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Subject: Ellenberger Replies to Cochrane and Talbott (1/2)
Date: 20 Jun 1994 16:12 MST
Organization: University of Arizona
Lines: 590
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <20JUN199416124123 at skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu>

Ellenberger Contra Cochrane:  The Second Reply & Talbott, Too

Foreword

On 22 May, Everett Cochrane (C.) replied to the first three points, or 
42% of my 19 May reply to him.  Although his primary goal was to 
discredit me, a careful examination of his remarks shows that he is the 
one who should be concerned about his credibility because in trying to 
skewer me he gloriously displays Chanticleer-style his own lamentable 
ignorance.  I regret the delay in this reply to C., who has seen fit to 
repost his criticism at least twice, but I have been held up waiting for 
replies from several people who have been and are unavailable.  While 
this reply to C. has been pending, I have posted a comprehensive reply 
to Cardona, two replies to Grubaugh and several shorter items on the 
physiological effects of strong magnetic fields, etc.  I have also been 
actively engaged in advancing research by facilitating the interaction 
between and/or among A.D. Kilmer, H.A.T. Reiche, H. von Dechend, O. 
Gingerich and E.G. McClain.  I am grateful to Jim Lippard for posting 
the original reply to Godowski and this rejoinder, plus posting my 
letter "A Lesson from Velikovsky" (_Skep. Inq._, Summer 1986), and 
reposting my clarification to "Ignotum per Ignotius" (IpI), rejected at 
AEON by C., when C. reposted his 22 May remarks.
In the April 1984 DISCOVER, Carol Tavris observed:  "One of the 
sturdiest findings in the slushy social sciences is that when a belief 
system [e.g., Freud's, or Velikovsky's, or Talbott's] meets contrary 
evidence--when faith meets facts--the facts are sacrificed."  This was 
my disappointing realization in April 1981 when I discovered that 
Velikovsky's (V's) use of Douglass's sequoia tree rings was unfounded 
and no one at KRONOS with whom I shared this discovery was concerned.  
But it took me until 1983 before I had realized that this symptom 
applied to all of the support for WORLDS IN COLLISION (WC) and that the 
evidence in the Greenland ice cores, which I had been rationalizing 
since 1977, in fact refuted V.'s scenario as well as those of other 
catastrophists and neo-V'ians.  These ice cores are a perfect way to 
test Clube & Napier's model of Earth's episodic interaction with the 
dense portion of the Taurid-Encke Complex in the Holocene by looking for 
certain extraterrestrial chemical and isotopic signatures in the 
seasonal layers which can be counted back over 80,000 years by naked eye 
in the new Summit cores.  Unfortunately, ice core workers do not 
routinely look for these exotic low level species; but this is not to sa 
they are not present.  The following analysis will show that nothing 
presented by C. can be given credence and that his behavior fits the 
model described by Tavris above.
I make no bones about the fact that most of what C. has posted about 
me and the handling of my invited memoir at AEON that he cancelled after 
the first installment is manifestly not true.  In April when I learned 
about the lies (confirmed in posts to t.o by Lippard) posted by C., I 
informed him that all future communication would be in writing for the 
sake of documentation.  Previous unanswered criticisms by C. of my 
conduct as a V'ian supporter now a turncoat were addressed in a 5 May 
memorandum sent to 14 t.o participants.  A copy of it may be obtained by 
sending a SASE to Leroy Ellenberger, 3929A Utah St., St. Louis, MO 
63116, marked "M", or $1.00 in lieu of SASE for foreign mail (your 
money's worth guaranteed).  The falsehoods and other chicanery 
perpetrated by C. in one paragraph posted 14 Jun are examined in 
Appendix A, below.
With this foreword, I hope the main rebuttal to C. will be mercifully 
short, presenting C.'s criticism, either by quote or paraphrase, 
followed by my reply.  I hasten to add, however, that Cardona's 14 line 
comment on 20 May took 76 lines to discredit.
If these comments strike the reader as intemperate, keep in mind that 
these arguments have been consistently ignored and/or dismissed by 
"Saturnists" since 1988 when Talbott invited me to be devil's advocate 
at AEON.

Reply to Cochrane

1a.  Velikovsky deserves "credit for his singularly novel idea" that 
"Venus only recently presented a comet-like appearance" and that
"recent cataclysms involving the respective planets inform ancient
mythology."

WRONG.  Here C. disqualifies himself the first time as a competent 
commentator.  Boucher was correct when he noted on t.o that Venus is too 
massive to have a tail, now or ever.  Comets have tails because their 
gravity field is too weak to hold an atmosphere when their ices sublime.  
Bodies as big as Venus hold an atmosphere, even were it molten, and do 
not show a tail.  Through the miracle of thermodynamics, even today with 
a surface hot enough to melt lead, the cloud tops of Venus are about -40 
degrees C.  No one has even shown that Venus _could_ present a comet-
like appearance, i.e., have a visible tail.  Venus's alleged tail is a 
red herring that has eluded detection until now; even Sagan missed it.  
So, if some body had a tail and was called "Venus" or was associated 
with Venus, it must have been an ordinary comet by composition, if not 
size.  Hint:  the giant proto-Encke in Clube & Napier's model.
C. also commits the _petitio principii_ fallacy assuming Venus had a 
tail for which V. deserves credit when such a tail has not been 
established and, indeed, is impossible, as reasoned above.  C. is 
mistaken if he believes science gives credit for "novel ideas."  Novel 
ideas are easy.  AEON is chock full of them and most, if not all, are 
wildly wrong.  As Henry Bauer sagely noted:  "Novelty receives a prize 
only after it has become part of the conventional wisdom" (2).  C. is 
quite misguided to think that V's priority on the erroneous notion that 
Venus had a tail has any importance.
On the other hand, Radlof (1823), whom C. decries, is germane because 
his scenario in HESPERUS AND PHAETHON places Venus in a cometary orbital 
scenario quite similar to V's in WC.  All of C.'s carping over Radlof's 
obscurity is irrelevant.  Obscurity never stopped D. Talbott from citing 
a source in his book THE SATURN MYTH.  Although no U.S. research library 
holds it, Clube & Napier's copy was obtained from the Royal Observatory, 
Edinburgh.
As for recent cataclysms involving planets, no physical evidence 
exists to support this notion and a host of circular, resonant satellite 
orbits at Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn flatly contradict such a 
naive, simplistic notion.  Regarding Venus, as C&N note, any prominent 
comet presenting a morning and evening apparition at perihelion would 
have been associated with her.  C. also ignores the fact that the five 
visible planets were named _after_ gods whose stories arose before the 
planets were named.  Since C. claims to be familiar with van der 
Waerden's SCIENCE AWAKENING II, he should know that to the Babylonians, 
except for Sun and Moon, the planet was not the god, but only the 
visible manifestation of the god (p. 57), e.g., Jupiter was "star of the 
god Marduk" (p. 59).

1b.  The "bizarre reference to Charles Raspil's phantom statement" does
not exist.

WRONG.  C. took the bait of my unspecified reference to Raspil.  The 
source is HORUS I:2 (1985) 25.  C. could have given me the benefit of 
the doubt regarding the authenticity, but he chose to treat it as though 
I made it up.  HORUS was a sister publication to KRONOS, founded by our 
deceased colleague at KRONOS, and my friend, Dr. David Griffard, who 
published seven issues.  On his frequent trips to and through St. Louis 
in '83-'84 he told me in no uncertain terms that the "Saturnitis" that 
had afflicted KRONOS with many articles by Rose, Cardona, Cochrane and 
Talbott was an intellectually irresponsible abomination.  As for the 
relevance of 17th century Europeans mistaking Venus for a comet, if 
they, why not some of the ancients to whom C. ascribes 100% veracity?

2a.  Tuman's dating Mul Apin Tablet I to 2048 BC cannot be correct 
because this is earlier than recognized by such scholars as Reiner 
and van der Waerden and such "astronomical proficiency" was 
"unknown and unimaginable in third millenium Mesopotamia."

WRONG.  C.'s discussion of Tuman's work and the Venus Tablets of 
Ammizaduga is thoroughly corrupt.  Van der Waerden does not say the 
observations on the Mul Apin tablets are from the Assyrian and Neo-
Babylonian periods; the tablets we have are copies of older tablets made 
in these more recent periods.
What irony that someone who blindly accepts V.'s intuition against 
the world's scientific and scholarly authorities raises these same 
authorities against Tuman's bona fide envelope-pushing insights.  Once 
again C. demonstrates how disconnected he is from the world of 
scholarship.  According to A.D. Kilmer, Assyriologist at Berkeley, 
scholars at meetings where Tuman presents his methodology and results 
have no problem with his pushing dates back, as C. seems to think; they 
question instead various steps in his procedures.
The roots of astronomical proficiency extend back farther than C. 
even begins to imagine.  Peter Huber has dated Enuma Anu Enlil tablers 
19-20 to 2302 BC (5).  Archie Roy reports that in 1899 Robert Brown 
dated Aratus's famous astronomical poem to 2084 BC, that a Sumero-
Akkadian Euphratean Planisphere shows the Sun in Taurus at vernal 
equinox, a position that predates 2540 BC, and that the present zodiac 
dates from 2000+/-200 BC (9).  Willy Hartner concluded that the lion-
bull combat motif originated at Persepolis or Ur about 4000 BC (3).  
According to Harald Reiche, the iconography of Iranian vases from 4000 
BC is demonstrably unintelligible except in terms of quasi-precessional 
phenomena (8).  According to Tom Worthen, "With the possible exception 
of the designation for Ursa Major, Pleiades is the only name for an 
asterism to be represented in several Indo-European daughter languages" 
(13).  Let the reader decide who possesses a "colossal ignorance in 
matters involving archaeoastronomy."

2b.  "Indeed, for several years now I have attempted to talk Leroy into 
debating Tuman's work within the pages of Aeon...."

WRONG.  This is not true because C.'s only knowledge of Tuma's work has 
been from Archaeoastronomy X (1987-1988) which, despite its date, was 
released April 1993.  No useful purpose would be served by debating 
Tuman's cutting-edge work with scientifically illiterate zealots in a 
pseudo-science publication.  I might as well debate the Copernican 
system in a Flat Earth Society publication.  Tuman's first paper 
applying his methodology appeared in 1983 (12).

2c.  "The Ammizaduga Tablets support the thesis that Venus once moved 
upon a different orbit."

WRONG.  Once again C. evidences his lamentable ignorance of a V'ian 
issue.  As I relate in IpI in AEON III:1, according to Rose & Vaughan, 
if the Venus Tablets record accurate observations, they imply ONLY that 
Earth's eccentricity has changed.  To assume the change is due to Venus 
is another instance of _petitio principii_, begging the question.
C. claims my discussion in AEON "is not a reputable source"; and this 
would be true were I advancing some cockamamie notion such as Earth 
having no tilt between, say, 3400 BP and 2700 BP or Earth acquiring the 
Moon in the Holocene (see Appendix B for note 17 from AEON III:1, p. 
103); but this is not the case for IpI merely marshalls the collective 
wisdom of such "reputable sources" as Peter Huber, Owen Gingerich, Asger 
Aaboe, and John Weir to refute the pro-V. interpretation of the Venus 
tablets.  In fact, IpI was vetted at several stages by Huber, Gingerich, 
and Weir.  I even sent the second draft to Rose for comment, to no 
avail.  Furthermore, C. misses the point that, in V'ian scholarship, the 
critic is required to evidence awareness of all relevant dscussions, no 
matter how derivative.

2d.  "That the Babylonians and Maya...both computed Venus' disappearance 
interval to be 90 days suggests that Venus only recently moved upon
a different orbit."

WRONG.  These intervals were counted, not computed.  Huber's point is 
that the observations in the Tablets are qualitatively the same as 
Babylonian observations from the late first millenium so the null 
hypothesis cannot be rejected and the Tablets reflect no change in the 
planetary orbits (4).  Aveni makes a compelling case that these deviant 
allocations of the Venus cycle were an attempt by the Babylonians and 
Maya "to fit Venus's motion into the time frame marked by the phases of 
the moon" (1).  Unfortunately, Aveni's keen insight is marred by his not 
knowing that Huber now favors 1702 BC as Ammizaduga's Year 1 and not 
distinguishing between historical and astronomical dates, i.e., between 
BC and (-).  Contrary to C., the similar discrepancies in the Venus 
Tablets and Dresden Codex do not mean the orbits have changed because of 
the work of Huber and Aveni cited above.  Curiously, C. cites Aveni's 
1981 book when he was perplexed by the discrepancies instead of his 1992 
book when he was not, which C. reviewed in AEON III:2.

3.  "The fact is that I am quite familiar with van der Waerden's book 
and it thoroughly contradict's Ellenberger's position."

WRONG.  Page 70 of SCIENCE AWAKENING II lists the contents of Mul Apin 
Tablet I, dated by Tuman to 2048 BC and perforce Sumerian, which 
contents include the elements of configurational astronomy.  
Technically, C. is correct that van der Waerden does not ascribe the 
origin of configurational astronomy to the Sumerians, but this 
technicality is overcome by the fact that, according to Hartner (3), the 
Babylonians got their astronomical terminology for stars and 
constellations from the Sumerians.  Thus, C.'s wish that "the Sumerians 
had kept such records" is fulfilled!  The discussion at pp. 78-79, cited 
by C., is irrelevant to the origin of configurational astronomy.

4.  Although C. does not address my discussion of the reed bundle Inanna 
symbols, which admittedly resemble comet tails (as the proverbial cigar 
resembles a phallus), I would point out that in context, not only do 
they often appear in pairs, but the constant association is with animals 
and birthing huts (11), whose connection with comets is obscure, to say 
the least.

The Parthian Shot:  C. ends his reply by harking back to our joint 
service on the staff of KRONOS and quoting Lynn Rose's opinion of me and 
my work in KRONOS XII:1 (1987).  This tactic is most unfortunate, for it 
puts Rose's credentials into play and they do not survive close 
scrutiny.
C. has a penchant for exaggeration, as when he writes "Ellenberger 
and I have had a long association."  I beg to differ.  Merely being on 
the same masthead with no personal contact is no meaningful association.  
I never had any continuing dealings with C. until May 1991 when he 
invited me to contribute to the Velikovsky retrospective project and 
promised me that my reply to Rose on the ice cores ("Litmus Tests in the 
Ice") would appear in the same issue as Rose's ice core article that 
appeared in AEON III:1.  C. broke this promise when he made "Litmus 
Tests..." the first section of Part 2 which was then cancelled.  This 
association ended officially in June 1993, but effectively in January 
when he left me alone as I revised the final section, "Legacies," as we 
agreed was advisable.
I categorically deny C.'s charge about my alleged "carelessness as a 
writer."  My articles, letters-to-the-editor, and forum items in KRONOS 
were highly regarded and I was told (by Greenberg) garnered high levels 
of reader response, mostly favorable, e.g., "Heretics and Dogmatists..." 
(4 pts), Earth as tippe top (4 pts), "Still Facing Many Problems" (2 
pts), and my defense of the catastrophic demise of the mammoth in KRONOS 
VII:4 (1982) which I retracted in AEON II:5 (1991).
Quoting Rose against Ellenberger is like asking Cato what he thought 
of Hannibal.  Rose stopped communicating with me in 1983 when we could 
not agree on the materiality of the omissions, misrepresentations and 
exaggerations in V.'s STARGAZERS AND GRAVEDIGGERS (see Appendix C:  
"Denouement," the penultimate section of my cancelled AEON memoir that 
was not type-set and of which C. told me his readers were not interested 
in such information; you be the judge.)
If anyone wants a countervailing opinion about Ellenberger, they 
might balance C.'s, Rose's, and Greenberg's (AEON III:2) skewed 
perspective by contacting such people and Tom Van Flandern, Victor 
Slabinski, Harald Reiche, Ernest McClain, Michael Friedlander, Victor 
Clube, Henry Bauer, John White, Martin Gardner, Milton Zysman and Frank 
Wallace.  Before he called me a "jack-ass" in AEON II:4, George Talbott 
once write "I admire your tenacity, your ability to write clearly and 
forcefully, and your intelligence" (June 4, 1982).  When V. inscribed 
his RAMSES II AND HIS TIME to me 20-V-78, he wrote "To Leroy who is 
almost consumed by the sacred flame of search for Truth."  I am that 
person still; but smarter and wiser.
On the other hand, as probably the last insider to defend the Mars 
events in WC, Rose shows no sign of being smarter and wiser.  At the 
August 1992 CSIS meeting at Haliburton, Ontario, I was moved to announce 
from the floor after a break:  "So far as I am concerned, nothing has 
been a bigger impediment to a sensible post-Velikovsky research program 
among supporters than the obstinacy, mendacity, invincible ignorance, 
and corrupt methodology of professor of philosophy L.E. Rose."  In my 1 
Sept. '92 letter to Clark Whelton, I went on:  "His intellectual 
pathology has been apparent to objective readers since his article in 
PENSEE I in 1972 and confirmed by his correspondence with Michael 
Friedlander following PSA 1974 a Notre Dame where Friedlander was 
confronted by Velikovsky, Paterson and Rose.  In THE NEW AGE: Notes of a 
Fringe-Watcher (1988), Martin Gardner observes:  'That KRONOS continues 
to be published is a striking tribute to the persistence of irrational 
beliefs on the part of humorless acolytes--the outstanding example is 
Lynn Rose, professor of (of all things) philosophy at the State 
University of New York at Buffalo--whose minds are set in 
concrete.'...My attitude towards Rose is no aberration or behavior 
without provocation.  It may be unorthodox, but it is not 
unjustified....Newcomers to Velikovsky with whom I've corresponded are 
aghast at Rose's personal attack on me in KRONOS XII:1 and many 
subscribers considered deplorable Greenberg's treatment of me in KRONOS 
XII:3.  In July 1991, Greenberg wrote a mutual correspondent saying 
Ellenberger is 'a barbarian unfit to be in polite academic society.'  
Excuse me, but at the risk of being self-serving, I do appreciate the 
difference between 'on stage' and 'off stage' behavior and am one of the 
few persons in the Velikovsky literature who has ever retracted an 
erroneous position:  SISW 5:4 and AEON II:5.  Velikovsky did, too, in 
June 1951 Harper's, but he did not follow through as he said he would.  
On balance, I'd put my record against anyone's in pursuing 'the sacred 
flame of the search for truth' which Velikovsky once inscribed for me in 
one of his books."
Although Rose is the first to admonish others about _petitio 
principii_, the fallacy of affirming the consequent, he is also one of 
its biggest perpetrators.  Consider the following passage deleted by C. 
from IpI:
Claiming that with such problems as energy-disposal we stand
before a door, not a wall, Rose exhibits a naively cavalier
attitude toward the laws of physics.  It would be more accurate--
and more honest--to say that Velikovsky's sequence of planetary
orbits does not conserve energy instead of deflecting criticism
by saying it 'conserve[s] total angular momentum and do[es] not
increase total orbital energy' (PENSEE VIII, p. 27).  He has more
faith in Velikovsky's intuition than in the laws of physics, as
captured in the following passage from his April 19, 1979 letter
to me:
I don't want to provide anyone with any basis at all for
saying that _I_ regard those unanswered questions as
difficulties.  When Vaughan and I wrote 'Sequence', we
freely and frankly discussed various questions and problems.
Then certain critics (whose names I have successfully 
repressed) said that _we_ had identified problems and
difficulties that invalidated Velikovsky's scenario.  That
is of course a gross distortion (as the ending of 'Sequence'
makes clear)....
The wall/door metaphor for impossibility/opportunity has become 
quite popular, having been invoked in KRONOS X:1, p. 92; XI:2,
p. 12; and XII:3, p. 66.  It is also simplistic.  Before one can
reliably identify a 'door,' or an 'opportunity for discovery,' one
needs to be able to identify both 'doors' and 'walls.'  In PENSEE
VIII, Rose & Vaughan contrasted energy conservation with the
parallax problem which some saw as a reason to reject the 
Copernican theory while Bruno saw it as an indication that the
stars were very far away.  However, the parallax problem is
different in kind from the energy conservation problem.  The
parallax problem disappears by a change in scale while the energy
conservation problem does not.  There ARE real 'walls.'  Some
things really are impossible or wrong, e.g., perpetual motion
machines, the flat earth, phlogiston, N rays, and polywater.....
Rose has not shown that he can identify a 'wall.'  Until he does
so, his identification of 'doors' cannot be taken seriously.

Obviously, Rose is unable to admit that WC is wrong--as he also shows in 
his approach to the ice cores where he refuses to acknowledge the simple 
litmus test they pose:  If the debris deposited in Earth's atmosphere by 
Venus caused 40 years of darkness at Exodus, where is it since there is 
no sign of it in the world's ice caps, ocean bottoms, or even the Sea of 
Galilee?  Rose has violated one of the most important canons of V'ian 
scholarship by ignoring the published versions of this test (see 
Appendix D for my first NATURE letter, "Falsifying Velikovsky," 1 August 
1985) and by ignoring RGA Dolby who put the ice cores on the table in 
1977 in the British Velikovsky journal.  Instead, Rose proposes that 
during the period between the Venus and Mars events, Earth had no tilt 
which somehow produced the brittle sections in the deep polar ice caps.  
But the brittle sections do not occur at the same epochs in different 
cores and not at all in Tibetan cores.  Rose shows his incompetence in 
KRONOS XII:2 when he dates an acid signal at 4000 BC (later reported to 
be 1645 BC) using linear interpolation on depth for dating a signal at 
1200m between endpoints of (50 BC, 800m) and (10,000 BC, 1800m) which 
implicitly ignores thinning with depth.  All of Rose's malfeasance on 
ice cores was exposed by Sean Mewhinney in "Ice Cores and Common Sense" 
which was sent to Rose in April 1989 as part of a joint mailing by 
Bauer, Ellenberger, and Mewhinney distributed to 110 people and 
published in C&AH XII:1 & XII:2 in 1990; yet Rose ignores this 
criticism.  Rose is not alone in this behavior, for in 1986 George 
Talbott declined to answer the question posed above.  We know Earth's 
axis was tilted during this period because the Chinese left us with 
gnomen readings they used to determine the solstices at this time.  Such 
is the power of true interdisciplinary synthesis to which V'ians barely 
pay lip service.  Rose's reluctance to confront the ice cores squarely 
reminds me of the contrasting attitude displayed by Professor William 
Buckland, as related in an amusing anecdote by Ariadne in NEW SCIENTIST 
for 13 Feb. 1986:  "He was being conducted round a cathedral and the 
guide pointed out the stains of a martyr's blood.  As usual, they were 
ineradicable and always fresh.  Buckland got down on the pavement and 
tested the stain with the tip of his tongue.  'I can tell you what that 
is,' he said.  'It's bat urine.'"  Rose's performance in assessing the 
ice cores as witness to WC shows that he is not really willing to stick 
out his tongue.
That Rose's intellectual pathology is long-standing is obvious from a 
critical reading of his "The Censorship of Velikovsky's 
Interdisciplinary Synthesis" in PENSEE I, reprinted in VELIKOVSKY 
RECONSIDERED (1976).  With the help of Sean Mewhinney and Henry Bauer, 
Rose's article was annotated in 1990 for distribution at the 
"Reconsidering Velikovsky" Symposium in Toronto under the title:  "The 
Annotated Rose: A Propaganda Piece Analyzed."  It is available by 
sending a SASE marked "Rose" to Leroy Ellenberger, 3929 Utah St., St. 
Louis, MO 63116, or $1.00 in lieu of postage for foreign mail (your 
money's worth guaranteed).

Talbott's Shared Delusion

Sunday, 12 Jun, C. posted 183 lines of nonsense by Dave Talbott trying 
to lend credence to his naive, literal interpretation of myth.  But 
Talbott's methodology is irredeemably flawed on several grounds.

1.  Their entire enterprise is based on the "Big Lie" that the planets 
were the first gods.  However, the real truth is that the planets were 
named after pre-existing gods whose origin had nothing to do with 
planets.  The major role of planets in early religion was in astrology, 
the product of theological speculation.  According to Morris Jastrow, 
Jr., in his "famous" and oft-cited article "Sun and Saturn," Saturn was 
not given a specific name until after Venus and Jupiter were named, 
which is surely strange if Saturn was the primordial deity described by 
the "Saturnists."  The nature of early religion is discussed in, e.g., 
T. Jacobsen, _The Treasures of Darkness_ (1976), E.O. James, _The 
Worship of the Sky-God_ (1963), E. Lyle, _Archaic Cosmos: Polarity, 
Space and Time_ (1990), and G.A. Wainwright, _The Sky-Religion in Egypt_ 
(1938/1971).

2.  The association of Sun and Saturn that looms large in the 
"Saturnists"' lore is readily accounted for by the law of contrasts:  
the linking of the fastest and slowest bodies moving in the ecliptic.  
Saturn may well have been specially associated with the Sun because, 
according to H.A.T. Reiche, time came to be measured by the Sun's motion 
and the number 30 linked their periods:  12 x 30 d = schematic solar 
year and 30 x (12 x 30 d) = Saturn's sidereal year.  The notion that 
"Saturn's immense form encompassed the whole sky" can be explained by 
the planet's name applying to both ORB and ORBIT.  As the most distant 
planet, Saturn's orbit, indeed, can be said to have encompassed the 
whole sky.  There is no need to have Earth close to Saturn to explain 
this image.  There is also no need for Kronos-Saturn to reside at the 
pole to rule there because in the framework of the _skambha_ he can 
affect the pole from his orbit through leverage, using the analogy of a 
ship's railing moving in tandem with the top of the mast; see _Hamlet's 
Mill_, Ch. XVII, a chapter "Saturnists" such as Cardona and Talbott show 
no sign of either having read or understood.

3.  Talbott ignores the advice in the April 14, 1972 TLS to the effect 
that "it is not possible to understand the relation of myth to reality 
without some independent knowledge of the reality."  Jerome Lettvin made 
the same point in "The Use of Myth" in _Technology Review_ (June 1976) 
with "You can't even guess what is meant [in myth] unless you know what 
is meant."  "Saturnists" make no attempt to support their 
interpretations with independent, preferably physical, evidence.  
Ironically, this advice in TLS appeared the month before the Talbott 
brothers revived PENSEE with the ten issue series "Velikovsky 
Reconsidered."  Similarly, Talbott is very vague about how long the 
polar configuration lasted and when it ended--and event that should have 
left unambiguous markers all over the world.

4.  Theories can never be proved by successful predictions, whether 120 
or 1200, as Wesley Salmon explained in the May 1973 _Scientific 
American_, ignored then by Talbott at PENSEE and ever since.  As I wrote 
Cardona 22 April 1989:  "It is axiomatic in set theory that if a set of 
symbols, S, has an internally consistent meaning, M, that set can also 
be interpreted as another consistent meaning, Q.  It is abundantly clear 
to me now that Saturnists took their cue from Velikovsky in assuming Q 
in the first place and interpreted everything else in terms of Q, logic 
and physics, and context be damned.  But the Egyptians and Babylonians 
and Sumerians (who were anterior to the former two) never heard of Q, or 
saw Q.  Jastrow makes this quite clear, it seems to me."

5.  In interpreting various artistic religious icons and motifs, 
"Saturnists" ignore the caveat in a footnote C. deleted from IpI, that 
"a picture is the artist's interpretation of the _symbolic significance_ 
of the subject, not necessarily a 'realistic' representation."

6.  Talbott writes nonchalantly about Earth swapping moons as humankind 
watched, completely oblivious to the cruel truth that lunar acquisition 
implies the destruction of the biosphere (see Appendix B).

7.  Talbott consistently conflates archaeological evidence with 
historical evidence, failing to appreciate the fact that an artifact 
exhumed from a historical site is not historical evidence, but 
archaeological evidence.  Historical evidence properly is written 
testimony with as little room for interpretation as possible.

8.  The "Saturnists" have no respect for negative evidence, considering 
that since a July 1993 telcon in which I explained the ice core 
testimony to Talbott, he and C. and Grubaugh have ignored it.  In this 
behavior they emulate their exemplar.  When I first met V., at his 
invitation on Palm Sunday 1978, the survival of the bristlecone pine, 
which for some is a sufficient disproof of WC, was on my list of 
questions.  When the issue came up, V. responded immediately with the 
nonchalance of a Borscht Belt comic, "So? They survived."  This typifies 
the general disregard V'ians have for negative evidence.  No single 
negative datum is ever taken seriously since real events cannot be 
disproved, another instance of assuming the truth of that which needs to 
be proven, _petitio principii_.

9.  The Saturn myth is not as all-encompassing as Talbott would have us 
believe.  It fails to account for at least two aspects of early 
religion:  1) _dakshina_, the ritual of right running (10, 13) and 2) 
the sacred number names assigned to Mesopotamian gods ca. 3000 BC by the 
Sumerians that encoded the primary ratios of music which later 
influenced the religious mythologies of India, China, Babylon, Greece, 
Israel, and Europe.  According to E.G. McClain, "All ancient 'theology' 
and a vast portion of ancient mythology is straight-forward harmonical 
allegory.  Deities and heroes encode mathematical functions.  Events 
encode operations.  The most powerful metaphors are appeals to visual 
imagination as it encounters the matrix arithmetic for various 
alternative perspectives."

10.  Finally, as I stated in a footnote deleted by C. from IpI, the 
"imperative groundrule of catastrophist research" expressed by D. 
Talbott, "that physical models must be tested against the mythical-
historical record" (AEON I:6, p. 123), ignores a crucial qualification, 
namely, that the only models worthy of consideration are _feasible_ 
physical models.  Thus, the laws of physics should be used to assess the 
feasibility of proposed polar configurations.  Those that are deemed 
impossible, as Ashton discussed in AEON I:3, should be discarded 
regardless of the "historical evidence" to which Talbott alluded 
because, in point of fact, there is no proper "historical evidence" for 
the polar configuration.  For one thing, the polar configuration harks 
back to the era of _prehistory_.  What evidence exists consists of 
_interpretations_ of various literary and religious motifs whose 
putative original status as a physical reality is highly dubious....The 
"Saturnists"...blindly superimpose modern concepts on ancient traditions 
ignoring the orality-literacy divide (KRONOS XI:1, p. 103) and the 
difference between cosmogonic, scientific, and historical thinking 
(Ibid., p. 107).

Conclusion

The "Saturnists"' interpretation of myth is methodologically unsound and 
totally unconstrained by the laws of physics.  There is no good reason 
to give any credence to the Saturn myth and its polar configuration 
whose physical impossibility has been explained to Grubaugh and the 
people at AEON for the past year by Tom Van Flandern and Victor 
Slabinski through Ellenberger's missives and memorandums.  The 
"Saturnists" do not explain anything that cannot be explained more 
economically by conventional scholarship.  Most, if not all, of the sky-
combat and Venus-comet imagery and the general fear of comets can be 
explained by Clube & Napier's model (_In the Cosmic Winter_ (1990)) of 
earth's episodic, energetic interaction with the dense portion of the 
Taurid-Encke complex during the Holocene, which was the stimulus for 
periods of eschatological enthusiasm in the Bible--real comets, real 
firestorms out of the sky (often about 40 days after proto-Encke was 
spotted), all relatable by archaic reasoning to Venus, and all 
astronomically feasible.  Yet Talbott never discusses Clube & Napier's 
model as an alternative to his planetary delusion.  When confronted with 
uncomfortable information such as Ashton's "Bedrock...", their reaction 
is to suppress it rather than to deal with it, or to ignore it as with
Clube & Napier.  Given their myriad failings, they are clueless in the 
mythosphere.

Leroy Ellenberger, Confidant to
Velikovsky, 4/78-11/79 and
formerly Sr. Ed. & Exec. Sec'y,
KRONOS
fax:  314-773-9273
St. Louis, MO, 20 June 1994

REFERENCES

1.  A. Aveni, _Conversing with the Planets: How Science and Myth 
Invented the Cosmos_ (New York, 1992).
2.  H.H. Bauer, _Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific 
Method_ (Urbana, 1992).
3.  W. Hartner, "The Earliest History of the Constellations in the Near 
East and the Motif of the Lion-Bull Combat," in W. Hartner, 
_Oriens--Occidens_ (Hildesheim, 1968), 227-259; reprinted from 
_JNES_ (1965).
4.  P.J. Huber, "Early Cuneiform Evidence of the Existence of the Planet 
Venus," in D. Goldsmith (ed.), _Scientists Confront Velikovsky_ 
(Ithaca, 1977), 117-144.
5.  P.J. Huber, "Dating by Lunar Eclipse Omina," in J.L. Berggren & B.R. 
Goldstein (eds.), _From Ancient Omens to Statistical Mechanics_ 
(Copenhagen, 1987), 3-13.
6.  E.G. McClain, _The Myth of Invariance_ (York Beach, 1976/1984).
7.  E.G. McClain, "Musical Theory and Ancient Cosmology," _The World and 
I_ (Feb. 1994), 370-391.
8.  H.A.T. Reiche, "The Archaic Heritage: Myths of Decline & End in 
Antiquity," in S. Friedlander et al. (eds.), _Visions of 
Apocalypse: End or Rebirth_ (1985), 21-43.
9.  A.E. Roy, "The Origin of the Constellations," _Vistas in Astronomy_ 
27 (1984) 171-197.
10.  W. Simpson, _The Buddhist Praying-Wheel_ (London, 1896).
11.  K.D. Smith-Tranquillson, "The Structure of Authority during the 
Late Uruk Period in Mesopotamia: A Synthetic Analysis," (M.A. 
Thesis, Berkeley, 1989); and David and Joan Oates, _The Rise of 
Civilization_ (New York, 1976).
12.  V.S. Tuman, "The Cerberus Slab of Hatra," _Q Jl. R. astr. Soc._ 24 
(1983) 14-23.
13.  T.D. Worthen, _The Myth of Replacement: Stars, Gods, and Order in 
the Universe_ (Tucson, 1991).

Jim Lippard               _Skeptic_ magazine:
lippard at ccit.arizona.edu  ftp://ftp.rtd.com/pub/zines/skeptic/
Tucson, Arizona           http://www.rtd.com/~lippard/skeptics-society.html

From: lippard at skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Ellenberger Replies to Cochrane and Talbott (2/2)
Date: 20 Jun 1994 16:13 MST
Organization: University of Arizona
Lines: 364
Message-ID: <20JUN199416131401 at skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu>

APPENDIX A

To show that what Cochrane (C.) says about Ellenberger cannot be trusted 
without independent corroboration, take for example a paragraph he 
posted 14 June in which he states:

1.  "...Ellenberger relies on insults rather than a careful evaluation 
of the evidence."

This scurrilous slur is handily refuted by referring the reader to my 
original 15 point issue-oriented, insult-free reply to Godowski to which 
C. initially requested four clarifications.  The colossal irony here is 
that there is no evidence for the polar configuration.  It is purely the 
collective self-delusion of a group of self-taught, scientifically 
challenged mythologists who reject or ignore metaphor in favor of naive 
literal interpretations.  Concomitantly, C. and his cronies ignore my 
observation that the record of seasonal deposition in the world's ice 
caps all through the Holocene refute the polar configuration during 
which there were supposedly no seasons.  C.'s exhortation for 
Ellenberger to examine the evidence evidently, then, does not refer to 
physical evidence, but to the mythological evidence that is subject to 
interpretation and requires independent corroboration which the 
"Saturnists" have consistently ignored.  The imperative of physical 
evidence was emphasized by Han Kloosterman in CATASTROPHIST GEOLOGY 
(12/76) when he noted:  "Velikovsky's claims of a minus 3500 y.B.P. 
disaster should first of all be based on field evidence, which seems so 
far lacking."
And when approached for the status of Roger Ashton's "The Bedrock of 
Myth" that was submitted to AEON in November 1987, both Talbott and 
Cochrane initially denied its existence, but upon pressing admit it 
exists, but did not merit publication.  Just coincidentally, Ashton's 
"Bedrock..." explains how polar configuration imagery could have arisen 
with no planetary astronomical cues and how metaphor functioned in the 
imagery.  Recently, C. finally sent Ellenberger a copy of "Bedrock..." 
that was liberated from Cardona's files.  If AEON is really a "journal 
of myth and science" and not a cult organ, then C. would invite Ashton 
to present "Bedrock..." at their conference over Thanksgiving weekend 
this November in Oregon.  Copies of this 22-page paper can be obtained 
by arrangement with Ellenberger (SASE with two stamps for U.S. mail or 
$1.50 for foreign mail).
Whereas my primary approach is to look for physical evidence on 
Earth, as with the Greenland ice cores, to corroborate the witness from 
myth, the "Saturnists" ignore the need to find independent 
corroboration, holding their idiosyncratic interpretation of myth to be 
superior to mere celestial mechanics and the laws of physics.

2.  "This style got him banned from Kronos, where he once served as
secretary..."

I was never banned from Kronos.  I declined to buy into the self-
deception entailed by calling an unambiguous disproof a "serious 
problem" and lost confidence in Greenberg's judgment when he failed to 
discriminate between personal opinion and scientific facts in refusing 
to print any letter correcting the gross errors in Jim McCanney's letter 
"Axioms of Astronomy" in KRONOS X:3.
As C. well knows, no one at KRONOS ever served as "secretary."  This 
is just one of his cheap shots.  For a period there was a "Senior Editor 
& Executive Secretary" (see the contributors listing in AEON III:1), the 
only dual-titled position that was created when Greenberg did not have 
the heart to demote the "Executive Editor" who was really the "Executive 
Gofer & Chauffeur."

3.  "...it led to his well-publicized problems with Aeon..."

The situation with Aeon is "well-publicized" solely because of C.'s 
postings.  My "problems with Aeon" probably stem from my interest in 1) 
the history of the Velikovsy controversy that debunks highly regarded 
myths (see Appendix C, below) and 2) physical evidence to support or 
refute various models and, while there is no physical evidence to 
support the polar configuration, the present state of the solar system 
and, indeed, the circular, resonant orbit of our Moon, is a sufficient 
disproof of it.

4.  "...the man who hired Ellenberger to work for Kronos..."

KRONOS hired no staff.  It was manned by volunteers who Greenberg 
invited to serve at his pleasure.  To my knowledge, Greenberg was the 
only person who ever took a salary (when finances permitted).  The fee 
Greenberg mentioned in AEON III:2 that he sent to me was a token monthly 
storage fee paid from 1983 to the end of my back issue fulfillment 
service in Nov. '87, eleven months after I resigned from the staff in 
Dec. '86.

5.  "...and the man whom Ellenberger acknowledged as personal mentor..."

Greenberg taught me the canons of V'ian scholarship and how to be an in-
your-face, unrelenting critic.  My animus is directed against the 
hypocrisy in a movement that demands certain behavior from critics that 
they decline to practice themselves; see Greenberg's "L. Sprague de 
Camp: Anatomy of a Zetetic" in KRONOS III:1.  My targets are not the 
diehard true-believers who most likely will never give up their 
delusion, but the innocent by-standers who are looking for authentic 
intellectual stimulation, as I was in 1969 when I happened upon WORLDS 
IN COLLISION in a bookstore and was unable to find a responsible guide 
for the perplexed concerning this admittedly fascinating book.

APPENDIX B

[From Leroy Ellenberger, "Of Lessons, Legacies, and Litmus Tests: A 
Velikovsky Potpourri (Part One)," _Aeon_ III:1, p. 103.  This footnote 
does not correspond to the text, but was mistakenly printed as a result 
of an editing mistake when the last section of part one of the article 
was substantially cut before publication without the author's knowledge 
or consent.  The footnote corresponds to text that was cut.]

[17] Another example of glossing over an insuperable energy disposal 
problem is provided by Dr. C. J. Ransom with his defense (_KRONOS_ I:3, 
pp. 47-48) of Velikovsky's proposal that Earth acquired the Moon within 
the memory of man.  The energy disposal is only a modest 48 calories per 
gram.  However, Ransom fails to note that _all_ capture models require 
Earth to be plastic enough for body tides to dissipate by solid friction 
the energy loss of the Moon, which "corresponds to 10% of the energy 
that is required to induce melting," according to S. Fred Singer (_EOS_ 
51, 1970, pp. 637-41).  This requires capture to occur early in Earth's 
existence because any lunar acquisition _a la_ Velikovsky implies the 
annihilation of the biosphere, which did not happen.  It is disingenuous 
for Ransom to imply that Velikovsky was criticized because his orbital 
changes were impossible when in fact the criticism stemmed from his 
impossible timescale.

APPENDIX C

[From Leroy Ellenberger, "Of Lessons, Legacies, and Litmus Tests: A 
Velikovsky Potpourri"  This section was not published.  Unlike most of 
the unpublished portions of the article, this part was not even 
typeset.]

DENOUEMENT (Revised upon advice of J. N. Sammer)

How firmly I held to all the Freudian mechanisms so long as
the deceptive proximity of the great founder confused my own
understanding!  How much I had to learn, correct, tone down,
or underscore, overcome or forget, or see with a different
eye...!
Wilhelm Stekel

Physics is the science of deciding what is possible and what
is not possible, and we now know sufficient physics to make
some very reliable decisions.
Milton Rothman, _Skeptical Inquirer_,
Fall 1989

While public interest in Velikovsky's claims has declined and, 
furthermore, has been overshadowed by the creation-evolution 
controversy, the Velikovsky affair continues to be discussed, as by 
Daisie and Michael Radner in _Science and Unreason_ (1982), by Arthur N. 
Strahler in _Science and Earth History_ (1987), by J. W. Grove in _In 
Defence of Science_ (1989), by Clark Chapman and David Morrison in 
_Cosmic Catastrophes_ (1989), and by Walter Sullivan in _Continents in 
Motion_, 2nd ed. (1991).  Although Bauer's _Beyond Velikovsky_ was 
completed before Velikovksy died and was trimmed by one-third by the 
publisher, it is, with later additions, the most complete account of the 
Velikovsky controversy so far and has been lauded by John L. Casti in 
_Paradigms Lost_ (1989) and hailed as "the definitive work on 
Velikovsky" by R. R. Robbins and W. H. Jefferys in _Discovering 
Astronomy_ (1988).
However, many key incidents are missing from the public record.  
Velikovsky omitted from his memoir _Stargazers and Gravediggers_ much 
that did not fit the public image he cultivated.  He strove to minimize 
the commercial significance of his writing to create the impression that 
_Worlds in Collision_ was accepted primarily on its merits as a 
scholarly work.  But it is interesting to note that when Velikovsky 
first contacted Macmillan in November 1946, he had a letter of intent 
from Gordon Atwater at the Hayden Planetarium for a Sky Show on his book 
when it was published.  The influence that this letter wielded after 
eight rejections without it should not be ignored in any historically 
complete story of the Velikovsky affair; cf. _Stargazers_, pp. 64-65.[1]
For twenty years, from 1963 to 1983, DeGrazia _et al._'s _The 
Velikovsky Affair_ stood as the history of those events, although some 
commentators noted the bias obvious in the account, _e.g._, W. O. 
Hagstrom, _The Scientific Community_ (1965).  With its status 
unchallenged, _The Velikovsky Affair_ even attained a mythic dimension 
and was the standard against which all comments on the controversy were 
compared.  When _Stargazers_ appeared in 1983, it was clearly no 
"history" and obvious that _The Velikovsky Affair_ was based almost 
exclusively on Velikovsky's notes which became _Stargazers_ with no 
countervailing sources to balance and flesh out Velikovsky's biased, 
incomplete and self-serving version of events.  Between the two books 
there was no history of the Velikovsky affair, only a memoir.  Like it 
or not, Bauer's _Beyond Velikovsky_ is the only history available.
While reviewing three books on Freud in the Nov./Dec. 1985 _The 
Sciences_, J. A. Hobson relates two actions of Freud's having obvious 
parallels to Velikovsky and his flawed and selective recall in 
_Stargazers_:  "Freud was the careful custodian of his own image and was 
willing to suppress the truth to protect himself," and "In a research 
and treatment program whose central rule is to say everything that comes 
to mind, and which relies on the retrospective assembly of data, the 
suppression of historical truths is as grave a crime as is concealing 
experimental evidence."[1a]
Before a meaningful reconsideration of Velikovsky can be 
accomplished, we need to know what Velikovsky was really about.  
Consider, for example, the following incidents in or missing from 
_Stargazers_:
There is no chapter on _Cosmos Without Gravitation_, which served as 
the rationalization of the physics implied by _Worlds in Collision_.  
This pamphlet was sent to many individuals and libraries in 1946-47 so 
that by 1950 many of the vocal critics had read it and thereby knew that 
Velikovsky did not understand physics, as Bauer explains in Chapter 7 of 
_Beyond Velikovsky_.  Velikovsky sent a copy of _Cosmos_ to Shapley on 
March 31, 1947 with an arrogantly worded cover letter.  Shapley, in 
turn, gave it to Donald H. Menzel.  The absence of _Cosmos_ from Horace 
Kallen's "Shapley, Velikovsky, and the Scientific Spirit" (_Pensee I_, 
reprinted in _Vel. Recon._) undermines the thesis that Shapley was 
unjustified in rejecting _Worlds in Collision_ before reading it because 
Shapley, as an astronomer, knew enough to know that the order of the 
Solar System could not have been changed within the last 3,500 years and 
that Velikovsky did not have a grasp of the requisite physics to 
challenge the firmly held astronomical consensus.  Similarly, the 
absence of _Cosmos_ from Sidney Willhelm's "Velikovsky's Challenge to 
the Scientific Establishment" (_Pensee III_) distorts his analysis.  The 
only evidence of _Cosmos_ in _Stargazers_ is mentions of it in quotes of 
Shapley and Wildt, the latter with a self-serving footnote by 
Velikovsky.
Velikovsky's discussion of Donnelly in _Worlds in Collision_, KRONOS 
VII:1, and _Stargazers_ (p. 42) is a grudging acknowledgment intended to 
minimize Donnelly's significance.  However, Velikovsky discovered 
Donnelly in the New York Public Library in 1940, according to DeGrazia 
in _Cosmic Heretics_ (p. 337); and I have since learned that Velikovsky 
was depressed for a week afterwards.  Despite this, when _Worlds in 
Collision_ was submitted to Macmillan in 1946, Donnelly was not even 
mentioned until J. J. O'Neill noted the absence (Bauer, _Beyond 
Velikovsky_, pp. 218-23).
Velikovsky changes the charge that _Worlds in Collision_ was listed 
as "Science" to one--which no one made--that it was advertised as a 
textbook (_Stargazers_, p. 65).  The first mention of Velikovsky in 
_Science_ came in Chester Longwell's April 13, 1951 letter which cites 
the "Science" listing, but Velikovsky conveniently overlooks Longwell's 
letter while discussing John Pfeiffer's July 13, 1951 letter which was 
an explicit reply to Longwell (_Stargazers_, p. 221).  Velikovsky also 
ignores the "Science" listing mentioned by Longwell in the book review 
discussed in "Quartered at Yale" (_Stargazers_, pp. 162-68).  
Considering the exposure the "Science" listing received, Joe May's 
rationalization in his review of _Stargazers_ (KRONOS IX:2) for how 
Velikovsky garbled it can be given no credence.  If Velikovsky had any 
doubt about the matter, he had over twenty years to resolve it and it 
would have taken only one phone call.  Additional insight into this 
incident may be found in Juergens' article in KRONOS VI:4, "Asimov's 
Guide to the Velikovsky Affair" and mine in KRONOS IX:2, "_Worlds in 
Collision_ in Macmillan's Catalogues."
The three last-minute "censors" were not "prominent scientists" 
(_Stargazers_, pp. 86 & 133), but three friends of Henry McCurdy, Head 
of the College Dept.:  C. W. van der Merwe (Physics, NYU), C. S. Sherman 
(Chemistry, Cooper Union), and E. M. Thorndike (Physics, Queen's 
College).  The fourth mentioned in a _Stargazers_ footnote (p. 87) was 
Charles Skelley, a Macmillan employee.
Admittedly, some of these "details" are relatively minor.  However, 
the cumulative effect of discovering all these "details" that had been 
suppressed, some of which are quite significant, was disconcerting to me 
because, after Velikovsky had emphasized in _Ages in Chaos_ that the 
Hebrews recorded both the good news and the bad news in the Old 
Testament, I certainly never expected to find that Velikovsky would 
manipulate events as he did in _Stargazers_.  Memoir or not, it is 
reasonable to expect Velikovsky's account to be accurate in the 
portrayal of his chosen topics and not to omit material details from 
them, such as possessing Atwater's promise for a Sky Show when he 
contacted Macmillan in 1946.  The importance of these omissions and 
manipulation was the issue that precipitated my estrangement from Rose 
in 1983.  It may not even be possible to know all that Velikovsky ever 
considered including in _Stargazers_ since the final make-up of the book 
was determined by the Estate which was constantly shuffling the chapters 
as publication approached.  Henry Bauer obtained from Morrow an advance 
copy--a set of bound page proofs--that contained several chapters that 
were dropped from the book just before it went to press.[2]
We can only speculate what the situation would be today had 
Velikovsky's unreasonable terms not squelched a project with the Wolper 
Organization in late 1974 for a television special on _Worlds in 
Collision_.  Velikovsky's file on these negotiations, which I examined 
in April 1979, reveals that Velikovsky would not yield on wanting re-run 
royalties equal to the first showing and withholding exclusive rights to 
the title "Worlds in Collision" for 18 months.  Velikovsky evidently did 
not want the Wolper project to interfere with a possible Canadian 
project, but the outcome was that there were no media projects in the 
wake of the AAAS debacle in February 1974.  After Velikovsky's death, a 
feature film project, with Milton Zysman as producer, foundered because 
the Estate insisted on a G-rated script which Zysman did not consider 
commercially viable.  Zysman had a budget of $6 million, the talent of a 
proven, top-flight screen writer[3], and the promise of NASA-quality 
animation for planetary flybys in the context of a plot based on the 
Skidee Pawnee sacrifices to the Morning Star.

Footnotes to "Denouement":

[1] Letter, Atwater to Ellenberger, November 7, 1983.  Atwater put his 
intentions in writing on 10 October 1946 in response to Velikovsky's 3 
October request for written confirmation of what Atwater told Velikovsky 
at their first meeting.  Later, George P. Brett, Jr. phoned Atwater to 
confirm what Velikovsky had evidently told him over the phone.  
Curiously, Velikovsky's account in _Stargazers_ merely mentions phoning 
Macmillan for an appointment (p. 63) and then jumps to November 22, the 
day of Velikovsky's appointment with Harold Latham.
In 1978 Velikovsky told me about Atwater's letter about the Sky Show.  
My telephone conversation with George Brett in January 1984, less than a 
month before he died February 11th, was not able to corroborate 
Atwater's account because Brett refused to discuss his experience with 
Velikovsky except to express his anger over the effect _Worlds in 
Collision_ had on Macmillan's reputation.  Brett's preferred topics of 
conversation were physical fitness and _Gone with the Wind_.

[1a] Apropos Velikovsky's approaching Macmillan, in _The Whig 
Interpretation of History_, Herbert Butterfield noted "It is not a sin 
in a historian to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and 
discounted.  The sin in historical composition is the organization of 
the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized."  Interestingly, 
Velikovsky quoted from H. (not M.) Butterfield's _The Origin of Modern 
Science_ in _Harper's_ (June 1951) and his AAAS address.

[2] The deleted chapters were titled "A Dishonest Dollar," "The Supreme 
Paradox," and "Meryt-Aten and Middlebury."  Three chapters were added:  
"Before the Chair of Jupiter," "Jove's Thunderbolts," and "Earth in 
Upheaval," while two chapters were substantially re-worked:  "In 
Kepler's Company" and "Mona Lisa and the Antarctic."  Previously, 
_Mankind in Amnesia_ was subject to similar manipulation.  Most 
significantly, the chapter "World Catastrophes as Punishment," which 
dealt with the role of religion in responding to global cataclysms, was 
deleted because V's daughter Shulamith deemed it too controversial.

[3] Namely, Calder Willingham, screen writer for "Paths of Glory," 
"Little Big Man," and "Ramblin' Rose," among other films.

APPENDIX D

[C. Leroy Ellenberger, letter in _Nature_ vol. 316, 1 August 1985, p. 
386:]

Falsifying Velikovsky

SIR--In his review of Henry Bauer's _Beyond Velikovsky_, Owen Gingerich 
observes:  "Although science cannot prove that a Velikovskian scenario 
is impossible, it might well prove that it did not happen"[1].  Although 
Gingerich selects Peter Huber's analysis of the Babylonian Venus tablets 
for this purpose, they simply are not decisive enough.  Indeed, Rose and 
Vaughan's critique of Huber[2], to which Gingerich alludes, is stronger 
than he allows.
The best evidence proving Velikovsky's scenario did not happen is 
provided by Greenland's Dye 3 ice core[3].  This core is continuous and 
datable by counting annual layers back at least 7,200 years.  
Velikovsky's catastrophes _should_ have left unequivocal markers in the 
ice.  Not only are the expected heavy dust layers absent, but volcanic 
acid fallout, identified with ancient eruptions in the Velikovskian time 
frame, is comparable in amount to that associated with single, recent 
eruptions[4].  This is not what would be expected if catastrophes of the 
magnitude described by Velikovsky had actually happened[5].

C. Leroy Ellenberger
3929A Utah Street,
St Louis, Missouri 63116, USA

[1] Gingerich, O. _Nature_ 314, 692-693 (1985).
[2] Rose, L. E. & Vaughan, R. C. _Kronos_ X:2, 1-12 (1985).
[3] Dansgaard, W. _et al._ _Science_ 218, 1273-1277 (1982).
[4] Hammer, C. U. _et al._ _Nature_ 288, 230-235 (1980).
[5] Ellenberger, C. L. _Kronos_ X:1, 97-102 (1984).

[The above letter accurately predicted exactly how Lynn Rose would 
respond to Gingerich (_Nature_ 317(10 Oct. 1985):470), to which 
Ellenberger replied bringing up the ice core data again, as well as some 
additional evidence (_Nature_ 318(21 Nov. 1985):204).  Owen Gingerich 
himself responded to Rose in part by reference to the ice core data 
brought up by Ellenberger (_Nature_ 319(9 Jan. 1986):93).]

Jim Lippard               _Skeptic_ magazine:
lippard at ccit.arizona.edu  ftp://ftp.rtd.com/pub/zines/skeptic/
Tucson, Arizona           http://www.rtd.com/~lippard/skeptics-society.html