is easy to see
why, after all, historical comets were feared. It follows directly from
the process of hierarchical disintegration that the incoming celestial
bodies to Earth must often be highly bunched in space; and especially so
if, as the constitution of cometary dust indicates, they happen to be
not particularly robust on account of recent devolatilisation. A near
miss by an ordinary comet may therefore virtually guarantee a direct
encounter with a significant sub-cometary body and produce damage on the
scale of nations or empires. The probability of an encounter with a
significant sub-cometary body is itself measurably enhanced when its
orbital period is commensurable with the Earth's and the associated
swarm of extreme sub-cometary fragments resulting also from
disintegration is repeatedly encountered by the Earth so as to produce
typical showers of ordinary atmospheric fireballs. In the latter
instance of course we can also take it that the originating comet is
either defunct or completely fragmented. Whichever is the case,
encounters with such swarms of extreme sub-cometary debris are in fact a
common feature of terrestrial history and occur in batches every other
century or so [1O, 17]. Herein lies the principal apocalyptic threat
already discussed and the primary reason now for an observational
programme to search out all the defunct comets likely to approach
near-Earth space. This issue can be viewed from another perspective.
Astronomers now calculate on the basis of several hundred Earth-crossing
asteroids and defunct comets which have been detected during the Space
Age (mostly, in fact, within the last decade) that there are several
thousand such bodies yet to be discovered. Up to 10 per cent or so of
these objects on present reckoning may be derived from the latest giant
comet to undergo hierarchical disintegration in inner Solar System space
and are believed to be associated with the so-called Taurid meteoroid
stream "complex" [19, 6, 70]. Originally identified this century as a
clutch of short-period, low inclination, highly eccentric meteor streams
extending over a sector of cis-Jovian space, whose orbital tracks
directed to and from perihelion are concentrated within a couple of
months centered on early November and late June respectively, the Taurid
complex is now known to comprise a full range of sub-cometary or
meteoroidal debris, most of which is defunct. The "giant comet" source
has by now virtually disappeared since the hierarchical disintegration
is a rapid process, comically speaking. Indeed the hundred or so objects
which the stated 10 per cent or so represent cannot themselves be
regarded as much of a threat to civilization since they strike the Earth
at the rate of about once per~10 6 years and are therefore likely to be
removed by continuing disintegration before any such collision occurs!
On the other hand, this hundred or so objects from a system undergoing
hierarchical disintegration is bound to be associated with many more
such objects which have themselves already undergone fragmentation and
which continue to exist individually as coherent batches or hosts of
sub-cometary debris. Earth "pseudo-encounters" with the unoccupied
centers of these hosts which make up the bulk of the Taurid complex are
thus likely to be occurring at the rate of about once per~10 5 years.
This rate is to be compared with the ordinary penetration of such hosts
which seems to be occurring at the rate of about once per~10 2 years.
The implication is that any Taurid host with a source which either does
or does not any longer exist and which passes within about 300,000
kilometers of the Earth, roughly three quarters of the distance to the
Moon, is potentially an apocalyptic threat. This calculation is
necessarily crude at the present time due to the absence of any
Spaceguard programme [57] to improve its precision, but the distance of
nearest approach during recent close passages by near-Earth objects [13]
does appear to indicate the "lunar sphere" may well be critical so far
as the typical batches of encounters with individual hosts are
concerned. In other words, it would not be surprising now if the
discovery of a new asteroid in the Taurid complex which passes between
the Earth and Moon also coincides with the revelation of a batch of
encounters with its host of subcometary debris. Indeed if one encounter
with such a batch were relatively close to the defunct cometary source,
one might well expect to observe the latter's ghostly passage from
horizon to horizon in association with a faintly luminous tail amidst
the occasional blazes of light across the sky as otherwise invisible
host members encounter the Earth's atmosphere and produce fireballs. The
characteristic feature of each such batch is an individual host of
sub-cometary (or subasteroidal) debris in elliptical orbit around the
Sun which is repeatedly and regularly intercepted by the Earth over a
timesscale of about a century, anything say between 50 and 150 years.
Such interceptions are likely to be in accordance fairly frequently with
a simple orbital commensurability between the host and the earth e.g. at
intervals of 13, 10 or 7 years, say, such as are associated with typical
meteoroids with orbital periods of 3 1 / 4 , 3 1 / 3 or 3 1 / 2 years
respectively. Such patterns of encounter, limited by a near
commensurability and by a traverse time due to relative orbital
precession between the host and the Earth will evidently result in
repeated enhancements in the observed flux of fireballs and constitute a
typical revelation. In such instances there is really no question as to
the fact of possible encounters with larger meteoroids in the near
future, only uncertainty as to the location, magnitude and frequency of
devastation. The fear of apocalypse of course will be engendered by
expert opinion which will naturally be encouraged to provide its most
accurate assessment (necessarily uncertain!) of the realistic risk.
Apocalyptic fear in other words is not ordinarily driven by charlatans
and will inevitably continue until at least the peak density of the
meteoroidal host has been traversed. The extreme subcometary bodies are
not in themselves dangerous of course (cf Section 3) since they produce
only relatively weak fireballs or clouds of dust and chemicals very high
in the atmosphere. They nevertheless signify the presence of a
proportion of ordinary sub-cometary bodies capable of producing very
much more powerful fireballs closer to the surface of the Earth (i.e. at
the level of multimegaton events) and high-level dust- veils severely
influencing global climate. Let us recapitulate here. By failing to
recognise revelations and the apocalyptic record (Section 3) and by
failing to consider their potentially rapid disintegration when
reflecting on the effects of asteroids and defunct comets (Section 4),
modern astronomers and historians have been able to construct a largely
uneventful history for mankind which is in keeping with the perceived
absence of any future trauma [57]. Government and society can take a
good deal of comfort from this beguiling scheme, of course, but the
disintegration of comets is also an established physical property of
these objects [60] and it has been known for some thirty years that a
recent giant comet is necessary to explain the extreme over-abundance of
sub-cometary material in inner Solar System space [81]. It is clear that
the full implications of comets to society and civilization can no
longer be ignored.*

*5. HOSTS OF VARYING DEGREE**
Modern governments and their advisers (astronomers) are familiar enough
with the situation that prevails during the normal course of events when
there is no celestial threat. Thus it is well known that monastic and
suicidal escapism will from time to time overtake millenarian sects and
their like in a variety of disturbing forms. The escapism though
commonly arises among highly rational and well organized societies which
dissociate themselves from the mainstream on grounds which often seem at
first to be acceptable within the normal standards of tolerance and
freedom. Under these circumstances the mainstream authority is clearly
expected to give only a suitably proportionate response to any deviation
from civilized custom that arises and a mere tendency towards escapism
is not of itself likely to be the signal for any decisive action.
However the "kneejerk" character of most of the official reaction which
ensues when a deviation is no longer perceived to be acceptable can
often be more disturbing than the deviation itself and a situation can
therefore arise in which the supposedly principal stabilizing influence
within society (its government) does in fact become its principal
destabilizing influence. Even on a limited scale, when there is no
celestial threat, this turn of events adequately illustrates the nature
of the problem confronted by mankind [74]. Indeed governments and their
advisers are evidently not very familiar with the documented occasions
during the course of history when mass escapism very clearly arose and
it is obvious therefore that there can be few grounds for confidence
regarding the likely official response when such occasions arise again
in future. The point here is that there have been frequent occasions in
the past when it is clear that virtually the whole population has been
concerned as to the accuracy of an apocalyptic prediction and has
undergone widespread social disintegration-even to the extent that all
semblance of political control was lost and overlordship soon passed to
an alternative national or foreign authority [23]. It is very hard to
believe an uninformed government will have any success in future
confronting mass escapism when apocalypticism once again appears. At the
heart of these severe social breakdowns there clearly emerge deep
theological concerns and it is a matter of historical fact that
contemporary analysts often seek to alleviate the celestial
traumatization of nations by propounding explanations of the revelations
which offer some degree of emotional release from the danger (often
known as "soothsaying" in the past). Two primary explanations seem to be
dominant (see below). Both evidently start from the assumption that one
is dealing with a manifestly obvious phenomenon. On the one hand it is
claimed that the danger is selective and will not apply to "chosen
people" (the doctrine of predestination), on the other hand it is
claimed that the danger is more apparent than real or that the manifest
phenomena are of a spiritual or disembodied character, and are not to be
likened to the behaviour of ordinary matter (the doctrine of
providence). The recourse to such desperate expedients, seemingly
attractive to the intellectual class [23], is by no means guaranteed to
succeed and the debate is usually left unresolved. Nevertheless the
debates clearly arise in the context of apocalyptic host encounters and
commonly degenerate into a state of civil unrest and revolution if not
outright war. The resulting pattern of secular historiography implied by
the successive batches of encounters with such hosts, admitting a
stepfunction in the evolutionary response of civilization, evidently
allows for the periods of eschatological concern which are known to
punctuate the course of history [12]. Even at the best of times, of
course, it is normal for nations to engage in war and we cannot
necessarily expect that the correlation perceived here between
apocalyptic/climatological events and their social consequences will be
unalloyed by such consequences due to other factors. Nevertheless the
tendency to civil unrest under specific, extreme, environmental
conditions may will be so decisive as to raise the question whether
these critical junctures in history when the reins of power are
otherwise unaccountably relinquished in favour of new regimes (e.g.
165O, 1790 and 1850) are also associated with general depressions in
global temperature (i.e. mini-ice ages) as expected. To explore this
pattern of history further we need to clothe our astrophysical model
with a bit more detail. Much hangs, it would now appear, on the actual
number of multimegaton airbursts or severe dust-veils which occur around
the globe in association with typical meteoroidal hosts. For, let us
say, ~100 such incidents in as many year (~75 over the ocean), almost
every nation around the "glob" is likely to be directly or indirectly
affected by a localized and/or global catastrophe tending to compound
and exaggerate the local effects of traumatization through physical
destruction and demographic loss e.g. by the enforced movement of whole
peoples. Indeed we might expect that the civilizations associated with
the largest empires under tines. circumstances will tend to collapse or,
at best, metamorphose. On the other hand, for ~10 such incidents during;
similar period of time (~7 over the ocean), large groups of nations
around the globe will not be affected by localized catastrophes thereby
limiting many peoples to the effects of traumatization alone, possibly
allowing many nations to remain in a state of relative equilibrium-even
to the extent of permitting large empires to consolidate once again. It
follows then that a history of successive encounters with ordinary
apocalyptic hosts which includes occasional encounters with more
substantial hosts might impose; sequence of repeated national
traumatizations interspersed with an occasional massive global collapse
of civilization This amounts to a pattern of history in which
civilization repeatedly undergo "Dark Age" declines widely separated in
time whilst also displaying a subsequent tendency toward the regrouping
of nations during the millennial aftermath of "Dark Ages" which leads to
the fashioning of new empire, and civilizations. Indeed, we might even
consider a history of this kind to apply to the fifth century collapse
of the Roman Empire and the subsequent "recovery" of Western
civilization in its wake. If so, we might also recognize an earlier
example of such collapse applied to the Sumerian Empire towards the end
of the third millennium BC and the subsequent "recovery" of the Fertile
Crescent in its wake With this as our broad model, it is not without
significance perhaps that cuneiform scholarship survived the first
collapse ca 2000 BC to be the main bearer of astronomical wisdom until
almost the time of Christ. Likewise we find Latin scholarship surviving
the second collapse ca 400-601 AD to become the main bearer of
astronomical wisdom in the West until the time of the Enlightenment. To
the Enlightenment's uninitiated of course, this model has all the
appearances of being a highly fanciful scenario. To some, it might even
be unacceptable a priori because it makes; strong but highly depressing
statement about the likely future state of civilization. Nevertheless it
is clear the modern historians have never digested the full implication
of past celestial signs and modern astrophysical insight concerning the
general state of our celestial environment Indeed, with notable
exceptions [23], they have purposely turned a blind eye towards the
apocalyptic record. It is a scenario that we shall need to keep in mind
therefore as we continue our present review.*

*6. MODERN HOSTS AND THE COLLAPSE OF NATIONS**
Nations habitually jostle for position on the world-stage Their
individual purpose, it is apparent, is to maintain indefinite control
over a section of the globe. In recognition of the various constraints
under which each operates, it is customary for nations to act in concert
amongst themselves so as to uphold an orderly state of dynamic
equilibrium Preserving the global status quo, in other words, is;
favoured way of maintaining national control and hence national
survival. The key to a modern nation's success in this continual
struggle is evidently the government and the institutions through which
the power of the people is effectively represented. Public opinion of
course is, by it very nature, an elusive beast and while it is
commonplace for modern governments to claim to represent people as a
whole, such is the normal pace of events both government and people in
practice usually defer to the well advantaged and to the well armed. As
was perhaps more evident among ancient regimes in the past, therefore,
it is aristocracies of a kind which generally hold the reins of national
and international power. For such aristocracies, the ups and downs of
nations through the balance of trade, armed aggression, natural
disasters and so on are all part of the normal tapestry of events.
Aristocracies indeed are sufficiently robust that even a global war may
do relatively little to upset much of the status quo. Likewise, the
status quo is hardly perturbed by a degree of substantial migration and
mass genocide. During the twentieth century, for example, some 12
billion human lives have been lived and lost; and of these, some 80
million have been lost as a result of localized "end-time" revolutions
largely provoked by fanatics [74]. Locally, this appalling statistic
involves a demographic recession of, say, 10-50 per cent but globally it
is less than 1 per cent. It is important therefore that we remain clear
as to the level of catastrophe which is here discussed. The twentieth
century by this and any other global reckoning is evidently somewhat
uneventful! As a consequence it is those longer periods of upheaval
around the globe to which mankind has intermittently succumbed during
the course of history that aristocracies, and hence nations, have the
greatest cause to fear: extended periods of famine, epidemic and war
during which the demographic adjustments and losses globally increase
above the customary background level (a few per cent) by at least an
order of magnitude to, say, 10-20 per cent. The three latest such
periods, each lasting about 50 years, are centered around 1650, 1790 and
1850 [38] and closely match the three latest enhancements of the
meteoroidal input to Earth [17]. Frequently identified as marking the
starts of the English, French and German enlightenments respectively,
these pivotal periods are of course historically conspicuous on ac-count
of the global upheaval and social revolution by which they are commonly
characterised. It is a curiosity of the twentieth century however,
possibly on account of its essentially uneventful character, that
Western civilization now tends to spurn any connection between these
social breakdowns and the celestial signs with which they are temporally
associated. Admittedly some scholars have drawn attention to the
climatological downturns at these epochs [49] which may of course be of
celestial origin. Such proposals however remain the exception rather
than the rule. In particular, historians fail to make anything of the
greatly increased eschatological concern of these times, i.e. a very
definite tendency on the part of those living to see critical aspects of
their environment in a process of very rapid and terminal change [23].
Rather, in order to explain the upheavals, it is customary nowadays to
invoke some kind of global breakdown in the diplomatic processes of
representative government occasioned by widespread internal collapse,
albeit any such so called "whig interpretation of history" is now
thought to be phenomenologically inconsistent and therefore seriously
unsubstantiated (e.g. [16]:see also Section 8). The whig interpretation
of history, in particular its theoretical justification, derives from
the highly respected philosophy of the well known English empiricists
(namely Locke, Berkeley and Hume) which first emerged as the seventeenth
century enhancement of the meteoroidal input to Earth went into decline.
The acclaimed purpose of the new philosophy was "a grand onslaught on
tradition, arbitrary government, and ecclesiastical authority in so far
as all these things supported the old order which had been defeated once
in 1640 and again in 1688" [52]. The victors of the English Civil War
and Glorious Revolution saw this philosophy therefore as their
justification in particular, a step back from the fundamentalist
excesses and outworn authoritarianism of the Interregnum and a step
forward to the millennialist dreams and "common sense" calculation of
the Future. The foundation of the new philosophy was a general theory of
knowledge based upon the empirical procedures of natural science rather
than the divine ordinances of old. religious rationalism which dispensed
with miracles and the whole paraphernalia of "supernaturalism" (i.e.
with revelations) "while continuing to believe in God" [52]. Upon such
rationalism was then duly founded the new English Monarchy, the French
Republic and the United States of America: new habits of thinking in
which aristocracies and nations around the world would come to operate
within a framework of political and economic liberalism. This is not to
say of course that these nations established a secure political and
economic process based on such founding principles since, in practice,
they proved surprisingly defective. Thus while it may be taken that an
appeal to empirical procedures would introduce an element of precision
into the measured relationship between apparently connected parameters,
the physical connections would themselves be subject to choice and
pragmatic judgment with extrapolated consequences that were not
necessarily secure. A century or so after the English empiricists had
embarked upon their line of inquiry, it was clear that the more or less
exclusive dependence of such rationalism on natural science had run into
severe theoretical difficulties; so much so that the whole line of
thinking was deemed basically irrelevant by the influential school of
German philosophers (namely Kant, Hegel and Marx). They essentially
recognized that public affairs must in addition respect the empirical
procedures of social science and hence rational metaphysics as much as
rational physics, the unavoidable human tendency to base political
action on supposition as much as on reality. Out of this were to grow
the ideas of dialectical materialism and a crucial explanation of the
great upheavals of history in terms of the natural instabilities that
arise within and among nations through social and economic determinism.
As is well known, the well nigh exclusive appeal to such determinism is
now commonplace in the service of modern history and modern politics,
tending to displace any related intellectual discipline in which an
appeal to physical determinism would also be involved. However, in
arriving at their underlying principles, both the English empiricists
and the German idealists have clearly relied upon a purely metaphysical
interpretation of the recorded "miraculous" or "supernatural" phenomena
of history. They have in effect taken a view as to the unphysical nature
of "revelations" which modern astrophysicists are hardly able to
endorse. Here then is the basic reason why modern aristocracies (i.e.
modern governments and their advisers) now largely overlook the evidence
of meteoroidal inputs and the recurrence of eschatological concern
during the great upheavals of recorded history. Indeed the original
arguments on which the English empiricists and German idealists based
their influential philosophies are now essentially forgotten. To recover
these arguments, we need to recognise that it was the original
cognoscenti of the Royal Society in London who first took a disparaging
view of meteoroidal inputs and apocalyptic fears, blaming the public
reaction of the contemporary English in particular [69]. These
cognoscenti were clearly of a whiggish disposition and evidently did
take such a view out of disrespect for the earlier intellectual support
which was given fundamentalism rather than millennialism by the London
Society of Astrologers [391. The latter was disbanded at the end of the
Interregnum and replaced by the Royal Society [73]. And in due course it
did seem that this new view of things had been comprehensively endorsed
when the new society's eventual president of distinction Newton, failed
to support his younger colleagues Halley and Whiston on the occasion of
the publication of their ideas concerning a sustained cometary threat to
Earth during the course of history [15]. Newton however was also a
theological non-conformist and it is well known that he attached great
significance to the known history of revelations (see below); thus he
appears to have inclined more to the teleological or Calvinist view that
the danger was predestined and selective rather than to the emerging
mainstream view that it was more apparent than real. This should not be
taken to imply an altogether blind faith associated with the typical
puritanical outlook: rather it should be taken to imply a form of deism
in which the cosmos naturally produces apocalyptic hosts to which the
conduct of suitably guided societies needs to be adequately matched. In
other words, Newton can be identified with those for whom eschatological
concern and global upheaval were still primary considerations and it was
the perceived business of society to survive apocalyptic terror as well
as the perceived business of individuals belonging to society to make an
earnest commitment or general covenant towards this end. Thus we are
dealing with an era that still saw deism and teleology as two sides of
the same coin, both operating in accordance with essentially the same
natural law, a natural law moreover which applied to society as a whole
and to which individuals exercising freedom of choice either conformed
(good) or did not (evil). Later Newton was to publish his own ideas
about the history of revelations and eschatological fear, essentially
implicating an enhanced meteoroidal input of the kind observed during
the course of his own lifetime [62, 8]. Broadly speaking these ideas
were very closely aligned with those of late medieval scholarship in
Europe [76] and hence with the Sumerian and Babylonian tradition
stretching back to the very foundation of civilization [46]. Under these
circumstances, to the extent that aristocratic governance is a natural
condition of mankind (just as wolves hunt in packs!) and eschatology is
a vital academic discipline associated with the activities of ancient
regimes (from~2500 BC-1800 AD), it is important that we reconsider the
social imperatives once believed to arise in response to recognised
celestial inputs. Indeed, all the more so if, as now seems likely,
Newton at the end of his career was not properly understood by his
younger contemporaries. Although English empiricism eventually continued
in the tradition of anti-apocalypticism, there can be little doubt as to
its emergence in the knowledge of near-miss comets and apocalyptic
hosts, causing nations to collapse. Thus, in likely awareness of
revelations and their apocalyptic implications (Section 5) whilst
reflecting on the attitude society should adopt (Section 6), the English
empiricists evidently introduced a blatantly metaphysical interpretation
of revelations which the remainder of Western civilisation proceeded to
single out as advantageous during the course of two further periods of
global upheaval around 1790 and 1850. It seems that a whiggish
establishment which was initially expected to guide society in
accordance with an apocalyptic fear which was historical and real (a la
Locke: Section 7) was then privately persuaded that revelations were of
no material substance in accordance with a teleological cosmology
introduced by the "gnostic" Greeks (a la Berkeley: Section 8). We shall
see that this persuasion was not altogether irrational.*

*7. THE PERCEPTION OF "LAST TIMES"**
Any specification of these longer periods of upheaval around the globe
(Section 6) in terms of a parochial (i.e. purely national) enlightenment
can of course be very misleading. Thus we cannot be too enthusiastic
about so called English French and German enlightenments when some
scholars would perhaps justifiably connect the English and American
upheavals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with a general
advance of predominantly Anglo-Saxon culture which French reactionaries
did not at first acknowledge [27] but which was then admitted by most
European nations during the upheaval of-the nineteenth century. In point
of fact, the successive enlightenments here are not as "progressive" as
many commentators might now be in-clined to claim since the
post-revolutionary French enlightenment was in practice something of a
wider European reaction against the English enlightenment which then
failed to secure intellectual support. Thus the successive
enlightenments perceived as revolutions were more in the nature of a
whiggish reaction to apocalypticism as in England which later spread to
America and then to Europe and to the rest of British Isles to become
the orthodoxy of Western civilization based upon rather specific,
pragmatic principles dictated by Berkeley rather than by Locke (see
Section 8). Indeed, if we take an even more parochial view and regard
these longer periods of upheaval as corresponding locally to the
so-called English Scottish and Irish enlightenments respectively, we can
well see that these advances are probably not unconnected with the
severity of the immediately preceding climatic downturns and hence
possibly with the corresponding meteoroidal inputs. These were prominent
enough within the British Isles to have implied a possible link between
the social plights of each people in turn and the conspicuously adverse
social conditions of the little ice-age, the highland clearances and the
potato famine respectively [49]. There are problems evidently in
handling such diversity among the parameters involved when seeking
historical patterns in social behaviour but the rather similar
correlations between astrophysical, geophysical, social and intellectual
developments may seem well enough founded now to raise serious questions
regarding the current linear model of historical evolution and to
justify seeking to reinstate a cyclic model of history involving the
successive incidence of apocalypse followed by renaissance [38]. Such a
model does not necessarily imply renaissances which are progressive
however and it is entirely possible that the apocalyptic experience
provokes an increase or decrease in the authority or freedom with which
society is controlled depending on the actual extent to which society
believes the cosmos (or divinity) was involved. With such a model, the
intermittent and serious breakdown of society is of course the more
readily understood and we can perhaps appreciate why our ancestors were
so ready to concede mankind's innate propensity towards extreme
antisocial behaviour in the presence of disturbing and terrifying
conditions-the unavoidable disposition to "sin"-which could nevertheless
be greatly alleviated by the creation of a rigidly structured society
and by the early inculcation of suitable knowledge and social customs.
The converse of course, attractive to Western civilization today, allows
for a greater degree of individual freedom and toleration of individual
habits within society whilst apparently failing to recognize the
practical difficulties that then arise with the application of restraint
in the presence of apocalyptic fear. Long accepted ideas about
eschatology (the destiny of man after death) and kingship connected with
the practices of omen astrology and the perception of cosmic catastrophe
("last times") which now seem strange did evidently arise however in
association with ideas about group salvation (i.e. specifically
favouring aristocracies) from prolonged cosmic terror [34]. Furthermore,
accounts of the afterlife given in the ancient mythologies consistently
reflect a situation of hopelessness and despair. These were not
originally accounts of punishment in hell for misdeeds of the wicked,
however, but of ordinary mortals transferred to a postmortem
environment, stories of inexplicable survival amidst equally
inexplicable extinction [80]. The dreadful warning was that of a
forthcoming state of the world, inevitably represented as a prolongation
ad infinitum of tedium followed by terror, such as had already been
experienced. The form of governance known as "ancient regime",
essentially recognising cosmic terror and serving aristocracies, can in
fact be traced to its inception during the early stages of the Sumerian
Empire and thereby to the very beginnings of systematic knowledge and
civilization itself. As such it admitted the bodies of knowledge now
referred to as omen astrology [77] and es-chatology [12]. It is
customary nowadays of course to dismiss these branches of knowledge as
irrelevant but, contrary to a popular misconception, there are no
serious grounds for supposing the essence of this secular knowledge is
other than empirically based and subject to scientific interpretation in
the modern sense of these terms [61]. In fact, the formal linkage of
omen astrology, eschatology and "kingship" in the past was clearly
fundamental to aristocracies with pretensions to hegemony. Territory
submitted to rule by hegemony which is so extensive as to be vulnerable
to the debilitating influence of apocalypse will commonly put the
survival of a mere aristocracy and its possessions seriously at risk. It
is no cause for surprise therefore that all aspects of social and
intellectual existence in such a culture should have been geared to life
beyond the apocalyptic events. The discipline of eschatology moreover
was no fanciful diversion: from its inception it dealt with a continuing
apocalyptic process by which specific celestial agencies would
inevitably reduce mankind and the terrestrial environment to states of
mental and physical chaos. By classical times, it was very widely
understood that the mightiest of these occurrences took the form of a
"universal conflagration" or "flood" at long periodic intervals due to a
circulation of celestial bodies which impinged upon the Earth. This was
by no means all however since lesser eras during the course of history
were also clearly involved, each with its associated "last times"
characterized by celestial signs and frightening events as well as by
wars, epidemics and famine. Comets on this account were just one
category amongst a range of natural phenomena which might be heedlessly
associated with the demarcation of critical periods in the course of
natural history. Because of the relative frequency of these phenomena it
is easy nowadays to imagine our ancestors have always had an exaggerated
view therefore of the significance of their particular epoch. While this
tendency cannot of course be discounted altogether, the inference is
almost certainly misleading since it fails to take account of the
primary apocalyptic agency (fireballs) through which the mental anguish
generally develops. The point to be emphasised here perhaps is that the
"uniformitarian" character of Nature is certainly defensible for a
considerable range of phenomena for much of the time but because it is
so deeply entrenched on this account, we must not fall into the error of
supposing it must therefore apply to every celestial phenomenon. Indeed
the clear impression that emerges from the strongly celestial
orientation of much mythology and religion, not least during the
classical era itself, is of a celestial agency in the past which did
strengthen considerably at certain epochs to become traumatic in the
extreme and which was then still an awesome prospect in the future (see
also Section 5). In contrast any such extreme trauma seem to have been
at a reduced level during the Enlightenment while the ancient regime has
increasingly appeared to be an irrelevance and thus in a general state
of abeyance. Accordingly and until two hundred years ago, virtually all
historiography was based upon a globally apocalyptic chronological
scheme [12]. A world historical process was clearly envisaged in which
ordinary natural processes would continue for the duration of an era
until its inevitable termination in "last times". A very ancient pattern
of such eras, now attributed to Zoroaster [24], is usually marked by the
Creation (~5500 BC) and subsequently by successive Ages: the Golden
(until~3000 BC), the Silver (until~2000 BC), the Bronze (until~1000 BC)
and the Iron (until~[0] BC/AD). A more recent scheme originating with
Eusebius and continuing into early modern times [62] involves a somewhat
more elaborate division of time but recognizes also the passage of
dominant civilizations: the Babylonians, the (unhistorical) Medes, the
Persians, the Greeks and the Romans (~2000 BC-500 AD), followed by the
emergence of the Holy Roman Empire (~500-1000 AD) and its renaissance as
Western (European) civilization (~1000-1500 AD) subsequently undergoing
reformation (~1500-1700 AD) and enlightenment (~1700-1800 AD) prior to
its secular emancipation (~1800 AD-the present). One accepts of course
that these transitions are to some extent still in general use but any
suspicion that they correlate with environmental events has now largely
been abandoned. We should not be over-impressed by any apparent
precision in these dates. Nevertheless the trend towards shorter eras as
we approach the present almost certainly reflects an increased attention
to detail regarding the correlation of celestial and terrestrial events.
On the other hand, as we have seen, the periods of "last times" can
endure for several generations and any chronological scheme involving
single dates of demarcation is therefore necessarily imprecise. To gain
some idea of its relative precision, we can refer to the most complete
record of meteoroidal fireballs during the last~2000 years which is that
maintained by Chinese imperial astrologers [110]. This shows substantial
enhancements roughly during the two centuries preceding and including
the time of Christ (say~150 BC-50 AD), the three centuries including the
European Dark Ages (say~350-650 AD), the two centuries that correspond
to the bulk of the Crusades (say~1000-1200 AD), the two centuries that
precede and include the Reformation (say~1350- 1550 AD), the half
century that includes the English Civil War and Interregnum
(say~1625-1675 AD), the half- century that includes the American War of
Independence and the French Revolution .(say~1765-1815 AD) and the few
decades that includes the period of European Revolutions (say~1830 -1860
AD). Most of these enhancements are broadly concentrated in the northern
hemisphere months of midsummer (end of June) and early winter (start of
November) indicating a likely strong association with the Taurid stream
of meteoroids [4]. This can reinforce the impression we are dealing with
an incidence of "last times" which is due to hosts of debris ultimately
originating from a single celestial agency. Whether the perception of a
unified process was sustained in this manner is perhaps not clear but
the idea of a celestial agency which intermittently exerts pressure in
such a way as to apparently "rude" mankind to greater knowledge and
understanding during successive stages of comparative calm but then
also, at longer intervals, introduces a level of devastation that causes
civilization to experience a particularly serious recession (cf the
model of Section 5) was evidently commonplace. The details of
apocalypticism indeed essentially upheld a picture of civilization in
which the low-level evolution of mankind advances by a process of
punctuated equilibrium in accordance with a random distribution of
encounters between the Earth and Taurid hosts; but with the added
feature of a longer term cycle as the greatest concentration of material
within the Taurid stream apparently swings back and forth in the sky
(see Section 9), regularly delivering mankind into the successive depths
of "Dark Age" every few thousand years or so while passing between the
corresponding shallows of "enlightenment". This periodic timescale is of
course very long in comparison with the human lifetime but it appears to
have represented an additional yet certain threat in contrast to the
uncertainty of random punctuations thus reinforcing the general
incidence of mental anguish in the past. The important point to be
emphasised here perhaps is that the incidence of "last times" in the
past was never perceived to be a trifling matter, more an integral part
of a supposedly real catastrophic evolutionary scheme which was
generally understood to involve both "punctuations" and "cycles".
contrary to a current general impression therefore, the main precepts of
the nineteenth century uniformitarianism- catastrophism debate relating
to geological and biological evolution were already essentially in
place, albeit in relation to much shorter timescales and seemingly more
germane effects.*

*8. THE DISEMBODIMENT OF REVELATIONS**
The evolution of species is either "progressive" or "punctuational"
depending whether the dominant environmental processes at play during
the course of extinction and speciation are "uniformitarian" or
"catastrophic". In principle the dominant environmental processes at
play can be biological or physical, whence a catastrophe likely arises
on account of an internal (biological) instability or an external
(physical) perturbation. Likewise the evolution of civilization either
progressive or punctuational depending whether the dominant
environmental process at play is uniformitarian or catastrophic.
Catastrophes in this case however, as we have seen, refer to the rise
and fall of "core societies" (aristocracies). Recent historians on the
other hand have not generally looked to physical factors (e.g. climate,
revelations etc.) as the principal cause of such rise and fall with the
result that the punctuational form of historiography that has been in
place for more than two hundred years is one in which the longer periods
of upheaval are mostly understood in terms of purely social factors in
general accordance with the "whig interpretation of history". This
widely accepted form of historiography clearly takes its lead from the
English empiricists and German rationalists and, as we have already
noted (Section 6), is currently undergoing critical re-evaluation [16].
An evidently fundamental issue however affecting the way this type of
historiography came to be established is to be found in the role of
biblical scholarship during the eighteenth century. Thus the Anglican
biblical scholars of this period, many of them bishops and members of
the whiggish ascendancy paying lip-service to the intellectual
leadership of Locke and Newton, were heirs to a contemporary historical
tradition which was made particularly manifest by the Protestant Bible,
combining both the New and Old Testaments. The episodic character of
history as expressed through the successive books of this Bible,
indicating separate periods of interaction between the divine cosmos and
mankind, was palpably reinforced as such through a perceived series of
so-called "Christian evidences" cumulatively seen as providing "proof"
of the fact in the manner of a euclidean text (~4O, 41]cf [65]). The
Bible in other words was widely looked upon as a canon of evidential
statements and prophetic utterances-propositions and theorems, one might
suppose-which taken together essentially "proved" the given framework of
historical knowledge. Interpolated between these statements and
utterances of course was to be found the discussion and interpretation
that would normally clarify the propositions and theorems in the context
of the meaning and implications of the canon as a whole. For the most
part, such discussion and interpretation are by way of subsequent
commentary on the original canon and were recognized readily enough by
their generally moral and literary style. The evidential statements and
prophetic utterances on the other hand were clearly understood as the
elements of an original, historically updated, document whose textual
content plainly identified it as such and which was generally considered
to be particularly well preserved. This is not to say however that the
meaning of the original document was considered to be immediately
apparent. Rather it was accepted that the meaning may have drifted on
account of repeated translation and redaction and that it was the
business of biblical scholars to discern its true meaning. In other
words, despite their substantially unaltered condition, the meaning of
the propositions and theorems now had to be inferred as much from the
context as from the words and was still a matter for scholarly debate.
The whiggish scholars were thus very much aware that "whoever looks into
the prophetically writings will find they are generally penned in a very
exalted style and oftentimes in such images as cannot admit of literal
interpretation" [66]. On the other hand the "exalted style" of the
so-called "Christian evidences" was commonly seen as accurately
reflecting the often dramatic or overpowering nature of the phenomena
referred to, hence their usual interpretation as recorded instances of
divine intervention in human affairs. It would be quite out of character
with the received theological wisdom of the time however to suppose
these "revelations" of divine intervention were in any sense figurative
or symbolic. Rather they were perceived as super- natural or extreme
celestial events. In other words there can be little doubt that the well
preserved historical document subsumed by the Bible was widely perceived
as a catalogue of very special celestial phenomena at certain
epochs-such as astronomers are now familiar with in the case of the
encyclopedic records of ancient Chinese ob-servations of such
phenomena-interwoven with a predictive or prophetic model linking
together what would otherwise be regarded as distinctive but unconnected
events. The modern astrophysicist has little difficulty in comprehending
the general principles that underscore such a historical document. After
all our modern picture of the universe is itself founded upon a
predictive physical model designed to match or "prove" selected
observational data in supposedly temporal sequence. The analogy does not
end there. For the eighteenth century biblical scholars and their
predecessors, like modern astrophysicists, were plainly not unaware of
the underlying, supposedly more mundane, framework of natural phenomena
upon which this category of more dramatic or supernatural events was
superposed [43]. Thus a division of intellectual labour was evidently
envisaged in which natural philosophers would largely supervise our
understanding of more worldly phenomena and theologians at the top of
the intellectual tree would supervise our understanding of divine
intervention; that is, the whiggish ascendancy was no different from any
other intellectual leadership and was ultimately in business to
establish a definitive view of divine material (providence) and divine
motion (its dynamic) along with an explanation of how these together
were responsible for the special celestial events known as revelations.
Soon after the mid-seventeenth century foundation of the Royal Society,
as we have seen, Bishop Sprat had remarked upon the widespread concern
in England as to the nature of "providences" and "prodigies" (their most
extreme version) while others such as Baxter in England and Mather in
New England [50] were advocating procedures whereby "providences" would
be systematically observed and recorded over much of the globe. The
frequency of meteoric "fireballs" due to the more substantial
meteoroidal inputs (see Section 4) was in fact significantly enhanced
above the usual background level during the seventeenth century and it
can hardly be doubted therefore that these fireballs were the primary
objects diverting contemporary attention towards thoughts of "last days"
and a very natural association with earlier revelations as recorded in
the principal canon of celestial knowledge. Normally of course the
providential background is of no greater consequence to mankind than the
incidence of lunar and solar eclipses or planetary conjunctions but if
it is significantly increased then the occasional prodigy may inject
vast amounts of dust into the atmosphere or generate a huge mutimegaton
explosion, thereby becoming a very serious hazard to mankind. The
well-preserved historical document-the Bible-we may be sure, was widely
received as a very vital catalogue of extreme but very real providential
events. In fact, the science of celestial mechanics itself emerged from
considerations like these relat-ing to divine material and divine
motion. Thus it is clearly no accident that Newton's Principia of the
seventeenth century, which heralded the enquiries of the eighteenth
century biblical scholars, was likewise structured like a euclidean
text. It has been said that there was an unprecedented fusion of
scientific reasoning and religious thought during the life span of
Newton [8] but, while this may be undeniable, the prospect of an
integrated scheme under one set of divine physical laws had been a major
component of the Christian intellectual agenda since at least as far
back as Aquinas [56]. What is perhaps not so fully appreciated these
days, therefore, is the extent of the purely (astro)physical motivation
behind much theological inquiry and of how much this represented a
continuing desire to comprehend the flux of supposedly divine material,
most especially its apocalyptic potential. Thus, by the seventeenth
century, it was already recognized that providence would arrive during
broad epochs (say 50-150 years) spasmodically distributed throughout the
course of history (say at intervals of a few centuries) reaching back to
the "deluge" and even to "creation" itself. If the historical analysis
of such as Zeigler, Munster and Gifftheil [37] Ussher, Alsted, Brightman
and Mede [76] and finally Newton [8] were to be upheld, the whole
sequence of "biblical events" was stretched over some 6000 years and
there was much to be learned about the future from a suitably careful
examination of the past. During these broad epochs, it is clear now that
providence would arrive in characteristic but subordinate temporal
patterns (i.e. at a particular month and a fixed, relatively small,
number of years) such as would readily allow a rather straightforward
prediction of the next influx together with such nervous anticipation of
the "end of the world" as would be engendered. There was no absolute
certainty of course that the "end of the world" would come but there was
no mistaking the general pattern of downfall during history associated
with these broad epochs. According to this pattern (Section 7), the
great kingdoms of the past had succumbed in turn: first Babylonia and
Media; then the Persians; later the Greeks, and finally the Romans. The
latter of course is not identified in the Book of Revelations but by the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the European Protestant movement
had essentially added to the list of downfalls the socalled "great
apostasy" when the Roman Empire governed from Constantinople failed to
retain control of the West and power passed into the hands of the so
called "Antichrist" at Rome. Descendants of the massive population
displaced into Western Europe during the great apostasy (Franks,
Germans, Anglo-Saxons) seem therefore to have been the principal parties
to perceive themselves as having been delivered (by the vikings?) into
the hands of a huge ecclesiastical empire ruled by a despotic church
from Rome. Their protestations evidently took hold alongside a
perception of the environment which was most clearly presented in the
Books of Daniel and Revelation, containing apocalyptic accounts of a
most fearful and terrifying nature. These books, as we have already
seen, are representative of a late Babylonian tradition before the time
of Christ [77] which stretches back to the origin of omen astrology
itself [61]. This is the very same tradition of course which led Keynes
[46] half a century ago to categorize Newton as the "last of the
Babylonians and Sumerians". There can be absolutely no doubt that the
Protestant whiggish ascendancy was heir to this tradition as well. But
whereas Newton, along with the principal puritanical movements of his
time, would look back with considerable horror at the great apostasy and
the original Christian sect identified with the apostolic succession
which had penetrated and dominated the upper echelons of Roman society
by the fourth century, the contemporary trend of whiggish opinion
amongst English bishops was evidently towards condoning and reaffirming
the critical fifth century decisions of the embryonic Holy Roman Church.
The point here is that the Christian sect in question, whilst having
gained in political clout as it moved away from the gnostic orthodoxy at
the turn of the millennium in which Christ was primarily a cosmological
phenomenon [80], was to use its position of dominance at the great
Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon to ascribe this cosmological
phenomenon to a disembodied or spiritual Christ, precisely in accordance
with the viewpoint now (re)adopted by the philosopher bishop, one
Berkeley. It is well known of course nowadays that Newton subscribed (in
private) to the so-called Arian heresy but the implications of this
heresy with respect to the physical nature of the cosmological Christ
(and hence revelations: see below) are now commonly overlooked by
astrophysicists. Thus the basic point at issue amongst the English
bishops was the precise interpretation to be given the "Christian
evidences". Locke, on the one hand, inclined to the view that we must be
dealing with quite exceptional natural events involving real material
bodies and that "what is obscure to us may have been perfectly clear to
those living at the same time in the past"; whereas Berkeley, on the
other hand, argued that "the proper objects of vision constitute an
universal language of the Author of Nature" and that "the language of
Nature cloth not vary in different ages or nations". Whatever was
intended by the biblical records of revelation therefore, it was now
supposed by the English bishops on the basis of the proposed
immutability of Nature that the associated physical effects of
revelation must always be essentially mundane, as the contemporary
observation of Nature assuredly asserts. It follows that the dramatic
quality of revelation must be understood to denote divine messages in
the sky possessing only a spiritual rather than a material content while
the processes of Nature must be regarded as essentially uniformitarian.
Such disembodied revelations were rather quickly approved by the
whiggish ascendancy in England (to be followed by the rest of Western
civilization in due course) with the result that physical revelations
ceased to receive any intellectual attention and were essentially
excluded altogether from the modern system of natural philosophy which
came to be known as materialism. Non-physical revelations however
incorporated into a philosophical system known as hutchinsonianism [67,
41], were widely accepted and led to an essentially allegorical
interpretation of the Bible [44] which was to become more or less
axiomatic whilst also admitting a form of natural philosophy constrained
by the principle of uniformitarianism [53, 26]. This farreaching
development was opposed during a significant revival of catastrophism
between~1790 and~1850 in France [10, 48] and in Scotland [55] which saw
the earliest scientific description of natural selection under the
conditions of punctuated equilibrium but which then also saw this
development rather quickly expunged from the scientific record [28].
This turn of events is historically significant since it demonstrates
Darwin's particular concern, critical to the English en-lightenment,
which was to develop an account of natural selection compatible with
uniformi-tarianism. The nineteenth century decline of catastrophism was
essentially a repetition therefore of the early eighteenth century
rejection of revelation as expressed through the differing views of
Locke and Berkeley. During the twentieth century, Darwinian
uniformitarianism became firmly established until the study of impact
craters suggested a significant role for cosmic catastrophes underlying
the course of evolution on geological timescales. During the same
period, the physical study of fireballs has been reinstated but the
findings nevertheless have tended to remain independent of the study of
revelations with the result that three principal forms of natural
philosophy relating to evolution on geological and historical timescales
can now be discerned. These are (1)
uniformitarianism-cum-hutchinsonianism (this essentially remains the
mainstream view); (2) catastrophism-cum-hutchinsonianism [13, 58]; and
(3) catastrophism [20, 22]. The differences of opinion rendered explicit
here, though not intractable (see Section 9), remain a firmly
established feature of modern enlightenment. The absence apparently of
any satisfactory resolution to the problem is marked by a particularly
vehement tradition within modern scholarship seeking to preserve
anti-apocalypticism. Here it only remains to consider the physical
theory of revelations that is permitted by their evidently material and
historical nature. The city of Alexandria, through its geographical
location, eventually came to be singularly well placed for the scholars
of imperial Greece undertaking comparative studies of the information
emanating from the great civilizations of the Near East. Prominent
amongst these scholars were the so-called "gnostics" who brought
together the various common strands of Chaldean astrology, Zoroastrian
dualism, Egyptian mythology, Jewish apocalypticism and Hellenistic
speculation to construct a unified system of cosmology (and religion)
which is now known to have been highly influential and extremely
widespread across the temperate zone of three continents ([80],Chapter 3
in particular). The existence of this unified cosmology almost certainly
betokens the spread of a unified (secular) culture as well [68], thus
pointing to an early example of the kind of growth that we now associate
with modern science and enlightenment at the heart of Western
civilization. The underlying perception behind this gnostic or imperial
cosmology was evidently that of the heavens which included an upper
region (or celestial sphere: the stars), an intermediate region (or
ecliptic plane: the planets) and a lower region (central to the sphere:
including the Sun and Moon). The various visible components of these
regions were clearly perceived as owing their physical existence and
creation to a former unitary body, the cosmological Christ. Creation was
not a once-and-for-all operation however but involved a process of
hierarchical disintegration known as "emanation" which also led to the
formation of other substantial celestial features, no longer extant.
Foremost here was a circular embankment ("the flaming walls") in the
form of a broad belt around the ecliptic, apparently just within or at
the celestial sphere, which marked "the boundary" of the known universe.
This boundary was also essentially continuous with a narrow bridge ("the
rope of angels") which connected the circular embankment directly to the
centre of the celestial sphere, thus joining the upper and lower regions
of the heavens. This boundary, including the bridge, appears to have
been once visualized as a very luminous, material construct resulting
from the emanations of the cosmological Christ which. however, was not
entirely uniform in its general appearance. Thus it was made up of
temporary shapes and evolving patterns, one such apparently including
Christ itself in circulation between the heavens above and below. The
lowest step of the bridge perceived as a ladder did eventually mark the
most critical phase of emanation from the cosmological Christ. This
critical phase was clearly taken to be an extremely dramatic event. It
not only captured the attention of Earthlings below but was evidently
considered to be the primary stimulus giving rise to the multiplicity of
cosmic mythologies among the various nations of the known world. Indeed
the event itself was a veritable "Pandora's Box" being the palpable
focus for an outpouring of visible celestial entities whose existence
thereafter appeared to capture the attention of witnesses all round the
globe. Putting these mythologies together, the emanation was ultimately
perceived by the gnostics to be in a direction essentially orthogonal to
the line of the narrow bridge, projecting first on one side and then on
the other to produce an identifiable "cross". This cross was never an
isolated feature of the sky however (e.g. see Plato's "Timaeus": [51])
since it evidently connected with a more extended celestial structure.
This structure, it would appear, corresponded to a closely bunched
hierarchy of so called "archons" (archaeons) and "aeons"-emasculated
versions, apparently, of the archangels and angels who occupied the
narrow bridge-whose rather similar orbital paths therefore intersected
at a point on the bridge and whose distribution otherwise was such as to
dominate the lower region of the heavens. The effect of the dramatic
event there-ore was to introduce new features in the sky which were a
pale reflection of the earlier, more luminous, constructs and which
furthermore did more obviously affect mankind. In fact these aeons were
evidently regarded as hostile to the Earth and mankind and it was their
emanations in particular which were subsequently associated with
revelations and apocalyptic terror.
It eventually came to be well understood of course that revelations were
equivocal in respect of the incidence of catastrophe and it was the
Greeks apparently, as imperialists, who first sought to turn the
incidence of potential non- catastrophe to public advantage by
systematically painting revelations in wholly optimistic terms. The
Greeks long before had taken the formal step of separating government
and academe, and while it is clear the latter then took rationalism to
even greater heights than before, the demands on government in the face
of apocalyptic terror (cf the banishment of Anaxagoras: [82]) evidently
meant a degree of sophistry was not out of place when presenting the
realities of the cosmos. Organized religion and stage managed miracles
indeed became endemic amongst the cosmopolitan Greeks [32] and we cannot
therefore be surprised at the cosmological phenomena which were
embellished, i.e.. a fireball phenomenon which became providential
rather than fickle, an original cosmological Christ whose body and
initial emanations became spiritualized, good and divine, a fallen angel
whose cross (regarded as Christ's burden) gave rise to the lower region
of heaven as well as to mankind on Earth, both perceived as evolutionary
stages of a defective material condition to be suffered by the entrained
spirit; and a subsequent resurrection of the cosmological Christ
perceived as an example to all other fallen spirits (i.e. all human
souls) whose route back to the upper region of heaven needed to be made
manifest. Nowadays of course we are more familiar with the teleological
or moral philosophical aspects of the theological rationale that was
invoked by way of explanation for the known cosmological facts;
conversely we are rather less familiar with the interesting theoretical
notion of a material condition which is some kind of negative or
defective attribute of the (primary) spiritual condition, tending also
to forget that we are now the beneficiaries of an intellectually hard
won physical science in which only the (positive) material world exists.
In fact, the significance of all the theoretical detail here must be the
greater on account of its having been clearly related to the known
cosmological facts. For we can hardly suppose that the Greek
imperialists would expect their version of "gnosticism" to carry
conviction with subordinate peoples unless the available cosmic
mythology were very adequately explained. It has already been noted that
the influence of gnosticism was wide: indeed it flourished for centuries
alongside the rise of the Holy Roman Church. Subsequent understandings
of apocalypticism would be expected therefore to match gnostic cosmology
to a plausible or acceptable extent. It is hardly surprising that late
medieval Protestant heresy, inasmuch as it inclined to hard-nosed
materialism, was a principal bearer of the original as opposed to the
embellished gnostic cosmology which an integral part of Christian
theology. To a later generation of imperialists in another place,
however, who no longer knew which aspects of cosmology had been
stage-managed and why some subtle aspects of gnosticism became
heretical, it was a matter of simplicity, albeit of surprise, to save
the surviving appearances by ultimately spiritualizing "the defective
material condition" of the revelations that still remained: in other
words, it was a matter of simplicity for English bishops, still rather
illversed in the basics of Newtonian science, to disembody the most
immediate parts of the observed cosmological environment for the sake of
"a language of Nature" which "cloth not vary in different ages or
nations" and for the sake of an anti-apocalyptic environment which they
sought to preserve.*

*9. APOCALYPTICISM UNRAVELLED**
We should not be too hard on English bishops! Subsequently this
inclination to disembody the most immediate parts, if not all, of the
observed cosmological environment has only been matched by academe's
solicitude for secularisation: indeed it is something of a surprise
nowadays to realise that this inclination can officially still be very
much in place. Darwin and Huxley, as we have seen, were prominent
nineteenth century influences who, by championing uniformitarianism-
cum-hutchinsonianism, effectively made sure cosmological astrophysics
remained disconnected from Earthbound physics right up to the Second
World War. Before the Second World War, for example, Britain's most
distinguished physicist (Rutherford) could easily set aside Britain's
most distinguished astrophysicist (Eddington) as a mystic because he was
all too obviously perceived as peddling a disembodied world. Thus did a
founding architect of the knowledge that gave us "the bomb" deal with a
founding architect of the knowledge that gave us "the expanding
universe". After the Second World War however a mankind ridden with
guilt disowned "the bomb" and as a consequence physicists were no longer
held in high esteem. Britain's most influential astrophysicist (Woolley)
could thus immediately position himself within the fastness of the
cosmic arena and look across with disdain at the rocket-men on their new
frontier and declare that [nearby] space was "bunk". America's most
influential astrophysicists meanwhile were not so confident. Thus it was
not until the 1960's they were able to persuade NASA to give up their
fundamental in situ measurement of nearby space and their part in any
1986 rendezvous with Comet Halley in order to concentrate on the cosmic
arena beyond. As a consequence, although the first rendezvous with a
comet quickly firmed up the best (post-war) model for comets and the in
situ measurement of nearby space rapidly established the particulate
outflow of cisJovian space which laid bare the giant comet debris
producing zodiacal dust, the perceived official position of
astrophysicists in Western civilization is still one in which those who
belong to "the cosmic arena" are expected to keep apocalypticism at bay.
It is easy to understand, therefore, why many astrophysicists were
provoked by the writings of Velikovsky [78, 79] who, as a psychoanalyst,
was justifiably very interested in the origins of apocalypticism but who
unfortunately laid himself open to easy condemnation through his
advocacy of an irrelevant and certainly inadequate "planetary" theory
for some past comets. Normally, of course, astrophysicists would display
some forbearance in the presence of theoretical inadequacies of this
kind but, in this case, it was all too obvious that they had failed to
address the historical evidence for apocalypticism and were merely
intent on creating a cover for their own deficiencies. Whipple [81], on
the other hand, did not address apocalypticism but did nevertheless
introduce the first realistic theory of subcometary debris for nearby
space involving a recent giant comet and this was widely approved by
comet scientists 147]. Clube and Napier [21, 22] then developed this
theory in the longer term galactic/geological context in such a way as
to permit the issue of apocalypticism to be specifically addressed [1,
2, 17]. Very few astrophysicists now seem anxious to defend the English
bishops although those hoping to eliminate apocalypticism from the
course of classical medieval and modern history [13, 58] still continue
to express themselves rather vehemently. The inner Solar System is
dominated by apparently two distinct "bombardments" from the cometary
cloud that accompanies the Sun in its orbit around the Galaxy [22]. One
of these is essentially an "unevolved" bombardment which has undergone
little or no interaction with the Sun and planets: it mostly comprises
ordinary comets in orbits whose semi-major axes are relatively large and
whose perihelia are isotropically distributed, implying a high mean
ecliptic latitude (i.e. a population made up of so called Halley-types
[6]). The other is essentially an "evolved" bombardment which has
undergone considerable physical and dynamical interaction with the Sun
and the planets: it mostly comprises the sub-cometary debris of giant
comets in orbits whose semi-major axes are relatively small and whose
perihelia generally lie close to the ecliptic, implying a low mean
ecliptic latitude (i.e. a population made up of so called Encketypes).
The dynamical histories of these bombardments are such that the
Halley-types evidently sample the direct influx of comets perturbed from
the so called inner Oort cloud. This influx is periodic (~26 myr) in
accordance with the cloud's probable penetration by impulsive perturbers
in the form of low velocity dark matter from the nearby mainstream
circulation of the Galactic disk. The Encketypes on the other hand
appear to sample the indirect influx comets perturbed from the inner
Oort cloud which first settle in the outer Oort cloud and then
preferentially transfer, in the case of objects that ultimately settle
in the inner Solar System, to "sungrazing"/"Jupiter-avoiding" orbital
configurations whose mean motion is resonant (e.g. 7: 2 J, mean period =
3.39 years) and whose initial perihelion direction is in the general
vicinity of Jupiter's. The perturba-tion flux in this instance reaching
the Earth is likely to be triply periodic in accordance with the Sun's
distance from the Galactic plane (~26 myr but 90° out of phase with the
direct perturba-tion flux), the outer Oort cloud's perihelion
distribution with respect to precession of the Jovian longitude of
perihelion (~79 kyr) and the sungrazer nodal precession (~2.5 kyr) in
relation to the Earth's orbit [2]. The physical characteristics of these
direct and indirect perturbation fluxes are however fundamentally
different. The Halley-types reaching the Earth are essentially dominated
by the commonest inner Oort cloud comets. that is, by ordinary small
comets with velocities close to the Solar System velocity of escape at
the Earth's orbit. The Encketypes reaching the Earth are essentially
dominated by the sub-cometary fragments originating from the rarest and
largest inner Oort cloud comets, that is, by the meteoroid fragments of
giant comets with velocities much closer to the velocity of circulation
at the Earth's orbit. For a representative linear size ratio between
small comets and meteoroid fragments of 10, the impact energy ratio
is~10,000 resulting in qualitatively different effects on the Earth. The
direct perturbation flux essentially reaches the surface of the Earth
and is responsible for craters, mass extinctions and major geological
effects, the indirect perturbation flux, on the other hand, essentially
reaches only the atmosphere producing impact fireballs and
disintegration dust-veils, the latter primarily affecting the climate
and the magnetic field. These general predictions are well illustrated
by the differing mass extinction and geomagnetic reversal patterns of
the late Phanerozoic respectively [22]. The current location of the Sun
in the Milky Way, very close to the Galactic plane, implies the Earth is
currently half way between the preceding and forthcoming mass extinction
"bombardments" 26 myr apart but more or less within a major glaciation
"bombardment". The latter bombardment is itself apparently cyclic with a
sub-periodicity of~79 kyr whose peaks roughly correspond to the most
recent giant comets settling in inner Solar System space, the latest
being responsible therefore for the last glacial starting~60 kyr BP. The
size and orbital con-figuration of giant comet sungrazers imply glacials
that last~50 kyr and the present overall pic-ture is therefore
consistent with a current giant comet which is likely to have reached
the end of its physical and dynamical lifetime within (say) the last
10-5 kyr. The most recent glacial-0-10 kyr BP is evidently in broad
agreement therefore with this astronomical prediction and would lead us
to expect a huge remnant "doughnut" of zodiacal dust (bounded by
ecliptic latitude bands) where the sungrazing progenitor's original
meteoroid stream has interacted with the as-teroid belt and, in
addition, another more substantial meteoroid stream resulting from a
terminal encounter of the highly evolved progenitor with one of the
inner planets (involving its complete tidal disintegration a la
ShoemakerLevy). Such a doughnut was first detected in modern times by
the Infra Red Astronomical Satellite in 1983 and, although an original
sungrazing meteoroid stream has yet to be discovered, is highly
suggestive of the much earlier more luminous, "boundary" configuration
("flaming walls" and "narrow bridge") which was such a prominent feature
of gnostic cosmology. It follows that the "Taurid" meteoroid stream is
very likely to have been formed as a result of a close encounter with an
inner planet producing a complex of progenitor debris whose central core
is also likely to be closely associated with the 7 : 2 J resonance.
Substantial evidence now exists in fact for a general category of inner
Solar System disruptions associated with the Taurid Complex involving
devolatilised cometary bodies which provide the bulk of the fragile
material reaching the Earth since ca 5000 BP [1, 2, 3, 17]. The general
dynanucal characteristics of the Taurid Complex are notably consistent
with its formation some 5000 years ago in association with an initial
luminous trail of the disrupted progenitor as the latter underwent
gravitational deflection during its "terminal" close encounter with an
inner planet (specifically in accordance with a cross at a low point of
the narrow bridge). Apart from the relationship between this Complex and
the generally random apocalyptic process discussed in the Sections
above, the nodal precession of the Taurid progenitor is of particular
significance since it results in an overriding long-term~2.5 kyr "global
cooling"f'global warming" cosmic dust cycle on Earth as well as the
correlated "Dark Age"/"enlightenment" bombardment cycle particularly
affecting mankind. Strictly speaking the~2.5 kyr dust bombardment cycle
is a~5.0 kyr double cycle with alternating phases depending on the
Taurid stream aspect with respect to the terrestrial polar axis (which
is itself subject to a much slower precession)-see Figure 1. It is of
interest therefore that the latest geophysical investigation of the
pervasive "millennial-scale" cycle in the Holocene and Late Upper
Pleistocene climate (i.e. since~60 kyr BP) based on deep ocean sediment
records of ice-rafting events in the North Atlantic [11] clearly
indicates a dominant~4.7 kyr cycle which is likely nevertheless, in view
of the more detailed~2.5 kyr cycle of the Holocene [63], to be a
precessional double-cycle confirming the underlying role of the Taurid
giant comet source. Of particular significance in this study is the
additional existence of a more random "cycle" of 1.47~0.50 kyr
associated with sudden cooling events which evidently persist into the
Holocene and which therefore bear witness to a continued interaction
with the Earth involving unexpected but comparatively major apocalyptic
events.
NODAL PRECESSION OF TAURID NODAL STREAM
*

*Figure 1: Illustration showing typical nodal precession for the core of
the Taurid stream, in particular when the Earth's orbit is intersected
(note the arrows). The parts of the orbit respectively above and below
the ecliptic are shown as thick and thin lines, The tirnescale is t(AD).
The Earth intersection epochs evidently occur ca 2200-2000 BC and ca
300-500 AD (implying a bombardment/dust cycle of around 2.5 kyr) while
the corresponding perihelion positions are below and above the ecliptic*

*10. CONCLUSION**
It has been shown here that the approximately centennial rise and fall
of fireball streaming sometimes associated with Earth-approaching comets
or asteroids is also the historical source of apocalyptic "signs". This
streaming is a proxy for hazardous swarms of sub-cometary debris
representing a higher flux to Earth than normally conceded of bodies in
the mass range~10 12 -10 15 g. Largely overlooked since early modern
historical time (and even flatly proscribed by some authorities 113,
58]), this hazard appears most commonly to take the form of global
climatic recessions, involving high-level dust albeit low-level
multi-megaton explosions associated with the most robust debris are by
no means excluded. These recessions are a feature of the general flow of
"Taurid" material to Earth recorded in polar ice-cores and ocean
sediment-cores, now recognized as being responsible for a basic 5000
year doublecycle alternately producing global warming and global
cooling. During the course of the Enlightenment, mankind has singularly
failed to come to terms with this apparently centennial threat, having
become strangely preoccupied during the Space Age with a very much less
frequent threat (roughly a thousand times less frequent!) which is
directly due to comets and asteroids. Whether or not mankind recognizes
the approximately centennial threat is tantamount to choosing between
apocalyptic and antiapocalyptic outlooks on the environment. This
question as I have shown, is of deep historical and political
significance being intimately bound up with the origins of Christian
doctrine and with the elitist desire to perpetuate anti-apocalypticism
along with its appropriately distorted cosmological setting. In view of
the intellectual and cultural climate of irrationality which arises
thereby, it is a moot point whether mankind will meet the challenge
posed by this question before the next bout of apocalyptic terror
descends. Such a situation represents an intolerable risk to civilization.*

*11. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**
I would like to thank Dr David Asher, Dr Alan Edwards and Dr Benny
Peiser for critical comments on an earlier draft of this review, also
the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies for the invitation to speak at
Cambridge and the Leverhulme Trust for material support.*

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