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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

The asininity of the attacks by the science media and conventional
scientists upon Velikovsky was consistent with book reviewing and
editorial practices generally. Sympathizers of V. had an ample data
bank from 1963 onwards from which to demonstrate that V.'s
critics were brash, dogmatic, imitative, narrow, selective,
unprepared, precipitous, vulnerable, incomplete, pretentious,
possessed, unversed, unserious, unselfcritical, prejudiced,
unsystematic, inexact, unphilosophical, ideologically scatomatized,
vague and irrelevant -- to say the least. Yet withal Velikovsky was
said to have been "buried" not once but repeatedly, and all of his
supporters with him.

In a field so broad, hundreds of major statements and thousands of
details offered in over a thousand published pages somehow
emerged unscathed. Several scores of statements were indicted for
ambiguity or rendered more doubtful. What everyone knew ahead
of time could be reasserted: the prevailing theory of celestial
mechanics would only make nonsense out of data presented. In
addition, planet Venus probably lacks massive clouds of
hydrocarbon; if so, either such clouds were never there or they
burned off over time, the latter being V.'s second line of defense.

All in all, this was so small a bag that V., when it came time to
write his address to the San Francisco AAAS meeting, ended it
with the words, "None of my critics can erase the magnetosphere,
nobody can stop the noises of Jupiter, nobody can cool off Venus
and nobody can change a single sentence in my books." He knew
that last expression was bravado, but he felt like sticking it in, so
unsuccessful did he consider his opposition to have been. He asked
Deg's opinion: should it stay? Deg was happy for the
swashbuckling septuagenarian. Besides there was enough truth in it

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to let it go as the last firecracker of a speech that crackled
throughout; why not? Fling it in their teeth. And so it stands. Since
effectively it says nothing and says all, who can object to it?

I have given much thought to what kind of review might be
tendered V.'s books, such that his supporters could not assail on
substantial or moral grounds but would not please them. I consulted
Professor Joseph Grace, a historian of science, and he kindly wrote
a review for our pages, holding to a 700 word limit, such as is
common.

"Velikovsky is a highly skilled and erudite scholar, who works
comfortably in several major fields of science and the
humanities. He has a style, an attack, that is primarily
humanistic. By this I mean to exclude social science, which
today has a format often resembling natural science, complete
with jargon. He writes more like Ignatius Donnelly, a
predecessor of a century ago, whose style is even more
pleasurable. There can be only mild objections to such a style,
considering the undefined and exotic, even occult nature of
some of the areas he must venture into and the non- existence
of a scientific language covering so broad an area. Of course,
we would lose much in clarity and orderly communication if
our students were to adopt it in all manner of writing.

Velikovsky sees prehistory and protohistory as frequented by
stupendous natural catastrophes that call into question the
stability of the solar system over long time periods, and
therefore the gradualism of darwinism in biology. His evidence
is limited and fragmentary, much of it anomalies that puzzle
historians both human and natural. Most of his evidence must,
and does also, serve conventional approaches, our received
knowledge, although he insists upon viewing it as catastrophic.

His most radical hypotheses, which he expresses far too
confidently, propose drastic erratic movements and changes of
planets, particularly the Earth, Mars and Venus, not to mention
the lunar satellite and the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. The
mechanics, even the electro-mechanics of such allegedly
historical events are, if conceivable, quite unknown and
undeveloped.

Here and there in his works one finds nuggets of valuable ore,
some in history, some in legend, some natural history. One

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finds these days a plenitude of studies of meteorites and
comets, a few of which he cites. One finds, too, many goods
works on historical and stratigraphic chronology, chronometry,
and it takes more than innuendo to shake the solid foundations
of radiochronometry. One must be impressed, on the other
hand, by Velikovsky's ability to discover anomalies and
contradictions, especially in Ancient History. He may well be
on the right track in discovering continuities between Pharaoh
Akhnaton and Oedipus, and concordances between the Biblical
Amalekites and the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt, and even is
stressing a baffling absence of archeological material to fill in
centuries of assigned time in Egypt, Greece, and elsewhere.

The reader will find many entertaining and suggestive pages as
well. As for his general ideas, practically none of them can be
fitted into contemporary scientific theory. The more heretical a
theory, the more hard evidence must be found to support it,
and Velikovsky's ideas of an electrically run universe, which
he never develops, and his claims of planetary aberrations in
early times to which he gives a great deal of attention, are, to
put it mildly, bizarre; there exists, that is, no astrophysical
theory to support them.

I would not recommend his books to anyone. Their pretensions
will enrage the learned and confound the ordinary reader.
Every age has books like them. I can mention Donnelly and
Mesmer in the nineteenth century, and George M. Price and C.
Beaumont in this century, but there were many more, which
are best forgotten. The genre is well known to science and
historians of the most ancient times, and one can judge the
future of the books by what has happened to their
predecessors.

The fact that a great many people read such works tells us little
about their value as science or literature. No doubt, in time,
such scientists as can be spared from other tasks or are
involved with his specific hypotheses will build up what would
amount to a total assessment. It is certainly too early to assert,
as Prof. A. de. Grazia did after only a dozen years, that he is
one of the great cosmogonists of the century."

What can be said for this review is that it gives a general
impression of what is talked about in the books and how, and it
does not challenge their right to be published, nor dismiss them as
anti-scientific, nor berate the author.

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When researching on the Velikovsky Affair, Deg stimulated V.'S
interest in the techniques of suppression, putting into a framework
the host of items which protruded from V.'s archives. Deg told V.
of a favorite old book, Henry Thouless' Straight and Crooked
Thinking and explained how it might be applied to V.'s
experience. V. was excited by the idea and prepared a handwritten
list of "70 ways of suppressing a theory," which the two men
discussed. The list that follows is largely in V.'s words and idiom.
It was not included in the published work. Each item is based upon
one or more concrete instances that can be documented and dated.
Later on V. wished to engage Lynn Rose in fleshing out and
publishing the list.

Actions of Established Scientists
and Cohorts Aimed at I. Velikovsky and his Book
Worlds in Collision (1950)

1.      Refusal to read or examine the manuscript.

2.      Charging it was not presented to specialists before
publication.

3.      Refusal to help with inexpensive tests through
established facilities.

4.      Accusation that work was not offered for testing.

5.      Assertion that work has been disproved by tests.

6.      Efforts to discourage printing.

7.      Demands for censorship.

8.      Engaging in censorship.

9.      Boycott of the book.

10.     Boycott of all textbooks of the work's publisher.

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11.     Threats of reprisal against publisher by not
offering manuscripts or withdrawing books.

12.     Threat against associated publishers without text
books.

13.     Appeals to the scientific community.

14.     Efforts to influence reviewers in advance.

15.     Appeals to mobilize hostile reviewers.

16.     Efforts to suppress favorable reviewers.

17.     Efforts to supplant regular reviewers with
volunteer authoritative writers as reviewers.

18.     Checking the allegiance of scientists and officials
of scientific organizations.

19.     Firing of unaligned scientists and officials.

20.     Punishment of book editors and firing.

21.     Demand that there be a public recantation by
publishers.

22.     Refusal to print author's papers about his books
in scientific magazines.

23.     Return of supplementary papers unceremoniously
without reading.

24.     Refusal to reprint answers to distortion of facts of
reviews.

25.     Misquotation from the book, and quotations out of
context.

26.     Copying of wrong figures into a quotation used in

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the book.

27.      No correction of erroneous statements in reviews
by anybody in the scientific community.

28.      Use of knowingly false argument.

29.      Dogmatic statements and accusations.

30.      Setting up and knocking down "strawmen."

31.      Dishonest rejoinders.

32.      Defamation and discrediting abuse.

33.      Promotion of antagonistic critics.

34.      Appeal to religious feelings.

35.      Guilt by association.

36.      Treating work by association with other ridiculed
or denounced books.

37.      Use of fallacious statistical method to decide
whether a genius or crank wrote book.

38.      Writing reviews and criticisms without reading the
book.

39.      Copying from other reviews (even of those who
had not read it themselves).

40.      Innuendoes that unneeded counterarguments
abound.

41.      Refusal by scientific periodicals to advertise the
work.

42.      Warnings against readers' inability to judge work.

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43.       Assuring the reading (and book-buying) public the
book is dull and worthless.

44.       Accusing author of using methods not actually
used.

45.       Denials of acts of suppression, compounding
perjury.

46.       Omission of credit or of footnoting the work when
offering "new" theories elsewhere that are contained in the
book.

47.       Refusal to give credit for discoveries confirmed
ultimately in tests.

48.       Refusal of information to author.

49.       Refusal to engage in communication with author
or allies.

50.       Suppression of news of disputes or debates won
by author.

51.       Deprecating value of crucial tests favoring
author's theories.

52.       Concocting stories that "1000 wrong predictions"
were in book.

53.       Defamation in letters and intimidation of potential
support.

54.       Use of great names (e.g. Nobel Prize winners) for
defamation.

55.       Whispering campaign; private letters.

56.       Intimidation of students, both undergraduates and

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graduates.

57.     Elimination of the name of the heretic from books
of reference.

58.     Removal of the book from libraries.

59.     Demands to place the book on the Register of
Forbidden Books.

60.     Pressure on scientific supporters by bribing with
better jobs to abstain.

61.     Grants given to disprove the book (no grants ever
given to "prove").

62.     Efforts, include fabrication, to show misuse of
sources by author.

63.     Damaging statements put in the mouth of deceased
persons of influence.

64.     Heaping of accusations without substantiation in
quantities making any response impossible in the same
media.

65.     Insinuations of profiteering and other ignoble
motives for writing the work.

66.     Attempts at organizing character assassination and
special meetings to dispose of the challenge.

67.     Dissemination of selected damaging reviews.

68.     Offering the readers arguments from specialized
fields that they are unable to verify.

69.     Generalization and complete disapproval on
grounds of a single alleged error.

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70.      Accusation of lack of sources by misrepresenting
the term "collective amnesia."

A service to the history and science of science would occur in the
expansion and testing of the list. Deg wished that he might
complete the list concerning V., then move to other cases in
science, and then to all occupations to display the universal
prevalence of misdemeanor, not so much to scandalize, nor to stop
it all (an impossibility), as to expose to light the epidemic
predicament.

When asked to place them into categories (for Deg was distressed
by their stringing out aimlessly) V. divided them into: suppression
of publication; punishment and rewards; examination of the theories
refused; ostracism of a nonconformist; rewriting of history and
scientific finds; control of criticism; unfair criticism; and unfair
criticism continued by unfair rejoinders. Deg in his turn divided
them into logical errors, moral offenses (cheating and dishonesty);
factual errors; illegitimate demands; hyperbole; personal abuse;
material sanctions; etc. V. was especially pleased with what Deg
called "the absent footnote technique" which with disastrous
effectiveness eliminates an undesired line of ancestors, such as V.

Stecchini in the 1970's pointed out that Schiaparelli was a leading
astronomer but could not get acceptance of his idea that Venus was
scarcely rotating in relation to the Sun, showing an "Earth-Lock"
as it comes closest to the Earth. The "Earth-Lock" was proven a
century later, but although it supported V.'s position was not even
mentioned, when, for example, the Encyclopedia Britannica (XIX,
78) connected the phenomenon with "unsolved but very significant
celestial mechanical problems connected with the origins and early
histories of the planets." Here is a case of partial incorporation of
quantavolution with the help of the "absent footnote technique."

The tricks used against V. were all commonplace in the scientific
world. Since his work was so widely publicized and since he
collected evidence so carefully, the tricks were simply more
completely displayed. The more basic causes of resistance and
opposition, which spawn tricks, have been discussed by Bernard
Barber, with a wealth of example. V. was not a sociologist.

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Allegations of meanness and nonrational thought exhausted his
repertoire of analysis, except for his handy notion of collective
amnesia of ancient catastrophe, which, he began to think, was the
essential cause of the opposition to his theories; people, including
scientists, could not bear to admit to open discussion their own
suppressed terror of the original events.

But, of course, resistance to new ideas occurs whether the new
ideas are  catastrophist or uniformitarian, and with ideas that are
false as well as with  true ideas, which Barber has shown in the
cases of Helmholtz, Planck, and Lister, among others. As Deg has
argued, the great fear of the poly-ego in the normal schizoid human
determines memory at the same time as it demands forgetting (or
resisting memory), and ancient catastrophes were materially grafted
onto this human mechanism; but the resistance to V.'s theories can
be only slightly assigned to the peculiarities of his catastrophism.

Deg prepared another list in 1978. He was making up this one out
of disgust with politics: he was gloomy over the practical
impossibility of finding persons in the world who were capable of
organizing, agitating and contributing to beneficial and benevolent
movements. But he saw that the list applied also to getting support
for scientific ideas and movements.

"Why Doesn't Somebody Do Something?"

Noone wants to follow
Helplessness
Hopelessness
Incompetence
Hardheadedness
General Disbelief
Indifference
Too busy, no time
Can't afford to, financially
Hurts somebody
Meets opposition
Arrogant to tell someone what to do
Timidity
Fear

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Fickleness
Inattention and distractedness
Leave it to the experts
The crazies you have to deal with
Hard work
Resentment against being ordered about
Ignorance of particulars
Disbelief in use of force or any form of manipulation
Hatred of those to be helped
Lack of foresight
Interested only in the moment
Can't believe a few voices might prevail
Things will work themselves out (laissez-faire)
Fear of being corrupted
Distaste for manners of other activists
Have to work with inferiors
Suspicious of potential collaborators
Fear of physical harm
Fear of failure
Fear of being responsible for effects

No wonder nothing ever gets done!

***

In 1978, Dr. Henry Bauer, later Dean at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute, offered the first full-dress anti-Velikovsky manuscript and
the Director of the University of Kentucky Press asked Deg to read
it with reference to its possible publication. Cutbacks in funds and
programming forced the Press into giving up the manuscript or
finding $5000 subsidy for its production. The University of Illinois
Press was finally to have brought the work out in late 1984.
Meanwhile one can have a review of it by way of Deg's Readers

Report of January 10, 1979:

To: University of Kentucky Press, Attn. Mr. Crouch
From: Professor Alfred de Grazia
Subject: Reader's report to Henry H. Bauer. Beyond
Velikovsky

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In my opinion, Dean Bauer's manuscript should be published.
It is the first generally adverse criticism of the work of
Immanuel Velikovsky by a single author. The author has
researched practically all available public sources. He is aware
of and also adversely critical of the failings of many of the
critics of Velikovsky. The book, strangely, is a likable book,
which probably reflects the author's character more than the
contents, which must prove annoying to a hundred people.

The book will be controversial. There is no avoiding this.
Feelings run high on the scientific and sociological aspects of
Velikovsky's work. The most incisive criticism is bound to
come from the supporters of Velikovsky, for they are much
better informed on all aspects of the controversy than the
opponents of Velikovsky. These latter are usually cut down
quickly. Dean Bauer realizes, though, that it is not easy to
address the issues, and has the advantage of four hundred
pages to explain himself and balance his analysis.

Because of the scope of the book, not only Velikovsky but also
a number of his supporters will be motivated to respond. And
one cannot doubt that they will have good grounds to enter the
fray Let me take myself as an example of what may very well
happen with others. On p. 236 the author mentions my "utter
conviction that Velikovsky is right." Right about what? I am
favorable to his general theories, his genius, and his defense
against the almost invariably misplaced attacks upon him.
Bauer might well stress his distinction between the "True
Believers" and the scholarly supporters. Among the latter, there
are many differences, the atmosphere is highly critical and, if
they seem overprotective of Velikovsky, it is because the
enemy outside is so massive and aggressive. It will add greatly
to the clarity of the analysis if the author distinguishes the
scholarly supporters and the lay supporters. (The word
"public" is better but unfortunately has several meanings.) The
scientific opponents of Velikovsky have also their scholarly and
lay supporters. As for disputes among the scholarly supporters
and Velikovsky, contrary to Bauer's statements, there are
dozens, beginning with Juergens, Hess, and Stecchini and
ending with the young writers in the current (Nov. 1978) issue
of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies Review.

At the bottom of p. 237, Bauer shoots from the hip at both
Juergens as an absurdity and myself as a political scientist,
while favoring physicist Kruskal's scornful attack upon
Juergens. This does not accord with Bauer's many comments

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upon dogmatic remarks and against extolling specialized
authority. Apart from whether he understands Juergen's
theory, which he does not bother to demonstrate, and whether
I understand Juergen's theory as well or better than Kruskal,
he takes up a vulnerable position: what qualification, one might
ask, does Bauer have for writing a book of sociology, history,
ethnology, and political analysis, not to mention meteorology,
geology, astronomy, etc.? Does he regard himself as a greater
polymath than any of us?

Then again, he contradicts my analysis of Margolis and a group
of Yale reviewers, claiming that his own count in the first
instance is at odds with my own. Perhaps he should reproduce,
in a couple of pages, the Margolis article with my comments,
adding his own. Such would be the better way to damage my
conclusions. The readers might then judge.

And so on. To say only of the distinguished group of scholars
who passed on the ABS special issue on the Velikovsky Affair
that none was a scientist gives a completely misleading idea to
the reader. Lasswell was one of the founders of quantitative
method in behavioral science. Cantril was a distinguished
psychologist and expert on systematic opinion analysis; etc.
Nor does he stress that Harry Hess, who is sometimes regarded
as having been the leading geologist of the past generation, was
a thoroughly sympathetic friend of Velikovsky. Hess and I
talked on two or three occasions of Velikovsky, and Hess was
as eager as I to see Velikovsky's scientific ability respected.
Hess recommended that his students at Princeton read Earth in
Upheaval, for example. These are but a few of the hundreds of
points of contention in the manuscript and yet I feel it should be
published with only modest changes, because it might
otherwise take years to redo it and I am not at all sure that the
public functions of the book would be greatly assisted. Perhaps
I am saying that the book as it stands invites a full rocket
display and, in the process, the public, science, and students
will become better educated. I doubt that any amount of
revision will make it a definitive and conclusive answer to the
rapidly developing body of work sympathetically or willy-willy
aligned to Velikovsky's books. I have four books in process
myself that are more controversial and upsetting to the
established doctrines of contemporary science than those of Dr.
Velikovsky. But I have the impression that I shall not
encounter the same type of opposition as Velikovsky if only
because the intellectual atmosphere has changed so much and
in part because of the Velikovsky Affair.

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Readers perhaps will little note the criticism directed at myself
and some others in the book, but they will be alert to a number
of points respecting Velikovsky, and I would suggest that Dean
Bauer reconsider them. He is attacking Velikovsky in 1979
partly on the basis of a pamphlet that Velikovsky published in
1946 ("Cosmos and Gravitation") and which Bauer even
appreciates is not pushed by Velikovsky himself or scarcely
anyone else. True, Velikovsky hates to recant, but the pamphlet
is not a necessary prologomena to the later books. Indeed,
Bauer's often insightful views about Velikovsky's character
and motives should make him wonder whether the pamphlet
was not merely a brash preliminary exercise, which vanity
demanded be published as advance claims. Further it has
become fashionable now to predict the doom of the concept of
gravitation, and Velikovsky's musings were in a way the
fashions worn in 1946 for anti-gravitational thought. This
might be said also regarding the model of the atom as
resembling the solar system. Only lately has that idea become
discredited. Are we to dump all scholars who early in their
careers exhibited what was currently believed? Then everyone
will have to walk the plank.

Bauer sometimes abuses Velikovsky, contrary to his
professional aim, generally observed, of avoiding inflammatory
and ad hominem statements. It should be easy to revise such
expressions as "astonishing ignorance" (p.159), "supreme
ignorance" (p.154), p.161 etc. I think that he would reap
rewards if he, or an editor, were to erase fifty to a hundred
non-functional adjectives or phrases.

And, in respect to Velikovsky as a knowledgeable scientist,
aside from "who is a scientist besides the self-elect," Bauer
underestimates Velikovsky totally. Let him ask Burgstahler
(chemist), Motz (astrophysicist), someone like myself who
knew Hess (geology), Hadas (linguistics), Lasswell (psychiatric
psychologist), Cyrus Gordon (Near East Studies), Einstein
(physics), Juergens (electricity), et al. Every last one will or
would say that Velikovsky is not only a good scientist, but an
imaginative one, and at home in a number of fields. I wonder
why Bauer did not take the step to include himself in this group
by interviewing the subject of his book. Velikovsky may be in
error, but he is a scientist.

Also, I would recommend dropping the discussion of whether
Velikovsky is a crank. Bauer admits that he himself is a crank,

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about the Loch Ness monsters. It's unworthy of this book to
waste itself on this unscientific concept. I would, as Dean
Bauer appears to believe, devote only several necessary
paragraphs to exposing the term "crank" and kicking it out of
bounds.

On p. 248, I note a striking contrast between a group of pro
Velikovsky publicists and a group of anti-Velikovsky scholars
of distinction. This is a "foul blow." Either let both be
publicists or both be scholars.

So, I should conclude that off-hand abusive terms ought to be
excised since they take away from a book some of its good air
of casual and pleasant inquiry. Cut back the section on cranks.
Perhaps dispense with the sections on "Cosmos and
Gravitation" save for a simple statement of its
inappropriateness and its inelegant foreboding of things to
come. The admirably clear piece on gases should win Bauer an
excellent contract for an elementary textbook in general
science, but may not belong here. Perhaps other paragraphs can
be removed here and there at the instigation of a generally well
educated lay reader.

The style is clear at the college level. Many, many things are
said that need to be said about both sides: about how scholars
are just (simply) people; about how the general public reacts to
controversies in science as to political struggles, baseball
games, etc.; and about the foibles of Velikovsky (though
perhaps not enough, regrettably, about how these foibles have
had something to do with driving him on relentlessly and with
good effect). And I think that Dean Bauer might even, in the
end, bite the bullet and state that on the whole it were well that
Velikovsky's books were published, then bad that they were
mishandled by the press, scientists, and disciples, yet good that
a million people began to read into history and science. Finally
take the word of the author himself (p. 366) that an
astronomer's statement that "Velikovsky's scenario was
impossible on grounds of celestial mechanics was just not so."
That is worth something and will win the author a medal for
courage, after all is said and done.

To avoid rumor-mongering or a delayed denunciation Deg told
V.'s retainers of the existence of the work and of his
recommendation that it be published. "Why?" he was asked,
meaning why didn't he stomp it. It's not bad, he answered, you'll

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see, and it will keep the dialogue going, even improving it.

Meanwhile, those who were termed by the anti-heretics
"devotees," "followers," "disciples," "supporters,"
"sympathizers," and were consigned to the limbo of science as
"benighted," "anti-scientific," "occultists," "astrologers,"
"fanatics," and so on, unendingly -- from these who were seriously
considering his work as well as doing work of their own, came the
discovery and reporting of his errors, qualification of his statements,
essays at quantification, adduction of contrary materials, tempering,
amending, and explaining. We need not go into the question,
"Whose mass of supporters is better -- yours or ours ?" We are
saying precisely that the effective scientific criticism of Velikovsky
came from those who were sympathetic to his work.

It was the heretic scholars who designed alternative scenarios, in
geology and astronomy, who upset V.'s chronology beyond the
Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, who pointed out correctly evidence
of pro-Biblical bias, who disputed his identification of the
astronomical bodies implicated in certain legends, who pinned
down the sources of numerous uncertainties, who reduced
vagueness, who found and accommodated predecessors in the
esoteric and difficult literature of catastrophism, far beyond the
sporadic dark hints that "nothing new" was being proposed.

To be blunt, if you want to know what's wrong with Velikovsky,
ask his friends, as much as his enemies; ask his admirers, as well as
his detractors. You must know the literature of quantavolution and
catastrophe. It is contained by now in many books and hundreds of
correctly postured articles, many old, many new, many
forthcoming. One can think no longer, if ever, that by "not
believing in Velikovsky" science will proceed on its customary
paths; a growing parade of many different kinds of
quantavolutionaries is finding its own paths. The parade cannot be
dismissed by uttering an imprecation against Velikovsky.

***

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists had been established in the
triumphant days of nuclear physics following the blast at Hiroshima

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and was dedicated to voicing the responsibilities felt by scientists.
Like the playboy college students who excused his poor grades on
grounds that his college was anti-semitic and who persuaded his
father that his nose, his curly hair, and his name ought to be
changed, whereupon, his grades remaining poor, he had to confess
that 'us Gentiles ain't very smart,' the Bulletin did change its
name for awhile and had the same old problem so it changed it
back again, but at this time, around 1964, was trying to boost its
popularity by exposing what Editor Rabinowitch regarded as
scientific impostors, and his chosen weapon, a science publicist
named Margolis, settled upon Velikovsky, whence was published a
cavalier article entitled "Velikovsky Rides Again."

Deg's larger and more detailed refutation of the offensive article is
reproduced in The Burning of Troy. So here I may introduce a letter
in the same vein from Eric Larrabee, a publicist and early supporter
of V., later head of the New York State Arts Council.

April 21, 1964

To the Editor:

The "Report from Washington" by Howard Margolis
in your April number is a mixture of intemperate
accusations and misstatements of fact. Margolis
dismisses as "hokum" the work of Immanuel
Velikovsky, which he has demonstrably read without
care and judges without experience. He claims there
is "no scientific way to examine" books which
abound in references to physical fact. Their author
had furnished specific scientific tests of his theory and
on all of them to date, according to Professor H.H.
Hess of Princeton, he had been vindicated. Margolis
brushes off Velikovsky's successful predictions as
"science fiction" and offers instead the results of his
"few hours" reading in philology and history.

He can apparently read neither French nor Hebrew. If
he could read. French he would not speak of the
"actual" inscription at el-Arish in words from the

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outdated English translation of 1890 instead of the
modern French translation of 1936, which is plainly
cited in Velikovsky's footnote. The French
translation gives the name Pi-Khirote. Margolis is
flatly wrong in stating the Velikovsky "alters" the
text, either here or in the case of the biblical pi-ha
hiroth (so spelled by Velikovsky in Ages in Chaos,
p.44). If Margolis had read even the English
translation attentively he would have found "King
Tum" (The French gives "le roi Toum"). This is the
text: "Voici que Geb vit sa mere qui l'aimait
beaucoup. Son coeur (de Geb) était négligent

après elle. La terre -- pour elle en grand affliction."
It goes on to describe "upheaval in the residence"
and "such a tempest that neither the men nor the gods
could see the faces of their next." The inscription is
shown to be historical by the fact that the King's
name is written with the royal cartouche.

Velikovsky's reasons for suggesting that bkhor
(firstborn) in the Hebrew text might be a misreading
for bchor (chosen) are given at length (Ages in
Chaos, p. 32-34) and are not essential to his argument
that Exodus and the Egyptian sources refer to the
same natural catastrophe. He uses the word
"obvious" in proposing that the phrase "to smite the
houses" refers to an earthquake in view of the fact that
Eusebius, St. Jerome, and the Midrashim all confirm
this interpretation. Margolis' sarcastic repetition of
the word "obvious" is wholly without justification.

Margolis accuses Velikovsky of saying that St.
Augustine puts the birth of Minerva at the time of
Moses whereas Augustine "says the opposite." This
would be a serious charge if true but it is doubly
untrue, both as to Augustine and Velikovsky. The
relevant passage in The City of God (Book XVIII,
Chapter 8) reads that Minerva was born in the time of
Ogyges and Velikovsky quotes it (Worlds in
Collision, p.171) in those precise words. In support of

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the damaging assertion that Velikovsky alters
evidence Margolis alters the evidence from both
sources.

Margolis cannot even read Velikovsky correctly. He
says that Velikovsky "can cite no description" of
Venus growing larger in the sky despite the fact that
on pages 82-83 and 164-65 of Worlds in Collision it
is so described from Western ("an immense globe"),
Middle Eastern ("a stupendous prodigy in the sky")
and Chinese ("rivalled the sun in brightness") sources.

The sociological interest of the Velikovsky case lies
in the willingness of scientists to dismiss the work of a
serious scholar as "hokum" on the basis of slipshod,
inaccurate, and abusive criticism. Margolis had
proved once again that the interest is justified.

Eric Larrabee

Deg was in an ornery mood and had threatened the Bulletin with a
suit for slander. V. was all for the idea consulted his friend, the libel
expert, Philip Wittenberg. Deg also consulted Herbert Simon and
adopted Simon's view, as expressed in the letter below:

Dear Al,

I have read the materials you sent me about the Velikovsky
matter. (Incidentally, I lunched with Velikovsky last week, and
we are going to have him back to the campus next autumn for
a lecture.) I have a few comments to offer on the matter of
strategy.

As I am sure you know, there is a doctrine in the law of libel
known as "invitation to comment." Anyone who performs
publicly -- and that includes publishing a book -- invites critical
comment, and has no recourse if he gets it unless he can show
actual malice. The critic does not, in general, have to sustain
the burden of proving truth. (I may have forgotten details, but
your lawyer will tell you that that is the general idea.) Two
consequences follow from this: (1) one should not publish
books -- or issues of the American Behavioral Scientist

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devoted to the Velikovsky Affair -- unless one has a thick skin;
(2) when one is flayed by a critic, one should almost never
threaten legal action, however righteous one's feeling.

The opponents of Velikovsky are not malicious, they are
indignant. Nothing about the Margolis article seems to me
libelous, however much I disagree with it. We certainly do not
want to imply that we wish to suppress his right to hold, or
even publish, these opinions, however much anguish they cause
us. Hence, if I were editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientist, I would politely but firmly reject your request that I
"withdraw my support" from the article. He might even point
out that to an anti-Velikovskyite, some of the language in the
September American Behavioral Scientist might seem quite as
offensive as Margolis' language did to you. C'est la vie.

When you receive the refusal from the editor -- as I am sure
you will -- I would advise that you then request an opportunity
to have three pages in BAS to reply to Margolis (perhaps
offering the same number of pages in ABS for a rebuttal to the
September articles). There is nothing to be lost by a public
discussion of the issues, especially the issue of freedom to
publish, and nothing to be gained by defending that through
threats to suppress it.

With best regards,

Cordially Yours,
Herbert A. Simon

Professor of Administration
and Psychology

After much deliberation and testing of the winds, Rabinowitch
wrote to Deg:

25 June 1964

Dear Mr. de Grazia:

In answer to your letter of May 12, I do not see why, and in
what form, the Bulletin should "withdraw its support from the
article of Mr. Margolis." I do not understand what you mean
by "your contributors and advisors urging you to take action
to remedy the wrong done us." The responsibility for the
contents of the articles published in the Bulletin rest (sic) with

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authors of the articles. It must be obvious, of course, that the
magazine cannot disclaim legal responsibility for any
defamatory statements, but I do not see in the article by Mr.
Margolis any statements of such nature with respect to yourself
or to the contributors of your journal. If all polemics over
matters of scientific competence would end in court, this would
be bad indeed for the climate of free discussion in this country.
In our society, the enemies of evolution can call scientists,
espousing this theory, ignoramuses, or heretics; the enemies of
fluoridation can call the medical authorities supporting it
whatever like names they might choose -- short of character
assassination -- and the proponents of fluoridation can do the
same to their critics. This is as political processes should be in a
democratic society.

In his article Mr. Margolis, after dealing briefly with the
astrophysical difficulties of Velikovsky's theory, expanded on
the interpretation of ancient texts. From the point of view of
the Bulletin the physical and astronomical evidence is crucial,
and the considerations of what Velikovsky calls "experience of
humanity," can only be subsidiary. Physical evidence is simpler
and more unambiguous; while interpretations of old texts and
hieroglyphic inscriptions is an tentative and often controversial
matter.

Since Mr. Margolis brought up the paleographic evidence in his
article, we must in all justice, permit Dr. Velikovsky (or a
spokesman for him) to point out the errors, if any, in his
argument. This should be done by someone with first-hand
experience in the field -- either Dr. Velikovsky himself, or even
better, some independent recognized authority in Biblical
history and ancient languages. We are willing to publish such a
letter in one of the forthcoming issues (giving Mr. Margolis the
opportunity of answering it, if he desires); but, we will then
terminate the discussion, since Egyptology or Old Testament
studies do not represent a field of the Bulletin's major interest.

As far as physical possibility of the events suggested by
Velikovsky is concerned, I mention the names of Menzel and
Shapley because I remembered that they did analyze
Velikovsky's theories at the time of their publication. I would
be glad to have any other recognized astrophysicist or
geophysicist (including the Princeton and Columbia
astronomers who have pointed out in Science the correctness
of some of Dr. Velikovsky's specific predictions), to present in

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the Bulletin briefly what they think of Velikovsky's theory as a
whole.

I believe it is a mistake to accuse modern science of intolerance
to the theories which destroy its accustomed frame of reference
and force it to revise its foundations. Einstein proposed a
revision of Newton's conceptions of time and space; for a few
years, there was some resistance of the type suggested by you,
but it was silenced by Einstein's explanation of the precession
of the perigee of Mercury, and his prediction of the bending of
stellar light in the neighborhood of the sun. If the correct
predications by Velikovsky, pointed out by Hess and others, do
not change the general rejection of Velikovsky's theories by
scientists, it is because changes in the laws of celestial
mechanics and revisions of well-established facts of earth
history, required by Velikovsky, are quite different from the
subtle, but logically significant and convincing changes in the
scientific world picture suggested by Einstein (as well as by
Mac[sic] Planck, when he postulated the atomic structure of
energy, or more recently by Lee and Yang when they
postulated a physical difference between a right and left screw,
object and mirror image). Modern science has learned to be
open-minded to revolutionary suggestion, if they are brought
up with strong scientific or logical evidence. Reluctance to go
along with Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision is, in my eyes,
evidence not of stubborn dogmatism of "official" science but
of the physical and logical implausibility of his theories.

Your letter and its request misinterprets the position of the
Bulletin. To conclude, since Mr. Margolis brought up
paleographic evidence, fairness requires the Bulletin to give
space to a letter disputing this evidence (provided this letter is
not more abusive that Mr. Margolis' criticisms). If Dr.
Velikovsky can suggest a recognized authority in astrophysics
or geophysics willing to discuss his theory as a whole in the
light of recent verification of some of his predictions, I would
consider giving space in the Bulletin for a brief discussion of
this kind.

It is in this spirit of scientific argumentation that the whole
problem should be resolved.

Sincerely yours.
Eugene Rabinowitch

Editor

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During the next few weeks Deg drafted a brutal reply to
Margolis's article and prepared a letter to accompany the critique.
However and meanwhile, V., ever hopeful of access to and
acceptance by the authorities of physics, prevailed upon Harry Hess
to submit on his behalf to Rabinowitch an article he had prepared
on his Venus theory in the light of new findings. It would serve as a
counter weight to the Margolis article, without reference to the
libertarian and legal issues involving the Bulletin.

In September Rabinowitch wrote to Hess, returning V.'s
manuscript without having read it and saying, "the Bulletin is not a
magazine for scientific controversies -- except on rare occasions
(e.g. in the field of genetic radiation damage) when they are directly
related to political or other public issues... Neither is it the function
of the Bulletin to provide an outlet for scientific theories not
recognized by professional authorities in the field." He explained
the Margolis article as an attempt to undo the work of "behavioral
scientists" in aid of V. whom, he said, they "championed in the
most violent way."

In October, the ABS published Deg's critique of Margolis, and
Deg sent it to Rabinowitch along with the letter that he had drafted
three months earlier.

November 12, 1964

Dear Mr. Rabinowitch:

Please permit me to answer frankly your letter of June 25,
which asks why and in what form your should "withdraw your
support from Mr. Margolis's article about us."

The why should be apparent in the attached analysis of Mr.
Margolis' writing, entitled "Notes on 'Scientific'
Reporting." This explains in detail the errors, the malice, and
the legal offenses of Mr. Margolis. Unless your can by the use
of evidence and reason erase those 54 notes, your are bound
scientifically, morally, and legally to "withdraw your support."

In what form should your "withdraw your support"? You
should "withdraw your support" by expressing in seven

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columns of space in your magazine (1) your acknowledgment
of the excessively large number of factual errors contained in
Mr. Margolis' article, and (2) your regret for the incorrect
unjustified slurs upon the character and motives of Dr.
Velikovsky and the contributors and editors of THE
AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, together with your
hope that your reader should join you in repairing in the course
of time such damages as was caused by this article.

My present letter could now end, as might have your own at
the same point. However, you go on to make further
comments that require answer.

You say that it would be "bad indeed for the climate of free
discussion in this country" if "all polemics over matters of
scientific competence would end in court." I answer that "all
polemics" are not at issue, but only one polemical action. (You
are of course, at liberty to universalize its meaning.) Moreover,
"the climate of free discussion" that you mention has been
clouded and cannot be logically cited as a reason for staying
our of court. It is precisely to get people out from under this
cloud that the law and courts are built. The courts enable an
objective determination to be made of a matter in certain cases
where free discussion is impossible. They permit and require
the calling and interrogating of witnesses under just conditions.
They prevent and remedy the abuses that you have presumably
endorsed. The law of evidence and the rule of law, Mr.
Rabinowitch, are the grandparents of the scientific method.
They are not its antithesis.

You say that in our society, disbelievers in evolution can call
scientists espousing evolution ignoramuses or heretics. You say
enemies of fluoridation can call medical authorities supporting
it like names and vice versa. You are defending your magazine
evidently for assuming the privilege of such name-calling as
opponents of fluoridation and evolution employ. Very well.
Your reader must judge you for that.

"Character assassination", you say, is not permissible, however.
The issue here is of course just that. I call to your attention the
numerous instances, well-noted in the aforesaid memorandum
on "54 ways", in which your magazine is guilty of character
assassination, slander, and libel.

Your next paragraph is logically queer, for your say that the
Bulletin is largely concerned with the astrophysics of

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Velikovsky and not with the humanistic evidence.(I will not
tarry with your incredible distinction between physical and
humanistic evidence.) But then you go on to admit that the
Bulletin reversed itself and abandoned its chosen field in this
case. (Apparently, any and every policy can be reversed to get
at Velikovsky. How true we were!)And you say you want to
get the historical evidence argued. Argued -- but not too much
you state, for you have to get back to your major interest! Like
UN affairs? Like scientific freedom? You may go back to your
affairs, Mr. Rabinowitch, but not before we are done with the
matter.

Now you would graciously permit Dr. Velikovsky or an
"independent authority" of the classics to answer Mr. Margolis
by a letter, to be followed by a reply from Mr. Margolis, and
then stop! Two-to-one is bad enough. But how does Mr.
Margolis deserve this reply? By his own expertness as a biblical
scholar, specialist in ancient languages, and classical historian? I
submit that this exchange might be equal and appropriate if I
might delegate my daughter who is majoring in archaeology at
Bryn Mawr to take up your invitation to reply.

A general appraisal of Dr. Velikovsky's theories in your paper
would be a good idea, as your suggest, and I think you should
find a set of scientists to make such an appraisal. I would not
go to Drs. Menzel or Shapley, whose participation in the
Velikovsky case, as documented in Harper's and The
American Behavioral Scientist, has been most unbecoming
Your hazy remembrance of their posture is scarcely a firm basis
for risking the reputation of your magazine and colleagues.
Besides the balance of evidence has continued to shift between
1950 and 1964. Do read that document; your must take the
time : you and your writer cannot decently continue to ignore
all the factual record of the case.

Still, all of this is not the central point, which is the behavior of
scientists, and you do well to return to it in your last two
paragraphs. There you first say that modern science is not
intolerant of unorthodox theories. This is not so; even the case
you cite, Einstein, was in your own words victim of "some
resistance" of the type the ABS described. But even if it were
so generally, why would you unscientifically and dogmatically
refuse to recognize an "unusual" case of resistance when it
loomed before you?

How can you say that the actions taken concerning Velikovsky

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and his theories was tolerant? Please state one procedure,
whose value your would defend, for that reception and
consideration of new scientific material, which was followed by
the leadership of science in the Velikovsky case. Show us that
he was given one key to the kingdom. I believe, as you seek to
do so, you will gradually eliminate from consideration all the
decent and rational procedures that are supposed to govern the
behavior of scientists. In the end you will either be indignant or
a cynic. You will not be the Rabinowitch whose letter I am
replying to.

I must end in laughter, which I hope you will forgive. For you
conclude by permitting Dr. Velikovsky to answer by letter
"provided this letter is not more abusive than Mr. Margolis'
criticisms!" I am not clear whether you are here defining the
outer limits of abuse, or whether you suggest pursuing
scientific truth by balancing two sets of slander.

Go back to my beginning, sir; you will find our two requests to
be generous offers made in the veritable "spirit of scientific
argumentation" that you appeal to.

Sincerely yours,

Alfred de Grazia

Dear Mr. de Grazia:

Thank you for your letter of November 12th. I can only add my
appreciation that you published the full Margolis article in The
American Behavioral Scientist. Your readers may judge.

Sincerely,

Eugene Rabinowitch
Editor

December 3, 1964

Dear Mr. Rabinowitch

We acknowledge your appreciation of our fairness. Does your
appreciation mean that you, too, will be fair to us and present

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our rebuttal before your readers?

Sincerely yours,
Alfred de Grazia

The rebuttal was not carried by the Bulletin. A great many
scientists had their prejudices reinforced at the expense of V., Deg,
and the ABS. In the final analysis and many year later, Deg's
indignation seems overdone, and it is doubtful that he ever had the
intention of suing, but he was up to his typical game of driving
home contradictions and pounding away at the basic homology
between legal and scientific procedure. Furthermore, while
discounting his rhetoric, I should also call attention to specific
instances of the damage caused by irresponsible behavior in
scientific circles tied directly to the Bulletin article: one on the
matter of fluoridation, on an exchange between Urey and Deg, and
two to be treated in chapter 15 on "The Knowledge of Industry"
involving the Sloan Foundation, Moses Hadas, and a project of Deg
in economics.

***

July 17, 1996

Dear Professor de Grazia:

Since writing you earlier in connection with my review of "A
Struggle With Titans, " I have been reading the various
documents cited in "The Velikovsky Affair."

One that particularly "struck" me was the article by Howard
Margolis in the April 1964 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists that your ably dissected in the October 1964 issue of
the American Behavioral Scientist.

What came as an even greater surprise, however was the article
written by Margolis about fluoridation in the June 1964 issue of
the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. By failing to take note of
published reports of toxic effects from fluoridated drinking
water, he constructs a very favorable case for fluoridation and
makes his opponents appear to have no scientific grounds on
which to oppose it! Since you were able to show that Margolis
is not a good philologist, I thought it might be worth pointing

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out that he also has not read the fluoridation literature very
thoroughly. The major documents he cited to support his view
are guilty of omission just as he is. The one that was prepared
in 1955-1956 is hardly relevant to "current" findings, while the
"Select" bibliography is no more that a compilation of
proponent research, with virtually no mention of contrary
results reported by others, especially in relation to clinical
findings.

I realize your interests lie primarily in the area of the
"sociological" aspects of a subject like fluoridation, but the
strong scientific evidence against fluoridation has been kept so
heavily suppressed that there is a close parallel to "The
Velikovsky Affair." Our own local public library, I might add,
has refused to accept or acquire a copy of "A Struggle with
Titans" on the grounds that the standard reviewing media have
ignored it -- just as they are ignoring "The Velikovsky Affair"!

Sincerely yours,

Albert W. Burgstahler

Professor, of Chemistry
The University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas

June 2, 1964

Dr. Alfred de Grazia
The American Behavioral Scientist
80 East 11th Street
New York 3, New York

Dear Dr. de Grazia:

I am sorry to see that you have gotten mixed up in the
Velikovsky case. Velikovsky was a charlatan. There is just no
doubt about it at all. It is not true that outstanding astronomers
would not welcome a truly original man with constructive
ideas. We would put him on the staff of the University of
California San Diego. I do think that you should try to
withdraw from this controversy as gracefully as possible and
not continue it. I assure you that every physical scientist of my
acquaintance will rise to defend the Bulletin against anything
you do.

I am terribly concerned at present about the lack of control in

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scientific publication. Science had always been aristocratic. Not
everyone could get his ideas published in effective journals.
Articles to the scientific magazines have been carefully edited,
and unless they conformed to reasonable scientific standards
they were refused. Today anyone can publish anything. In the
first place, very second-rate scientists can get jobs somewhere 
- with industrial companies, government agencies, the space
program, etc. They all have their private printing press in the
back room, namely a reproduction device, As a result, papers
of all sorts are sent out. Also there are new journals springing
up with no decent editorial control whatever. The result is an
enormous amount of confusion. In fact, as I have stated and I
now repeat, there is often so much noise that one cannot hear
the signals.

With best regards,
Very sincerely,
Harold C. Urey

Deg's Journal, June 29, 1964

...Velikovsky had palpitations last week. For several days his
pulse was irregular. He has gone into a three day period of rest
and is taking a little tranquilization by drugs. He has been
traveling too much and spending too much time trying to direct
strategy in his scientific defense. A letter I received from
Harold Urey depressed him greatly. Identifying as he does with
authority, V. is hurt when a Noble Prize winner for chemistry
refers to him as a charlatan. What can he be expecting? I have
not been able to educate him to the sociology and political
science of science. He believes in rationalism and that other
experts only by odd mistake "because they haven't read his
works," treat him so contemptuously and with hostility. V.
wrote what he thought should be my reply. (Sometimes his
presumption becomes arrogant.) It was a strange letter, full of
pathos and humble remonstrance. I could not and would not
use it. It is an interesting document about V. himself. It would
do him no good even if I were to use it. Yet he was deeply
perturbed when I informed him I was sending my own letter of
reply. He claimed that his was a perfect letter, which he was
proud of, and felt must be sent. It was then I learned of his
palpitations. The thought occurred: the strangeness of this
letter goes with a nervous disturbance. He desperately wanted
me to send his letter; he mailed it by special delivery to New
York where I was and phoned to press me about it. In a week
or two, when his illness is passed, he may be secretly pleased

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that I went by own way.

I spoke later to his wife. She seemed displeased with me too.
She, too, will come around. She confirmed how "hurt" he was
by the Urey letter. Urey is a --------! What better could come
from him. His letter to me is a disgrace and I mean to call it
that.

July 8, 1964

Dr. Harold C. Urey
School of Science and Engineering
University of California, San Diego
P.O. Box 109
La Jolla, California 92038

Dear Dr. Urey:

Thank you for your letter of June 2. I appreciate your concern
that I may "have gotten mixed up in the Velikovsky case."
Since everyone whose attention is called to the case has gotten
mixed up in it, in one way or another, I guess that I am in good
company.

Your second sentence is that "Velikovsky was a charlatan."
He neither "was" nor is a charlatan. Resort to your nearest
dictionary will satisfy you on that score. If you insist that you
have not made a linguistic error, then you must give me one,
just one, bit of evidence to support your allegation. Indeed,
your next sentence is "There is just no doubt about it at all."
Since you are a scientist and know the nature of proof, you
must have a great many pieces of evidence, adding up to
certainty. If you cannot cite such evidence, then you must
apologize to Velikovsky, or you become yourself a charlatan
and slanderer.

Your may refuse this challenge. Very well. We do not usually
carry substantive discussions of factual theory in the American
Behavioral Scientist, but if you will honor us with one
significant error of fact or logical contradiction in Velikovsky's
works we will print it and let it go at that, for we are not
concerned to solve the problems of physics and astronomy, or
politics and economics in our pages. I know that you will have
no trouble with this small matter; I could probably manage it
myself; that Mr. Margolis could not succeed, nor some others
who tried, does not prove that the works are flawless.

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Then you say, "It is not true that outstanding astronomers
would not welcome a truly original man with constructive
ideas." I am afraid, Dr. Urey, that you will be hard put, in the
light of the history of science, to maintain this statement also,
unless you would again resort to evasive semantics, defining
the words "truly original" and "constructive" to suit your
ends. Your saying that "we would put him on the staff of the
University of California, San Diego" could be regarded as an
idle threat if it were not for the well-known anxiety of certain
California colleges to discover warm bodies wherever they may
be.

You thereupon urge me to withdraw from the controversy.
Actually, I had done so; but the stupid brazenness of the
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' article brought to me a sharp
realization that many of your kind simply will not learn.
"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny:" every error of the
scientific mind and spirit in the history of the Velikovsky case
was by almost preternatural skill recomposed into a few
columns of the Bulletin. This you ask me to swallow!

The controversy will continue. You say the "every physical
scientist of my acquaintance will rise to defend the Bulletin
against anything you do." Perhaps you will not have as many
acquaintances as you claim and they will not be willing to act as
your troop if they, or at least several of them, were to read the
pages of the American Behavioral Scientist and compare them
with the article of the science correspondent of the Bulletin.
(Isn't it interesting that the scientists' Bulletin should have to
hire a non-scientist to write about science for them?)

You have, it is clear, a rather horrifying vision of science. You
gently threaten me, you promise to bring in your gang, and
then you begin to reveal the utopia that occupies your mined.
"I am terribly concerned at present about the lack of control in
scientific publication," you write; "Science has always been
aristocratic. Not everyone could get his ideas published in
effective journals. Articles in the scientific magazines have been
carefully edited, and unless they conformed to reasonable
scientific standards they were refused. Today anyone can
publish anything."

I, too, Dr. Urey, am concerned about scientific publication. I
am not, however, concerned about the lack of control by the
scientific oligarchy, as you are, but by the lack of

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communications, the haphazard and chaotic situation that is
caused as much as anything by a defective leadership in the
sciences. Your kind of scientific aristocracy is precisely the
reason why your subsequent claims are laughable: if there is
any villainous theme in the history of science, it is the
continuing attempt to deny a voice in the organs of science to
iconoclasts, outsiders, and just plain kleine Menschen.

You will be responsible for retarding the progress of science if
you succeed in reestablishing the old system of information
controls. You should turn your attention to organizing
scientific information rather than to suppressing it.

Similarly you should be pleased that more of our working
population today are scientists, rather than coalminers or
ditchdiggers. Indeed you seem to be angry with them for
pretending to perform the same operations as are practiced by
you happy few. "...Very second-rate scientists can get
somewhere -- with industrial companies, government agencies,
the space program, etc. They all have their private printing
press in the back room..." Einstein with his patent-office job,
Da Vinci doing his civil engineering, Freud setting up his own
printing press, Darwin idling on his patrimony -- there certainly
are a great number of these second-raters, without university
chairs, not content to eat common fodder and let their
intellectual ambitions expire peacefully!

I am beginning to see your point. You would wish only first
rate scientists such as Howard Margolis, formerly a science
writer for The Washington Star and now correspondent for the
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, to have freedom of scientific
expression. Your idea would be to have a kind of Empire such
as Alice discovered in Wonderland where the knighthood of
science is conferred by your power elite and the Sir Margolises
can be sent out to harry any peasants who may have the
temerity to poach upon the truth.

Your conditions for peace are not acceptable, Dr. Urey. Our
condition is that science be open and public, and remain so. If
you wish to alter your conditions substantially we would be
pleased to hear from you again. Meanwhile, with regards to
your work on tektites, I remain

Respectfully yours,
Alfred de Grazia

***

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The special magazines given over to reporting and supporting V.'s
doings have been Pensée, Kronos, and the Review of the Society
for Interdisciplinary Studies. Each of these has carried extensive
materials on the preliminaries, proceedings and aftermath of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science convention
panel dealing with Velikovksy's ideas at San Francisco in
February 1974. According to astronomy Professor Ivan King of the
University of California at Berkeley, it was Carl Sagan who
suggested the confrontation. It was intended that the panel be
divided into supporters and opponents of V., but over a period of
months, the pro-V. nominees were weeded out. This was
suspicious, and I am inclined to cast suspicion on both sides.

In the first place, both the establishment (for it can be called such
also on these occasions when it puts on a face) and the heretics
chose a deceptive yet revealing title: "Velikovsky's Challenge to
Science." V. would never allow himself to be called a non-scientist;
yet, to have his name in the limelight, he allowed himself to be
juxtaposed to science. Simultaneously, the establishment (that is,
the government ad rem in charge of the state of science), in order to
isolate the heretic, allowed the personalization of the panel, in itself
an abuse of the scientific method which addresses itself to ideas,
not men. Might not a better title have been "The Validity and
Prospects of Neo-catastrophism"? Then with eight papers, four on
each side, the topics of the mechanics, the electromagnetics, the
historical record, and the reception of neo-catastrophism in science
could be taken up.

Did V. want to appear without support on the stage, keeping the
spotlight, whether for the hero or the martyr, upon himself, and
therefore did he not fight hard enough to ensure himself that
support? He ended up with two neutral parties, the opposition of a
biased chairman, and three convinced antagonists eager for the fray.
Surely there must have been some masochistic force at work in
him, coupled with an extremely clever Machiavellism: a pro
Velikovsky paper would do nothing for V.'s image as a great
scientific loner and martyr.

If the one man who knew the Venus historical record best, Lynn
Rose, had been present, he could have devastated, on the spot and

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forever after, the presentation made by Huber. It would have been
ineradicable from the book that followed, entitled Scientists
Confront Velikovsky. If Juergens had been forced into the panel by
V. then Mulholland would have been finished off. If Deg had been
invited, he would probably not have gone, but if he had, he might
have effectively harried Sagan and Storer, considering what these
two ended up by saying. Then V. would have been off and running.

Instead, it was a gruesome exercise at V.'s cost, then and
thereafter. He behaved magnificently, like Samson dragging down
the temple of the Philistines upon himself. He won the crowd. The
press, ignoring the crowd, and incapable of reading the papers,
pronounced him dead. V. did not really go to San Francisco to have
the crowd be with him. He went there to gain scientific recognition.
Or did he get mixed up and rely upon the crowd, and hope for a
victory against impossible odds while cultivating the fantasy of
martyrdom ?

The establishment -- and Professors King and Goldsmith, the
official sponsors, found themselves irresistibly playing the roles of
the establishment -- was quite pleased to let the panel develop into
an over-kill of V. It could not even conceal its hope when
explaining the public presentation of the symposium. King, who
was the Chairman of the panel, explained privately that he was so
anxious over the responsibility of presenting V. at a scientific forum
that he had to persist in saying that the purpose of the symposium
was to refute a set of ideas that science had proven absurd. Actually
he said so publicly beforehand:

What disturbs the scientists is the persistence of these views, in
spite of all the efforts that scientists have spent on educating the
public. It is in this context that the AAAS undertakes the
Velikovsky symposium. Although the symposium necessarily
includes a presentation of opposing views, we do not consider
this to be the primary purpose of the symposium. None us in
the scientific establishment believes that a debate about
Velikovsky's views of the Star system would be remotely
justified at a serious scientific meeting.

Now I would like to quote the economist Shane Mage's booklet,
Velikovsky and His Critics, because of its elegant conciseness.

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Besides, he was present at the occasion, and neither Deg nor I was
there.

What took place in San Francisco was... the beginning of a real
debate, even if it often seemed to those of us in attendance like
a donnybrook. Of the six invited panelists, one, Norman Storer
(Prof. of Sociology, Baruch College of CUNY) disavowed
competence in any aspect of the subject but nevertheless
managed to conclude that the mistreatment of Velikovsky,
though abstractly deplorable, was also an "understandable"
response of the "scientific community" to a perceived "attack
by right-wing forces in American society. Velikovsky himself
presented a short paper outlining the basis of, and some of the
evidence for, his Challenge to Conventional Views in Science,
and often took the floor vehemently to rebut specific criticisms.
His views on the importance of electrical forces in celestial
mechanics also received strong support from Professor Irving
Michelson (Mechanics, Illinois Institute of Technology), who
described his paper Mechanics Bears Witness as "an act of
objective scholarship," intended to be neither pro or anti
Velikovsky.

The polemic against Velikovsky was conducted by two
Professors of Astronomy (Carl Sagan, Cornell University, and
J. Derral Mulholland, University of Texas) and one Professor
of Mathematical Statistics (Peter Huber, Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology). Almost all the media coverage of the panel
consisted of favorable citations of these three contributions,
especially Sagan's very long essay entitled An Analysis of
Worlds in Collision. In the absence of Sagan, who left before
all papers had been read in order to attend a taping of "the
Johnny Carson Show," a vigorous discussion, involving
audience as well as the remaining panelists, continued for
almost two hours after conclusion of the formal presentations.
Both sides claimed victory.

The logical next step was publication of the symposium
proceedings, but of the panelists only Velikovsky was willing
to permit publication of an integral transcript of the speeches
and the floor discussion. Lengthy negotiations failed to arrive at
a mutually agreeable format, and ultimately the two parties
decided to publish separately.

The anti-Velikovsky case was presented by Cornell University
Press under the title Scientists Confront Velikovsky (hereafter

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referred to as S c.V). In addition to revised versions of the
AAAS papers by Sagan, Mulholland, Huber, and Storer, this
volume also includes a paper by Prof. David Morrison
(Astronomy, University of Hawaii), prepared, in its original
form, for a 1974 conference sponsored by the editors of Pensée
. There is also an introduction by Dr. Donald Goldsmith, editor
of S c.V and organizer of the AAAS panel, and a foreword by
the novelist and authority on heresiology Isaac Asimov. From
the proclaimed standpoint of "scientific orthodoxy" Asimov
begins by raising the question "What does one do with a
heretic?", with specific reference to Velikovsky; goes on, with
unimpeachable orthodoxy, to write that Velikovsky's
proposed physical explanation for catastrophic events recorded
in the Bible is a "far less satisfactory hypothesis" than is "the
hypothesis that divine intervention caused the miracles", and
concludes that "Velikovskians" are totally impervious to any
amount of "mere logic." (S c. V, pp. 8-15) He does not,
however, recommend that they be turned over to the secular
arm...

The AAAS volume is presented by its sponsors as "a full scale
critique" (Goldsmith, S c. V, p. 27) which, according to the
review commissioned by the AAAS Journal Science,
accomplishes a definitive refutation of Velikovsky's
"downright preposterous" heresy. The essays in this book
"utterly lay waste his theories." Sagan's paper "is amusing,
acrid, and totally devastating...his essay alone is sufficient to
reduce the Velikovsky theory to anile fancy," and "Velikovsky
is flatly and totally disproven... As far as Velikovskianism is
concerned it is dead and buried. The final nail has been driven."
(Science, v.l99, Jan. 20, 1978, pp.288-9)

Was this appraisal accurate? Referring to the trial by press, yes. V.
was further damaged in the eyes of scientists everywhere. Speaking
of substance, whether of the symposium or of the papers, it was not
true. The arguments of Sagan, Mulholland, and Morrison were
mostly well-known and those of Huber (the surprise amateur of
ancient Babylonian tablets) had been long ago considered by
Stecchini and Rose. Additions and revisions allowed to the writers
did little to bolster their defenses when it came time to publish the
book Scientists Confront Velikovsky. An early analysis of the
enemy dispositions appeared in Pensée ; then, in two issues of
Kronos (III2 and IV3), and in pieces appearing elsewhere,
supporters of V., forced to waylay the establishment speakers in the

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alleyways, stripped them of their arguments. The Cornell University
Press, a willing captive of circumstances, which might have
published a fascinating, meaty volume on the issues, published one
poor lopsided volume, and sold paperback rights to W.W. Norton
Company. The heretics remained in the alleyways. Scarcely any
reviews (except those of the heretics) put the opposing volumes
side by side and compared them judiciously, or even savagely.

I shall not go into the several dozen points of contention here, and
will take Deg's word for it that the substance of the full arguments
did more good than harm for a considerable range of
quantavolutionary hypotheses, including some precisely attributable
to V.

Shane Mage, in appraising the speeches against V., uncovered in
them several important concessions that had been apparently
achieved over the years. First, the book Scientists Confront
Velikovsky "disavows and repudiated the entire 'Scientific
polemic' of the 1950's and 60's both implicitly and explicitly."
Next, both the sponsor, Goldsmith, and Mulholland assert that V.'s
ideas and arguments are not "un" nor "anti"-scientific, whatever
the press and then the scientific community presumed to draw from
the event. Furthermore, the legitimacy of cosmic catastrophic
hypotheses in science was acknowledged both by Sagan and
Mulholland, but the specific hypotheses of V. were attacked (and
obviously the scientists are in confusion as to how they can work
historically and empirically with the hypotheses that they admit.)

In line with my earlier suggestion, a different and more proper title
would have brought these most important areas of agreement to the
fore. If these would have been the subjects of the panel, and if
Velikovsky had been only one out of eight panel members and
authors, four of whom would have adopted positive positions and
four adversary positions, then the world of science would have
been much impressed and enlightened, and the heretics might have
surrendered their weapons with honor. V. himself would have
acquired many scientific allies and be better received from then on
in discussions among scientists; hundreds of hours of anxious and
resentful negotiations and dispute would have been avoided; and
many fresh minds might have been inspired to enter the newly

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opened field of quantavolution. The AAAS affair was a great
opportunity lost to quantavolution by V. and the establishment
agents.

Deg disliked the word "heretic." I mentioned so earlier. Perhaps I
should have renamed this book. To him the word was un
American. It was one more useless nuisance for indulging V.'s
self-image. True, the dictionaries include it with its modern
meaning, "one who dissents from an accepted belief or doctrine of
any kind," but in a modern democracy, he said, the occasions for
heresy are innumerable, while, without severe sanctions, the
hysterical historical pitch of the word is absent.

Whereas V. called himself a heretic both in respect to religion and
to science, he chose to stress science as the offending authority. In
his day, in Western Europe and America, the idea of heresy hardly
held meaning for the larger society, although it could be effective in
the ambiance of, say, Catholicism or Presbyterianism; even here
one had to lay claim to authority heretically within the group itself.

V. was determined to be a heretic from within science but to do so
one had to be a scientist in the first place, and one of the childish
games played between the scientists and V. had to do with whether
he was indeed a scientist and therefore properly within science's
jurisdiction to be adjudged heretical. Logically, we are back with
Alice in Wonderland and not the least of the skits form never-never
land was the massive attack upon V. launched in the name of
science and culminating in the book, Scientists Confront
Velikovsky.

Here, from the beginning, the scientists promoting the event at the
AAAS meeting in San Francisco, were befuddled. Yes, they felt,
they had to defrock V., but to do so they had to frock him and
admit him to their canonical court.

But to admit him they had to claim jurisdiction over him; that is,
they had to legitimize him by allowing him to debate his ideas with
them. One can perceive this strain and stress clearly from beginning
to end of the touted confrontation over a period of years. The
promoters, King et al., would say, we are not meeting to discuss V.

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but only to make it clear that he is not speaking as a scientist. And
then, of course, they proceed by the only modern way science
knows, to refute him as a scientist in public argument.

When the time came to publish Scientists Confront Velikovsky the
establishment, operating by queer contradiction, obtained the good
services of author, Isaac Asimov, the most famous popularizer of
science and science fiction to introduce the work, admitting ipso
facto that its contents alone would not fulfill the contract put out on
V.

Then what does Asimov do but fall into the pit of scholasticism by
spending his precious few pages as an instant expert on heresy. He
accepts the fractured word and further mangles it. He concocts and
improperly applies a distinction between two kinds of heretics,
those who commit heresies from inside the system and those who
do so from the outside. The first type can be sometimes correct, the
second never. V. was the never-correct type. Says Asimov,
"Public support or no, the exoheretic virtually never proves to be
right. (How can he be right when he, quite literally, doesn't know
what he is talking about?)"

Lest he be pilloried for such bold statements, Asimov has insured
himself by the most vulgar kind of verbal trickery: he makes
insiders out of outsiders if they have "reached the peak of
professional excellence" whatever that is. So naturally -- once again
he says it -- "the exoheretic... is virtually never right, and the
history of science contains no great advance, to my knowledge,
initiated by an exoheretic." There is no arguing with such
foolishness. The foolishness, I must add, is compounded by self
contradiction, for is not Asimov's gun hired to introduce this book
because he has a large public that buys books? So here is Asimov,
the outsider, depending upon the public which, he says, is always
wrong, to follow him in his denunciation of heresy.

But matters become worse for Isaac Asimov. He says that the
scientific establishment (calling it the "scientific orthodoxy") is
"completely helpless if the heretic is not a professional scientist -- if
he does not depend on grants or appointments, and if he places his
views before the world through some medium other than the

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learned journal." That is, the establishment can withhold grants,
appointments, and publication from its own heretical members, but
cannot from "exoheretics" or outsiders. That leaves the public as
the only outlet for the exoheretic's views, but Asimov says that the
public is never right: "the appeal to the public is, of course,
valueless form the scientific standpoint." He does not seem to
realize that he is condemning himself and science, for he seems to
approve this situation while granting that in rare instances an inside
heretic is incorrectly punished. I cannot easily believe that the two
publishers (Cornell University and W.W. Norton) and the several
authors, especially not the clever Carl Sagan -- but how can one
watch out for everyone's business? -- did not read carefully the
few passages that prefaced their great act.

***

In the years of which we speak, Deg had a part to play in the
establishment and it was not a bad life. He turned up in Washington
form time to time. He lunched with his friend "Kirk" Kirkpatrick,
Executive Director of the Political Science Association, where he
was for a time a Council Member, or at the Senate or the Cosmos
Club with friends; Bill Baroody was funding some of his writings
from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
Earl Voss and Tom Johnson there were pleasant companions; it
was a smallish show, then, close to the Republican Presidents and
Conservative after his direct relations with it ceased. Deg knew a
number of Congressmen. He had access to the U.S. Office of
Education when Frank Keppel of the Harvard Graduate School of
Education had gone to run it, for he had worked with Keppel at the
Harvard Graduate School of Education and had been offered
appointment there. He consulted with the Department of Defense
when "winning the hearts and minds" of Vietnamese was top
priority, and went to Vietnam on a panel requested by General
Westmoreland, then Commander-in-chief. He had acquaintances
who were in the top echelons of half a dozen great companies, and
half a dozen of the large foundations, others who were millionaires,
UN ambassadors and bureaucrats, New York politicians, and so
on. He helped leaders like Nelson Rockefeller on occasion (without
compensation). He went as a delegate to UNESCO. He helped the
Publisher of Life magazine to help the American Jewish Committee

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to establish better relations with the Vatican, and was shoved by a
wily Spanish Priest for a moment into the ample arms of dear old
wobbly-eared reformer, Pope John XXIII.

The New York University President, James Hester, also from
Princeton, was as friendly as he could be to a faculty troublemaker.
The departmental faculty itself was to Deg's ways of thinking too
petty, unintellectual and anarchic to launch upon large schemes, and
moreover his giant University was always in a state of imminent
financial collapse. After his first year there, he had to bring in
practically all of the funding for his projects from foundations and
gifts, which is no so difficult when one is in the swim of things. His
middle-level university income from his tenured appointment was
supplemented by consulting fees, honoraria, and grants. He spent
all the money that he could spare on his American Behavioral
Scientist, which was felt to have a good influence on social science
research, and gave him editorial influence, whether critical, or to
help friends, or to assist students and up-and-coming scholars to get
ahead.

Publishers were easy to come by. Advances were generous for
textbooks, subsidies for the others. Complimentary books flooded
his library. He could stop at practically any university in the world
and be invited to lecture, dine, discuss. He traveled abroad often,
always with jobs to do, always funded at least in part by some
agency (never The Agency) or foundation.

To hear him tell the story, he could have gone on and on this way
with la dolce vita, spreading his wings of influence over more and
more people, things and activities. He could have dawdled more
with attractive women, driven a new car, worn new suits, written
books with ex-Presidents, etc. Why this was actually his way, his
route, his fate, could have been foretold in childhood. I doubt that
he fully realized it. But perhaps enough of the reasons become
evident in the pages of this book to preserve us from going back to
the "Roaring Twenties" of Chicago, Ill., U.S.A.
There seems little reason to doubt Deg, however, when he cites his
friend Ithiel de Sola Pool's analysis of networks. By a calculus of
probability, given an unstructured society, the chances of any
person knowing a person who knows another person who knows

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any other particular singled-out person in the society are very high.
Theoretically, given the relatively sharply structured society
everywhere, he could be introduced to anyone, even in the
worldwide society. Deg, in his old notes on Pool's manuscript,
figures that he practically needs know only his own widely
differentiated acquaintances to know anybody in the top elite, and
needs but jump one more acquaintanceship to meet just about
anybody else. He even made a parlor game out of his directory, and
proceeding to say who whom he knew would know this person.
This occurs because a person who knows 2000 people is in a
position to know the, say, 500 acquaintances each, of these, and
this million, with its 500 acquaintances each, exceeds that
population by far, but since the population is stratified, the number
falls short of total success until the chain is extended.

There are applications of network theory to the workings of
science. Conventional science, we know, is not a juggernaut, a
palpable monster, a solid phalanx, a disciplined corps of
bureaucrats, a theocracy, or even an organized political party. It is 
- it must be, in order to avoid its own contradiction -- a subtle,
diffuse, often impenetrable, often disguised, often unconsciously
composed network of relationships.

Marxist scholars would readily comprehend this fact and would tie
the whole network to the economic production mechanisms of the
capitalist system. The Chicago School of political science would
see in it promptly the manifestations of Mosca's "political formula
and ruling class" and Deg's "ideological imperative."

Discriminated against indifferently in American Society,
evangelical Christians such as many Baptists, represented in a
growing movement of "Creation Science," but usually acting
individually for their nooks and crannies in the system, would also
be characteristically alert to the operation of the scientific reception
system. So would the large number of individual American and
British heretics who compose a disinherited, not formally qualified,
keen and occupationally and characterologically diverse "watch
and ward" network, ready to suspect the worst of the establishment.
Resembling these latter would be many a disenchanted student, not
yet amalgamated into the conventional system.

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All of these together, plus the simply curious, might readily muster
the kind of crowd that assembled to witness the Velikovsky panel
convoked by the program committee of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science at San Francisco. The audience,
well over one thousand persons, was by far the largest of the
Convention.

Let me now explain how it happens that the scientific network, or
establishment, might in this case, as it has often done in the history
of science, be acting against its own presumed interests and hence
to repress new correct theories. How does the ruling formula of
science triumph over challenging ideas, making them heretical, and
chastising their proponents?

Every field of knowledge is nowadays organized. It has therefore
leaders. Some of these leaders are parochial. Others have
connections with relevant social networks and organizations of the
other fields and other segments of society. These leaders acquire
fame (which already represents the same circular system of the
generation past, advancing for instance a Menzel, who inherits for a
Harlow Shapley, or a de Grazia, who inherits from a Charles
Merriam.)

The mass media, though it hardly reports science, seeks out or
gives access to fame. Reporters, woefully unprepared, interview the
leaders. Educational media, including widespread fund-seeking
alumni magazines, turn to their exemplaries of the famous. The
occasional television, radio, and magazine concerns about the
knowledge industry result in reports that are favorable to the same
group. Foundations appoint from the same leaders to their boards of
trustees and consulting committees. So do scientific and political
government agencies, although other interests can intrude more
here. The leaders, and now we are speaking of some five thousand
persons, give awards disproportionately to each other, as do
generals and admirals. Government foundations, such as the
National Science Foundation, are even more susceptible to network
influence than private foundations.

In the area of book publishing, the ideas of the leaders largely

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determine what manuscripts shall be published as textbooks, and on
what kinds of books the university presses should spend their small
resources. Trade book publishers for the general public have almost
no viable interest in serious scientific or humanistic work. Usually
what they publish in these areas is meant to blossom quickly and
die, to challenge no strong interest, and certainly not to offer
alternatives to major scientific paradigms unless they would join the
ranks of somewhat disreputable and financially insecure publishers.
Thus, if Velikovsky had published with Lyle Stuart's firm instead
of the Macmillan company originally, the opposition would never
have gathered. They had to have as their target a press that would
seek to avoid censure for "conduct unbecoming a gentleman."

The scientific and professional magazines that report new
knowledge are governed by boards and editors, who are acceptable
to the leaders and are watched rather carefully by them. Fading
away from the specialized periodicals are magazines of popular
science, few of which are financially secure and all of which are
dependent upon the good will of the leaders. The Scientific
American, for example, would never wittingly go beyond the
activities of the core elements of a science. When a troublesome or
controversial theory surfaces on its pages, evidencing a conflict
between two leader-led theories, it seeks to appease both sides by a
second article or letters of comment. Its need to seem "original" is
fed by lavish illustrations, a feature it shares with the National
Geographic Magazine, the Smithsonian, Discovery and other
periodicals. By editorial tricks, all such magazines lend their
materials a glamour and adventurism that they usually do not in
reality possess.

The network of leaders extends down through the public secondary
and elementary schools from the colleges by way of lesser sheikhs,
supervising boards, and hoi polloi of the fields. Not even the threat
of teaching "creation science" in some state will excite overly the
nabobs. The legal and journalistic techniques of handling anti
Darwinism have long been known, and a legion of educators moves
efficiently into battle on this front with little direct participation of
the national leadership. Private secular schools -- the Lawrenceville
Academies and Grotons -- would never wish their pupils to utter
the wrong titles or theories in anticipation of entering the halls of

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learning hallowed by the leadership. The Catholic schools are
deintellectualized; nor has the Catholic Church yet retracted its
judgment against Galileo.

A word, finally, about the corporate world, where so much applied
and some pure research is done, from which, too, funds must flow
increasingly into the coffers of the universities. Their corporate
images, hence their profits, depend upon the skills people come to
believe (via advertising and public relations) that they command
and engross. Like university presidents, leaders of science dip into
corporate treasuries on occasion as consultants, board members,
and  officers. Just as retired generals are common in the aerospace
and engineering industries, highly placed scientists, even without
the need to retire, are frequently positioned in corporate research
structures.
Immersed in this and in all that has gone before, a leader of the
establishment network has almost no incentive to take up a new
controversial theory, much less to originate one himself. He is
himself subject to disciplinary actions, often quite subtle, should he
stray from the fold.

The network can be most simply presented as a list of institutions
through which the leaders of science operate or upon which they
exert influence. The influence is continuous, is intensified on crucial
issues and, in my opinion, is generally beneficial and should be
enhanced throughout the system. Meanwhile, however, the
influence needs consciousness-raising and built-in mechanisms of
reform.

LEADERS OF SCIENCE
extend their influence into:

1.     Audio-Visual Media
(fame; reportage)
a.     TV and radio Networks
b.     Public Broadcasting
c.     Documentary films

2.     Popular Press
a.     Scientoid Magazines

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b.     Science Fiction
c.     Publicity (columnists)
d.     Newspaper and newsmagazines, prizes, etc.

3.     Book Publishing
a.     Trade
b.     Textbooks
c.     University Press

4.     Scientific Journals

5.     Universities
a.     Secular Schools
b.     Religious Schools

6.     Scientific Associations

7.     Foundations (private)
8.     Governments
a.     Executive offices, commissions
b.     Legislatures
c.     Government Foundations, Prizes, etc.

9.     Corporations
a.     Research and consultation
b.     Board of Directors

The leaders of science in the English-speaking world can be
numbered from 50 to 10,000, depending upon where you wish to
draw the line of influence. They are fairly concentrated
geographically in the Northeast Megalopolis, Chicago, Washington,
and the San Francisco Bay Area, with a small English contingent,
fairly closely in touch.

An extraordinary fact is that immense scattered network ultimately
engaging the whole world is composed of what in business or
government would be regarded as absurdly small units. They are
like the oldtime Piggly-Wiggly small grocery store, owner-operated
network, not fully centralized, bureaucratic establishment.
Furthermore, it is largely subconscious or scarcely perceived.

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Nevertheless, in the end -- and merely to picture the network -- the
librarian in Juneau, Alaska, the student at the University of Tampa
(Florida), the editors of the Times Literary Supplement, CBS, PBS,
NOF, the Ford Foundation, Harvard University Press, the Board of
Education of the City of Chicago, the engineers of Western
Electric, the science section of the New York Times, the editors of
Science Magazine and its popular offshoot Science 84, the National
Academy of Sciences, the curators of the Museum of Natural
History in New York, and many thousands of other "nerve
endings" of the science system of communications and influence
respond to cues and jiggles of power from the elite group.

Surely, it is one of the most benign elites of the world. It probably
rules easier and can rule less than almost all other elites. Its
punishments are relatively light. It stupefies people but all forms of
rule stupefy their clients or subjects; here, indeed, the science elite
is more enlightening, in its double function of stupefying and
enlightening, in its S/E ratio, than most elite or influence networks.
But its exists, and it is effective. To evade or avoid or attack the
Scientific Establishment, to invade its inner sanctum and transform
its Holy of Holes, its ideological center, its paradigms,
Weltanschauung, ruling formulas, or whatever one might wish to
call its heart, is the work of decades and, at least before, of
centuries, and, in the words of Lasswell, almost always involves the
process of "partial incorporation," by which is meant that before
the revolution is won, the elite changes its behavior to concede the
victory and keep out the revolutionary personnel.

Thus the monarchical regimes of Europe incorporated in most cases
the key ideas of the French Revolution before the republican
revolutionaries conquered them, and the capitalist regimes went
"welfare state" before the socialists could take power; so that, if the
quantavolutionary movement were to seriously threaten the ruling
elite of Newtonian stabilitarian and Darwinian gradualist
uniformitarians, these would be reacting, as in fact they are acting
now, to incorporate the quantavolutionary formulas and outlook.

Meanwhile the quantavolutionary movement would be formed out
of mistakes of the existing regime, out of apostates and disaffected
scientists and engineers, occult publishers, little presses, small

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personal foundations, religious creations, maverick legislators,
fugitive publications sliding out of Xerox machines, and a motley
public crowd of dissenting readers and talkers. Sooner or later,
according to Roberto Michel's "Iron Law of Oligarchy." the
Scientific Establishment would be modified in attitude, beliefs,
practices and personnel but would still be the oligarchy, or, let us
say, "a better and more enlightened class of leaders."

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE FOIBLES OF HERETICS

For his first half-dozen years on Naxos, Deg stayed in a town
apartment the Venetians had built in the 13th Century; then he
moved out to his stone house on the isolated promontory of Stylida.
In these places, much of the Quantavolution series was written.
Deg's permanent encampment at Stylida was of marbled stone and
primitively equipped, not a cabin, neither a villa. Antiques jostled
useful junk on the marble tables and shelves. He pounded nails into
the walls and from them everything dangled. Empty plastic bags
were stuffed behind shelves for further use, empty bottles were
hoarded. String, cord and rope in odd lengths were saved and hung
up. From this frugal perch sloping upwards, he contemplated the
serene seascape before him and the battling cats of the world
beyond, not excepting the heretics.

Saving rope reminded him of Frank Knight, exemplar of the laissez
faire Chicago School of Economics who, in his office at the
University of Chicago used to store the string he too saved.
According to an eyewitness, he was mounting a train for the East
one day when he called out to his waving family, pointing, "There,
get that piece of string!" His highly regarded economics, thought
Deg, were nicely encompassable by Homo Schizo theory.

Knight's colleague, the very liberal U.S. Senator Paul Douglas was
dining in Manhattan, another time with Robert Merriam, Assistant
to President Eisenhower, and with Deg, and Douglas told of a
Republican Senator who had ridiculed the incessant internecine
fighting among the Democrats; "like a bunch of alley-cats" they
were. Whereupon Paul had risen to add, "That may be true, but
what in the end is the result --many more cats!" And while they
were laughing, the waiter handed the distinguished-looking elderly
gentleman the bill and they had to laugh more as the Scot, Quaker,
economist, and statesman, and foe of loose spending, winced,

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grumbled, and paid.

The cosmic heretics, bereft of resources, collected pieces of string
to build bold systems Coming out of nowhere, and without
structure or discipline, they fought like alley-cats. Rebuffed by the
world of the press and science, they often became morose.

Deg's Journal, January 25, 1970

I spoke to Immanual on the telephone. He is feeling poorly and
he intimates both a throat ailment and sinister external moves
as the source. We are all suffering vague symptoms in the
world. For months, I have felt this and the pain and scarcely
know to what to attribute them? There are thirty physical and
psychical causes all intermingled and the physical uneasiness is
appropriately vague. So many millions in the world are, I think,
similarly affected. It is as if the germs of diseases were directed
by a mastermind, who says to them, "Now man has learned to
be specific and special in his therapies, so you must now be as
vague as possible, so that he will not know what he is suffering
from."

Deg might as well have gone on to talk of the generalized "germ"
of schizotypus, which suffuses human nature and finds a great
many ways of emerging in disease, now specific, now general. It
may be no coincidence that in this decade two reciprocal kinds of
slogan clashed with each other in the mind of society, the one
aimed at pandemic expressing of paranoia, the other at fighting off
paranoia, so that everyone was "unavailable" and "by
appointment only," and "fill out the form" while people were
telling one another "reach out and touch someone." Highly special
acts of terrorism increased around the world as highly general
public opinion surveys showed the public to be regarding every
group of leaders and every special group as untrustworthy,
including their own national and world leaders.

"The most despicable of all ways of suppression is denying to me
the originality and correctness of my predictions." So said
Velikovsky at a philosophical panel at Notre Dame on November
2, 1974. He was directing himself at the moment to Professor
Michael Friedlander. Friedlander had announced, "One of the
things I'm not going to do is to attempt to defend the foolish, and

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intemperate, and venomous statements that have been made by
scientists over the last 25 years." He proceeded then to incite
Velikovsky's outburst (which one might also call "foolish,
intemperate, and venomous") by addressing himself to V.'s
astronomical scenario of the Venus encounter with Earth.

To be useful a prediction must be derivable logically and
unambiguously from the model. If the prediction bears only a
tenuous relation to the model, then the validation of that
prediction may in fact say nothing about the model.

In rebuttal, V. pointed to the details of his own early claims: that
Venus was incandescent in historical times; that the planet had to
be very hot to carry the gaseous hydrocarbon clouds that he
believed to be there; and that he had declared the first announced
temperatures of 600 degrees to have been too low, and in fact they
were.

What constitutes a prediction gives grounds for incessant quarreling
and namecalling. Deg was convinced that scores of his own
prognostications in sociology, economics, and politics could be
culled from his own books and shown to have been realized. For
instance, he had predicted at one time that the achievement of equal
population districts ("one man -- one vote"), so stoutly advocated
by the cities of America, would result in heavier political weight for
the cities' chief frustration, their own suburbs. He was not
surprised nor did he put in a claim when the prediction was
fulfilled. He never got around to predicating when the world would
end, but, should it end, he could in the thereafter cite some highly
probable estimates.

I did not know when Velikovsky got onto the claims and
predictions "kick." I am guessing that the famous letter by
Bargmann and Motz got him going. It was the first nice thing ever
said about him in a scientific journal. The letter was V.'s idea and
he provided much of the contents. It asserted that V. had suggested
radio noises were emanating from Jupiter and were discoverable;
they were discovered serendipitously by Burke and Franklin over a
year later. Further, in 1950, V. said that the surface of Venus must
be very hot, and, sure enough, by 1961 the heat had been
discovered by reliable instruments.

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Practically nothing was said of the method employed to arrive at
these advance claims. But so guilty are scientists in the matter of
"claims" and "priorities" that V. profited greatly from his cryptic
and general utterances. And, no doubt, had he been guiding NASA
research, these items would have been systematically uncovered.

The practice of advancing priorities is childish and the idea of
proving a general cosmogony by a race of claims is ludicrous.
There can be no crucial test or event. Even if Venus were to slip its
moorings and drift toward Earth tomorrow, the historical scenario
would not be proven. If the cosmogony is accepted for working
purposes, the prediction (or test) will have meaning; if the
cosmogony is not accepted, the prediction cannot be stated. This is
shown by the resilient way in which the great heat of Venus has
been claimed as a greenhouse effect by Sagan and others.
A member of the audience at the Notre-Dame panel made the most
fitting remarks:

Each side has constructed its own version of what would count
as a crucial test, and has constructed its own judgment as to
how that test has been passed or failed. This is a singularly
sterile manner for resolving disputes....As far as rational dispute
is concerned, we have to begin by saying we might be
wrong....to say what would count against us in our own book.

It would certainly be appropriate, within every scientific work and
in a discussion of it, to confess its weakness, to argue its null
hypotheses. We are bound to do a poor job of attacking ourselves.
And, of course, disputation may overburden issues to the harm of
clear presentation of the theses. Nevertheless, Deg, in writing
Chaos and Creation, was anxious enough about excessive positive
argumentation to give over a chapter to the Devil's Advocate.

In one sense, the cosmic heretics in the Velikovsky case were a
conservative group, asking for law and order in science, demanding
even that the letter of the law be followed, all the more because
their substantive ideas -- erratic planets, forceful electricity in space,
short geological time, etc.-- were deemed untrue. In fact, like the
typical heretical group in politics or religion, they had logically to
deny that the word "heretic" could apply to themselves; for theirs

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was the truth. To those who like myself believe that science enjoys
only hypothetical and useful "truths," a scientific heresy is logically
impossible. Heresy is an excrescence of authorities.

Heretics typically are intolerant of other heretics, if only to hold
together their highly vulnerable and unruly group within a miasma
of ideas. We find a push-pull phenomenon occurring: the heretics
are pushed out of conventional science and attract or pull in the
religious, the occult, of ESP, "Ancient Astronauts," UFO's and
astrology, the eccentric, and the revolutionary types. All of his
provides a hustle and bustle on the fringes of science. All scientists
are normally neurotic about their fringes. Only the wisest (read
"self-aware and self-knowing") and self-loving of them could
understand and sympathize with what they saw going on.

Onetime, in the fall of 1976, far from the scene of action, Deg heard
distant sounds of strife and the name called out of his old friend,
Professor Paul Kurtz, a pragmatist philosopher and Editor of the
Humanist magazine. Besides many pleasant hours working
together, Deg remembered how Kurtz had let him introduce a
scatological remark into an article of this well-mannered
publication. He wrote Kurtz a tender of good offices, suggesting
attention ought to be given to neo-catastrophism, and sending a
privately printed essay on Homo Sapiens Schizotypicalis.

Kurtz replied (in confidence, for he was a careful keeper of the
peace) explaining that the fracas had generated out of a single
sentence against Velikovsky in an article by Sprague de Camp, a
detested figure among Velikovsky's cult. Kurtz said that even if he
had wished to do so, he could not censor de Camp. He was startled
by the vehement and even menacing letters that he received arising
first from publishing the De Camp article and then from a possibly
garbled quotation of him in the Washington Post. At the same time,
Kurtz acknowledges, "The followers of Velikovsky claim that he
was unfairly treated by Shapley, etc. -- with which I fully agree, I
remember full well your justifiable concern." He was, he said,
open-minded, aware of general disbelief in V.'s theories, but not
conversant with them, or with Deg's for that matter, and he wanted
to know Deg's theory of evolution: "Your thesis is most creatively
provocative. My major question is what does it do to the theory of

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evolution?"

Deg told V. of Kurtz's letter, V. spoke to Greenberg, and
Greenberg fired off a letter to Deg, wondering how he had come to
be in touch with Kurtz, and retelling the story as he saw it: "Kurtz
may be your friend, but we are certainly not enemies." Deg could
only wonder once more at how Greenberg could turn any situation
into a personal threat and from this into an aggression.

The Humanist did publish an article by V., defending himself
strongly against the then current voices of his opponents. Possibly
the pressure of anger unjustified impelled The Humanist to give V.
his say; after all, isn't the lesson of democratic politics that a group
needs anger, not justice, to make its point?

V. was lucky enough to have a few opponents who made a hobby
of him. They kept an eye on the news about him and cast enough
aspersions his way to maintain his more diligent supporters in fine
fettle. In keeping with the history of ostracized movements, nearly
all of the heretics worked part-time at the job. Most were poor,
although they did not reveal their poverty like oldentimes Parisian
bohemians. They were, too, mostly unreliable, partly because of
their busy-ness and hand-to-mouth existence, and because they
were not under the lash of the dollar, but also because they were
often afflicted with intense inner struggles. I would quote Nietzsche
regarding them, "It takes a chaos within oneself to give birth to a
shooting star." "That's it, they're crazy," one might say, which is
a fraudulent pretense of those who are crazy-normals.

Astronomy professor George O. Abell of U.C.L.A. writing in the
Skeptical Inquirer says that the followers of V. "are actually
following somebody who may be a bit crazy. For isn't there
something psychotic about a person who claims that he alone in a
field with which he is unfamiliar, can fathom the pure truth, while
hundreds of thousands of specialists with lifetimes of experience
behind them are muddling about in the darkness? And doesn't the
popular acceptance of such a scientific-religious hero suggest a
problem, or at least some kind of an unfilled need, on the part of the
follower?"

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Deg's Journal, Princeton, December 27, 1978

Warner Sizemore here yesterday, 10.45-1.30, discussing many
affairs.

He reported that not only Greenberg and others were angry at
the SIS magazine group in England but that Velikovsky was
upset because of their caviling at points and their undermining
his theories instead of developing them.

Further V. ordered Sizemore and Greenberg to drop Peter
James as Senior Editor from the editorial board of Kronos in
three months, or else he would give them no further material of
his own to print. James is associate editor for the historical
content of SISR and also on the Kronos board.

Then, says Sizemore, V. reconsidered and told them that he
didn't mean what he said. Sizemore did not guess whether this
was a conclusion of principle or of expedience. (There are
several reasons for expedience: the scandal, the harm to
Sizemore and Greenberg, as well as Kronos, etc.) In the later
case V. would remain guilty of the very behavior of scientist
upon which his own case of persecution is based in part. If his
retraction of his order was in principle, then the action may be
partially excused because it was withdrawn.

It is not the first time that V. has come perilously close to
practicing the behavior of his enemies. He is by character
domineering, and suppression of the opposition would come
easily to him under other circumstances.

V. had been called a charlatan but there was nothing to it. Deg
asked himself, how could anyone use the word? And that they used
it as others use curses and obscenities. At most, on occasion and
like most men, he believed suspiciously hard in ideas that were not
so firm, but none, thought Deg, in this sense had never written a
thoroughly honest book and none ever could, by the very limits of
language, for language is fundamentally a compendium of psychic
tricks, played upon oneself and others, fraudulent in a sense.

But now, I think, reflecting upon the heretics, that fraud is a remote
cousin of pretension. To lay claim to something is a human
necessity. Yet whoever has any claims must be a fraud. To say "I
am alive!" is a pretense and a fraud, a boastful claim to what after

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all is a delusion about nature, a question begged. We are all such
frauds.

There is something else, too, another kind of subtle fraud, a fraud in
the too delicate sense of being wronged, and this V. had. One who
feels that he had been defrauded is a fraud, as, for instance, in
criminology, many victims of fraud are engaged in attempted fraud
to begin with, making money out of nothing, etc....And then,
persuading others that one has been defrauded, is also a fraud. At
such persuasive tactics, V. was a master.

He could persuade by overpowering belief and documentation that
he had been defrauded on a grand scale. He could persuade the
most pathetically defrauded people that he had been defrauded
more than they, and the defrauded turned their purses of energy and
sympathy over to him. For he had converted his defrauding into the
collective conscience, and was collecting retribution and returns on
his defrauding because his supporters neglected their own suits in
order to pursue his suit but received no more than abstract justice.

It was as if all the gas company's customers thought they were
cheated and put all their energies into the case of one them, making
the case a landmark, but the favorable decision on behalf of the test
case resulted only in the vindication and compensation of that
person, while the rest could not afford to sue, and the gas company
hardly changed its practices.

***

Now the time had come for Deg to print Chaos and Creation. It
was 1980. An outsider, innocent of the sociology of heretical
groups, would expect the publication of Chaos and Creation to be
welcomed. The field would open up further. Fresh material would
offer itself for discussion. The implications of the work of V. would
be extended. New possibilities would be manifest. There might
even be some personal congratulations in order, for no one had yet
produced any considerable work in the format of a book that could
be readily assimilated to most of what the readers of Kronos were
versed in and attentive to.

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Not at all. When the book was in page proofs, it induced the
dormant strain in relations between the directors of Kronos and
Deg to rupture into hostilities. The occasion for the hostilities came,
as if often does in human relations, whether personal or
international, out of a situation promising well. Executive Editor of
Kronos Sizemore and Deg were meeting weekly out of friendship.
They ate, drank, walked and talked together for hours on end.
Sizemore was enthusiastic about Deg's manuscript of Moses, and
had also been reading Chaos and Creation as the proofs arrived
from India.

At the time, Deg and Aim had largely abandoned Manhattan and
were living in a tiny apartment in Princeton, writing their books,
and spending as little money as possible in order to pay for the
production of Chaos and Creation in Bombay. When Warner came
to visit, they would huddle their sizable frames together amicably
amidst piles of books and papers for a while, until Ami would
retreat to the second room to write upon the kitchen table between
the sink and the small bed.

The Indian production was nightmarish. A thick file of
correspondence attests to the pains engendered by cultural and
physical distance. A perfect book was out of question. The work
was being set in hot type, linotype, which, unlike the word
processors of today, lets new errors creep in as rapidly as old
mistakes are expunged. For weeks a strike of Indian paper mills
stopped supplies to the printer. The quality of the paper, never
good, worried Deg, too. The poor Indians were trying to conserve
their old machines and paper and ink and Deg could not tell from
the proofs whether fonts were broken or the paper was refusing the
bad ink, and, worse, whether the final printing impression would be
uniform on the pages. The book was loaded with proper names of
extreme diversity, with illustrations, and with hundreds of citations,
three most common sources of typographical, printing, and
formatting mistakes. Deg had known the same printers from a
decade before; they had printed Kalos: What is to be done with our
World and Kalotics; he had been to their shop; he liked the several
owners and workers. But it was a different world, of different
standards, and to convert it acceptably to American tastes, while
keeping costs down and work within hailing distance of the

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schedule, was continually frustrating.

Warner, believing Deg would be pleased (and no doubt he would
have been pleased) to see some portion of the work printed, sent
(without Deg's knowledge) a photocopy of the page proofs to
Greenberg, then in Florida, and spoke to Greenberg about the
progress of the work in the course of their frequent telephone
conversations. Greenberg was enraged by errors still in the proofs,
or so the issue was presented to Deg by Warner. Deg, already upset
by the defects and by the report, asked Greenberg on the phone to
be specific about the work being "full of errors." When the letter
came, the little that was added to the mistakes transmitted by
telephone was rushed off to India for correction. There were
mistakes so slight as a compositor's misspelling of Greenberg's
name in a footnote crediting him with contributions to
quantavolution (his name being mistakenly mispelled by the
compositor as "Queenberg," for instance, in itself sufficient cause
for paranoiac fury), and a wrong middle initial for Earl R. Milton,
who received 'Earl S.', a complimentary psychological mistake
tying him to a dear old professor of Deg, Earl S. Johnson, the same
to whom The Divine Succession is dedicated.

Writes Greenberg:

After going through half of the text of Chaos and Creation, the
Citations, and Bibliography, I have decided to enclose a
sampling of pages that is symptomatic of the entire work. The
kind of repair help that you need goes far beyond any gratis
assistance that I could provide. I have already spent the better
part of three days reading your book and no relief appears in
sight. Typos abound, names are misspelled, publications are
improperly cited and dated, many dates are questionable and
just plain wrong, not to mention glaring omissions from the
published literature. The catastrophic sequence proposed by
Velikovsky has been rearranged (Mercuria precedes Jovia) and
work by people such as Warlow has been uncritically accepted,
etc., etc.

He goes on to list various, mostly brief, articles, and certain
contributors to Kronos that were not in Deg's bibliography (the
longest and most complete that had ever appeared on catastrophism
and Quantavolution), concluding "What you have done is

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downright insulting and I find it hard to believe that it wasn't
deliberate."

Deg replies on April 2 from Princeton:

You agreed to telephone me collect, later on, and to recite your
list of such findings into my tape-recorder. You knew that the
need for any corrections was immediate. I kept the machine by
my telephone for six days more and now here is your letter.
Several additional typographical errors are indicated, two of
which I wish I might change, along with the aforesaid.
Otherwise your letter pullulates with grotesque exaggeration,
unsupported allegations, hostility, and vanity. Dealing with
paranoia makes one paranoid: could it be that you first
promised and then decided not to offer corrections of the
proofs because you want to be free to slander the book?

Deg was surprised at the rapidity with which the situation
deteriorated. Sizemore, father, organizer, producer, financier,
executive editor and trouble-shooter for Kronos let Deg understand
that a selection from the book would not be printed and that the
book would not be reviewed. Deg scoffed at this: how could it not
be reviewed? Whose magazine was it? It would be a mockery of
the pretenses of Kronos magazine, both substantive and libertarian,
to suppress its mention. Warner unhappily suggested that the book
need not be reviewed in Kronos. Deg insisted that. Warner do
something about the matter, to no avail. Their warm friendship
abruptly froze.

Many months later, the book arrives from India. A review copy
was sent to Greenberg. Other copies were sold respondents from an
announcement by way of the mails. One day in April of 1982, Deg
received a letter from Stephen Franklin, whom he did not know. [I
find that they exchanged letters many years before.]

Dear Dr. DeGrazia:

I wish to obtain a copy of your book Chaos and Creation.
Please let me know whether I may obtain this directly from
you, & if so how much, etc. If not, where? I am enclosing a
copy of a letter I received from Kronos since I feel you may be
interested in how they are handling requests for information

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about your book...

Franklin was referring to a letter from Leroy Ellenberger, who had
been promoted from a free-lance gadfly on V.'s opponents to
Executive Secretary of Kronos. The letter was written on Kronos
letterhead with a Glassboro State College address, and did not
oblige Franklin's request for Deg's address. The letter follows:

Dear Mr. Franklin:

With respect to the book Chaos and Creation which is the
subject of your March 25th inquiry, be advised that KRONOS
has chosen, after examining it, not to be associated with its
promotion or distribution. For your information, the book was
published privately in India. Its author is in charge of its
commercialization.

As a reader of KRONOS, you are no doubt aware that we are
not averse to presenting a critical approach to Velikovsky and
that we will entertain responsible alternative, and even
opposing, views. Given our interest in developing a
Velikovsky-based catastrophist alternative to
uniformitarianism, we would be more than anxious to inform
our readers of new, fruitful sources of information. The book in
question leaves too much to be desired to merit, in our opinion,
serious attention.

If your curiosity gets the better of you, so be it. CAVEAT
EMPTOR.

Deg called Franklin, received authorization to use his name when
raising the issue, and with malice afterthought, sent a letter to the
President of the College, reproaching him for letting the College be
a party to damaging slander through people who were pretending to
connected with the School. Official action and an apology were
asked. Expectedly, there came no reply, but Sizemore was
aggrieved by the step, calling it ridiculous and a charade.

Meanwhile, Deg chose out of the "staff" of Kronos several
individuals whom he knew personally. He wrote to ask them their
attitude in regard to not reviewing his work. All replied
sympathetically; still not one found the issue serious enough to
deliver an ultimatum to Kronos, not Frederick Juenemann, not

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Cardona, not Lynn Rose.

Rose aroused Deg's ire for postulating an enmity between
Greenberg and Deg which did not exist, and evaded the issue of
Ellenberger. (Deg liked ornery characters like Greenberg more than
suave types like Rose.) He wished to hurl at Rose a statement in
Kronos made by V. against Storer of the AAAS panel: "One who
maintains 'neutrality' between a gross offender and the victim of
the offense does not give an objective account of the realities; the
account is biased in favor of the offender."

Even Earl Milton who was so close a friend and collaborator did
not take up a strong position. Irving Wolfe at University of
Montreal replied that Chaos and Creation should be reviewed and
said that he would tell Greenberg so. Greenberg held firm,
something he was good at doing; some of the heat was turned
against Ellenberger, as if his letter had been a willful rash act, and a
decline in his fortunes began, partly accounting for his retirement to
his original home base in St. Louis. But Deg regarded Ellenberger
and even Sizemore as toys of Greenberg in this instance. Toys for
what? For psychiatric play-therapy, he insisted.

Many months later, as three of the "Staff" and friends including
Deg sprawled about a sunny dock and swam in the August waters
of Lake Kashagawigamog near Halliburton, Ontario, they talked of
the affair and all seemed to agree (no vote being taken) that Lew
Greenberg was acting the dog in the manger, that he acted so
habitually, that Ellenberger was irresponsible, that the book should
be reviewed, that Deg should cool down his reactor, and that
Kronos would collapse if Greenberg resigned, as he frequently
threatened to do. And if Kronos collapsed, where would its 2000
readers go, and where would its score of writers go to publish their
articles? Dwardu Cordona, a writer and editor of hard opinion but
essentially sweet character, asserted he would bring up the matter
with Greenberg again. Deg was noncommittal. Later on, he did
receive a letter of Cardona from Vancouver mentioning, inter alia,
that he talked to Greenberg, who was still without remorse, and
even still angry.

The past could not be recaptured, despite the restoration of a distant

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relationship, and the major issue remained (the refusal to review
Chaos and Creation). Sizemore sent a note of condolences when
Deg's mother died and then another note apologizing for
addressing the first note to "Albert" instead of "Alfred." Deg had
not noticed the mistake or, more properly, had noticed it and
thought nothing of it. Now he apprehended that the printers' errors,
which misspelled Greenberg's name in one place, etc., and the
personal slips that made Earl R. into Earl S., and so on, might be
compared with changing the name of Alfred to Albert, this
involving a close friend of many years. Poor Sizemore, thought
Deg, caught up in an object lesson; I should have thrown the fit of
rage he expected.

Sizemore was at this time enormously busy. He had four major
occupations, beginning with his professorship in philosophy and
theology for one. Secondly, he was, as I said before, a creative
artist who had put aside his larger skills to create a singular
commodity, friezes in wood, copying in detail great (or lesser)
paintings. And these he carried around to sell at fairs on certain
weekends, and while sitting by his works he read books and articles
and newspapers by the bag- load. Then he entered upon the
national Amway corporation, and began to build a network of
clients and customers to purchase a wide range of consumer goods;
this entailed meeting upon meeting; much of the vast energy that
had gone into advancing and promoting Velikovsky was moving
into a truly American promotional enterprise -- part crass
materialist, part ideological fervor, a hybrid of love-thy-neighbor
and get-rich-quick. Deg would not join him; he regretted the
diversion of the intelligent energies that had placed Sizemore
among the top dozen of no more than a few score active promoters
of quantavolution in the world.

Yet he understood the figure of the missionary-capitalist, for he was
reminded of the time he studied the leading caucasian families of
Hawaii, who had emerged from their work at Christian conversion
owning a good part of the land, commerce, and industry of the
Islands. He believed, unlike others, that Sizemore and his wife, who
had never before plunged into an enterprise with him, might well
make a fortune. Max Weber, Richard Tawney, Edward Shils,
Sebastian de Grazia, Benjamin Nelson and their brethren of

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economic sociology would instantly recognize the puritan-capitalist
nexus in Amway and in Warner Sizemore.

Nor, meanwhile, excepting his break with Deg, did Sizemore
neglect his primary responsibilities in quantavolution. He still was
the mainstay of Greenberg (and I do believe that Sizemore, were he
to strike it rich, would generously fund Kronos and set up seminars,
publish books, and promote the general development of the field);
he still visited and helped Elisheva; he kept up with the field. He
aided friends in need, as he did Sigmund Kardas, first when Kardas
moved his house, and then when Kardas was nearly killed crashing
into a wrong-turning trailer truck one midnight on the highway near
Bordentown.

In October, 1982, upon returning from Greece, Deg was still
needling Sizemore:

Dear Warner:

I hope that all goes well with your enterprise;

I trust that you have known of Kronos' decision last winter to
not review Chaos and Creation. After your long history of
interest in the book and its writing, this must have come as a
surprise to you. Have you spoken to the staff about it?

Before leaving for Greece last Spring I submitted a note to Jan
Sammer as Associate Editor of Kronos to read and forward for
publication. I commented upon Velikovsky's Baalbek article.
Sammer has since reported to me that when he told Greenberg
about it, Greenberg said that he would not read it or publish it.
This appears to be one more step in the recapitulation of the
unconscionable techniques which, we say, were employed in
regard to Dr. V.

Also, out of the blue sky came the enclosed letter from
Ellenberger. [Not carried here.] I cannot afford the hours of
rebuttal and psychiatric analysis that it calls for. What should I
do with it?

Are you, or are you not, Executive Editor, father confessor,

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and angel of this mad show?

Sincerely yours,
Al

P.S. As you may know, we have been denied the privilege of
renting Kronos' mailing list to announce the publication of
Chaos and Creation. On the other hand, I have received in the
mail on more than one occasion postcards advertising Leroy
Ellenberger's Velikovsky T-shirts, beer mugs, etc., using
Kronos addresses. I fail to appreciate the philosophical
principle at work here; should you not consult with Lynn Rose
and advise me on it?

The letter aroused Sizemore to stiffer opposition. He railed at Deg
for trying to separate KRONOS from its Glassboro State College
letterhead, and advanced two propositions. This first was that
"factual errors" in Chaos and Creation (which apparently he had
not discovered in his intensive and enthusiastic reading of the
manuscript and page proofs over a period of months) made its
mention in the pages of KRONOS impossible: "it would be
difficult with such errors as would reflect upon our integrity."
Second he rejected any analogy between the treatment which the
reviewing media had meted out to Velikovsky and that which was
rendered Deg by KRONOS, adding that V. had "not once in forty
years of correspondence with his opponents" resorted to "invective
or scorn." This is close to the literal truth, just as the fact that
General Eisenhower never killed an enemy soldier.

Such ruptures of relations among heretics are common. In this
instance the main material effect was to suppress attention to
Deg's book for three years among a key audience for works on
quantavolution, represented by Kronos magazine. By the end of
1983 Greenberg was intimating an interest in advertising and
reviewing Deg's books. [Again he renigged.]

I have come near to demonstrating that grand principles of morals
and science can equally well be extracted from the dross of
existence or flare out of imperial trumpets. The phenomenon of
"self-destruct" is ever threatening in new movements of all kinds.
Yet another phenomenon here deserves mention before passing on
to other matters. It has to do with energetics, or more simply

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laziness. And I am fortunate for having spoken so much of
Sizemore for he exemplifies the non-lazy, the antithesis of the
phenomenon of limited energetics or laziness. The phenomenon has
also to do with the motives of the persons in fringe movements,
with what they want to get out of their belonging and in fact do get.

The cosmic heretics were fond of reciting the litany, Velikovsky in
the lead, that if his new ideas were to be admitted to scientific
discussion, the textbooks of most disciplines would have to be
revised. Astronomers would have to correct their own lamentable
errors, and also they would have to study electricity, geologists
astronomy, anthropologists geology, historians mythology, and so
on. At the same time, a number of cosmic heretics were solely
Velikovsky buffs: they were incompetent and unfamiliar with other
quantavolutionists. Some had never had, nor now wished to have,
an education broader than that afforded by Worlds in Collision.
They derived their political, moral, and intellectual sustenance from
a couple of books and a man. They were housed in this comfortable
concrete defensive pill-box from which they would sporadically fire
and venture forth on forays and to scavenge.

To this type of person, the threat of Chaos and Creation was as
real as a full-scale attack upon Worlds in Collision.
To read another thick book? And more to come? A hobby would
have to become a chore. Horrid possibilities in religion,
geochronology, and human development had to be confronted.
Much reading was required. A "snap-course," with its slogans,
became suddenly a curriculum.

The format and style of the new book was itself a threat; it read
well, but was organized like a text-book. The several hundred
readers of its first year found even a chapter in it devoted to
negative criticism. The chapter, called "The Devil's Advocate,"
was written by Deg under his dropped middle name of Joseph and
an English translation of "Grazia" into "Grace" for the cognomen.
He felt that a full self-critique, carried as he went along, would have
been useful but would have doubled the size of the book. So he did
his best to demolish his work in a single chapter.

That he succeeded with some is evidenced by an editor of

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Athenaeum Press who, in rejecting the manuscript, claimed to be
persuaded by Professor Grace, and by a review in the newsletter of
the Canadian Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, whose author
wrote that much of what he had to say was well put by Joseph
Grace. Deg did not like subterfuge and had foreseen that a reader
who liked or disagreed with the chapter would soon enough catch
on to the dodge. Still, Elisheva read it and was amazed by its being
there and asked Deg who the writer was. That caused a laugh. And
Leroy Ellenberger himself, even after hearing the explanation, was
so suspicious and perplexed that he wrote to Deg to confirm that
the writer was not a professor at Glassboro State College. Deg
noted with interest that Leroy, who would not let the readers of
Kronos hear of the book, was reading it, presumably having
wrapped it in a plain cover after receiving the gift from Deg.

***

On January 17, 1982, Brian Moore is telling Deg about the
difficulties the British Society is having with its publications and
asking him to come and share a platform with Dr. Don Robins who
is to speak on isotopic anomalies in radiochronometry. The Society
would also like a talk on the past ten years since Deg published The
Velikovsky Affair.

Incidentally, mention of the Velikovsky Affair above reminds
me of my current fracas with Lewis Greenberg which you may
like to include in your comprehensive survey of the history of
Velikovsky (when you eventually come to write it). I had
received permission from Dr. Hewsen to print in SISR his talk
to the last Symposium at Princeton in which he criticized
Velikovsky's use of his sources. Lewis, of course, would not
print it in Kronos as it was too critical for his taste, but as we
advertise ourselves as a forum for the Velikovsky "debate,"
we felt it could be a useful contribution from an informed
Velikovskian. The result was hugely ironical; Greenberg has
threatened us with legal action if we publish it as the words
were actually spoken at his Symposium. To me it seems the
ultimate sin for a Velikovskian to attempt to suppress views
which he finds unpalatable, but when I put this point to
Greenberg he avoids the question and suggests we terminate
the correspondence! There the matter rests for the moment.
Rather sad.

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Deg notes to himself on the margin of Moore's letter. "Shall I
send  letter to Lew on this with copies to Kronos board?"

He does not do so. Instead, he calls Professor Hewsen, and later
replies to Moore:

I spoke to Hewsen about your fracas with Greenberg, also
Sizemore. Neither H nor S is strongly interested in the matter;
H confirms the offer to you but thinks G is serious about a suit;
S would advise against such an action, which, to my mind,
would be only taken up by a lawyer as nutty as G. H. never
gave away any rights to publish. And, of course, the attitude of
G is disgusting. I find G's polices and behavior frequently
irrational and arbitrary, and have not talked to him in some
time. S is occupied with a new commercial venture now as well
as teaching, so sees into little. Ellenberger and G do the whole
bit. I think that G would do battle with all the 1500 Kronos
subscribers and all authors and with Mrs. Velikovsky and
Shulamith Velikovsky and anyone else who would come into
sight, especially all females; he is the most handsome
rhinoceros in these parts and generally exhausted from his
struggles.

And Brian answers:

SIS still seems to be persona (prope) non grata with Mrs.
Velikovsky. She would not allow us to put slips in the British
edn. of M in A drawing attention to the Society. We are also
excluded from the book itself though Kronos is listed.
Warlow's book of course lists both organizations (though this
has not stopped Kronos from berating him in their latest issue.
With colleagues like this, who needs the Sagasimov?.) Which
reminds me -- I mentioned the Hewsen Affair in my last letter
and this obviously prompted you to enquire a little into the
matter. I'm afraid this has fueled Leroy's paranoia even more.
When I last wrote to him I said I was not going to pursue the
matter, but he now thinks that I "asked" you to "intervene"
on our behalf and gave me a little homily on hypocrisy to boot!
Still, don't lose any sleep over this -- such misunderstandings
are endemic in our relations with Kronos. Leroy and I continue
to collaborate on other matters, so there is still a positive side
to the relationship.

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Greenberg and Ellenberger manage next to enrage Peter James,
who has a sweet disposition but a sharp tongue. He resigns from
Kronos' editorial board with a vengeance, and later in London tells
Deg, yes, certainly, if you want to publish my letter of resignation,
do so.

Dear Lewis and Leroy,

In view of the present shitty relations between KRONOS and
SISR I can't see much good reason to provide Kronos with
any further copy...

Permission on "Darwinian man" is withdrawn (or at least
suspended).

The same applies to my BAR and Stiebing correspondence, and
to the promised section on Carchemish from my Glasgow
Conference paper. Whether this material has been set in type or
not, permission is firmly withheld. I had also better tender my
resignation from the KRONOS staff as well..

Frankly I don't see why Hewsen's paper has put the wind up
you lot so much. On the other hand maybe I do. All Hewsen
was saying is that we must not treat Velikovsky as a tin god,
and that we would be doing far more service to the man's
genius by admitting the weak parts of his work and sorting the
wheat from the chaff. The KRONOS staff suppress his paper
(yes, suppress), at the same time protesting that they are not
Velikovsky cultists. Give me one GOOD REASON why
Hewsen's comments should not have the publication that he
wanted them to have, apart from the desire of the KRONOS
staff to suppress a point of view that doesn't exactly square
with their own.

I am, to say the least, disgusted. I thought the name of the
game was free speech and fair discussion. The "Velikovsky
movement" has been crowing for so long about the suppression
of Velikovsky's ideas. It makes me sick to see people who
pontificate against Velikovsky's enemies do the same to
someone who is basically sympathetic to Velikovsky's ideas.
Go to the back of the class and join the Shapleys and the
Sagans. You should both hang your heads in shame.

There was nothing untoward or irregular about Brian's letter
to Hewsen. It was not going behind Lewis' back, conniving or

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in any way deserving the hysterical reaction we got. Hewsen
wrote the bloody paper, a fact that seems to have been
forgotten in this silly squabble, not Lewis Greenberg or Leroy
Ellenberger. Brian quite rightly wrote to Hewsen about it, and
asked him to clear things with LMG. There was no intention of
"stealing" anything without KRONOS Permission. Hewsen
was asked to request KRONOS Permission. Get that straight.
Nothing criminal, nothing strange. The reaction? Sheer
hysteria, and the usual childish threats of legal action. And
why? You tell me why. Ask yourselves, have a good think
about your real reasons for trying to suppress someone's
thoughts...

I also find KRONOS' attitude to Peter Warlow rather weird.
Why have you got it in for him? Answer: JEALOUSY, plain
and simple. If he lived in the States and was one of your
immediate clique you would be breaking your backs to help
him find some answers to Slabinski, instead of running him
down all the time as you do. Along comes the guy who for the
first time produces a model and a mechanism for a
Velikovskian event and publishes it in a well established physics
journal, and you lot just try and jump on him. Rose, in his
comments about Senmut's ceiling, doesn't even seem to be
aware of Lowery and Reade's extensive studies, or Reade's
later work on the Ramesside star-tables. What are you going to
put in place of Warlow's model, which satisfies the
mythological and geological evidence so well? Spin reversal?
Crustal slipping? Go on then. Provide us with a model that will
make Stabinski happy. You know damn well that Slabinski's
calculations can't and don't take into account electro
magnetic effects. These are, after all, part and parcel of the
Velikovskian view of celestial mechanics. So way do you take
such great delight in Slabinski's calculations when they ignore
them? Answer: jealousy.

I have taken a lot of stick from KRONOS staff for the
criticisms I made of Ramses II and His Time in my review.
Letters from Greenberg, Rose, and others made an incredible
fuss as if my criticisms had come out of the blue, and I was told
repeatedly that I was knocking Velikovsky's view of this
period without putting anything in its place. On the 19th
February 1976 I wrote a 5 page letter to Velikovsky,
summarising several years work, pointing out my major
objections to his equation of the Hittites and the Chaldeans,
and the 19th and 26th dynasties. In February 1977 Velikovsky

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wrote back pretty well ignoring the points made, except to
postulate an ad hoc invention of a second Neriglissar to get
around problems in the Neo-Babylonian succession. In 1978
Ramses II appeared, and the major areas of problem which I
had pointed out were almost completely ignored. The reader
was left totally in the dark about key material that shows
Velikovsky's scheme for this period to be impossible. So I l
felt perfectly justified in raising this problem for the benefit of
SISR readers. It would have been intellectually dishonest not to
have done so, particularly since I had raised the main points
with Velikovsky two years before...

KRONOS no longer strikes me as a "magazine of inter
disciplinary synthesis"; it is rapidly becoming a cross between a
Velikovsky fan magazine and an anti-SIS Review...

I am very sorry that it has come to this. But when KRONOS is
filled over and over again with one-sided ad hominem piffle
about Gammon, MacKie and Warlow, three of the most
valuable contributors to the Velikovsky debate, and when
KRONOS still continues to treat Velikovsky's work in toto as
the proverbial sacred cow, then things have gone too far. I am
only interested in having honest assessments of Velikovsky's
work, to find out what is right and what is wrong. I am not
interested in a silly KRONOS vs. SISR struggle which seems to
interest you far more than the academic issues involved....

Peter James

But this is only part of the letter which I suppose might be summed
up in the words of St. Paul to the Phillipians (1:15): "Of course,
some of them preach Christ because they are jealous and
quarrelsome, but others preach him with all good will."

***

The explosive discourse among the heretics, we have seen, is often
as vituperative as the salvos of heretics against the outside world. It
is also more personal and intensely felt. There were times when
Deg felt that Greenberg's tiny clique of Kronos was trying to make
a sort of Trotsky out of him for advocating world revolution rather
than "revolution in Russia" as Stalin would have it. He was
consoled to know that the invectives and diatribes were the lot of

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other heretics and conventional figures venturing into the line of
fire. Nor was he without blame; so that he could not but remind
himself of the saying, "He who lives by the sword dies by the
sword." Or "he who lives by the pen is poisoned by the pen."

By contrast with the heretics, the conventional scientists were most
gentle among themselves on the subject of the heretics. It was
almost unprecedented when once Robert Jastrow mentioned in
print a serious statistical misapprehension of Carl Sagan in an
attack on Velikovsky; Sagan defended himself vociferously. I do
not mean to say that the conventionals are more fair or decent; they
are nicer and more polite, and must go to print under institutional
barriers against vehement expression. The heretic cries havoc and
unleashes the dogs of war, and is often too distraught to tell friend
from foe.

If all of this seems trivial, that is because the word "trivial" for a
dispute is defined by contrast with horrible and bloody conflict. Or,
I think, it is all trivial, even when there is horror and bloodshed.
Examine the horror and bloodshed of history. Is it not very often
over the trivial -- a sentence of Marx, an oath to the King, a remark
"against the people," a failure to salute the flag, the greasing of
bullets with pork fat, these and a myriad of like trivia --  which
manage to bathe mankind in bloodshed and keep people in terror
much of the time.

One can never tell from a virulent heretical letter or a smooth
conventional reasoned critique whether, were the author possessed
of the power, he would not exercise violent sanctions. The men and
women who run affairs -- in all spheres of life -- are very often like
the infant whose rages, so ludicrous, would be regarded with the
gravest concern and even panic if abracadabra suddenly the infant
sprang up adult and armed.

But that is the point of keeping the peace at nearly any cost: if
people are kept from destroying themselves and each other, sooner
or later they will be happy that they failed in their wishes. They will
recognize that their aims are foolish, trivial, misguided, and
mistaken, or that they would have been themselves erased, or that
their enemies had agreed in principle with them, or that they and

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their enemies, alone or together, might find a better resolution of
their mutual problem.

What has been shown here is that the establishment has violated
most rules of logic and fair play in literary and scientific
intercourse, but, further, I have shown that the heretics, in dealing
with the outer world and among themselves, have also violated
most rules of logic and fair play in their literary and scientific
intercourse.

What then can be concluded as a matter of principle? Call down a
plague upon both their houses? Go in search of honest men like
Diogenes forever carrying a lantern to illuminate any rare finds?
Favor the weak against the strong, the heretic against the
conventional establishment? Continue to expose such illogical and
unjust conduct wherever and whenever it appears? Psychoanalyze,
especially in the sense of self-analysis, everybody including
ourselves? Reform the scientific reception system by institutional
inventions to bring about a rule a law, emplaced as part and parcel
of the rules of scientific method?

The questions answer themselves. Each implies a herculean task.
Yet each implies a remedy of value. The answer to each and all of
these questions is a resounding "Yes!" All must be done, no matter
that each in itself is, if not impossible, exceedingly difficult, In
Homo Schizo I and II, Deg put forward a persuasive, if apparently
pessimistic, analysis of human nature. Homo Schizo is incurable,
imperfectible, by nature. He can only be modified, constrained,
trained, and controlled within limits. But within these limits stand at
the one extreme the most horrible conduct and at the other extreme
the most charming, endearing, and harmless conduct. The main
trouble in the latter case is human unreliability.

Meanwhile, work was beginning on The Cosmic Heretics and I
wrote Carl Sagan in 1981 asking for a meeting in the line of
reporting first-hand something of Sagan's ideas about Velikovsky
and about himself. A reply came, dated 9 November, 1981:

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9 November, 1981

Belated but very sincere thanks for your letter to Professor
Sagan asking if he might meet with you at some point while he
is in New York City to discuss Immanuel Velikovsky as part of
the background for the book you plan to write about
Velikovsky. Unfortunately, Dr. Sagan is now totally immersed
in science, having just returned to Cornell after an absence of
more than two years. To his regret, he will not be able to
accept your invitation. If you have not yet read it, you might
wish to have a look at the chapter on Velikovsky in Dr.
Sagan's book, Broca's Brain, published in paperback by
Ballantine in 1980.

With kind regards,

Cordially,
Shirley J. Arden
Executive Assistant to Carl Sagan

I had indeed known of the aforesaid chapter, which had already
appeared in at least three different publications and which had been
mauled and dissected to the point of uselessness, Brian Moore's
SISR review being perhaps the most nicely done of the valid
commentaries upon the book. Perhaps a rebirth would come with
the baptism of being "totally immersed in science" that would
impel him to drive his own Cosmos TV series off the airwaves. Or
to withdraw his book, The Dragons of Eden, from circulation, of
which N.J. Macintosh wrote in Nature (27 April 1978): "It is
inaccurate, full of fanciful and unilluminating analogies,
infuriatingly unsystematic, and skims hither and yon over the
surface of the subject, unerringly concentrating on the superficial
and misleading... profoundly unscientific."

Sagan was the latter-day Harlow Shapley for many a heretic,
though Deg could never quite tell why. Sagan had denounced
Velikovsky's suppression, criticized his work publicly, and at
worst was slipshod and sophomoric. On Deg's last visit among the
English heretics in 1983, and amid some chortling, Deg was told of
one Michael "Mike" Saunders, a true-believing Englishman, who
was representing interests in the never-never lands of the Gulf
States sheikhdoms, and was ringing people up with "great"

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schemes, one of which was to win over Sagan by setting up for him
a professorial Chair for Interdisciplinary Studies at Cornell
University, counting upon him to sing a new song of solar space.
After Deg stopped laughing, he opined that such things had
happened before (see, e.g. the Morton Prince case, that is described
in the next chapter), but that star professors are much too clever and
ornery nowadays. Like the time when a large donation to the
Psychology Department for the purpose of pursing telepathic
research was accepted by Stanford University but diverted to other
uses, perhaps to construct bigger and better mazes for running rats.
Apropos, unlike rats, professor avoid any mazes built for them and
devise their own crooked ways. And some are quite principled,
need I say?

389

PART FIVE

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRY

Deg detested the new Bobst Library building at New York
University from the moment he entered it on 16 December 1972 at
16:00 hours for a reception to celebrate its opening. The old central
library had been in the basements of the Main Building. It was
rumored that one could draw a book from there, and he did so from
time to time. But now they had obstructed the view of Washington
Square from his apartment to put up a casbah-red structure that
from the outside seemed transported from the Near East while
inside there was a giant space towering to twelve tall stories up, a
roofed atrium around which wound narrow bands of shelving areas,
obviously inadequate save for a few years of collecting, and already
requisitioned on its top floor for the administrative officers of the
University. The sensation was vertiginous; the building floated with
its books tucked around its waist; how could a scholar study with
his ideas precarious on the edge of exposed space?

A dance band was playing and he promptly envisioned how the
design would permit its use by a Las Vegas concessionaire to bail
out the near bankrupt school: a pavilion for dancing on the marble
main floor, baths and massage parlors below, a bar on the second
floor, social rooms on the third, a bordello for men on the fourth,
one for women on the fifth, one for homosexuals on the sixth, then
levels of gambling and a sky restaurant. One of the most expensive
pieces of land in Manhattan had been used to roof empty space.
The spectacle was dazzling. He rarely used the library.

When he was there he would ask himself whether it was hyper
critical of him to have such feelings, part of his basic envy of a
world that rushed along without his consent, getting things done
nevertheless; or was he simply observant of facts and aesthetics
that most people, those in power as well as their subjects, could not

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see or think of. This happened often, that he would no sooner
denounce something, privately or aloud, than he would reprimand
himself for thinking that he could see truth and value and
contradictions thereof that groups of intelligent people working in
financial, architectural, legislative, and other task forces could not
see.
He did not wish to believe only in himself; he would rather enjoy
the warmth of consensus, the applause of the crowd, but it would
rarely work out so. Everything he did, everything he got, it seemed
to him, even under the conditions when he was boss, gave him not
a whole loaf, nor even half a loaf, but a thin slice. (I am not
speaking of material goods, but of the quality of the product.) The
situation regarding money alone was bad enough; the incompetency
of the rich society to obtain value with its money was much worse
to suffer.

Throughout his career, Deg found that it was harder to get money,
the better the cause. A wage for oneself was not difficult, a salary
slightly more so, commercial money for an imaginative project
easier the quicker the turnover and the realization of profit. The
trouble with your ideas, Rodman Rockefeller said to him once
while they were conspiring about the world, is that they do not
involve things that people regularly consume in large quantities, like
canned food and cement houses. Not that Rodman was
spectacularly successful with his company. IBEC, which went
progressively from more romantic to less romantic, from third
world to first world projects. In those times, Deg wondered at how
year after year Rod could go on administering -- ever so
comfortably to be sure -- a business without breaking out more
often into some of the more imaginative enterprises and social
adventures that he obviously enjoyed visualizing. Deg blamed
affable father Nelson for the suppression.

To continue on money: then longer-term money became harder,
then money for a vulgar or fashionable charity, then money for
important research or an extraordinary book. Money came hardest
for a cause that one believed to be purely for the public good -
unless it was a commonly recognized public good like the Bobst
Library or some other building for a respectable university to house
respectable and vulgar objects, or unless it was a concealed fraction

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of a public good (the thin slice of the loaf again), like a significant
sociological question slipped into an advertising survey for dog
food, or unless it was illegally obtained, wherefore some political
radicals have robbed banks and others their families, and still others
lived under miserable and dangerous conditions.

Deg made a dozen attempts in search of a teaching and study
platform for catastrophe and quantavolution. Recall this was a
period when all kinds of new courses were being pressed upon
universities and colleges; standards were in general decline.
Professors were wringing their hands and burying their files for
safekeeping. Yet they consistently rejected the advances (never
mind seeking the help) of quantavolutionists who had more respect
for the traditional research materials of the culture -- in classics,
linguistics, foreign languages, history of science, philosophy, etc.
and whose attractiveness to students would have erected massive
barriers against the anti-intellectual and book-condemning feelings
rampant in student bodies everywhere.

A score of teaching heretics had managed to insert V.'s materials
into their courses under various pretexts and in several cases could
even carry his name in the title or subtitle of a course. The
Dartmouth Experimental College at Hanover, N.H., invited V. one
time for two days of meetings with a seminar; at least six faculty
members of as many different disciplines met with the seminar
before and after to discuss his books Worlds in Collision and Earth
in Upheaval.

V. was generally unhappy about the educational system, although
he was displeased, too, with the student rebellions when they
occurred. A dramatic polemic against the system of higher
education finally appeared posthumously in three pages of Mankind
in Amnesia (182-5). At least this statement is available to save him
from reproach for never having attacked on general grounds (as
opposed to personalized ground) the foundations of authority or
their institutions.

Before converting his own social invention course to a course on
quantavolution, a one-time unauthorized change to which no official
objection was made, Deg tried a frontal appeal. Here, in 1973, he

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addresses an assistant dean for curriculum, after discussing the
matter with Bayly Winder, Dean and friend. He is making as few
waves as possible, by placing the course in the summer session
(where "imaginative offerings" are encouraged). The proposal
went to the Committee of Deans:

October 29, 1973

Memo to: Dr. Sylvia Konigsberg

From: Professor Alfred de Grazia

Subject: A proposal for a summer
Institute on Primeval Catastrophe

and the Development of Human Nature

A large and increasing public is interested in the theory that
ancient astrophysical and geophysical disasters caused
profound changes in the human environment and human
nature. Much of the interest centers around the work of
Immanuel Velikovsky and his school of thought. Wherever
Velikovsky appears to speak, his supporters and critics
assemble by the hundreds and even thousands. His sole talk at
NYU drew hundreds of students and professors several years
ago.

I have worked for a decade on problems raised by Dr.
Velikovsky since the publication of my book, "The Velikovsky
Affair." in 1963, and am presently going to press with another
book on the disasters of the Homeric Age. A heavy flow of
written materials and archaeological reports has begun and
promises to be practically endless. There is a need for an
academic center for presenting and discussing the problems
they present to all fields. Excellent scholars are available to
participate. I suggest that such an Institute might be held from
July 1-20, 1974, at New York University. It would occupy
three hours of class time on fifteen days, would allow students
not-for-credit, undergraduate students for four credits, and
graduate students for the same ( 4- credits). The required
readings would amount to 1200 pages and graduate students
would prepare a research paper. It is expected that from 80 to
200 students can register for the Institute.

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Personnel for the course would include:

1.       Prof. Alfred de Grazia, Supervising Professor, Full
time;

2.       Adjunct Prof. Annette Tobia, Ph.D., Einstein
University in microbiology and presently lecturer at NYU, full
time.

3.       Prof. William Mullen, Ph. D., Princeton University
classicist (one-third-time);

4.       Prof. Livio Stecchini, Ph. D., JD, Patterson State
College, historian of science (one-third-time);

5.       Mr. Ralph Juergens, Engineer and astro-physicist,
Associate Editor of Pensée  magazine, (one-third-time);

6.       Visiting Lecturers and Discussants (one day each):
Professors I. Velikovsky; (general theory); Lynn Rose, SUNY,
(philosophy); Frank Dachille, Pennsylvania State Univ.,
(geology); Edward Schorr, Fellow, American School of
Classical studies (archaeology); and possibly an additional
person or substitute;

7.       Prof. Nina Mavridis, CUNY, Political Scientist,
administrative coordinator, full-time.

There would be fifteen primary one-hour lectures and 30 one
hour discussion meetings which would break the lecture
audience into small sections of 25 persons. Related lectures and
discussions would meet on the same day.

The titles of the lectures follow:

Primeval Catastrophes and

the Development of Human Nature

I.       Time, Nature, and Human Beings

1.       The Theory of Catastrophes                De Grazia

2.       Origins of Human Nature                   De Grazia

3.       The Geological Record                     D'Achille
or Burgstahler

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4.      Historiography of the Solar System       Stecchini

5.      Correlations Of Geology and
Astrophysics                             Juergens

6.      The Synchronization of Prehistory        Mullen

II.     Case Studies in Disaster and Development

7.      Case I: Atlantis Stechini

8.      Case II: The Age of Pyramids             Stechini

9.      Case III: Exodus                         Velikovsky

10.     Case IV: The Homeric Age                 De Grazia

III.    Origins of Behavior and Institutions

11.     Theology and Government                  De Grazia

12.     Literature and the Arts                  De Grazia

13.     Sexuality and Aggression                 Tobia

14.     Technology                               Stechini

IV.     Final Problems

15.     Is Human Nature Governable?              De Grazia

Discussion leaders: Professors De Grazia, Tobia, Stecchini,
Mullen, Juergens, D' Achille, Burgstahler, Mavridis. With 100
students, nine daily section meetings are required. If the
number of students exceeds 100, we should add to the faculty.

Readings: In addition to several paperback books that will be
required the staff will prepare a collection of readings difficult
of access, and Xerox them. The basic readings will be Worlds
in Collision by I. Velikovsky, the study of Homeric catastrophe
and literature by A. de Grazia, and the collection of readings
that will represent, among others, the rest of the collection of
readings that will represent, among others, the rest of the
faculty. A valuable and unique supplementary bibliography will
also be provided, and, finally, a set of maps, drawings, and a

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special lexicon.

Continuation of Project: We would like to begin work on the
project as soon as it appears probable that we would have 80
students, and to continue research in connection with, and to
prepare for, successive Institutes. Therefore, it is suggested that
50% of the gross receipts from student fees (less additional
faculty costs) for students in excess of 100 in number be placed
in a special project fund in the University for continuing study
and development of materials in the subject-area.

27 November 1973

TO: Professor Alfred de Grazia
FROM: R.B. Winder

The Committee of Deans discussed on Thursday, 15
November the proposal for a summer institute on primeval
catastrophes as outlined in your memorandum of 29 October
addressed to Dean Konigsberg. The consensus was that
although the proposal might very well produce a large
enthusiastic audience of paying customers, it probably would
not do so from degree candidates. The Committee felt SCE
might be interested in sponsoring the program, and I suggest
that you take it up with Dean Russell Smith forthwith.

I do appreciate the drive you are putting forth for funding of
various sorts and am only sorry that we felt this one would not
work in the context proposed.

Nothing could be worked out in the unprestigious "School for
Continuing Education." My academic readers can practice a dry run
on this proposal, or another like it as carried in The Burning of
Troy: their own committees might well respond similarly.
Practically all universities in America capture their students with
"credit courses" and find "course anomalies" as distasteful as
anomalies in science.

The New School for Social Research was not so impeded, although
it, too, became divided into "non-credit" and "credit" areas. V.
gave a successful series of lectures there in 1964. Clark Whelton
also taught there a non-credit course on "the Velikovsky Question"
in the Fall of 1979 and significantly some students kept in touch
with him afterwards, interested in keeping informed and hoping to

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form an association.

Milton to de Grazia February 15, 1980:

Our department is being reviewed, and me with it. Trainor is
one of the referees, the other is hostile. Yesterday he said,
Milton is not doing physics because Kronos is not include in
Physics Abstracts nor Science Citation Index. That remark
deserves immortality. Hang in there, Al, we're winning.

Milton was a popular professor at Lethbridge University and was
teaching and reading quantavolution in his general physics and
astronomy classes. He was an intellectual force on the vast
Canadian Prairie, in touch with the press and radio systems. He
knew the vast skies there like a Polynesian navigator. His lifelong
asthma kept him in a lifelong course in advanced nutrition, organic
chemistry, and atmospheric science. Then he read into myth and
legend, and there was no stopping him. In every picture he
discovered fresh signs. Aside from his personal qualities, he could
connect with the more than ordinary number of students there who
had heard everything good about God and the Bible at home, but
nothing at all, if not bad, about these subjects in "education." Even
only to hear the Bible being used as a learning tool was exciting to
them. One should recall, too, how low the estate of physics had
fallen.

We find our Dean of science reporters, Walter Sullivan of the New
York Times, admonishing us.

Physics is the most basic of the sciences, apart perhaps from
mathematics. All phenomena, when probed to full depth, are
controlled by its laws...Yet physics is in trouble Student
enrollments in that science have plummeted...There is a public
distrust of physicists that borders on revulsion and the
physicists themselves are pursuing lines of research more and
more remote from the problems of everyday life...

Sullivan's key lines were the juxtaposition of two anomalies -- 
public paranoia and physicists' schizoid remoteness of character,
traits that do not marry well. The American Physical Society was
discussing the low state of physics, and Sullivan wrote that
generally the leaders thought that more money should be spent by

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the government. The British physicist and astronomer, Fred Hoyle,
wanted even greater accelerators. He also wanted scientists to
participate in politics. "You see why the world of politics is such
an indescribable mess. Think of the opening of the baseball season.
Think of the ceremonial first pitch. Think of what the baseball
season would be like if that sort of pitching went on right through
the summer. Then you have it -- the present state of affairs."
Presumably under Hoyle's new-age baseball, physicists would
pitch and baseball would become nothing but home-runs as the
batters perfect themselves to bang away at the invariable straight
ball coming right down the center. Or perhaps Hoyle was saying
that physicists should join the pluralist republic, as the ethnic strain
of physics, helping where they could. Deg was not sure this was
"according to Hoyle," but he liked the idea.

Milton tied together the Eastern and Western Canadians, and the
Canadian belt triangulated to the Princeton-Trenton-Philadelphia
area where Sizemore, Deg, and Greenberg kept shop. In the
Kronos network, besides Greenberg, Sizemore and Ellenberg,
might be found Rose, Vaughan, Wolfe, Cardona, and Jueneman.
Some say that there should be added Milton, Sherrard, Westcott,
Hewsen, Ransom, Talbott and Sammer. It was a unifocal net, with
Greenberg as the focus. Deg connected with London, Holland,
Paris, Basel. Greenberg, losing Peter James in London, found
Bernard Newgrosh as correspondent. Marvin Luckerman, a
doctoral student at the University of California at Los Angeles,
founded a biennial magazine, Catastrophism and Ancient History;
relations with Greenberg were cool, and the British were not much
impressed with his first issues, but praised the good try. Still he
rounded up a thousand readers and began to improve his journal.
The creationist groups stemming out of Los Angeles, Ann Arbor,
and Seattle were quantavolutionary perforce, having been given
only a few thousand years by the Bible to produce everything. Here
and there were quantavolutionaries of orthodox connections -
Gould at Harvard in paleontology, Ager of geology in England, and
so on for several countries. The password that could readily cut
these out from others was their answer to the question, "Has a
planet moved?"

A very small group it all was, absurdly so when compared with the

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network of thousands of periodicals, scores of associations, and the
mass media that served orthodox science. It makes one wonder
whether the heretics were worth considering: certainly by the usual
American standards of great-sized multiplex technology they were
not.

***

Deg heard when young from his democratic teachers how smartly
the vested interests turned to minister to public needs, and was
continually surprised when old to see how reluctant they had
become to give themselves away. As his friend Lasswell put it,
when writing with Abe Kaplan Power and Society, no ruling class
gives up its goods without being forced to do so. This goes pari
passu for philanthropoids and publishers, two industries affected
with a public interest. The philosopher, artist, composer, author,
administrative innovator, and physical inventor, if he is to be
creative, typically is driven to become a sneakthief, or
revolutionary, or go mad, or all three. So says Deg, who worried
only about becoming a revolutionary, because then he would have
to spend his time among sneakthiefs and maddies as well.

"Of course the heretics would not get support, they did not apply
for it. One must play the game by the rules. Apply and apply and
apply again." Deg knew more about this than his heretical
acquaintances by the time they had encountered one another. He
had enjoyed the fleshpots and studied what motivated the
foundations, publishers and universities. He could warn the heretics
that they need hardly try -- and V. was of this opinion, too -- or,
worse, in order to succeed, they must prepare themselves to spend
much of their energies in trying, and he was insistent upon a point
that few could appreciate, that only a peculiar type of masochistic
personality could apply incessantly to the point of success without
losing the vigor, freshness, profundity of his ideas and the vital
energy needed to pursue them for their own sakes.

On a few occasions, the heretics would solicit funds from
individuals in small amounts to disseminate a publication about
Velikovsky, but efforts at larger funding failed. The Foundation for
Studies of Modern Science initiated a series a approaches, of which

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I have already spoken; still, I shall add one more instance.

Murray Rossant, Director of the Twentieth Century Fund, was
reported by someone to be attracted to V.'s work. Because Deg
and his brother, Sebastian, were already known and had been
working with the Fund in very different fields, FOSMOS sent two
fresh and handsome faces to meet with Rossant and his colleague
Schwartz, Bruce Mainwaring and Coleman Morton, both
enlightened businessmen. A friendly encounter ensued, the upshot
of which was that, although the Fund had never gone into this area,
the two officers were interested personally in seeking other sources
of funding, and when all was said and done, nothing happened.
Nothing, that is, except that the Fund itself gave money to Giorgio
di Santillana and Hertha von Dechend for research that they were
doing on ancient and primitive myth and legend which, it was
believed beforehand, would show that mankind was clever and
scientific long before it was credited with being so, but also that
there was no need to invoke catastrophism to explain the nature of
mankind's early preoccupations.

This was recounted to Deg and the others by Stechini, who was
well acquainted with Santillana and von Dechend. The product of
the research, Hamlet's Mill, was welcomed by the heretics,
nevertheless, for its intimations of ancient quantavolutions, but, if
the reader wishes to understand the rampant confusion of the book,
he may simply apply the hypothesis: here are two great
scatomatized experts trying to avoid mention of catastrophism.

Though they be liberal or conservative, foundations are unlikely to
be creative. They think they are able to judge creativity, of course,
and especially if large, "creativity" and the "independent sector"
of society are often included in their slogans. Their size and their
bureaucracy correlate well.

"But in any event," writes Deg, who had urged the Ford
Foundation to apply this, his scheme, "they are unlikely to
make lists of all the people who lay creative claim to their
bounty, and dispense it equally among a random sample of
them. No they put the applicants and petitioners through the
hurdles that they learned in their first course in Business and
Public Administration should be set up to employ typists and

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junior managers. So it happens that if all the people who ever
applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship had given the same
quantity of intense energy to a story, a painting, a song, or a
study as they gave to applying, American culture would be up a
notch or two over all its length and breadth. The waste of
creative energies going into the national foundations of the
sciences, arts and humanities is truly enormous; they use up at
least a tenth of the country's creativity, with their stick games
between the insiders and the outsiders. I would close them
down and give their hundreds of millions to the colleges of the
country whatever their defects -- in proportion to their
budgets."

The cosmic heretics might discern that they were outlaws without
going to the trouble of applying for their identity cards. But they
could not help themselves: after all, they were educated in a way,
bathed regularly, were fluent in the language, and found their
interests carried in the index of foundation provenances. So they
were tempted from time to time to try for a grant or subsidy. To my
knowledge, they invariably failed. (I am not speaking of the
occasional hand-outs tendered by friends and other heretics but of
the system of lending a hand as institutionalized by the private or
government foundations.)

Deg had enjoyed many experiences with foundations, small and
large. The large were too "responsible" and proper to be bold. The
small were generally pets and hobby horses of their founders.

Exceptions occurred that were interested in large social issues. A
small foundation, the Relm-Earthart group, was a pleasure to deal
with. It had a tough board, and was administered by James
Kennedy and Richard Ware, both of whom bet on the man, not the
institution, and did not try to make useless work for themselves and
others. (The Cornuelle brothers, Herb and Dick, were this way, too,
when they were in the foundation business. So was Bill Baroody.)
Deg did a variety of economic and political studies with their help
over the years. They were not occupied with ancient history or
natural history. Since they lent you aid, they must be "good," I say
to Deg sarcastically. Very well, he says, shall I give you some bad
ones that have helped me? Never mind, I said, I'm in enough
trouble with you already.

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Yet the very deprivations and constraints that help Deg in his
quantavolutionary trap made him more determined and passionate.
Again Deg is writing in his notebook, perhaps to warn himself, like
a politician warns himself to refuse favors or an infantryman warns
himself to keep his feet clean:

There is this in common among a gold miner, a terrorist, and a
purveyor of new ideas; they often come to exist in a new moral
dimension, called immorality and outrage. Lunacy, lying,
cheating, contempt and inconsideratedness for others;
misappropriation: the pandora's box of the creator spills these
out.

Deg never committed such follies -- almost never -- and blamed his
frustration correctly or incorrectly upon his own character: he
inspired himself but could rarely inspire enough of the all-important
others. Society is run by networks and gangs, and you have to join
a gang, stick with it, use it and let it use you, and if ultimately you
fail or perish with the gang, well, that's the end of the trail, it's a
life-term establishment. Most gangs and network fails. Therefore
skill and luck in getting into and out of the appropriate gangs is
often essential to success.

"We're working on an ABS issue about what needs to be done
with the science of economics," said Deg to his colleague,
Professor Arnold Zurcher, who was also Director of the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation. The Foundation operated in this area and Deg
wondered whether they would provided support for the project in
the neighborhood of $10,000. His colleague represented an
approach to political science that Deg regarded as outmoded and
intent upon replacing. He was a jolly fellow and they were friends,
and he knew that Deg was carrying the weak finances of the
American Behavioral Scientist on his back. Do up the proposal, he
said, I think that you have a good chance and I'll support it.

Not long afterwards, Deg received an official letter from the
Foundation rejecting the proposal. He was surprised -- the request
was logical: it was for small money and enjoyed support. His
colleague was apologetic. Al, he reported, the proposal passed from
one vice-president to another, with Margolis' article from the
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about the Velikovsky affair attached,

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and a big "No" scribbled on the face of your proposal. (Later on
Bill Baroody of the American Enterprise Institute came up with
some money to support the issue, and economists were assembled
and the issue published.)

April 22, 1964

Mr. Ralph E. Juergens
416 South Main Street
Hightstown, New jersey

Dear Mr. Juergens:

I continue to be amazed that sensible persons continue to give
attention to the Velikovsky affair. I wonder if you have read
the statement by Howard Margolis in the April 1964 edition of
the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist.

Very sincerely yours
Warren Weaver

Vice President
Alfred p. Sloan Foundation.

Warren Weaver was a career philanthropist, wrote a good general
survey on probability and, like many another, was a nice man. New
York University named its Computer Center after him. (For a photo
of it, in context, see Deg's Politics for Better or for Worse.)

May 4, 1964

Professor Moses Hadas
Columbia University
New York 27, New York

Dear Professor Hadas:

As long-time subscriber to Reporter magazine -- actually since
it started -- I was very much interested in your excellent review
in a recent issue of "Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis." by
Robert Graves and Raphael Patai. I did draw a long, deep birth,
however, when I read in the first paragraph that "in our own
time Immanuel Velikovsky, who was maligned for making
myth the basis for a cosmic hypothesis, appears to be
approaching vindication."

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As a scientist, until 1960 a professor of chemistry at Columbia
and an admiring colleague of yours in Columbia College, I have
always regretted the action of a few misguided souls who
reacted 13 years ago to "Worlds in Collision" by attacking
Velikovsky's publisher -- I think it was Macmillan. The book,
in my opinion, should have been classified as science fiction
but, nevertheless, it was unrealistic, and humorless as well, to
expect a publisher interested in profits, as they all have to be, to
overlook an opportunity to make a few extra bucks. The
reaction to "Worlds in Collision" and a subsequent book, the
title of which I do not recall, was fairly violent but, as I
remember, reviews by Harrison Brown of Caltech and a
woman astronomer with a hyphenated name from Harvard
pretty well disposed, so far as I was concerned, of Mr.
Velikovsky and his theories of cosmology. But now along
comes Mr. Howard Margolis to tell us in a recent issue of the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that "Velikovsky rides
again."

Perhaps you have already seen Margolis article, but if you have
not, I think you may find the attached copy of interest and
perhaps amusing.

With kind regards.

Sincerely yours,
L.H. Farinholt

Vice President
Sloan Foundation

To all medical psychologists: what is the vagus nerve syndrome
that make a man "draw a long, deep breath"? Re Harrison Brown
and the "woman astronomer" with a hyphenated name from
Harvard, see The Velikovsky Affair, Alfred de Grazia, Editor.

6 May 1964

Mr. L.H. Farinholt
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
630 Fifth Avenue
Rockefeller Center
New York, NY 10020

Dear Mr. Farinholt,

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Thank you for your kind letter and its enclosure. I can have no
opinion about the validity of Velikovsky's work; his ideas may
be wholly misguided, but I know that he is not dishonest. What
bothered me was the violence of the attack upon him: if his
theories were absurd, would they not have been exposed as
such in time without a campaign of vilification? One after
another of the reviews misquoted him and then attacked the
misquotation. So in the Margolis piece you send me I read
"Pi-ha Hiroth which Velikovsky has altered into Pi-ha Khiroth,
further enhancing his evidence." But the two are equally
acceptable transliterations of the Hebrew, and the latter is the
more scientific. For the Egyptian name, Margolis, following old
books, writes, Pekharti, but the Egyptian has no vowels, so
that the correct from is P-kh-r-t, and of this Ph-khirot is very
plausible expansion. The ha in the Hebrew is merely the definite
article. It is his critic, not Velikovsky, who is uniformed and
rash -- and so elsewhere also. The issue is one of ordinary fair
play.

Yours sincerely,
Moses Hadas

May 31,1966

Dr. Warren Weaver
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
630 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10020

Dear Mr. Weaver:

I have harbored for many months your critical note concerning
the studies of the American Behavioral Scientist on the
reactions of scientists to Immanuel Velikovsky, thinking all the
while of an appropriate constructive response.

We have recently published an enlarged version of the same
studies in book form and I have asked the publishers to send
you a copy with my compliments.

There are, of course, two issues in the Velikovsky affair -- 
one, the conduct of scientist and the press; two, validity and
utility of his theories. The issues are separable but an
involvement in one naturally inclines one into a stance on the
other. I think that you can help many people, including myself,
find their way through these issues, granted that you may have

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neither the time nor the inclination to take on major
responsibilities for the problems raised.

What I should like to suggest is that we get together for a
day's conversation on the two issues in the company of several
other men, with the sole end of educating each other. I have in
mind persons such as Professor Donald Fleming of the
Department of History and Science at Harvard University,
Thomas Kuhn, Professor of History and Science at Princeton
University, and Professor Harold D. Lasswell at the School of
Law at Yale University. I believe that five would be the right
number.

I have mentioned a reunion to none of the men named, and
have an idea only of Lasswell's thinking about the subject at
hand.

We might spend the morning on the question of validity (not
"solving" it, but working to understand it) and the afternoon on
the question of treatment of unorthodox ideas in science.

I am quite at your disposition on the matter. Hoping to receive
your opinion, I remain

Sincerely yours,
Alfred de Grazia

Editor

There was no reply.

4 March 1974

Dr. Eleanor Sheldon, President
Social Science Research Council
230 Park Avenue
New Your City

Dear Dr. Sheldon:

I have become increasingly interested over the past few years in
the origins of human nature, prompted largely by a growing
familiarity with some new ideas that Dr. I. Velikovsky has
introduced in the treatment of pre-historic and ancient
catastrophes befalling humanity. The field is not new, of
course, and several disciplines in the social sciences and

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humanities currently share it. But a lively set of controversies
with a considerable potential for new discoveries and new
syntheses has begun to erupt here and there. Hence there may
be occasion for the kind of interdisciplinary research -
discussion efforts that are appropriate to the SSRC and ACLS
or both.

Perhaps the eye of the cyclone moves around the question: Did
homo sapiens become human and cultured in gradual steps, as
received theory would have it. Or was he compelled to think
and behave humanly by the effects of natural forces so immense
that factors such as sex, commerce, and "normal" invention
must take a secondary role in explanation?

In preparing a monograph on the effects of disasters in homeric
times, I have encountered and had to deal with problems that
are central, not related incidentally, to the fields of linguistics,
historical chronology, astronomy, physical and cultural
anthropology, comparative literature, archaeology
(worldwide), geology, fossil paleontology, soil chemistry,
electromagnetics, astrophysics, sociology of sex, ecology,
climatology, oceanography, theology, chemical and fossil
dating, psychology of infancy and of stress, epistemology, the
history of science, and political science for the origins of
theocracy, bureaucratic system and collective violence.

The problem of approaching the field is not as impossible as
might appear from the listing. It can be stated as an excellent
model for cross-disciplinary investigation and theory. The
numerous sciences involved have been shocked and
compressed, taken aback, you might say, and the time may be
right for a reappraisal of where they all stand in reference to the
question. I have felt continually the need for the kind of
sounding board, stabilizer, consulting resources and motivator
that I once experienced via the establishment of the first
Political Behavior Research Committee of the SSRC and its
subsequent operations.

Should you be of the opinion that the subject might interest the
SSRC and be within its jurisdiction, I should appreciate the
chance to discuss it with you in some detail

Sincerely yours,
Alfred de Grazia

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April 5, 1974

Dear Professor de Grazia:

Thank you for your interesting letter of March 4, in which you
suggest a possible role for the Council in exploring human
socio-cultural evolution, particularly in the light of an
hypothesis that posits discontinuous advances, following a
massive challenge and response model, rather than incremental
steps.

It is true that this kind of problem is inherently cross
disciplinary, is of potentially great interest, and needs strong
guidance if it is to make progress. Also, I am aware that
Velikovsky's ideas are receiving wide attention again -- or,
perhaps, at last. Nevertheless, the topic you outline, which
demands a unified approach is too enormous for the SSRC to
handle, and even if the ACLS were to be involved (obviously, I
cannot speak for the ACLS) it would still be unlikely that we
could marshal the appropriate efforts. At the very least, the
physical sciences, as you point out, would have to be closely
involved.

As you know, the Council is now addressing itself to more than
a full intellectual and administrative agenda, and I cannot
foresee a way in which we could be helpful with this topic. It
certainly deserves attention, however, and I wish you success
in your capable efforts to bring that about.

Sincerely yours,
Eleanor Bernert Sheldon

In reflecting upon all that happened to V. and to Deg and the
others, it would be unfortunate to keep one's eyes on the
immediate characters alone. For they are all symbols, too, players
in a drama, representing types of our civilization. If V. is subject of
a hundred book reviews, these reviews are signs of the times that
happened to gather electrostatically like fluff around his work.

J.B.S. Haldane, a noted biologist who also wrote on Science and
Ethics, found V.'s Worlds in Collision a degradation of both
science and religion, a peculiarly enraging combination, apparently,
for a marxist and fellow-traveler, whom Deg, with a long nose for
hidden political mazes, suspected might be waving the flag (red,

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that is) for his American colleague, Harlow Shapley; and when
Deg, duty-bound to probe wherever necessary, intimated these
sensings of political psychology, he was scolded by certain naive
and intensely tender liberal consciences, as if political processes of 
leftist politics, external politics, could never enter scientific
processes. So he was amused when, in perusing an edition of
Frederick Engels' Dialectics of Nature, a work which many Soviet
scientists find it de rigueur to praise highly somewhere in their
books and which contributes to biological science roughly in the
same measure as Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, he had to note that
the adulatory introduction to Engels' book was by none other than
J.B.S. Haldane, who apparently could see contemporary marvels in
the century-old work of a communist that he could not perceive in
V.'s book. Furthermore, had not Marx and marxists been
universally insistent upon the interconnection of all things with the
ownership of the means of production and therefore all things were
politicized and  relevant subjects for investigation.

Indeed, Deg, in his typically optimistic manner (he would pick up a
redhot stove), had conceived of the true interests of marxist theory
as residing in catastrophism, not uniformitarianism. Why he asked
himself, sometime around 1978, did Marx and Engels so strongly
endorse Darwin, fashioning the pattern for marxists to follow ever
since (the heresy of Lysenko in the 1950's being a significant
incident thereto)? Perhaps, he thought, the model of catastrophism
did not give them a broad natural inclined plane for the progression
of history; it defeats man's greatest works in an instant. It pays hob
with the development of the pure but reversed Hegelian dialectic of
thesis-antithesis-synthesis in the historical process. It depresses
man's will and capacity to build an ultimate utopia. And Marx and
Engels, despite their rejection of the Hegelian "will" and ideal,
conceived of and nurtured the most fantastically strong human will,
one that could overturn social orders and political regimes (of
course, with the aid of history). So they needed natural change to
back up social change -- Engels waxing polemical on this need -
but the change must not overturn catastrophically the works of
revolutionary men.

Still, Deg thought also that the problem of arousing the masses was
immediate and paramount with them, whereas, the problem of

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nature and history (just mentioned) was less important. Now the
masses must see themselves as the symbol or substance for a great
tidal wave, storm, explosion, and destroyer. Therefore, the imagery
of catastrophe would be more effective than the interminable
gradual incremental change of Darwin and bourgeois society. And
indeed there are indications the Marx smelled an ideological rat in
the theory of evolution. Furthermore, in reading Soviet studies
pertinent to quantavolution, Deg could sense a slackness in their
basic tie to Lyellism and Darwinism. In the back of Deg's mind
there was an ulterior motive, to loosen the anchor of
uniformitarianism (or "actualism" as the Europeans call it) in the
marxist setting, thus to free up a flow of new quantavolutionary
energy.

So Deg wanted to address himself to this problem, and he asked his
daughter, Victoria, who was a professor by now, eminent on
intellectual movements of the past century, and who said, yes, it did
seem like a good idea, and she being much better attuned to the
marxist mentality and avant-garde currents in the field than he, Deg
promptly submitted a proposal to the political science and
sociology section of the Natural Science Foundation. When the
refusal came, he asked for and received the critiques of the review
panel. He was a little dismayed to discover that he was illiterate and
ignorant beyond his worst fears, even more so than most scholars
must be on the measuring scale that the Foundation had provided
conveniently to its panel.

But when he thought that he might judge the responses to his
proposal better if he knew who were writing them, the request was
refused, on grounds of "policy," and, of course, the policy was, as
is usual, good for those who were in charge of the policy and
working behind the defenses afforded by the policy. Momentarily
Deg thought to investigate the law on the subject, and to have
introduced a bill for laying open such matters, as an amendment to
the federal law on freedom of information, or even to launch a
lawsuit, seeking a mandamus to produce the records. He didn't do
so, of course, because, as my readers by now amply appreciate, ars
lunga, vita breve, Two years later, a postscript to the episode
occurs in his journal:

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January 20, 1980

A famous letter from Marx to Darwin is said to ask Darwin's
permission to dedicate a volume of Das Kapital to him. Year
before last, the National Science Foundation turned down my
proposal to study the question why Marx and Engels, who
perhaps should have been ideological quantavolutionists, not
evolutionists -- that is, catastrophists, not uniformitarians  -
would have so warmly accepted Darwin's group. (The anti
religious connection is, of course, obvious, but the Europeans
were not so friendly to Darwin and were non- religious too).
Then [1976] came the exposure that the famous letter had not
been written by Marx at all and the mistake was traced back to
its source in early communist revolutionary Russia. Marx could
say once more "Je ne suis pas marxiste" (if he ever said it). I
wonder whether he would also have said "Evolutionem non
fingo." Probably he was content with two of the thrusts of
Darwinism: materialism and historical progressivism.

***

But enough of foundations, lest I have no energy left for treating of
publishers. The lesson that publishers learned from the Velikovsky
Affair was the same as a first-term convict learns in jail, how not to
get caught a second time. The unfortunate victim of the lesson was
any author who was preparing a book in the field. Macmillan
Company dumped Velikovsky's book and Doubleday Publishers
made a good deal of it over the years. All the nice people and the
pundits and the heretics believed that Macmillan, Doubleday, and
other publishers would have "learned their lesson" and a new age
in publishing would dawn. Controversial books would not be
discriminated against, and so on. To Deg (I hope that I am not
giving him too much credit for saying so), this was utopian thinking,
and he ought to know, being a utopian, a "realistic utopian," he
insisted, by which he meant precisely a person playing a high risk
game knowingly, because the game involved some worthy ideal.
He said this to those who called his works on world order, "Kalos"
and "Kalotics," utopian.

Publishers, on the contrary, did not venture into catastrophism, nor
make any money out of the "pseudo-science" or "fringe science"

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of catastrophes. Ransom's Age of Velikovsky was privately
published, and when later published commercially, sold only
modestly. Patten's works were published privately and did well.
Deg's Velikovsky Affair was handled by two small, high-risk
publishers and sold under 5,000 copies, and later in England sold
another 10,000 copies. David Talbott's Saturn did not repay
Doubleday its large author's advance. Melvin Cook's book,
Prehistory and Earth Models, published in England, sold very
quietly and modestly; it was technically written, but an
"acceptance" would have sold many copies in college courses,
technological industry, and the Scientific American's public.
Hapgood's book on The Path of the Pole sold modestly. Milton's
Recollections of a Fallen Sky failed to reach the American market
from Canada.

Henry Bauer's book on the Velikovsky Affair took six years to be
published and a University Press did the job (Illinois); since Bauer
found little of substantive value in V.'s work, one need not wonder
how a pro-V. work would have fared in the same circles. Dorothy
Vitaliano's anti-catastrophic book on disasters in geology (Indiana
University Press) enjoyed only a small sale. So it is not being pro-or
anti-catastrophism that sells, but books on the subject are either
unsellable or the publishers will not bring them out or promote them
properly.

The most successful publisher attending to quantavolution was
William Corliss' Sourcebook Project, a household concern, that
culled the history of science and current reviews for worthy
material, finding thousands, reprinting hundreds, all the while
maintaining a nicely neutral position.

What was true for book-publishers held also for magazine
publishers. The only magazine with a general readership that gave
sympathetic attention to quantavolution was Frontiers of Science,
edited by Elizabeth Philips. It failed after several years because it
was part of a conglomerate operation that used the bottom line to
weed our unprofitable properties. The very small journals, playing
to between 300 and 1500 subscribers were fully unprofitable. Yet
without them, there would have been no means of advancing a
viewpoint attractive to millions.

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By the rationale of laissez-faire economists this should not have
occurred; in fact it is normal in the world of education and science.
The contradiction between a society's need for creativity and the
resources allocated to creativity is stark. It is further exaggerated in
the inner organization of education and science where the more
creative the work the less the outlets for it. New journals in the
sciences often form out of failures of the reception system.
Theoretical Physics was founded because some scholars could not
get enough of their material into Physical Review. Deg founded
P.R.O.D (Political Research: Organization and Design), to
advance new ideas in political science and sociology; it later
became the American Behavioral Scientist, which was markedly
altered in format, approach, and contents when he gave up its
editorship in 1965. One of Deg's students, Howard Smuckler,
became editor of magazines of Ancient Astronauts and ESP; from
the beginning they were given newsstand circulations of 200,000
copies, with the proviso that wild nonsense be given free rein. The
most fortunately situated scholar in the country for communicating
occasionally his ideas of quantavolution, sometimes subtly, at times
explicitly, was paleontology Professor Stephen Jay Gould of
Harvard University who wrote a regular feature for the magazine
Natural History, published by the New York Museum of Natural
History with a popular circulation reaching a million readers.

Various publicists such as Sprague de Camp and Theodore Gordon
gave chapters over to mocking or explaining Velikovsky, but their
books were not greatly affected by these chapters. One of the best
of the publicists was Fred Warshawsky who wrote Doomsday: The
Science of Catastrophe. Picking up Rene Thom's mathematical
topological theory of catastrophism, presumably applicable in any
field, he applied it nonmathematically, heuristically, in discussing
the many works trending toward the quantavolutionary outlook. He
undertook with V. a couple of long sessions that curled his hair and
set him straight on what to say of V.'s achievements in an article
for the Reader's Digest. Having escaped perdition, he went on to
write a full book on catastrophes, ancient and modern, which was
published by the Reader's Digest Press. This company made a
distribution agreement with Harper and Row, which performed so
poorly with his book that Warshawsky complained bitterly to

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everyone and achieved some promotional effort. The company then
closed down, and Harper and Row stopped selling the book,
returning its very large remaining stock. Then McGraw Hill bought
rights to the book for its back list, to no effect. Over 8,000 copies
were sold, but 17,000 copies were "remaindered" at a pittance.
The New York Times ignored the book. Some favorable reviewing
occurred. It went out of print after only several years. And please to
note the way in which an author's "property" is kicked around.

The situation, as I surveyed it, is that not one major publisher has in
print a book on quantavolution, excepting Doubleday, Morrow, and
Dell, all with Velikovsky, and excepting, too, the New American
Library with a reprint of Francis Hitching's The Neck of the
Giraffe, in which the head of the giraffe is quantavolution, the neck
is the long disdainful connecting link, and the body is conventional
biology. (For those who might think otherwise, I should say that
Erich von Daniken is an "ancient astronauts" buff, not a
catastrophist, except in mood. I say this because I am often asked
what I think of von Daniken and I respond that he is not a
quantavolutionary; he blithely propounds mysteries without
worthwhile solutions, but he is, alas, a cosmic heretic.

On October 31, 1982 (Halloween ) the 15 Paperback Bestsellers
(trade) which were listed in the New York Times around the U.S.A.
carried six (6) titles dealing with the cat, Garfield. The number one
bestseller was "Garfield Takes the Cake," then, number 4 was
"Here Comes Garfield," number 10 "Garfield Weighs In," number
13 "Garfield at Large," number 14 "Garfield Bigger than Life,"
and number 15 "Garfield Gains Weight." If Garfield were missing,
Rubik's Cube would occupy several of its places, vying with
books on diet. The NYT defines this class of paper backs as
"softcover books usually sold in bookstores and priced at average
higher than mass market."

One cannot read Deg's notes and hear him talk without deriving an
apocalyptic view of the publishing industry. "It is a doubly sick
industry. It is economically sick and it is functionally sick. By
'functionally' I mean physically, ideologically, and morally. It is
dominated by cheap nonpublishing money, coming from
extravagant swashbucklers and conglomerates of merged and

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paralyzed units. Ownership is alienated from editors, editors from
producers, editors from authors. It is characterized by some of the
worst labor practices, witness to the shadiest deals, and engages in
the thoroughgoing degradation or writers."

This is the way he often spoke. He wouldn't say much and
sometimes in a group or committee be quiet, abstracted, even
appearing bored. Then suddenly he would be seized, and as if to
make up for lost time and to persuade others that he was only
speaking because what he was saying was being torn from his lips,
he would hammer out the words, scalding rather than sweetening
the atmosphere, so that when he finished, there was neither
applause nor babble of dissent, but a pause, until someone
evasively spoke around him, and when that happened he didn't
insist upon his point but subsided for a good while.

Deg could recite a long list of great writers who had put out their
own books, he even claimed that most great writers did so. First of
all, up until the late Eighteenth Century -- Franklin, Voltaire, the
Encyclopedists -- every writer put out his own books, unless, after
burying him, friends or relatives printed his work. In a marginal
note to one of his late anatomical sketches, Leonardo de Vinci
implored his "neighbors" to see to it that his works would be
printed.

The publishing racket (Deg's word, not mine) developed sweetly
out of bookstores and printing shops where it belonged and should
have stayed, but by the latter part of the nineteenth century Balzac
was excoriating the thieves and profiteers of the business in an
excellent novel, Illusions Perdues. Dickens, Dostoevski and
Flaubert sweated to carry their novels first as serials in magazines.
But where are the magazines, bad as they were, today -- they carry
a single chapter, but usually the pain of editing a chapter for a
magazine is damaging to both the author and his book.

Is it names you wish? (And he would begin.) Walt Whitman,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Stendhal, Beatrix Potter -- yes, Peter
Rabbit -- James Joyce (an angel helped), Marcel Proust, Rainer
Maria Rilke, Virginia Wolfe, Andre Gide (The Immoralist
issued in 300 copies), Sigmund Freud and, if you will,
Velikovsky himself published his early pamphlets. Colette was

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published by her husband Willy who even stole her name as
author. America's best autobiography, The Education of
Henry Adams, was put out by the author.

The myth of Thomas Wolfe is used continuously by publishers
to show the unknown young writer discovered by the great
fatherly editor of a conventional publishing company and led
carefully to reveal and convey his beautiful achievements to the
world of readers. Even this case is mythical, as the editor
involved, Maxwell Perkins, tried to explain in a recent edition
of Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. But the truth will never
catch up with the lie until publishing circles come upon a
similar myth to serve them.

If Charles Darwin's Origins of Species sold out through a
book store in 1859 it was because writing and printing were
still for gentlemanly use and the book was not deposited behind
a mass of their friends. Dammit -- nowadays you can't even
sell a book to a friend! Besides there was a prurient and
agnostic public altered to the sensationalism of the book.
Surely you must know, too, that Darwin's thesis was already
well-worn and agreed upon; he was selling evolution even
though he didn't use the word and the book's raison d'étre
was the silly mechanism of natural selection, which was nothing
more than a watered-down Lamarckianism, a slogan for bird
watchers and garden clubs. It was an easy sale.

Deg had one arrow in his quiver to fire at the now pathetically
wounded publishers. They are frauds, announced he.

They pretend to publish the books of the country. Ninety per
cent of the serious writing, and I include even novels and
poetry here, is put out by government presses of several types,
by subsidized university presses, subsidized independent and
university institutes, scientific associations, and self-help
amateurs like myself. Further, much of the serious writhing put
out by so-called independent publishing houses is subsidized,
by insider deals, involving mutual back-scratching, agreements
to arrange publication of one's editors, promotional devices
such that no established book reviewer need fear his shit will go
down the drain when there are people who will eat it, [I am
sorry, but that is what he said], by quiet subsidies, by
guarantees of sales, by tricky deals with film-makers, press
agents, television companies, and corporations, and you name
it.

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At this point I intended to escape Deg's diatribes by telling how he
came to enter upon his writing campaign and then to publish his
own works. Lest you think that such violent opinions as his come
out of intense suffering and exploitation, let me once again remind
you of Deg's character, acquired in earliest childhood: he could be
and was often indignant about a person or an institution or a
system, without being hurt by them and even while being helped. In
a way, he was rather like his children's generation and the hippies,
except that he had the forcefulness and discipline that produce
alternatives; he seemed always to have ready a proposal for another
way of doing things. In this way, he was more sprung from the
nineteenth century utopians: Fourier, Brook Farm, St. Simon, Marx,
Henry George, As you will see here, he didn't expect much, he
didn't suffer greatly, he didn't mind sacrificing, and he did not
dance a jig when he finished the job. I assure you once more of that
great difference between Deg and V. Deg did not see himself as a
victim; V. saw himself as a victim.

Deg moved into the field of quantavolution slowly and then ever
faster. This I would attribute to his heavy involvement's between
1962 and 1966 with the American Behavioral Scientist and the
design and production of retrieval of bibliographic annotations in
the behavioral sciences. During the same time, he was writing
heavily in political science, especially on the reform of relations
between Congress and the Presidency. After he turned from these
in the period 1967 to 1972, he wrote Kalos : What is to be Done
with Our World? Hired by Simulmatics Corporation, and given the
assimilated rank of a general with "Top Secret" access by the
Department of Defense, he spent a few weeks in and out to win
over the Vietnamese people and to bolster the morale of their own
troops.) The job led him quickly into urging measures that were too
radical and diversionary for the forces, civilian and military, that
were moving in an irresistible death-dance toward the ignominious
withdrawal of the United States presence in Indochina.

He was writing poetry and before flying to Vietnam in 1967 he
collected his poems and put them to press as the Passage of the
Year; some of them he framed in what he called an "eccentric,"
"super-sprung" rhythm. He gave a copy of the book to Harold

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Lasswell who said, yes, he had written poetry when young, at
which Deg commented that poetry was more accessible to the
senile than the juvenile. He gave a copy to Velikovsky who, it
appeared, had published a small book of poems under the
pseudonym of Immanuel Ram, in Russian, in 1934. V. read Deg's
poems and used a quotation from them on one occasion to persuade
Deg of a point. Suddenly it seemed that mankind was a secret
crowd of poets.

He then joined with a University instructor who had not studied
directly with him, and had met in the annual Department reception,
Nina Mavridis, a tough, emotional, polyglot petite blonde smartly
turned out, whom he later married. They went in search of a Greek
island house, and he bought a parcel of land on Nazos, which was
then a quiet backward island, and there built the stone cottage
facing across the straits to Paros.

He turned to several of his former students, graduates, and "drop
outs" from the system, and together they organized an experimental
college, L'Universite du Nouveau-Monde, and settled in for a
hectic year upon the Alps of Valais, Switzerland. All the while, he
visited Princeton, coming and going, keeping in touch with the
Velikovsky circle there and with whoever of his immediate family
happened to be home from schools and wanderings around the
world.

With the University of Switzerland closed down, the United States
withdrawing from Indochina, his work on a new world order totally
ignored, his family disassembled, efforts at reforms within New
York University ending only in cosmetic changes, and resettled
efficiently with Nina in an apartment of Washington Square
Village, just across from one of his classrooms, and a block from
his office, Deg drove through the resulting energy gap into the field
of quantavolution. He completed two books of political science
during this period, neither requiring heavy research but both of
which, Politics for Better or Worse and the "lectures to the
Chinese", Eight Bads, Eight Goods, he considered as "state of the
art" philosophically, and innovative in format and perspective. Both
were "successes," he thought: neither earned much money $18,000
in the first case, $3,500 in the second.

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His University teaching had never in his career cut very deeply into
his time for study and writing, partly because he did not "pal
around" with students and varnish their wasting time. Too, he
avoided committee assignments that seemed useless, and had little
need for generalized social encounter. During nine months of the
year, he gave an average of twenty hours per week to straight
pedagogical, work; the rest went into his projects -- editorial,
political, pedagogical, consultative -- and writing. Wherever he had
taught, including New York University, he was expected to be a
"producer," to do research and writing in return usually for a lighter
teaching and committee load. He was usually expected "to bring
money into the University," which sometimes he did, and to find
funds for his research and activities, which sometimes he did. He
used his time fully and completely for these latter purposes,
working year-round, seven days a week, for three to twelve hours.
(obviously, everything did not "come easy to him," as so many
acquaintances believed.) His journal slackened off, through the
sixties and seventies, entries occurring only every several days on
the average and even then deprived of events recited in their
fullness.

He rarely spent more than ten minutes on the day's newspapers; he
watched television several hours a week; he listened little to music
and rarely played his trumpet any more, but often was humming
and whistling to himself. Except when reading a novel or a poem,
he did not read in the conventional way. Reading was an instrument
of research and writing. He would pounce upon a book or article
and seek directly the point that he was addressing, which had made
him pick up the work in the first place. If it wasn't helpful, he
would put the work aside. He could rarely be trapped, for instance,
by some lurid description of a disaster. At the rate of 100 pages an
hour he could tell whether there was anything useful to him in a
succession of books or articles. An issue of Science, though it might
contain 100 pages, would ordinarily occupy 10 minutes, just
enough time to see whether there was something of interest in it. He
would however, spend hours on a relevant two-page article in a
strange field -- a paleontological article using explicit chronometry,
for instance, learning the method used, looking for the expected
illogical turn or twist, the weak point in a piece which after all had

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been fashioned with extreme care, was the darling of the authors'
eyes, and had been rigorously criticized by conventional readers.

At first both current materials and ancient materials on
quantavolution were not so easy to find. Stecchini was alone as
supplier of references outside of V.'s works. As the network of
scholars like Mullen, Juergens, Milton, Crew, Sizemore, Moore,
Lowery, James and several dozen others came into the field the
supply of references grew exponentially. Pensée, Kronos, The
S.I.S. Review and Workshop and Corliss' Sourcebooks and
Newsletter brought hundreds of citations to light. I cannot do less
than say that the names of the hundred authors of the articles and
notes in these magazines is the measure of 90% of the field. If
screened for relevance and translated into quantavolutionary terms,
several hundred more names would be added -- not that they would
gladly accept being added -- from the conventional output of
scientific books and journals.

In a combination of disgust, impractical judgment,and worthy
motive, he decided in 1977 to resign all obligations to teach and
supervise dissertations and to be at hand for the various faculty
meetings; he found the University ready to pay him a third of his
salary to engage solely in research until he would arrive at the age
of 63, after which he would be considered as fully retired. The
agreement was soon followed by a considerable general inflation of
the economy, and a reduction in foundation activities, so that he
was constrained to stringent personal economy, not so evident on
the surface, but oppressive in reality. He had no illusions about the
interests of foundations and government research agencies in
quantavolution and in fact received no help. He earned a little
money here and there, whatever could be done rapidly without
taking his money here and there, whatever could be done rapidly
without taking his mind off of his quantavolutionary studies. He
sold a piece of land on Naxos. He sold, too, a small house he had
bought for his retirement, near Brown University where he had
once taught and close friends still lived. These funds and more went
into research costs -- typing, Xeroxing, travel -- and to the
occasional support of his mother and other family members. Nina,
although she finally earned her doctorate, and was a most effective
teacher, could not get into and hold onto a position in one of the

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college systems of the New York area. Whatever money she had,
she spent fully and equitably. This is no place to speak of her at
length; she was everywhere in those years, but when Deg comes to
tell of Naxos, it will be up to him to tell of Nina. By the middle
seventies, she and Deg had split, and came finally to see one
another as friends only, there on the island where she bought and
remodeled two medieval Venetian homes and lived with her
husband Peter whenever possible.

Deg's first book in the Quantavolution Series, The Disastrous
Love Affair of Moon and Mars was written in the early seventies.
He had thought for several years that he should write a textbook on
what he was then calling revolutionary primevalogy, but before he
had settled among several outlines of the work and written a few
passages, he reached back for a journal entry written while staying
at Pythagoreion on the Island of Samos and decided to try out the
new field with a case study.

Pythagoreion, Island of Samos, July 12, 1968

I have come across and read for the first time closely and
consciously the song of Demodocus at the house or Alcinous.
How wonderfully it describes what Velikovsky said was the
actual set of cosmic events of the Seventh Century before this
era, of how bright-crowned Aphrodite loved the god of battle
Mars-Ares, and how they repeatedly fucked "in the house of
fire," whose master, Hephaistos, finally entrapped them in a net
and put them upon a more pious course. The passage must be
analyzed Word for Word: the parallelism is beyond
coincidence; either Velikovsky wrote the myths of the Greeks,
or something like the physical events he describes historically
took place.

The story referred to is a brief lyric of a hundred lines, sung in
Book VIII of the Odyssey, the epic poem of Homer. It tells of a
much longer opera ballet sung and danced for Ulysses.

Deg showed his manuscript to Juergens who was surprised at its
coincidence with his own electrical theory of the events, which was
to appear ultimately as two articles in the magazine Pensée. V.
would not read it. Deg wished to dedicate it to him. V. said let Bill
Mullen read it and if he likes it, go ahead. Mullen did, very much.

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Cyrus Gordon liked it, but could not respond to the astrophysical
scenario. Further he suspected Aphrodite to be Venus, not Moon.
The English acquaintances of Deg got onto the manuscript when he
submitted it to the publisher, Sidgwick and Jackson, who had
published The Velikovsky Affair in England, and he showed it to
them. They liked it, but in all conscience could not accept the
identification of Aphrodite with the Moon, for they identified her
instead with Athene, Ishtar, and the morning and evening star,
Venus.

This disagreement meant that the English group was ready to
dispute an important point of Velikovsky for, in his application of
the Iliad to the Martian disturbances of the seventh century, he had
found Aphrodite joining with Ares in the Trojan War to fight
against Athene. Whereupon, and for other reasons, Aphrodite was
assigned to the Moon. Desertions were numerous on this score.
When James published a critique of Deg's identification of the
goddess, it stood without rebuttal, and Cardona, Rix and others
were convinced of James's case.

American publishers were not turned on by the Love Affair. W.W.
Norton, through Brockway, said it was well written but not to their
tastes. So it went with one publisher after another, Simon and
Schuster, Dodd and Mead, Doubleday, Random House, Harcourt
Brace, Stein and Day, Princeton University Press, Harper and Row,
Atheneum, Sidgwick and Jackson, Free Press, and even the New
York University Press (unless a subsidy were paid). Deg thought he
should "toot his horn" perhaps, as his mother used to tell her boys,
so he prepared a blurb about it.

He made the Love Affair sound as if it might attract the masses, but
publishers were quick to point out that the book was serious,
learned, of dubious validity, and sophisticated: in a word, forget the
masses; indeed, betake yourself to a university press. But Deg
knew already the university presses were eager for wide publics,
undercapitalized, dominated by editorial committees of the more
conventional members of their faculties, and slow and painstaking
to a fault. He visited Jerry Sherwood of the Princeton University
Press. She returned the manuscript in time with the expected
advice. Deg stopped peddling the book. He was too busy with the

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general work, Chaos and Creation, to carry on the sometimes
interminable pingpong of serious publishing.

Time after time over the next decade, he would pause in his work
to recalculate the options of his predicament. Naive friends
counseled him: "Any press would be happy to consider your
books." A publisher encountered would say, cordially, "Let us see
it by all means." Get it down to 160 pages -- less. No footnotes.
One only, not really new, idea. The emerging rule seemed to be:
"Never underrate the unfitness of readers, media, and publishers."

Yet it was like a drug, this pushing one into the marketplace, or like
television, One succumbed from time to time, had a bad trip, and
came away cursing himself for not having avoided the encounter.
The condition of the publishing industry in America was
unbelievably bad; would that it were terminal. All that could be said
of it was that it was freer than publishing in Nazi Germany or
Soviet Russia, or for that matter in most other countries. It was as
bad or worse than the political system of the United State in
meeting its obligations, much worse than the educational system
with all its weakness.

But unhappy thoughts of this kind did not obsess Deg; they
occurred often for a moment (as when he examined the book
review section of the New York Times, or looked at a publisher's
list). Long before, in the days when his work seemed ordinary,
when his means of rewarding and insulting were conspicuously in
readiness, publishing his books and articles was no problem.

The society, however, was enveloped in the myth that the
publishing process was a logical affair, constrained tightly by the
message between the covers. A writer's fortunes were thought to
vary with the quality of his message. So many useless and
dangerous myths rule society! Like the myth among scientists of
myriad readers perusing their article in a reputable scientific journal
-- 10,000? 5000? 500? yes, 50 and feel lucky.

Now, all of this jeremiad is preliminary to announcing that at
certain point in time, probably it was in 1978, just after he began his
final race against dwindling finances, Deg decided that he would,

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unless intercepted by an angel, proceed to complete his work and
then by one means or another publish it himself. Somehow the
money would be found, and he thought to publish it in Bombay,
where he had connections with friends  and a publisher, the Popular
Book Depot, which had produced Kalos and Kalotics.

One premise he maintained firmly: he would not be finally
frustrated and incapacitated by the publishing system. Another
premise was his delusionary Paternoster: that what he attempted
might be great importance to mankind. It was the best work he
could set himself to -- and who else could do it -- none whom he
knew of -- and his other great object in life, a new political order of
the world, offered at this time no opportunity nor chance of success.

The decision was not easy, hardly definite in fact, because like
many decisions he made, it was long foreseen and warmed upon a
little burner in a recess of the mind. It was not an optimal solution,
by any means. The myth, social binding, and conventions of
publishing are so pervasive that none of his acquaintances thought
this procedure wise, prudent, or even possible. All too poignant
was his awareness that the controversial matter that he was writing
would combine with its unorthodox publication into a hard
prejudice against the books. Under such circumstances, more than a
touch of megalomania is needed.

He pushed ahead imprudently, erratically, and stubbornly, or so it
seemed to others, and they were correct, but they could not see
how such failings of character might add up to an achievement. He
wrote everywhere and under all conditions on all sizes and kinds of
paper with pencils and pens of any type, and now and then on
typewriters, electrical, or a portable, mechanical one. He read in
several libraries, bought very few books, was sent Xerox copies of
many pieces by Sizemore, Milton, and others, corresponded, and
ultimately had made notes on some hundreds of books and articles.
These were often caught on the wing, and he was often exasperated
upon completing a book to have lost a citation, forgotten the
spelling of a name, left relevant pieces now in Greece, now again in
New York.

There is nothing special to recommend in his research and writing

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procedures except what one cannot anyhow imitate: a wide-cast
unerring eye for the salient, the strong background of
methodological --  especially epistemological --thought and theory,
a modest skill at writing, a great skill for synthesizing material, an
inborn will to let nothing stand in one's way, a lifetime practice in
doing much with little. Once in the while he got help; Donna
Welensky, whom sometimes he paid for her typing and sometimes
not, whom he came to love for her energy, efficiency, and ineffable
kindness to the world, never mind her brawny blonde beauty.

The latter half of the dozen strenuous years were dominated,
physically speaking, by the presence of a quiet deep-voiced dark
haired, brown-eyed, French novelist whom he encountered first at
Naxos, where she was joyfully spending a few francs that her
publisher had let her have as a consolation for not publishing her
latest book, The Paladin. With great difficulty for her assets were
almost literally on her back, she obtained a visa to come to
America, and thenceforth Deg took care of her, and she took care
of him. In 1982, they married. They lived in New York City, at
Princeton, in Washington, on Naxos, and in Paris, appearing more
affluent than they were or pretended to be.

They visited her ancestral village, Habsheim, between Basel and
Mulhouse, they traveled to England, Italy, Hungary, and Canada.
She loved the journeys and loved Deg and adapted quietly,
imposingly, to the net of human ties and implausible projects of
Deg with a broad, engaging and ever-ready smile. When Elisheva,
sculptress forever, met her for the first time, she was awestruck at
bones that made her strong hands ache for a chisel and hammer.
"How did you find such beauty?" she asked Deg. She could be
happier than anybody whom Deg had ever met, under the poorest
conditions of life -- but then, as he often said to her, and she fully
agreed, we are much better off than humanity is or has ever been or
will be.

In more than a decade from 1972 to 1983 Deg gave over perhaps
no more than eight months to work outside of quantavolution.
Almost all of these few months was spent consulting directly and
indirectly with the National Endowment for the Arts with Carl
Stover, a friend of thirty years standing. Given a general directive

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and promoted by Carl before Nancy Hanks and Livingston Biddle,
directors of the Endowment, Deg wrote a number of sketches of
what might be done to stimulate a broad range of cultural areas, but
principally he committed a trenchant irony called "1001 Question
on Culture Policy" in which using the format of a book of
interrogations, he was able to say all that he wanted to say. The
work was an implication that nothing intelligent and basic was
being said about public policy on the arts and humanities. Stover
even managed to obtain from the Ford Foundation a subsidy with
which to send copies of the work to most prominent leaders of the
organization and direction of cultural affairs of the United States.
Copies were also distributed in Western Europe. The effects, so far
as might be perceived, and disregarding the encomia that are easily
aroused by techniques of publicity, were nil.

Otherwise the quantavolution investigation progressed and enlarged
grossly. By 1975 the basic Chaos and Creation was calving. The
theory of Homo Schizo emerged and went one way,, ultimately two
ways, in two volumes, one on the origins, one on human nature
today. A great fragment fell out of Chaos and Creation and became
a treatise on exoterrestrial aspects of geology, The Lately Tortured
Earth. On a sojourn in Naxos there occurred an idea for an article
explaining why the Pharaoh should have pursued the Jews in
Exodus; quickly, stimulated by conversations with Anne-Marie, it
transformed into a book of exhilarating discoveries and, in the end,
God's Fire: Moses and the Management of Exodus.

He had already devised a theory of how the solar system might
have enacted the set of quantavolutionary dramas which he had
been uncovering and classifying. He wrote of it to Ralph Juergens.
He found agreement there, and then he achieved the support of Earl
Milton, Earl opted to come in on the enterprise of a book; Ralph
became engaged, too, but hardly had Earl gone down to Flagstaff,
Arizona, to go over their preliminary notes with him, than Juergens
died suddenly, of a heart attack. Over several years, in Princeton,
Washington, Manhattan, London, and Naxos, and by telephone and
correspondence, Milton and Deg worked to complete the book. Its
Index, in an unique format, which they named the Omnindex
because it merged glossary, bibliography and key words, was
finished at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., on February 16,

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1984.

The Moon and Mars book was standing by for revision. The
Burning of Troy, its title taken from its first easy on the calcinology
of Troy IIg, was organized to contain studies, reprints, essays, and
notes. The Divine Succession was taken up; its central theory, that
all gods are of the same family, was put forward; an
anthropological and psychological discussion of the major aspects
of religion followed. Then, as Deg stood back, gazing anxiously
and unproud into the manuscript, there came to him the idea of
adding two new proofs of the existence of gods, and also the
scheme of a catechism for whosoever might wish to contemplate a
possible new religion alongside the old.

There was left only The Cosmic Heretics, which I undertook to
write. Its origins lay in Deg's intention, growing over some years,
to write an autobiography in half-a-dozen volumes. He still
nourishes the thought, cowering over the prospect of its passage
through the gauntlet of fast-gathering, spiked-leather-fisted knights
of time. But perhaps I can also do this job for him.

***

In 1980 he sent off Chaos and Creation to India for production.
Delays were many. Stephanie Neuman lent him $3000 to defray
some of its costs. He paid her back two years later. Funds came in
from the sale of the book through the mails to lists of friends and of
purchasers of William Corliss' Sourcebooks. Corliss himself sold
copies. But larger sums were needed. They came from an advance
of Ben Gingold, a friendly architect who intended to purchase land
in Naxos from Deg, from cashing in 10% of the annuities that were
to take care of his retirement, from yet another property sale, and
from a personal bank loan. Household economies were the rule.
The logic was simple: a small saving enabled thirty letters to be sent
out, thirty letters might elicit a couple of orders. Deg and Aim
moved into a dingy little brick house on an old street of Trenton, in
a neighborhood that sociologists call by the menacing term
"marginal."

Publishing in India was becoming costly. The Indian rupee which

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should have lost its international value, maintained itself steadily
against the dollar, letting India pay its debts at a loss of export, but
then it exported little anyhow. Nevertheless, Deg let himself in for a
third round with Indian printers, sending off in early 1982 the bulky
manuscript of The Lately Tortured Earth.

He rationalized his private publishing company in a memo to
readers, but then decided not to print it in his book. Here is a better
place for it, so I am carrying it:

A Note on this Edition

The Edition is intended to bring the materials of Lately
Tortured Earth to the attention of the small number of scholars
and students who are directly involved in research into
quantavolution and catastrophe. It has not undergone the ideal
processing of several expert readers, critics, and editors. It has
been published for the very purpose of arousing comment and
criticism.

Four major reason occur for this procedure:

There are inordinate delays and difficulties in publishing
through the natural channels of the trade book and textbook
publishers and university presses. This book and others in the
quantavolution series have already been in manuscript form for
some time. It may be better, therefore, to publish the work
promptly in this manner than to let more years slip by until
finally some convinced entrepreneur will be bold enough to
undertake its publication.

Since the work enters upon numerous fields of sciences and
humanities, expert readers would be required, a veritable
conference of critics, and, logically in each case, a possibly
unfavorable critic and a possibly favorable one. Many copies,
much time, and thousand of dollars in fees would be needed.
Based upon the author's experience with the editorial services
of some prestigious publishers, the cost is too high to pay.
Publishing the book on the author's responsibly alone will
enable hundreds, instead of a score, of experts and students to
weight the validity and utility of the work.

Third, authors of unusual theories and controversial types of
evidence are strangers to specialists of most relevant fields.

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Foundation support, university backing, and publishers'
advances are practically impossible to obtain, all of which might
otherwise be used to avoid editorial, factual and linguistic
peccadillos and to comb more efficiently the library stacks for
materials on "non-fields."

Fourth, new high technology has come to publishing, but there
is a shameful disparity between the high-level technology
abundantly available for the most useless kind of publications
and deeper problems of human culture and natural history,
most of which necessarily occupy the attention of only a few
persons. While university presses, never an ideal solution,
deteriorate and while commercial publishers vie for scrapulous
material, and while publication technology vies for faster
addressing and delivery of junk mail and selling computers for
games and word processors to enchant the bored secretary,
those to whom consigned the progressive evolution of culture
are hard put to survive, assemble, and operate the tools of their
trade.

We hope, in sum, that our readers will be fully critical, yet
tolerant of our not so sleek editorial packaging.

Delays loomed up in India with Lately Tortured Earth so he turned
to domestic production. Once again he had to review all of the
possibilities for cheap book production in America. His initial
constraints were several. He needed a secure conventional binding,
preferably cloth or sewn. He could not publish in a large format,
say 8 1/2 x 11 inches, because he wanted to put the book before the
reader in a familiar form. He needed a bookish type font, an even
right margin, running heads and other "luxuries" that American
readers had come to expect and demand. He wished to insert many
illustrations; this would be costly if they required redrawing or
screening.

He observed the rush of new technical systems, computer memory
word processing equipment, "perfect" glue binding machines,
automatic cameras, small presses of various kinds and alternative
Xeroxing machines. None of the products and suppliers with whom
he treated had a clear perception of what his needs were and he
found himself lecturing them about the greediness and
unresponsiveness of industry that is set up to treat deferentially the
unconscionable matter of junk mail and the industrial wordage of

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the culture -- and he would sound off sometimes on the gamut of
the intellectual pariahs, the serious writers, artists, and scientists.

From time to time he would play with the design of an ideal system
of personal and small-group publishing at a cost the humble
creators of culture would afford. He put aside consideration of
systems of microform production and distribution, because the fast
culture was still too slow to accept them. He foresaw in the
meanwhile a word processor with software for book-setting; a
memory capable of handling a book as a whole; software for
intelligent spelling and indexing and storing and addressing
networks of acquaintances and potential customers; big readable
screen; means of composing tightly and finely; a tape that could be
stored and would feed a composer that could be slow but must print
out a handsome book font and a generally useful caption font. Then
the output, automatically paginated, would be pasted up on cards,
the cards then printed in multiple copies on a reliable copying
machine that could handle from one to a hundred copies of four
pages (11" x 17") at a time, after which a collating machine could
fold and merge the pages into a book that would then be placed into
a thermal, glue-binding machine, capable of handling up to a 500
page text with its covers, be they cloth or card. Next the book
would be trimmed, then, if cloth-bound, jacketed with a paper that
had been produced by the same system. The small edition, by
which Deg meant from fifty to five hundred copies, would be
shelved until sold and shipped. Meanwhile the announcements
would be coming out through the same system and would be
addressed by the automatic print-out of the stored customer and
complimentary lists. Small gadgets and work routines would be
devised for the interfaces of the system components. The whole
publishing company would fit in a garage or basement comfortably.
It should not cost more than $20,000, including initial supplies, and
a year's maintenance contract. It should be affordable with a
$2000 down payment with the balance plus interest in extended
payments over a 36-months period. Facilities for the bookmaking
announcements, or its equivalent in magazine and pamphlet
production would be provided; actually a much larger output would
be possible.

The system he envisioned is quite feasible technically. Beginning in

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1981, Deg could set forth the named components and locate their
suppliers to provide a complete system in the range of $30,000, but
the system would have uneconomic, inefficient, superfluous, and
flawed elements. The field was moving rapidly. At some moment, it
could be brought together and a revolution in publishing
accomplished. Or rather, what would happen is that the great
majority of thousands of creative groups of the nation would cut
themselves off effectively from the commercial and university press
publishers, building firmly and at a cost they might afford the
printed communication network which they needed if they were to
survive. When a company called the Who's Who of Contemporary
Authors circularized him, asking the usual information and adding a
request for "words from the wise," he wrote (May 18, 1981):

SIDELIGHTS: "Two futurisms for the debased and desperate
intelligentsia: A) With the decadence and collapse of the
publishing business, creative writers should discover how to
publish themselves and reach their own special audience;
commercial publishing is 95% an exploitative delusional myth.
B) With the decline and collapse of the existing world system,
the free intelligentsia should cut back on writing just anything
for money or prestige and begin to assume responsibility for
picturing and propagandizing a revolutionary new world
order."

He never got around to seeing whether they printed it.

Nothing approaching a new full mini-publishing system was
achieved by Deg with the Quantavolution Series. The name
"Metron" meaning "Measure" was revived from a personal
reporting, consulting, and publishing company he had employed
mostly in the 1950's and 1960's to put out the American
Behavioral Scientist, the Universal Reference System, and books
and reports. Now it was to be the name of the first
quantavolutionary publisher. The means of publication were only
half-new, a melange of all ordinary systems. Word- processing with
photo-composition by large machines, Compugraphic composition,
and old hot-type linotype systems and by already old-style small
offset presses. Bindings ranged from Smyth-sewn cloth-covered
board binding to new compact "perfect" thermal binding. Deg
designed all the covers and the format, under heavy constraints of

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format, color, and costs.

The printing and publishing industry was in a technological and
marketing revolution and it was annihilating the old breeds of
manuscript-evaluator, copy-editor, proof-readers, and designer. All
of these operation now were more expensive and provided less
reliable and competent services. Deg arranged much of the
composition, printing, and binding with Rick Bender of the
Princeton University computer center and with the University's
Printing Services. They became adept at running small editions in
the interstices of time that occur with a large computer and
photocompositor.

In all, the labor of his wife and himself as designers, editors, typist,
clerks and managers of production and distribution, would have
cost $65,000 to purchase as services on the open market. Direct
research and overhead costs (actually paid out or otherwise
absorbed) came to about $60,000 over the whole time; direct
production costs amounted to $41,500; early mailings and
advertising cost $6,000. Without any allowances for the author's
time or advances against royalties (he being the author), the total
real cost amounted to $172,500. The total number of books
produced was only about 6,000, and many of these were not
intended for sale. The editions were numbered. The average real
(but not cash) cost per book, then, not including any compensation
for the author, amounted to $28.80 per copy.

When I spoke to him before turning this page over to the printer
(taking care not to be seen laughing) the returns had totalled
$7,500. He expected receipts to reach $30,000 in a year's time and
finish off the balance of immediate direct costs, $17,500, during the
second year. This would also exhaust the first edition copies. The
main chance of compensating for the $125,000 of other non
monetary but poignantly real costs would be to sell rights for new
editions to other publishers As for the royalties of the author, in our
simulated account here, these would have to wait until further new
editions were issued, and were ticketed for archival expenses.
Apparently the avant-garde or heretical author is frustrated whether
by the publishing business or in his own efforts to reach out and
communicate.

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Deg was continually irritated by the ignorance of the intelligentsia
concerning the engine rooms of the ships carrying them. They are
brainwashed by the language of Hollywood, in the markets of best
sellers, and in the display quantities of ads of rich corporations. The
intellectuals, with few exceptions, inflict upon their creative
brethren the oppressive standards of the rotten rich --fame, money,
connections. Dick Cornuelle and Deg enjoyed examining some of
the exquisite typography, color-drenched illustrations, and perfect
printing that went into annual reports of companies which had
bought dearly Cornuelle's more than ample writing talents. No
expense, no technology, no skill was spared to convey to some
thousands of barely interested shareholders and stockbrokers how
well or badly the managers had run their affairs during the year. The
annual report, no matter how expensively published, was but a trifle
in their operating costs of the year. Yet it would have covered the
costs of publishing beautifully fifty creative works.

Where are all these creative works? Is that the objection? Most of
them are abortions of a culture of intellectual and science
prostitution. They do not appear because they cannot be carried to
full term. They do not appear because they expire too in their
creator's archives. And this is why Deg, as he came to the end of
the Quantavolution Series and I near the end of telling its history,
began to harangue his family and intimates to set up an Institute for
Creative Archives. A billion dollars a year, he claimed, is the
cultural loss to the American nation of the death of the archives of
its creative workers. This was a real loss, not registered in the
unselective National Economy's Accounting System. He wanted to
do something about it.

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