Discussion: Invisible Catastrophes Speaker: Anthony Larson Such has been written in interdisciplinary forums about glaring flaws in Velikovsky's approach to past planetary catastrophes. Discussions of his "hidden agenda" and "biblical fundamentalism" have been painful in that they impugn his motives, implying that his work is, therefore, somehow diminished. Using that yardstick, we would have to question Newton's contributions. Research should be judged on its own merits, not what motivates its creation. Most analysts have jumped on the bandwagon. One by one, it seems they have systematically rejected every catastrophic event designated by Velikovsky for his presumed lack of good evidence or because of perceived misinterpretations on his part -- leaving the onlooker wondering whether the analysts accept the principle of catastrophe or not! No rational mind wants to defend the indefensible, support the insupportable. An error is an error is an error. But this rush to reject Velikovsky (for such it seems) among scholars who once embraced him smacks of Lemming-like behavior. Self-examination, to minimize error, is probably healthy as the fledgling discipline of neo-Catastrophism seeks to establish itself and find credibility in the space age. But this rush to pummel the work of its founder may be counterproductive, to say the least. Accusations from all quarters within the Catastrophist movement have left the impression among many that Dr. Velikovsky's entire thesis is flawed! Criticism must be better thought out. For example, Velikovksy's improper use of mythical themes from prehistory to support his thesis of the Exodus catastrophe is probably one of his most glaring errors, as Talbott pointed out in his article entitled, "On Models and Scenarios," (AEON I:4, p. 9). But, Talbott stumbles as badly when he follows with this comment: "Anyone arguing for later catastrophes -- on the basis of myth -- must be able to show the introduction of new mythical themes, or at least dramatically new applications of prior themes, in connection with the proposed catastrophe. In the catastrophist discussion to date, not one has achieved even a first step in this direction." With this assertion, Talbott shows himself as prone to error as Velikovsky. Later catastrophes would only serve to reaffirm prior themes and symbols, not establish new ones. The human mind works from generalities to specifics, quickly seizing upon broad similarities. Given such tendencies, eyewitnesses to later cataclysms would automatically make mental connections between what they were seeing and the original traditions. For example, the Exodus comet-planet, standing vertically on the horizon as Velikovsky postulated, would be strangely reminiscent of the polar column associated with ancient Saturn -- certainly similar enough to fulfill the symbolic expectations of tradition-oriented Israelites. So, too, any presentation of a crescent to earthly observers at that time would bring to mind the earlier Bull of Heaven tradition. Note that the ancients did not alter their view of the heavens for thousands of years -- even though the observable evidence, evident from day to day, contradicted everything the traditions taught. Derivations of Saturnian traditions persisted right down into modern times since they were preserved as religious tradition. Certainly the victims of late catastrophes (which bore marked similarities with religious traditions) would as easily insist on fitting their new experience into the old traditions. Such is the power of the Saturn myths and the bent of the human mind! Such interpretive power would demand that any extraordinary occurrence be explained in terms of preexisting cultural myths and traditions! Talbott was plainly wrong. There would be no introduction of new themes or symbols; to search for such would be in vain. Any catastrophe subsequent to that which brought the Golden Age of Saturn to a close would simply reconfirm the myth and symbolism of the earlier epoch. Thus, the similarities between early and late catastrophes may cause the later catastrophes to be virtually invisible in a mythological approach to history. This is the proper line of thinking for any scholar who wishes to reexamine Velikovsky's work -- which view throws open the door to the possibility that much of the criticism aimed at Velikovsky's conclusions may be flawed. There very well may have been later catastrophes involving Venus and Mars, much as Velikovsky postulated. Despite its shortcomings, what is remarkable in Velikovsky's tour de force was his ability to perceive catastrophic events where others saw none. This will prove to be either his memorial or his downfall. And even if he should finally be proven wrong regarding the late catastrophes (which I doubt, despite his choice of flawed evidence), we will all owe the good doctor a tremendous debt of gratitude for pointing the way in the first place. On Flying Dinosaurs Speaker: Ted Holden In past ages, not only 300+ lb. flying creatures (Texas Pterosaurs), but also 160 -- 200 lb. modern birds (teratorns) flew. Nothing much larger than 30 lbs. or so flies anymore, and those creatures, albatrosses and a few of the largest condors and eagles, are marginal. Albatrosses in particular are called "gooney birds" by sailors because of the extreme difficulty they experience taking off and landing, their landings being (badly) controlled crashes, and all of this despite long wings made for maximum lift. The felt effect of the force of gravity on Earth was much less in remote times, and only this allowed such giant creatures to fly. No flying creature has since RE-EVOLVED into anything like former sizes, and the one or two birds which have retained such sizes have forfeited any thought of flight, their wings becoming vestigial. Adrian Desmond (The Hot Blooded Dinosaurs) has a good deal to say about the Pteranodon, the 40 -- 50 lb. pterosaur which scientists used to believe was the largest creature which ever flew: Pteranodon had lost its teeth, tail and some flight musculature, and its rear legs had become spindly. It was, however, in the actual bones that the greatest reduction of weight was achieved. The wing bones, backbone and hind limbs were tubular, like the supporting struts of an aircraft, which allows for strength yet cuts down on weight. In Pteranodon these bones, although up to an inch in diameter, were no more than cylindrical air spaces bounded by an outer bony casing no thicker than a piece of card. Barnum Brown of the American Museum reported an armbone fragment of an unknown species of pterosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of Texas in which 'the culmination of the pterosaur...the acme of light construction' was achieved. Here, the trend had continued so far that the bone wall of the cylinder was an unbelievable one-fiftieth of an inch thick! Inside the tubes bony crosswise struts no thicker than pins helped to strengthen the structure, another innovation in aircraft design anticipated by the Mesozoic pterosaurs. The combination of great size and negligible weight must necessarily have resulted in some fragility. It is easy to imagine that the paper-thin tubular bones supporting the gigantic wings would have made landing dangerous. How could the creature have alighted without shattering all of its bones! How could it have taken off in the first place! It was obviously unable to flap twelve-foot wings strung between straw-thin tubes. Many larger birds have to achieve a certain speed by running and flapping before they can take off and others have to produce a wing beat speed approaching hovering in order to rise. To achieve hovering with a twenty-three foot wingspread, Pteranodon would have required 220 lbs. of flight muscles as efficient as those in hummingbirds. But it had reduced its musculature to about 8 lbs., so it is inconceivable that Pteranodon could have taken off actively. Pteranodon, then, was not a flapping creature, it had neither the muscles nor the resistance to the resulting stress. Its long, thin albatross-like wings betray it as a glider, the most advanced glider the animal kingdom has produced. With a weight of only 40 lbs. the wing loading was only 1 lb. per square foot. This gave it a slower sinking speed than even a man-make glider, where the wings have to sustain a weight of at least 4 lbs. per square foot. The ratio of wing area to total weight in Pteranodon is only surpassed in some of the insects. Pteranodon was constructed as a glider, with the breastbone, shoulder girdle and backbone welded into a box-like rigid fuselage, able to absorb the strain from the giant wings. The low weight combined with an enormous wing span meant that Pteranodon could glide at ultra-low speeds without fear of stalling. Cherrie Bramwell of Reading University has calculated that it could remain aloft at only 15 m.p.h. So take-off would have been relatively easy. All Pteranodon needed was a breeze of 15 m.p.h. when it would face the wind, stretch its wings and be lifted into the air like a piece of paper. No effort at all would have been required. Again, if it was forced to land on the sea, it had only to extend its wings to catch the wind in order to raise itself gently out of the water. It seems strange that an animal that had gone to such lengths to reduce its weight to a minimum should have evolved an elongated bony crest on its skull. Desmond has mentioned some of the problems which even the Pteranodon faced at fifty lbs. or so; no possibility of flapping the wings for instance. The giant teratorn finds of Argentina were not known when the book was written. They came out in the eighties in issues of Science Magazine, and other places. The teratorn was a 160 -- 200 lb. eagle with a 27' wingspan, a modern bird whose existence involved flapping wings, aerial maneuver, etc. How so? There are a couple of other problems which Desmond does not mention, including the fact that life for a pure glider would be almost impossible in the real world, and that some limited flying ability would be necessary for any aerial creature. Living totally at the mercy of the winds, a creature might never get back home to its nest and offspring given the first contrary wind. There is one other problem. Desmond notes a fairly reasonable modus operandi for the Pteranodon, i.e., that it had a throat pouch like a pelican, has been found with fish fossils indicating a pelican-like existence, soaring over the waves and snapping up fish without landing. That should indicate that, peculiarly amongst all of the creatures of the earth, the Pteranodon should have been practically immune from the great extinctions of past ages. Velikovsky noted that large animals had the greatest difficulty getting to high ground and other safe havens at the times of floods and the global catastrophes of past ages and were therefore peculiarly susceptible to extinction. Ovid notes (Metamorphoses) that men and animals hid on mountain tops during the Flood, but that most died from lack of food during the hard year of the Flood. But high places safe from flooding were always there; oceans were always there and fish were always there. The Pteranodon's way of life should have been impervious to all mishap; the notion that Pteranodon died out when the felt effect of gravity on Earth changed after the flood is the only good explanation. Back to Adrian Desmond for more on size as related to pterosaurs now: It would be a grave understatement to say that, as a flying creature, Pteranodon was large. Indeed, there were sound reasons for believing that it was the largest animal that ever could become airborne. With each increase in size, and therefore also weight, a flying animal needs a concomitant increase in power (to beat the wings in a flapper and to hold and manoeuvre them in a glider), but power is supplied by muscles which themselves add still more weight to the structure. The larger a flyer becomes the disproportionately weightier it grows by the addition of its own power supply. There comes a point when the weight is just too great to permit the machine to remain airborne. Calculations bearing on size and power suggested that the maximum weight that a flying vertebrate can attain is about 50 lbs.: Pteranodon and its slightly larger but lesser known Jordanian ally Titanopteryx were therefore thought to be the largest flying animals. Notice that the calculations mentioned say about 50 lbs. is max for either a flier or a glider, and that experience from our present world absolutely coincides with this and, in fact, don't go quite that high; the biggest flying creatures which we actually see are albatrosses, geese etc. at around 30 -- 35 lbs. Similarly, my calculations say that about 20000 lbs. would be the largest theoretically possible land animal in our present world, and Jumbo the stuffed elephant, which I've mentioned, the largest known land animal from our present world, was around 16000. But in 1972 the first of a spectacular series of finds suggested that we must drastically rethink our ideas on the maximum size permissible in flying vertebrates. Although excavations are still in progress, three seasons' digging from 1972 to 1974 by Douglas A. Lawson of the University of California has revealed partial skeletons of three ultra-large pterosaurs in the Big Bend National Park in Brewster County, Texas. These skeletons indicate creatures that must have dwarfed even Pteranodon. Lawson found the remains of four wings, a long neck, hind legs and toothless jaws in deposits that were non-marine; the ancient entombing sediments are thought to have been made instead by floodplain silting. The immense size of the Big Bend pterosaurs, which have already become known affectionately in the palaeontological world as '747s' or 'Jumbos', may be gauged by setting one of the Texas upper arm bones alongside that of a Pteranodon: The 'Jumbo' humerus is fully twice the length of Pteranodon's. Lawson's computer estimated wingspan for this living glider is over fifty feet! It is no surprise, said Lawson in announcing the animal in Science in 1975, that the definitive remains of this creature were found in Texas. Unlike Pteranodon, these creatures were found in rocks that were formed 250 miles inland of the Cretaceous coastline. The lack of even lake deposits in the vicinity militates against these particular pterosaurs having been fishers. Lawson suggests that they were carrion feeders, gorging themselves on the rotting mounds of flesh left after the dismembering of a dinosaur carcass. Perhaps, like vultures and condors, these pterosaurs hung in the air over the corpse waiting their turn. Having alighted on the carcass, their toothless beaks would have restricted them to feeding upon the soft, pulpy internal organs. How they could have taken to the air after gorging themselves is something of a puzzle. Wings of such an extraordinary size could not have been flapped when the animal was grounded. Since the pterosaurs were unable to run in order to launch themselves they must have taken off vertically. Pigeons are only able to take-off vertically by reclining their bodies and clapping the wings in front of them; as flappers, the Texas pterosaurs would have needed very tall stilt-like legs to raise the body enough to allow the 24-foot wings to clear the ground! The main objection, however, still rests in the lack of adequate musculature for such an operation. Is the only solution to suppose that, with wings fully extended and elevators raised, they were lifted passively off the ground by the wind? If Lawson is correct and the Texas pterosaurs were carrion feeders another problem is envisaged. Dinosaur carcasses imply the presence of dinosaurs. The ungainly Brobdingnagian pterosaurs were vulnerable to attack when grounded, so how did they escape the formidable dinosaurs? Left at the mercy of wind currents, take-off would have been a chancy business. Lawson's exotic pterosaurs raise some intriguing questions. Only continued research will provide the answers. Note that Desmond mentions a number of ancillary problems, any of which would throw doubt on the pterosaur's ability to exist as mentioned, and neglects the biggest question of all: the calculations which say 50 lbs. are maximum have not been shown to be in error; we have simply discovered larger creatures. Much larger. This is what is called a dilemma. Then I come to what Robert T. Bakker has to say about the Texas pterosaurs (The Dinosaur Heresies, pp. 290-291): "Immediately after their paper came out in Science, Wann Langston and his students were attacked by aeronautical engineers who simply could not believe that the Big Bend dragon had a wingspan of forty feet or more. Such dimensions broke all the rules of flight engineering; a creature that large would have broken its arm bones if it tried to fly...Under this hail of disbelief, Langston and his crew backed off somewhat. Since the complete wing bones hadn't been discovered, it was possible to reconstruct the Big Bend Pterodactyl [pterosaur] with wings much shorter than fifty feet." The original reconstruction had put wingspan for the pterosaur at over 60 feet. Bakker goes on to say that he believes the pterosaurs really were that big and that they simply flew despite our not comprehending how, i.e., that the problem is ours. He does not give a solution as to what we're looking at the wrong way. So much for the idea of anything RE-EVOLVING into the sizes of the flying creatures of the antediluvian world. What about the possibility of man BREEDING something like a Pteratorn? Could man actively breed a 50 lb. eagle? David Bruce's Bird of Jove, 1971, describes the adventures of Sam Barnes, one of England's top falconers at the time, who actually brought a Berkut eagle out of Kirghiz country to his home in Pwllheli, Wales. Berkuts are the biggest eagles, and Atlanta, the particular eagle which Barnes brought back, at 26 lbs. in flying trim, is believed to be as large as they ever get. These, as Khan Chalsan explained to Barnes, have been bred specifically for size and ferocity for many centuries. They are the most prized of all possessions amongst nomads, and are the imperial hunting bird of the Turko-Mongol peoples. The eagle Barnes brought back had a disease for which no cure was available in Kirghiz, and was near to death then, otherwise there would have been no question of his having her. Chalsan explained that a Berkut of Atlanta's size would normally be worth more than a dozen of the most beautiful women in his country. The killing powers of a big eagle are out of proportion to its size. Berkuts are normally flown at wolves, deer, and other large prey. Barnes witnessed Atlanta killing a deer in Kirghiz, and Chalsan told him of her killing a black wolf a season earlier. Mongols and other nomads raise sheep and goats, and obviously have no love for wolves. While a wolf might be little more than a day at the office for Atlanta with her 11-inch talons, however, a wolf is a major-league deal for an average sized Berkut at 15 -- 20 lbs. Chalsan explained that wolves occasionally win these battles, and that he had once seen a wolf kill three of the birds before the fourth killed him. Quite obviously, there would be an advantage to having the birds be bigger, i.e., to having the average Berkut be 25 lbs., and a big one be 40 or 50. It has never been done, however, despite all of the efforts since the days of Chengis Khan. We have Chengis Khan's famous "What is best in life..." quote, and the typical Mongol reply from one of his captains involved falconry. They regarded it as important. Chengis Khan, Oktai, Kuyuk, Hulagu, Batui, Monke, Kubilai et al. were all into this sport in a big way. They all wanted these birds big, since they flew them at everything from wolves and deer (a big Berkut like Atlanta can drive its talons in around a wolf's spine and snap it) to leopards and tigers, and there was no lack of funds for the breeding program involved. Chengis Khan did not suffer from poverty. Moreover, the breeding of Berkuts has continued apace from that day to this, including a 200 year stretch during which those people ruled almost all of the world which you'd care to own at the time, and they never got them any bigger than 25 lbs. or so. Remember Desmond's words regarding the difficulty which increasingly larger birds will experience getting airborne from flat ground? Atlanta was powerful enough in flight, but she was not easily able to take off from flat ground. Barnes noted one instance in which a town crank attacked Atlanta with a cane and the great bird had to frantically run until it found a sand dune from which to launch herself. This could mean disaster in the wild. A bird of prey will often come to ground with prey, and if she can't take off from flat ground to avoid trouble once in awhile...it would only take once. Khan Chalsan had explained the necessity of having the birds in captivity for certain periods, and nesting wild at other times. A bird bigger than Atlanta would not survive the other times. One variety of teratorn, however, judging from pictures which have appeared in Science Magazine, was very nearly a scaled-up golden eagle weighing 170 lbs or so, with a wingspan of 27 feet as compared to Atlanta's 10. In our world, that can't happen. Just another one of those things for which establishment science has no answer. Thoughts on the Jubilee Speaker: Norman Schwarz Bernard Newgrosh ("Venus and the Jubilee," AEON Vol. III, No. 1) is so confused that I'll start at the end. He says: "If one allows for pre-Exodus 'events' then almost certainly the Maya [Venus] cycle would date from the post-Exodus period, and the Israelite jubilee (if it does represent a Venus cycle) would reflect a pre-Exodus period." A). The Maya ran four "calendars" at the same time: a 365 day solar year calendar; a 260 day ritual year calendar; a 584 day Venus "year" calendar; and a lunar calendar. Then every so often, they would adjust for cumulative errors because the solar year was almost 365.25 days, the Lunar period was not exact and the 584 day Venus "year" was not quite exact either. This is much like our leap year adjustments. The Synodic (with respect to the Sun) period of Venus is (averaged over a long time) 584 days; its Sidereal (with respect to the stars) period is 224.7 days. [The common Classical approximations of Venus' sidereal period were 224 and 225 days; the Maya used 224 8/13 days which is closer to the actual 224.7 days than either 224 or 225 days.] Thus the famous Maya 52 year cycle is: (52 years) x (365 days/year) = 18,980 days, 1). 18,980 days = (32.5 x 584) days = (84.5 x 224 8/13) days. That is, in 52 solar years there are 32.5 Synodic periods of Venus, and 84.5 Sidereal periods of Venus. [In 104 years there are 65 Synodic periods and 169 Sidereal periods.] 2). 18,980 days = (73 x 260) days. In 52 solar years there are 73 Mayan ritual years. B). The Jews used a soli-lunar year of 364 days. Their 50 year jubilee cycle was: (50 years) x (364 days/year) = 18,200 days = (81) x (224.6913) = (81) x (224.7) days. In 49 years, they had seven years of fallow ground; in the fiftieth year the ground was also fallow. So, in 50 years there were eight years of fallow ground. (8 years) x (364 days/year) = 2,912 days = (13 x 224) days. Eight Jewish years were 13 Sidereal periods of Venus. But the most common thing known about Venus in the ancient high civilizations was that in eight (solar) years, there were five Synodic periods of Venus. (8 years) x (365 days/years) = 2,920 days = (5 x 584) days. In my opinion, Velikovsky's intuitive understanding of the Leviticus jubilee as a "Venus cycle" exemplifies his occasional brilliant insight at its best. Here, I agree with Newgrosh, there is not the slightest hint of Venus in Leviticus 25; one actually has to do the calculations. Since the 584 day and the 224.7 day periods of Venus are what we now have, it is obvious that neither the 52 year Maya nor the 50 year Jewish cycle has anything to do with a "catastrophe" (other than at some time in the long ago, Comet Venus, scared the bejesus out of everyone). Of Ponderosas and Heinekens Speaker: Lewis M. Greenberg A memoir, like beauty, is in the eye (mind)) of the beholder. Its credibility is invariably determined by the inevitable distortions of memory and personal perception as well as the quality of documentation and the corroboration of others. In the last two issues of AEON (II:6 and III:l), its readership has been questionably enlightened by the excerpted self-focused soliloquy of Alfred de Grazia ("Cosmic Heretics") and the self-hating vitriol of Leroy Ellenberger ("A Velikovsky Potpourri"). Ordinarily, I would refrain from commenting on such material and let the reading public draw its own conclusions. But, the various negative comments made about me in those two potboilers requires an appropriate response in order to set the record straight. Canards unanswered tend to become canonized truth. My earliest direct encounter with de Grazia did indeed take place in Philadelphia on Dec. 11, 1975. Warner Sizemore, who was also there, had brought de Grazia to meet me thinking that the latter might be able to help KRONOS which was then in its infancy. KRONOS I:3 had just been published and we were still financially strapped. (In those days, Warner was always bringing someone to meet me in the hope that we would find our "angel". Invariably, that someone generally turned out to be a pompous blow-hard with nothing tangible to offer.) The first thing de Grazia proposed was a $500,000.00 microfiche project to deal with "revolutionary primevalogy", among other things. KRONOS was to broaden its base and be overseen by a newly formed Executive Board. In other words, KRONOS was to be used for de Grazia's ideas, and the journal's editorial policy was to be determined by others. Needless to say, I balked. KRONOS was founded, with no apologies, to deal with Velikovsky's work. If de Grazia wanted a forum for his own theories, I felt that he should start his own publication. Of course, that would have required serious effort. Furthermore, de Grazia was quite vague about the funding for his proposal and we had our own financial difficulties, without looking for new ones. Besides, I was highly suspicious of de Grazia. It was one thing for KRONOS to be associated with a high-profile heterodoxy. It was quite another to be linked with its outer limits. Made-up words and phrases such as "quantavolution" and "revolutionary primevalogy" gave me pause (it was hardly paranoia as de Grazia claims); and I decided it would be best for all concerned if we went our own separate ways. Velikovsky many times said that made-up words were a sure sign of pseudo-science. Additionally, there was something elusive about de Grazia's personality. I was never sure as to who or what I was really dealing with and was wary of his motives. Years later, when Cosmic Heretics appeared, my instincts were confirmed. For there, in the pages of CH, the reader is treated to a trio of de Grazias -- de Grazia himself, Deg (an acronym which, at first, made me think of DeLaurentiis entertainment group), and Joseph Grace (middle name combined with English transliteration). As Lynn Rose so aptly put it in KRONOS XI:3, p. 58: Part of the pervasively distorted perspective of Cosmic Heretics can be attributed to de Grazia's focus on himself. As if one de Grazia were not enough, we must deal with at least a trinity of de Grazias: (1) the author, who usually writes in the first person; (2) "Joseph Grace", who carries de Grazia's middle name and supposedly serves as a devil's advocate; and (3) the mysterious "Deg", who appears to be the same as de Grazia and the author, except that both Deg and de Grazia are at times said to be in disagreement with the author! If this were The Three Faces of Eve, we might see some point to these multiple personalities. Here, it is just a frivolous distraction. When the entire "Quantavolution" series finally appeared more than a decade after my initial contact with de Grazia, I felt fully vindicated in my earlier assessment of that individual and his contributory potential. Laden with errors, written in turgid prose, and highly speculative at best, the series has failed to attract noteworthy notice. This, despite the quoted accolades of de Grazia's coterie. When I once pointed out a serious inversion of Velikovsky's sequence of catastrophic events in de Grazia's published work, he merely shrugged -- even though that sequence was somewhat crucial for his own scenario. This, from a man who is more concerned with my purported "profligate telephoning" -- a subject de Grazia has fixated on in his writing -- which was none of his business and for which he contributed nothing. Our phone bill was properly paid; and the telephoning produced orders of magnitude more than the far costlier global hip-hopping of de Grazia who spent more than a decade criss-crossing the continents in search of "quantavolutionists". The daily running of KRONOS was an international operation with an international staff, existing in pre-pc and pre-fax days. Perhaps, I should have used smoke signals to make de Grazia happy. What only a select few know, and I shall now reveal, is that I was not only Editor-in-Chief of KRONOS, but its subscription & renewals dept., its billing dept., and bookkeeping dept., among other things. I was also one of the major fund raisers, contributing profits from my editing of KRONOS' book publications directly back to the journal. All this, while being a full-time College Professor and dealing with a multiplicity of dramatis personae of the Velikovsky movement ranging from Velikovsky himself to a host of others. Ultimately, KRONOS was weakened not "by its top-heavy reliance upon Velikovsky's case", as de Grazia foolishly supposes, but by the sheer exhaustion of doing the job for thirteen continuous years and allowing the journal to be marketed for a ridiculously low price. Some subscribers who objected to our $20.00 per annum subscription price thought nothing of plunking down six times that amount, sight unseen, for later publications. So much for human nature. De Grazia also mentioned that "friends like Sizemore come mostly in fairy tales and epic poetry". This is true; and Velikovsky did indeed take Sizemore for granted as he also did with so many others. Warner is a most amiable and decent fellow, but discretion is not his strong suit. In a moment of gemutlichkeit, he would sometimes say things in private that others, lacking propriety, would repeat in print. What de Grazia fails to divulge is the fact that, in the end, it was he (de Grazia) who violated Sizemore's trust and destroyed the long-time friendship that had existed between himself and Warner. As for de Grazia, during the better part of the 1970's and 1980's he acted as a "free-agent" doing his "own thing" -- a relatively minor player in a movement in which he now pathetically pretends to have played a major role. *** Now to Ellenberger. If nothing else, he is an "equal opportunity offender". Over the past fifteen years, both orthodoxy and heterodoxy alike, in the New World and the Old, have been equally insulted, maligned, and castigated by Ellenberger's waspish writing. A blizzard of missives -- a veritable "Post Card Winter" -- has descended on all who are perceived to be on the wrong side of Ellenberger's current beliefs. Quoting from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: "All are punished." In retrospect, I must share part of the blame. Like a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, I unwittingly helped to create something that was later unleashed upon an unsuspecting world, uncontrollable and horrific. For it was I who nurtured Ellenberger's early writing, honed his skill with my editing, and gave him the confidence, direction, and encouragement he needed in order to grow. Moreover, I provided the platform and publishing space essential for that growth. Mea culpa. With the appearance of "A Velikovsky Potpourri", so much twaddle has been brought in its wake that I cannot allow it to pass without a substantial retort. For starters: Ellenberger likes to place a bevy of quotes after each heading or sub-heading in the text of his articles. One assumes that this is intended to add more weight, in the form of credible "witnesses", to what follows. Unfortunately, the quotes from Ashton, Anonymous, de Grazia, and Gould, et al. are given equal weight -- assuming they have any weight at all. Furthermore, the variety of sources for the quotations is apparently designed solely to exhibit Ellenberger's supposed erudition and breadth of reading. In point of fact, the various quotes -- taken out of context and covering some forty-five years -- are either childish, irrelevant, or just plain silly. Collectively, they represent "the fallacy of the perfect analogy" (see D.H. Fischer, Historians' Fallacies, p. 247) and virtually all may be dismissed outright for very good individual reasons. A few carefully chosen examples should suffice to make the case. When it comes to evolutionary processes, Stephen Jay Gould (quoted twice) is almost a closet Velikovskian. Gould's theory (along with Niles Eldredge) of "punctuated equilibria" (see G.R. Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery, pp. 6ff.) is basically a variant of the "cataclysmic evolution" first proposed by Velikovsky in Earth in Upheaval. Gould's open criticism of Velikovsky, while publicly paraphrasing the latter's insights, makes him highly questionable and, therefore, a poor witness -- Dismissed. Norman Newell (also quoted twice) was a devout uniformitarian whose scholarly stance is both antiquated and untenable (see L.M. Greenberg, "Cataclysmic Evolution", KRONOS I:4 (1976), pp. 102-103). As a witness, Newell is discredited -- Dismissed. Quoting Martin Bernal against anyone gives new meaning to the expression "People who live in glass houses...". Bernal's thesis in Black Athena of an "Afro-Asiatic" basis for Classical Greek culture has raised its own firestorm and engendered a controversy not unlike that which greeted Worlds in Collision (see Bernal's Black Athena, Vol. II, pp. xvi-xxii; and J.E. Coleman's article -- along with Bernal's response -- on Black Athena in Archaeology, Vol. 45, No. 5 [Sept./Oct., 1992], pp. 48ff.). Bernal is a very suspect witness -- Dismissed. Add to the above the potpourri of additional quotes (perhaps that was Ellenberger's titular inspiration), from both published and unpublished (!) works, and the reader will quickly realize that they are all about as meaningful as the quote from "Anonymous". (As an aside, the AEON reader might be interested to know that I have in my possession dozens of positive quotes about Velikovsky's work by Anonymous.) With regard to the above mentioned quotes, it is instructive to note that Ellenberger objects to my calling him "a disaffected zealot who long ago drifted beyond the pale of rational objectivity". Too bad he didn't quote the balance of the editorial sentence in question: "[who] cannot resist the quotable negative nor rest until the ghost of Velikovsky is thoroughly exorcised from the intellectual realm. A personal vendetta in the name of enlightened scholarship is the ultimate in tasteless, unsophisticated, and infantile scholasticism." For Ellenberger, these words are as applicable today as they were five years ago; more so, in fact. The gratuitous dedication of Ellenberger's essays to David Griffard and Joseph May as "good friends and allies" is especially odious and unwarranted. The late Dr. Griffard, a psychologist and my closest KRONOS colleague, confided to me that he believed Ellenberger to be clinical; while the late Dr. May considered Ellenberger to be a disruptively loose cannon who bore close watching. Indeed, it was only to keep an eye on Ellenberger and exercise some control over his doings that saved him from being expelled from KRONOS' ranks. In retrospect, I was wrong. He should have been canned in 1981 at the latest. For the five years prior to his resignation in Dec. of 1986, I had to ward off the entreaties of the majority of my staff to dump Ellenberger from our midst. His unbridled behavior, as gadfly, towards contributors, colleagues, and strangers alike was undermining the entire professional integrity and harmony of the journal. When Ellenberger finally resigned from KRONOS, it was a great relief to all. Contrary to what he has intimated, Ellenberger left with a literal whimper. Rose's criticism proved devastating; and for one who had been dishing it out for years, Ellenberger couldn't take it. Immediately after receiving his copy of XII:l, Ellenberger called me at 8:00 in the morning. He was looking for sympathy and phone numbers for people to call. To say he was subdued is putting it mildly. Only the phone company had a good day that day. Shortly afterwards, I received a formal resignation typed on a post card. Ellenberger claims to have "lost confidence in the Editor-in-Chief's editorial judgment and objectivity" and that "the playing field was no longer level for" him. The playing field had not been level for quite awhile; it had been slanted in Ellenberger's favor. But, after I discovered that he was savaging would-be contributors before the fact, in private, was savaging them again in print, and was then savaging them after the fact in both private and print, this became too much. At work, at home, or at play, people were being bombarded by post and by phone. Unlike Ellenberger, who hasn't been gainfully employed for the better part of the past decade, others have professional responsibilities to consider and tend. (Speaking of which, Ellenberger's back-issue order-filling responsibilities were neither voluntary nor done as a pure favor to me. He was paid for his work; and while the amount was insubstantial it was still something rather than nothing.) It was I who not only encouraged the writing of "Still Facing Many Problems," it was I who came up with the title, helped Ellenberger to structure the material, applied my editorial skills, and made numerous critical suggestions along the way. Now, all of a sudden, I "was not qualified to judge the arguments" contained therein. On the contrary, I found them to be thought-provoking and in need of discussion. That's why they were encouraged in the first place. But SFMP was expected to open a door, not close it. Only Ellenberger anticipated an immediate reply and on his terms. No reply now, for him, meant no reply would or could ever be made; and that is the nub of the issue. Ellenberger's egocentric concerns were and are always paramount -- as if KRONOS and its kind existed solely to satisfy him. With such an individual, one is in a Catch-22 situation, for he can never be satisfied. Let us now examine the body of Ellenberger's potpourri -- and what a potpourri it is! Like a modern Tower of Babel, Ellenberger piles citations from the likes of Gingerich, Goldsmith, Mulholland, and Morrison -- all of whom were discredited long ago in the pages of Pensee and KRONOS -- on top of hearsay from friends and acquaintances (Van Flandern and O'Keefe), and then adds an abundance of mainstream references, unsupported speculations, erroneous conclusions, and ad hominem charges as a crown to it all. There may indeed be some wheat among Ellenberger's chaff but, due to spatial constraints and other reasons, I shall defer to those more qualified in the physical sciences than I to respond at a later date. For now, as an antidote to all the scientific handwaving, I would merely refer the reader to an excellent recent book by Paul Davies titled The Mind of God (1992), especially pp. 13ff. and pp. 162ff. Additionally, it appears that the star Sirius has undergone an unexpected astrophysical transformation within the past two thousand years. Scholars think that "the change from red giant to white dwarf might well have occurred, although its speed and smoothness would be quite unexpected. In addition, no trace has been found of the catastrophic effects that would be associated with such a change" (C&EN, Feb. 10, 1986, p. 60). Fascinating. Evidently, the cosmos still holds a number of surprises for astronomers and astrophysicists when it comes to temporal and catastrophic matters. Ellenberger's conclusions about Joe May's review of Henry Bauer's book are without foundation. Ellenberger was no longer a member of KRONOS' staff at the time, and my intentions regarding May's review were and are still unknown to him. Ellenberger is also being disingenuous about Thomas Ferte's paper on calendars. KRONOS did decide to print that paper, but Ferte supposedly had other plans for the piece, changed his mind (as he was wont to do), and refused to release it to us for publication. The fact that KRONOS VII:l carried another one of Ferte's articles, submitted at the same time as the calendars paper, proves that we had no aversion to his work. Ellenberger's statements on this matter are downright false. Re the revised chronology, it is an interesting spectacle to see Ellenberger bringing in Peter James on the side of Abraham Sachs against Velikovsky, and then turn around and bring in Kenneth Kitchen against James, et al. Though Centuries of Darkness borders on quasi-plagiarism of Velikovsky's ideas (the acknowledgment to Velikovsky is worse than niggardly while references to the work of others such as myself on the Lion Gate at Mycenae, published in Pensee more than twenty years ago, are totally omitted), it does bear the imprimatur of Colin Renfrew. This only proves that the field of ancient chronology is hardly settled. We still do not have scholarly consensus on the dating of the Exodus, for example, though if one were to read the published work of John Bimson, one would find a diversity of proposed historical settings, all credibly argued and ultimately leading to confusion. Dr. Bimson is a compelling scholar, though he can be equally convincing arguing both sides of an issue. Ellenberger cites John Bimson as an unanswered critic who "refuted the Hatshepsut=Sheba equation in C&CR VIII, 1986", pp. 12-26. This is yet another example of Ellenberger's chicanery. Bimson's refutation may indeed be valid, but two crucial points need to be made here. First, Bimson might have given some acknowledgment to my co-authored work with Ralph Juergens on locating Punt in the east (KRONOS I:2, pp. 89-93) as well as a bit more weight to Eva Danelius' earlier article on the Queen of Sheba (KRONOS I:3 and I:4) supporting Velikovsky's identification with Hatshepsut. But I won't quibble. More importantly, Bimson concluded the main body of his article with these words: ...in the matter of the identification of Hatshepsut with the Queen of Sheba, [Velikovsky's] reconstruction is in error. However, when the faulty identification is discarded, and when Sheba and Punt are returned to their proper locations, Velikovsky's chronology is seen to be upheld in a way which has hitherto been overlooked. It brings harmony to the otherwise unrelated archaeological, biblical and Egyptian evidence for relations between South Arabia and the kingdoms of Israel and Egypt. Thus, looking at the "big picture", we see that Bimson was actually supportive of Velikovsky and did not repudiate him, as Ellenberger meant to imply. (One wonders if Ellenberger ever read Bimson's article past the title.) Steakhouses and beer may be fun, but intellectual history does not progress from their substance. For Ellenberger, Velikovsky and his work were more than a mere intellectual pursuit. They entailed an emotional investment far beyond ordinary parameters. In his own words, upon reading the galleys of Bauer's Beyond Velikovsky, Ellenberger had "an intellectual near-death experience because...[he] had no rebuttal to the substantive [sic] arguments in Henry Bauer's" book. What came as a belated revelation to Ellenberger was something those of us who had been dealing intimately with Velikovsky's theories had known for a very long time. As a scholar and human being, Velikovsky had his shortcomings. But, who doesn't? Unfortunately, Ellenberger had come to view Velikovsky as an archetypal father figure whose scholarship and ethics were beyond reproach. When this assessment seemed no longer tenable, in Ellenberger's mind, he felt betrayed and has been lashing out at any pro-Velikovsky position ever since. Consequently, when Ellenberger says that his "essays exhibit a sufficient measure of restraint", the statement is patently ludicrous. Not content with throwing out the bath water, Ellenberger has chosen to throw out the baby and the bassinet as well. Moreover, since Ellenberger now feels that "if anyone had exposed the vacuousness [sic] of Bass's papers in 1974, when supposedly a dialogue existed between Velikovsky's supporters and detractors in Pensee, [he] would never have gotten as involved with Velikovsky as [he] later did", why does Ellenberger tenaciously persist in remaining involved? Get a life! The true measure of Velikovsky's worth lies in the intellectual vistas that his theories have already opened up for generations of scholars. As I said in my last KRONOS editorial: At the least, Velikovsky has kept thousands of minds working overtime during the past forty-plus years. Here, indeed, is a legacy! This is one obvious fact conveniently overlooked by the nouveaux intelligentsia who would have nothing to think about, write, or say if it were not for Velikovsky. And the final chapter has yet to be written. In an article for KRONOS II:2, "Were All Dinosaurs Reptiles?", published in 1976 but written in the 1940's, Velikovsky postulated that Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and Triceratops may all have been mammals (p. 92). Furthermore, Velikovsky wrote: "The large pelvis of brontosaurus suggests that this monster might have have given birth to its young and did not lay eggs" (emphasis added). Despite some terminological errors and a confusion of typology with phylogeny, Roger W. Wescott, a Professor of Anthropology, found Velikovsky's essay to be "an otherwise brilliant insight...not just years but decades ahead of the specialists -- in this case, the herpetologists" (KRONOS II:3, pp. 84-85). Years later, in the August 1988 issue of Discover (Vol. 9, No. 8), P. Chapman noted that James Horner "and other scientists have shown that, contrary to what we've always assumed, some dinosaurs were almost certainly agile, speedy, and smart. Some may have been warm-blooded, and a few -- notably the brontosaur -- may even have borne live young" (p. 49). This does not necessarily mean that Brontosaurus (Apatosaurus) was a mammal but it does indicate that the line between mammals and a reptilian definition of dinosaurs has begun to blur (see J. Noble Wilford, The Riddle of the Dinosaur, pp. 147-149 and pp. 162ff.; D. Lessem, Kings of Creation, pp. 149ff. and pp. 276-279). In Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky alluded to the possibility of exobiological life and disease being associated with Venus and Mars during the period under consideration in that book (pp. 187, 263-264). He also speculated about the present-day presence of "vermin" on Venus (p. 369) and pathogenic microorganisms on Mars (Pensee I, p. 23). Despite the harsh criticism of C. Sagan, et al. on this matter (see L.M. Greenberg, "Sagan's Folly", KRONOS III:2 (1977), pp. 74-75, 79-80 and the responses therein), F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe co-authored a series of books (controversial in their own right) on similar subjects, among them Lifecloud (1978) and Diseases from Space (1979). Their work has been roundly criticized by R. Shapiro, for one, in his book Origins (1986), pp. 234ff. A more balanced discussion may be found in C.B. Thaxton, et al., The Mystery of Life's Origin (1984), pp. 192ff. The point of all this is that what was considered outlandish in the 1950's, 60's, and 70's could be discussed in serious scientific debate in the 80's. In Mankind in Amnesia (1982), Velikovsky wrote the following: A racial memory is not a transmigration of the soul; it is, however, an inherited unconscious memory. And through a racial memory we can consider ourselves as having been present at some horrible cataclysmic scenes amid unchained elements, devastation by which no creature in the world, on land or in the sea, could conceivably have been unaffected. Thus the accumulation of the genetic mnemes comes down to every representative of the species in our days through every one of the genealogical lines: all ascendancy reaches back to the same generation that was exposed to the trauma. (p 30) In the frame of collective amnesia, which is the syndrome I first discussed in Worlds in Collision, the amnesia that occurs in a single victim closely following the trauma is not an exact parallel: the collective mind does not immediately forget what it went through. What occupies us are the two processes in which the heritage was transmitted: the conscious oral and later written relay, and the unconscious, racial mneme, inherited and occasionally activated after some related experiences. (p. 33) What Velikovsky did not discuss was the possible physical mechanism that could be responsible for the continuance of collective memory while simultaneously accounting for the onset of collective amnesia. It is here that the recent work of Rupert Sheldrake may have application. In his 1988 book The Presence of the Past, Sheldrake offers us an update on his earlier theory of morphic resonance. (Sheldrake's work is not without its own controversy -- see New Scientist, 1 October 1981, p. 61.) According to Sheldrake there is "the possibility that memory is inherent in nature" and, like plants and animals, "all humans too draw upon a collective memory, to which all in turn contribute...Our memories may not be stored inside our brains, as we usually assume they must be [and] the nature of things depends on fields, called morphic fields." The process by which the past becomes present within morphic fields is called morphic resonance. Morphic resonance involves the transmission of formative causal influences through both space and time. The memory within the morphic fields is cumulative...(Introduction) However, the principal way in which we are influenced by morphic resonance from other people may be through a kind of pooled memory. We have already discussed the collective influence of other people's habits on the learning of languages and the acquisition of physical and mental skills, and considered ways in which this possibility can be, and has been, tested by experiment...The idea that a collective memory underlies our mental activity follows as a natural consequence from the hypothesis of formative causation. (pp. 221-222) The concept of collective amnesia can no longer be dismissed in a cavalier manner. Memory and the mind constitute a new frontier in science (see E.B. Bolls, Remembering and Forgetting, 1988); and the term "collective amnesia" has already been applied in another context, specifically to the Johnson years of the 60's (see The Miami Herald, 10/15/81, p. 8E). The subject of war and human survival was of primary concern to Velikovsky. His seminal thinking on this subject was also presented in Mankind in Amnesia ("The Age of Terror"). Velikovsky firmly believed that both the underlying cause and periodicity of war were inextricably linked to the cataclysmically induced traumas of the past in which the greater part of humankind participated. He feared that thermonuclear weapons would lead to final Armageddon as the repetitious martial pathology of the past overwhelmed and destroyed the present and perhaps even the future. The problem, as he saw it, was how to extricate humankind from the compulsive and self-destructive bonds of the past. When Mankind in Amnesia appeared, the critics scoffed. One of the most vile of many reviews of that book was by Paul W. Hoffman in Science Digest (12/82), p. 101. It brought a torrent of responses, nearly two dozen of which were published in the May 1983 issue. The matter basically ended there, however. More recently, a book by Anthony Stevens -- a practicing analyst and psychiatrist in England -- titled The Roots of War: A Jungian Perspective (1989) has appeared. It presents a powerful pendant to Mankind in Amnesia and provides compelling credibility to the thesis of the latter. It is must reading, especially the Preface and Chapters 1 and 2. ...And the final chapter has yet to be written. Uranus and Other Matters: A Reply to Ellenberger Speaker: Dwardu Cardona Leroy Ellenberger has often misunderstood past points I wished to stress. Worse than that, he has misquoted me often enough to make me think he reads with blinkers on. Twice now he has brought to his readers' attention my mention of the 98 degree axial tilt of the planet Uranus in a previous discussion of mine concerning the possibility of a terrestrial inversion.^(1) "The fact that Uranus is spinning on its side," he wrote, "is irrelevant to the possibility that Earth flipped over within the past 12,000 years for two reasons that should have been obvious to Cardona..."^(2) And "Cardona puts no quantative controls on speculation and ignores crucial details of cited material -- such as, that the 98 degree tilt of Uranus is considered to be the result of a hard impact billions of years ago..."^(3) The latter, I'm afraid, is an outright misrepresentation of my work. In the very paper that Ellenberger is here criticizing, I stated that the "current theory that attempts to account for this tilt, as proposed in 1966 by the Soviet scientist V.S. Safronov, invokes the impact of a sizeable body with Uranus during the planet's coagulative period."^(4) So how can Ellenberger state that I ignored this "crucial" detail? What, in any case, are the "two reasons that should have been obvious to Cardona" which render this analogy "irrelevant to the possibility that Earth flipped over"? First [Ellenberger tells us], Uranus is not turned upside-down, but tilted 98 degrees. This indicates that it had an axial tilt, not a tippe top maneuver. Second, the tilt is widely considered to have been caused by the impact of an Earth-sized body early in the Solar System's history...not a fly-by.^(5) Apart from the fact that this is exactly what I myself had claimed in the first place, what is Ellenberger trying to tell us here? Tippe top maneuvers have nothing to do with me. I never brought the subject up in the paper in question and it is not fair to lump me together with Peter Warlow (with an erroneous reference)^(6) simply because he, also, used the Uranus analogy in his defence of a tippe top inversion of the Earth.^(7) Besides, I myself had already stated that "I am not yet quite certain what it was that inverted the Earth" but that "I do rule out planetary fly-bys."^(8) It appears, then, that what "should have been obvious to Cardona" not only was, but was actually acknowledged -- which leaves Ellenberger's criticism hanging in mid-air. All that remains to be examined is why this analogy is "irrelevant to the possibility that Earth flipped over." And here, as elsewhere, Ellenberger misunderstood me entirely. Had Ellenberger taken his blinkers off when he read my paper, he would have realized that it was not so much Uranus itself that I was using as an analogy but its satellites. Thus I wrote: This direct hit [on Uranus], however, does not of itself explain why Uranus' satellites should also have been affected. If these satellites were already orbiting Uranus at the time of the impact, it would mean that they tilted in response to Uranus' own tilt...If they were captured later, they would still have to have been pulled out of the plane of the ecliptic and tilted 98 degrees by some force emanating from Uranus itself.^(9) Ellenberger now tells us that this force was "the gravitational attraction of Uranus' equatorial bulge"^(10) -- in effect, a gravitational torque.^(11) Be that as it may, this process proves that a body can be tilted in space without being directly impacted by another. As impossible as Ellenberger might deem it to be, my attempted reconstruction of Solar System history somewhat follows Immanuel Velikovsky's postulate that Earth had once been a satellite of Saturn.^(12) Thus, if a direct impact could have flipped Uranus on its side, a larger one might have turned Saturn head over heels with the possibility that the Earth, as its satellite, would have done likewise. Not, mind you, that I am offering this postulated event as having necessarily transpired, but, for the present, it should suffice as a tentative possibility. I am not even asking Ellenberger to accept this reasoning -- heaven knows he will find ample criticisms to level at it -- but, in future, I hope he will at least represent my views correctly. II Ellenberger additionally stated that: Cardona also exhibits extreme naivete in discounting several orders of magnitude for the time scale of astronomical processes. For example, Van Flandern's exploding planet millions of years ago cannot be downdated as Cardona would have it because the dating is based on the periods of first return comets.^(13) This is another outright misrepresentation because I did nothing of the sort. But let me, first, briefly outline what the original discussion consisted of. In the first place, "Van Flandern's exploding planet" was actually Ovenden's and, back in 1973, the latter had placed the explosion as having occurred 16 million years ago.^(14) But then, because Van Flandern wished to find at least some of the debris released by this explosion, he zoomed in on first return comets whose orbits "took them around the Sun in just four million years,"^(15) thus reducing Ovenden's 16 million years to merely four. What Ellenberger seems to forget, however, is that Ovenden's own objection to the explosion of this 90 Earth-mass object was swept under the carpet by Van Flandern. Ovenden had stated that we "know of no mechanism whereby a planet might 'explode' with sufficient violence to disperse 99.9% of its mass..."^(16) Even Van Flandern had to admit that "unfortunately we have almost no evidence at all as to what caused the explosion" and that "some scientists maintain that no known process can explain how planets could get enough energy to explode."^(17) Even so, this difficulty did not keep him from accepting that the planet did explode. In view of all this I had written that: It is doubtful that a 90 Earth-mass planet would have been entirely solid. Nothing that massive exists in a totally rigid state in our Solar System. A Saturn-sized planet would probably have been akin to Saturn -- a gas giant.^(18) My reasoning was that since, despite some recent disclaimers, the gas giants of our Solar System have been described by some as more star-like than planet-like, a nova-like outburst would be more in keeping with Ovenden's and/or Van Flandern's exploding planet. That I was attempting to compare Van Flandern's scenario to the Saturnian one was, of course, obvious to everyone. And, true, somewhat sarcastically, I did state that "if Van Flandern can reduce Ovenden's 16 million years to just four, who can guarantee me that someone will not yet reduce the four to one or even to only a few thousand?"^(19) But, even so, despite all this, I did not downdate the event described by Van Flandern, as Ellenberger has accused me to have done, since I also stated: But let me not even disregard Van Flandern's four million years -- for I can also accommodate them...As I wrote not so long ago, 'there is corroborative evidence which implies that Saturn was disrupted more than once'; that 'the records indicate at least three disruptions'; and that 'if ancient man remembers three Saturnian catastrophes, there is a possibility that further Saturnian disasters had occurred prior to the advent of humankind itself'. What is there against one of these earlier catastrophes having occurred four million years ago? What is there against one of them having occurred 16 million years ago, as Ovenden originally claimed? And earlier still?^(20) Once again, I do not expect Ellenberger to accept any of this, but that is not the point now, is it? If he is going to accuse me of having done or not done whatever he believes I should or should not have, he had better first understand what I have written and present it correctly when commenting about it. III Ellenberger has not only misunderstood me, but even those authorities he cites in his defence. A good example comes from his criticism of T.W. Field's postulate that a terrestrial inversion occurred 12,000 years ago,^(21) in which Ellenberger cited a work by Owen Gingerich. ...Mr. Field's idea that an inversion happened about 12,000 years ago near the end of the last Ice Age [Ellenberger wrote] is counterindicated by the Great Bear (Ursa Major) being associated with the northern pole star. The identification of this constellation may well have originated about 26,000 BP before the peak of the last glaciation...when Polaris was earlier the pole star. At that time, the giant cave bear, whose veneration traces back 50,000 years, was the supreme beast of prey and sacred to Paleolithic Man in Europe. While the mammoth and mastodon survived the last Ice Age, the giant cave bear did not...Thus, the giant cave bear was last venerated when Polaris was the pole star. If the Earth was upside-down at that time, as Mr. Field suggests, then Paleolithic Man in Europe could not have projected the giant cave bear on the present northern sky.^(22) Now, in the first place, I don't know if Ellenberger and I are living in the same world or not but, the last time I looked, Polaris, otherwise known as alpha Ursae Minoris, was still the pole star. Secondly, Gingerich did not base the antiquity of the Great Bear's name on the fact that the giant cave bear was venerated by Paleolithic Man. (What is there in the Great Bear constellation that specifically looks like the prehistoric giant cave bear as opposed to the more common bear which remained prevalent in Europe after the Ice Age?) What made Gingerich claim that the Great Bear's name "may date back as far as the Ice Ages" was the fact that the name of this constellation was also known "by many different Indian tribes of North America" who could not have brought it with them from Siberia -- where the name of the constellation was also known -- across the Bering Straits except during that time when the straits were bridged by the ice of the last Ice Age.^(23) Even so, Ellenberger may counter that his argument still holds. If we are to believe the ancients, however, terrestrial inversions occurred more than once in the past. According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians believed that "four times...the sun rose contrary to his wont; twice he rose where he now sets, and twice he set where he now rises."^(24) There is nothing, therefore, against the naming of the Great Bear constellation prior to the Earth's third inversion way before the onslaught of the last Ice Age. The third inversion would have moved the Great Bear to the southern hemisphere (did not the Egyptians relate that the Great Bear came bowing down?);^(25) the fourth would have brought it back to the northern one. For the third time, I am not claiming that this is exactly what transpired but, again, that is not the point. Nor am I condoning Field's claim that an inversion took place 12,000 years ago. The fact, however, is that Ellenberger cannot use the argument of the Great Bear constellation in refuting the possibility of past terrestrial inversions -- and it behooves him to understand the arguments offered by others before he criticizes what he is not willing to accept. IV It is highly unfair for Ellenberger to accuse KRONOS of not having wanted to publish Roger Ashton's paper, "The Fabulous Celestial Polar Saturn," without knowing the full details of what really transpired.^(26) During Ashton's short association with KRONOS, I invariably acted as a mediator between him and Lewis Greenberg, the Editor-in-Chief, and not only do I know exactly what took place, I can back it all up with the relevant documents still in my files. Back in 1982, Ashton had prepared a trio of articles which were to follow each other. These were "The Polar Planet," "Saturn: The First of the Gods," and "The Fabulous Celestial Polar Vision". But, because of Ashton's penchant for perfection, he was continuously updating, revamping, and superceding his articles. Later that same year, Ashton wrote "The Fabulous Celestial Polar Saturn" to supercede "The Fabulous Celestial Polar Vision" which, despite the similarity of titles, was an entirely different article which attempted to show the physical impossibility of the planetary alignment he himself, as well as others, had proposed for the mythological Saturnian configuration without, however, negating the mythological configuration that he, as well as others, had constructed from the content of myth. In other words, while Ashton accepted that this configuration was mythologically valid, he eventually denied that it had any basis in planetary alignments. To my knowledge, and contrary to what Ellenberger stated, this paper was never sent to the editors that Ellenberger mentions. (He might be confusing the paper in question with some other of Ashton's articles). I'm not even sure the corrected version ever left my desk. And for a very good reason. Ashton was still revamping "The Polar Planet," the first of the series, a revamping that continued through 1983 into 1984. There was no point in circulating "The Fabulous Celestial Polar Saturn," let alone publishing it , until "The Polar Planet" was put to bed. In the interim, Ashton and Greenberg fell afoul of each other. It was not so much that "Greenberg found a pretext in a remark by Ashton to Isenberg not to publish Ashton's paper."^(27) What really took place was the following: Artur Isenberg had criticized one of Ashton's papers on Indra and Brihaspati.^(28) In his reply to Isenberg, Ashton saw fit to severely criticize KRONOS' editorial policy, its choice of articles, and what Ashton termed its Velikovskian attitude. Moreover, Ashton was adamant that his reply was to be published in full or else he would "withdraw it if any statement [was to be] editorially deleted."^(29) No editor I know of could ever bow to such a demand. As I later told Ashton, he should have kept the two issues separate: Isenberg to Isenberg and KRONOS to KRONOS.^(30) Greenberg's reaction was predictable: "Tell Ashton I am granting him his wish; not only shall I publish nothing at all of his reply to Isenberg, I shall in fact publish nothing at all by him until he grows up." That is the message I relayed to Ashton,^(31) and the matter ended there. Speaking for myself, this was a sorry state of affairs but, editorially, I had to side with Greenberg. No editor should ever be expected to give in to blackmail of this sort. In the end it all boiled down to a clash between two very strong-willed persons. The pity is that Ashton had a lot to offer and I have learned much from him especially in matters of Sanskrit. To this day I continue to mine the information he proferred me over the years and I never neglect to laud his expertise and scholarly insights whenever the occasion arises. As for Ellenberger, he is not above foul play. In the past, he has often criticized my works in private communications which he then had the audacity to circulate far and wide, thus indicating to those whom he canvassed how clever he is. He has never, however, circulated copies of my responses. Is this, then, fair? Contra Windsor Speaker: Dwardu Cardona Samuel Windsor finds it hard to accept that, according to ancient testimony, Earth was once located directly beneath the planet Saturn with which it shared its axial rotation.^(32) He is not the only one. Only a few have been bold enough to give some sort of credence to this far-fetched postulate. What surprises me in this instance is that Windsor seems to accept the ancient testimony itself but not the logical conclusion derived from it. According to him, the ancients' "description of Saturn being fixed over Earth's North Pole (or their picturesque portrayal of it in that position) cannot have been accurate when we compare that 'cause' description to simple mass dynamic experiments available to us today." In other words, Windsor accepts that the ancients placed Saturn in a north celestial polar position but denies that this could have been possible. The logical question to ask, then, is: Why did the ancients place Saturn in such a position? What purpose could such a falsification have served? Windsor chides me for refusing "to draw any distinction between the described experiences of our predecessors and their belief system as to causation." But, in my belief, there cannot be a distinction between the two. Windsor's own stand is that the ancients were correct in identifying Saturn "as a role player of final and primary importance" in Earth catastrophes but incorrect in their placement of the planet in Earth's north celestial polar region. In dealing with ancient testimony, however, one cannot accept what fits the present scheme while denying what does not -- and Windsor himself knows this. In trying to reconstruct the ancient cosmos from ancient documents, one must either accept the entire testimony or none of it. To accept only some of it would be selective. What this boils down to, in effect, is that if the ancients were wrong in placing Saturn in Earth's north celestial polar region, how can we be sure that they were not wrong in identifying Saturn as "a role player" in Earth catastrophes? Thus Windsor himself has noted that: "Many of us have faulted the scientific community for ignoring the records of observations made by our predecessors" -- of which he gives some examples -- and then laments the fact that these "are all ignored and treated as if they were imagined by their recorders." But by ignoring Saturn's ancient placement, is he not just as guilty? As if to stress the above point, Windsor additionally states that when ancient data does not conform to currently popular theory, science consigns such data to mythology "and defines that body of literature as the product of human imagination, without basis in observational fact." And yet, he himself has consigned Saturn's ancient placement to that same "body of literature" for the very same reason. Mr. Cardona [Windsor goes on] mixes the observations recorded with the observer's comments concerning 'cause' of the images viewed and then demands the reader accept his described 'causes' as valid. He does this while telling us that some obvious violations of physical laws have to be yet explained in terms of those laws in order to maintain the truth of the ancient belief system as to 'causes'. My "described causes," however, are directly reliant on "the observations recorded." Thus, when the ancients place Saturn in Earth's north celestial polar region, the "cause" could only be the sharing of rotational axes by the two bodies concerned. If Windsor knows of another "cause" that can get us out of this conundrum, let him speak up. "The physical principles violated by having any rotating mass change its spin axis orientation so as to continue to point its geocentric pole toward any fixed point without external torque imposed [up]on it," Windsor continues, "are known to every high school physics student...on Earth." But, to be sure, I have never anywhere as much as hinted that the Earth changed its axial orientation without the imposition of an external torque. That is merely Windsor's assumption. Mr. Cardona's approach [my critic finally accuses me] isn't significantly different than a call to accept magic and mysticism. There are, of course, those who do accept magic in preference to experimentally determined rational systems of logic. Learned discussions with such people, however, is restricted to groups already holding their views. Engineers and scientists must sit back and listen to their pronouncements in the same appreciation with which one reads 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'The Tales of a Thousand-and-One Nights.' (These are fun stories, but shed little light on how bread is really baked). This is ironic, to say the least. Was it not Windsor who had it stated of Donald Patten's most recent major work that he wished he had read it forty years ago,^(33) as if the downright errors contained within its pages would have made a better man of him? And how did Patten resolve his physical difficulty when he wrote himself into an astronomical corner? In attempting to account for the altered Martian orbit in his long series of Martian fly-bys, Patten offered some "insights," one of which concerned the gravitational influences exerted by Jupiter and Saturn on Mars. Knowing that this combined influence would not have been strong enough to alter the Martian orbit to the extent his scenario required, he even appealed to the orbital exertion that might have been imposed by the three previous Martian catastrophes. At one point he even toyed with the idea that Mars may have been hit by an asteroid. The computer simulations which his colleague, Ronald Hatch, is supposed to have conducted, however, must have failed to confirm the accountability of any, or all, of these external forces on the altered orbit of Mars. Thus, with his back against the proverbial wall, Patten was forced to offer yet one more "insight" -- one that, following his indictment of "Fiat Creationists," takes the reader somewhat by surprise. "Was that [variant Martian fly-by]," asks Patten, "accomplished by the hand of the Lord?"^(34) And, not being content with this "insight" in the form of a question, he restated it more affirmatively: Clearly we suspect something beyond the routine influences of Jupiter and Saturn. Our best answer to this question is 'the Hand of the Lord.' But how that hand worked is something the mechanics of which is [sic.] not presently understood. Further, they may never be understood.^(35) If this, then, is the work Windsor has been championing since 1988, how dare he accuse me of asking my readers "to accept magic and mysticism"? Ginenthal: A Correction Speaker: Ev Cochrane In the previous issue of AEON there appeared an article by Charles Ginenthal entitled "The Surface of Venus -- 'A Newborn Babe'." Upon Mr. Ginenthal's request I agreed to edit the paper for publication, which necessarily involved substantial rewriting on my part. On page 84, immediately after the first sentence beginning "One of the major theoretical supports of the greenhouse model..." I saw fit to delete several sentences as, in my opinion, they interrupted the flow of the argument. Mr. Ginenthal has since objected to this decision, as according to him, it renders him susceptible to the criticism that he suppressed evidence contrary to his previously published statements on Venus' atmosphere. We regret any misunderstandings caused by this editorial decision, and in deference to Mr. Ginenthal's request we hereby reproduce the paragraph in question as originally submitted to us: "One of the major supports of the evidence of the greenhouse effect is the belief that Venus is in thermal balance. In my book Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky (NY 1990), page 242 is an error regarding this thermal balance. I had assumed that a report of the oscillation of Venus' atmosphere was verified. Unfortunately this is not the case and the oscillation has been discredited by Pioneer Venus research. Nevertheless, there is clear evidence that has not been discredited that thermal balance is not at all supported by the evidence. Over and over..." References 1. D. Cardona, "The Trouble With Aztex," KRONOS XI:2 (Winter 1986), p. 21. 2. L. Ellenberger, "The Impossible Tippe Top Earth," AEON II:5 (Feb. 1992), pp. 85-86. 3. Idem, "Of Lessons, Legacies, and Litmus Tests: A Velikovsky Potpourri," AEON III:1 (Nov. 1992), p. 93. 4. D. Cardona, loc.cit. 5. See note #2 above. 6. The journal in question was published in 1987 not 1978 as stated by Ellenberger. See next reference. 7. P. Warlow, "Return to the Tippe Top," Chronology & Catastrophism Review IX (1987), p. 12. 8. D. Cardona, loc. cit. (Emphasis in original). 9. Ibid. (Emphasis in original). 10. See note #2. 11. See note #3. 12. I. Velikovsky, "On Saturn and the Flood," KRONOS V:1 (Fall 1979), p. 7. 13. See note #3. 14. M.W. Ovenden, "Planetary Distances and the Missing Planet," Recent Advances in Dynamical astronomy, ed. by B.D. Tapley & V. Szebehely (Dordrecht, Holland, 1973), p. 332. 15. T. Van Flandern, "Exploding Planets," Science Digest (April 1982), p. 94. 16. M.W. Ovenden, loc. cit. 17. T. Van Flandern, loc. cit. (Emphasis added). 18. D. Cardona, op. cit. , p. 36. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. (Emphasis in original). 21. T.W. Field, "Evidence of an Inversion Event?" AEON II:1 (June 1989), pp. 5 ff. 22. See note #2. 23. O. Gingerich, "The Origin of the Zodiac," Sky & Telescope (March 1984), p. 220. 24. Herodotus, History, ii:142. 25. G.A. Wainwright, "Letopolis," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XVIII (1932), p. 164. (NOTE: Velikovsky's suggestion that this event took place during the historic period is not necessarily correct). 26. See note #3, p.102. 27. Ibid. 28. Although this took place in 1984, the criticism did not see print until 1986 -- see KRONOS XI:2, pp. 75-78. 29. Ashton to Greenberg, Nov. 10, 1984. 30. Cardona to Ashton, Dec. 21, 1984. 31. Ibid. 32. S. Windsor, "Contra Cardona," AEON II:5 (Feb. 1992), pp. 99-100. 33. Idem, "Foreword" to D.W. Patten, Catastrophism and the Old Testament (Seattle, 1988), p. xviii. 34. D.W. Patten, op. cit., p. 243. 35. Ibid. (Emphasis added). _________________________________________________________________ \cdrom\pubs\journals\aeon\vol0302\077disc.htm