Answers To Further Critics LYNN E. ROSE Copyright (c) 1986 by Lynn E. Rose (This paper is a sequel to my "Answers to Critics", which appeared in KRONOS XI:2, pages 3-l8.) ........ Alfred de Grazia's Cosmic Heretics ( 1984) bills itself as a "true" narrative of all sorts of events from the early 1960's to the early 1980's. Many of these events lie entirely outside my own experience and are difficult for me to corroborate. Other claims in the book are about events that I am more familiar with, even though I was not always directly involved with them. In such cases, while some of what de Grazia says is more or less correct, it seems to me that there is far too much of what he says that is incorrect: his remarks are often either false or severely distorted, and the book as a whole is simply not a reliable source of historical information. Indeed, it is one of those situations in which we must already know the facts, in order to separate the factual claims from the non-factual claims. Anyone studying the history of the Velikovsky movement would be foolish to accept the sorts of claims that are made in Cosmic Heretics, unless those claims can be corroborated on the basis of independent sources.(1) Part of the pervasively distorted perspective of Cosmic Heretics can be attributed to de Grazia's focus on himself. As if one de Grazia were not enough, we must deal with at least a trinity of de Grazias: (1) the author, who usually writes in the first person; (2) "Joseph Grace", who carries de Grazia's middle name and supposedly serves as a devil's advocate; and (3) the mysterious "Deg", who appears to be the same as de Grazia and the author, except that both Deg and de Grazia are at times said to be in disagreement with the author! If this were The Three Faces of Eve, we might see some point to these multiple personalities. Here, it is just a frivolous distraction. Writers of autobiographies and personal memoirs do inevitably focus on themselves, of course, but a major problem with Cosmic Heretics is the way de Grazia focuses on himself as if he were a major and central figure in the Velikovskian movement even at times when he was not. For the past fifteen years, de Grazia has not been a major or central figure in the Velikovsky movement, though he writes as if he had been. Prior to that, and beginning with his first contact with Velikovsky in 1963, de Grazia was indeed a fairly important figure in the movement. This lasted for about eight years. His importance was primarily in the areas of editing and organizing, however, and his written contributions were relatively modest. He did produce one rather conventional paper on the scientific reception system, but, for a man who had at that time already written several books, that one article was but a dab. As founding editor of the American Behavioral Scientist, he arranged to publish three papers in the September, 1963. issue: one by Ralph Juergens, one by Livio Stecchini, and his own paper on the scientific reception system. That issue of the ABS was later expanded and published as a book, The Velikovsky Affair, which de Grazia co-authored and co-edited (in that book, de Grazia's only contributions were his own paper from ABS, plus a short introduction, while Juergens and Stecchini both provided lengthy additional papers for the occasion). In the summer of 1971, de Grazia organized the conference at "Deg's college" in Switzerland, which was attended by Velikovsky and a number of his supporters. Those are de Grazia's principal contributions to the Velikovsky movement. In the period from the autumn of 1971 on, when I was much involved in what was happening, I saw very little evidence of any participation by de Grazia. The Velikovskys rarely mentioned him. He was not, of course, inactive during the 1970's. He was very busy doing his own thing, traveling the world, writing his books, and so on. I gathered that he was much more interested in elaborating his own ideas than in developing and advancing Velikovsky's ideas, and I came to think of him more as a one-man de Grazia movement than as an active member of the Velikovsky movement. From time to time he did show up, or was heard from, but there were always at least a dozen other people, in the 1970's and 1980's, who contributed far more than de Grazia did to the Velikovsky movement. * * * Those are some of my general impressions about Cosmic Heretics and its author/authors. In the following part of this discussion, I shall be concerned with just two or three of the score or so of places in the book where I am mentioned by name. I wish not only to set the record straight regarding these matters, but also to use them as illustrations of how de Grazia's comments often seem to me to be quite remote from the truth. (In what follows, I regret the need to write at such length about personal matters, especially when these subjects have so little relevance to the really important issues that should be our main concern. On the one hand, I would like to say as little as possible about de Grazia's book. On the other hand, it may be that the only way to counter gossipy material that is false is with gossipy material that is true. And it is quite clear to me that there is much in de Grazia's book that is false and that needs to be countered. I intend to do my share of countering, and I urge others to do theirs.) * * * On page 289, de Grazia says that "Deg liked ornery characters like [Lewis] Greenberg more than suave types like Rose". I would suggest that this description of me as "suave" may be somewhat inconsistent with another description of me on page 237 as "grumpy" - de Grazia seems to mean that I was "grumpy" about the handling of the A.A.A.S. Symposium of February, 1974. But it is the matter of the A.A.A.S. Symposium itself that is important here, rather than de Grazia's various opinions of me, or even the issue of whether those opinions are self-contradictory. For all of the gossipy and self-absorbed character of the book, it is somewhat puzzling that de Grazia should omit one of the major events in de Grazia's dealings with Velikovsky: the time when Velikovsky asked de Grazia (and me) to work on a book about the 1974 A.A.A.S. Symposium and its aftermath. That was one moment during those years when de Grazia perhaps was at the center of the Velikovsky movement. (Or almost.) As far as I have noticed, the only place in the book where this conversation is even alluded to is in de Grazia's remark that I had become "grumpy" about the A.A.A.S. Symposium. Perhaps I did indeed strike de Grazia as "grumpy" when the subject of the A.A.A.S. Symposium came up. Certainly both de Grazia and I were something other than "suave" on that occasion. But what I was actually "grumpy" about - if that is the right word - was the idea of working with de Grazia. The need for a full-scale response to the A.A.A.S. critics was much on Velikovsky's mind during those years. He was extremely dissatisfied with the seventh issue of Pensee, and his hopes of being allowed to reply within the context of the Cornell book - Scientists Confront Velikovsky ( 1977) - were finally dashed, when it became clear that he would be at the mercy of a group of people whose main purpose was to stack the deck against him and to treat him as unfairly as they could. Velikovsky eventually decided not to submit his "Afterword" to the Cornell people, even though it was already written. As an alternative, he had begun to think of a separate, book-length reply. The conversation in question took place in the Velikovsky's living room, with Velikovsky and me on the facing sofas, and de Grazia in one of the single chairs that Velikovsky usually sat in. Like many other frequent visitors, I knew which chairs were Velikovsky's favorites and made it a point to stay out of them. Perhaps that is related to what de Grazia sees as suavity. On page 89 of Cosmic Heretics, de Grazia makes much of not wanting anybody to sit in Velikovsky's chair after his death, but on this occasion he had no qualms about displacing Velikovsky to the sofa. It is fortunate that Velikovsky was not wearing a mantle that day. Velikovsky seemed comfortable on the sofa, though it was perhaps the first time that I had seen him there. He asked if de Grazia and I would be interested in co-authoring a book on the A.A.A.S. affair. Velikovsky saw the A.A.A.S. affair in the 1970's as comparable in many ways to the events of the 1950's. Since de Grazia had already dealt with the Velikovsky affair of the 1950's, it was reasonable for Velikovsky to think of him as one who might work on the A.A.A.S. story as a continuation of the Velikovsky affair of the 1950's. It was also reasonable for Velikovsky to think of me. I had long been interested in the Velikovsky affair, and was even then working on a full-scale critique of Peter Huber's A.A.A.S. paper on Venus. Also, Velikovsky had liked my "Censorship" paper in Pensee IVR I, which was concerned with the events of the 1950's. Velikovsky waited for our responses to his proposal. He seemed to think that we would agree quite readily. Instead, both de Grazia and I waxed inarticulate. To the best of my recollection, de Grazia said nothing at all. I did not want to say anything either, but I did hem and haw a little, and said that perhaps this was an idea that we could examine further. Velikovsky was surprised and mystified by the uncomfortable silence and by the obvious distaste for his proposal, and he did not hide his disappointment. Neither de Grazia nor I was at all "suave" about it. We just sat there, like two mute bumps on a log, and let Velikovsky wonder out loud about us. Our awkward silence, and Velikovsky's wondering about it, probably lasted no more than thirty seconds, though it seemed interminable. My opinion is that Velikovsky's long professional experience as a psychoanalyst then came into play here. He sensed rather quickly, and surprisingly calmly, that he was not going to get either one of us to say anything, and that there was some sort of blockage that he could do nothing about until he understood it better. So he decided to go on to other matters, even though the A.A.A.S. project - which was very important to him and which he was eager to get settled - had been left up in the air for reasons that he did not understand. There were a number of things about working with de Grazia that bothered me, and that I quickly reviewed in my mind during that period of "grumpy" silence. At the time, I did not want de Grazia to hear them. Now, because of de Grazia's book, I want everybody to hear them. I thought about how different from mine (and possibly incompatible with mine) was de Grazia's approach to the sociology of science in his essay in The Velikovsky Affair. Like Velikovsky, I saw the Velikovsky affair as a matter of psychoanalytic resistance, and I found de Grazia's conventional models and sociological jargon to be of little use in trying to understand what went on. I also shared Velikovsky's distaste for the frivolous coinage of words - such as the rather misbegotten "quantavolution". (Velikovsky maintained that pseudo-scientists frequently display a compulsion to coin new words.) I thought about how ominous was de Grazia's unilateral decision to print The Velikovsky Affair with "Alfred de Grazia" listed as the sole editor, when in fact Juergens and Stecchini (and Velikovsky, too) were not only co-authors but also co-editors. I knew that Juergens and Stecchini protested their omission from the title-page with sufficient outrage that subsequent printings have had to list all three names, as should have been the case from the beginning. (Nevertheless, page 92 of Cosmic Heretics still refers to The Velikovsky Affair as "Deg's Book", and there are several similar remarks scattered through Cosmic Heretics - with no mention of the fact that The Velikovsky Affair was actually co-edited as well as co-authored. Even in the mid-1970's, I had little reason to think that de Grazia would treat me any differently from the way in which he had treated Juergens and Stecchini. If de Grazia and I had co-authored a book, would it have been presented as "Deg's Book" also?) I thought about how typical of de Grazia it had been to submit to KRONOS a paper by himself with a paper by Stecchini tacked on to it as an appendix. I liked de Grazia's paper, which was on Irving Michelson, and I had earlier recommended that it be published in Pensee. But I did not see any reason why Stecchini should be relegated to an appendix of de Grazia's paper. Similarly, I did not see why Stecchini should have been relegated to a long appendix of Peter Tompkins' book, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, especially when Stecchini's appendix was a far greater contribution to scholarship than Tompkins' book could ever be. Thus I recommended to Greenberg - and he readily agreed - that Stecchini's piece should be published as a separate article, not as a mere appendix to something by de Grazia. I even wrote a short piece of my own on "Michelson and Meton", and the three articles appeared together in KRONOS I:3 (1975). The enumeration of these points takes far longer than the few seconds that I needed to mull them over in my mind. Most of my thinking during the ensuing period of strain was directed toward trying to find something, anything, that I could say. I bore no ill-will toward de Grazia; it was fine with me if he did his work and I did mine, but I did not want to collaborate with him on such a major project. I could not say Yes, and if I did say No, I would have to give Velikovsky my reasons. All in all, it seemed better to sit there in silence, which is essentially what I did. A little later that day, after de Grazia had gone, Velikovsky and I were seated at the kitchen table on the second floor, and he brought up the earlier conversation. He seemed not at all hurt, just puzzled. He handled the matter as if he expected my reticence to continue: instead of asking me any explicit questions, he just mentioned that he had suggested that de Grazia and I might want to work together on an A.A.A.S. volume and that neither one of us had seemed interested. So long as de Grazia was not present, I of course had no reluctance to discuss the matter. I explained my position as follows (this is close to verbatim): "I am interested in working on the A.A.A.S. material, but not with de Grazia. You made a mistake. You asked us when we were together. You should have talked to us separately. I do not know why de Grazia was silent, but the reason I was unable to say anything was because I do not want to co-author a book with de Grazia. I think that he would expect to make all the key decisions and run things, and that I would end up doing all the work. I also think that he would then try to take all the credit. If you had asked me in private, I could have told you immediately that I was not willing to work with de Grazia, and then none of this need have happened." Velikovsky accepted all this without any questions. He did not even ask why I saw de Grazia as I did. After all, he knew de Grazia far better than I did. In any case, Velikovsky now had at least half of his mystery solved. I still do not know whether he ever solved the other half of the mystery, namely, what made de Grazia fall silent. Presumably de Grazia had as little desire to work with me as I had to work with him. He may also have felt that the A.A.A.S. project itself was not as important as it seemed to Velikovsky and me. On later occasions, I never bothered to ask Velikovsky if he had learned what caused de Grazia's silence. Velikovsky and I always had much more important matters to discuss, and I was just never curious enough about this to mention it to him again. In due course, Velikovsky came up with another idea, that he and I should co-author the book on the A.A.A.S. affair. To this I readily agreed, and the work proceeded over the next several years. The Sins of the Sons. A Critique of Velikovsky's A:A.A.S. Critics was eventually completed and is presently being readied for submission to a publisher. * ** On page 185 of Cosmic Heretics, we find the following paragraph: "V. lacked the capacity to give and take; he would disrupt any on-going thought processes to call all hands to shoo the chickens out of his backyard. Those heretics, like Rose and Vaughan, who opted to exercise their intellects in his garden, found themselves becoming overspecialized in certain crops, interpreting Venus tablets and calculating conceivable orbits under conventional restraints. This is only to say that such heretics became unfortunately limited despite their eminent suitability for larger tasks; they were also diligently occupied, as was the solaria binaria trio, in developing the larger network of heretics and playing firemen for V.'s fires (some of which were arson)." Clearly de Grazia is again lashing out at Velikovsky, but, aside from that, I do not understand just what this paragraph says. (I have had the same problem with a number of de Grazia's other pronouncements.) The context is of little help: this paragraph just seems to have been jammed into the middle of a discussion of electromagnetic phenomena in the galaxy, with little concern about continuity. (Who are the members of the solaria binaria trio? Earl Milton, de Grazia, and Deg, perhaps?) As one who had very extensive "give and take" with Velikovsky during the last eight years of his life, I find de Grazia's opening salvo mystifying. Nor do I understand his remarks about chickens and fires and arson. Even the statements about Vaughan and me are rather obscure. On the one hand, de Grazia seems to be attributing to Vaughan and me a capacity to do work of great scope. (If I didn't know better, I might take that as a compliment.) On the other hand, he seems to be saying that our work on the Venus tablets is not only narrow, but has made us narrow, despite our "eminent suitability for larger tasks". Finally, he seems to be saying that this waste of our talents is somehow Velikovsky's fault. The suggestion is that Velikovsky assigned us this unworthy task, just as he is said to have assigned us the tasks of shooing chickens and fighting arson fires. (Again, I don't really know just what all of this means. Could it be that shooing chickens and fighting arson fires is like what I am doing right now?) But let us speak a little further about the Venus tablets. Velikovsky was not even aware of our decision to study the Venus tablets. Early in 1972, it was not Velikovsky but Vaughan who suggested that he and I work together on the Venus tablets. I immediately agreed, and that was that. Velikovsky was not notified or consulted, and did not even hear about our work until some time later. Thus the suggestion that Velikovsky assigned us this task is false. The further suggestion that this task is unimportant and unworthy of our talents (whatever those talents may be) is also false. Trying to arrive at a correct understanding of the Venus tablets and the orbits that they imply is one of the most important things that anyone could do. If de Grazia disagrees, that only suggests that he has no grasp of the subject. As far as we know, the Venus tablets are the only set of records old enough and detailed enough to enable us to determine any of the orbits that were in effect prior to the present orbital arrangement. When the observations on the Venus tablets were made, Venus may already have been substantially on its present orbit, but Earth seems to have been on an orbit whose eccentricity was at least five or six times the eccentricity of the present orbit of Earth. If our dating of Years 1 to 17 of the observations to the early eighth century is correct, this suggests that at least one drastic change in Earth's orbit occurred subsequent to that time. The importance of this for catastrophism should be obvious. * * * For Velikovskians, there are two special implications of the Venus tablets that need to be mentioned here, since they are apparently not obvious to the parties concerned. One implication is that those "supporters" of Velikovsky who have rejected the Martian part of the Worlds in Collision scenario should be more cautious. Something seems to have changed Earth's orbit, and it apparently wasn't Venus. That leaves Mars as the most likely candidate. Thus those who have rejected the Martian episodes may eventually have to return to the Velikovsky position. A second implication is that those who have rejected the later parts of the revised chronology may also have to return to the Velikovsky position, since much of Velikovsky's revised chronology for that period is linked to the Martian episodes. It would be premature to try to argue all of this in any detail, but it is not too early to recommend that those "Velikovskians" who have dropped the Martian episodes and/or who have dropped the later parts of the revised chronology should carefully consider what would be the effect on their views if they became persuaded that Earth underwent at least one major orbital change as recently as about twenty seven centuries ago. In my opinion, that effect would be lethal. * * * Having criticized a number of others, let me conclude with a criticism of myself (and Vaughan). The three Tables in our "Sequence" paper (Pensee IVR VIII, pages 30-31) all give a relatively substantial eccentricity for Earth during the post-Beth-horon period or Stage 3. (The post-Beth-horon period covers the more than six centuries between the last near-collision with Venus, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the first near-collision with Mars, in the eighth century.) In all three Tables, the Stage 3 eccentricity of Earth is 0.090. This raises a problem. Those Tables were intended as possible models for Velikovsky's sequence of orbits. But Velikovsky thought that the post-Beth-horon period featured a year of 360 days and a month of thirty days. Furthermore, he thought that these years and months were not schematic but observational. He also thought that no intercalary months or even intercalary days were used during the post-Beth-horon period. These views of Velikovsky's have frequently been attacked, by his "friends" and his foes alike. I have not yet been convinced either way, and it is not my purpose here to try to resolve these disputes. (I do find that many of those attacks on Velikovsky are unconvincing, but that in itself does not enable me to resolve the basic issue here.) For now, I merely wish to point out that if the thirty-day months were not schematic, but essentially observational, then both Earth and the Moon would presumably have been on orbits of almost negligible eccentricity. If Earth did have an eccentricity of 0.090, then there would have to have been considerable variation in the length of the synodic month at different times of the year, as well as in the length of the solar day. (Both the solar day and the synodic month are longer when Earth is nearer the Sun and shorter when Earth is farther from the Sun.) We would then have to regard the months of thirty days as merely reflecting the mean values, and therefore as being more schematic than strictly observational. Whether Velikovsky was right or wrong about the thirty-day months, the 360-day year, and the lack of intercalation, our figure of 0.090 in Stage 3 still fails to model Velikovsky's actual views, and therefore fails to accomplish our intended purpose. For whatever it is worth, I regard the comments in the preceding paragraph as the first and only legitimate criticism of our "Sequence" paper that has yet appeared. ** * If it seemed desirable, Vaughan and I could revise our three Tables, so as to reduce the 0.090 eccentricity virtually to zero. We are reluctant to do this, however, since the figure of 0.090 might turn out to have been fairly well chosen, despite the fact that it does not mirror Velikovsky's views on the non-schematic character of post-Beth-horon months. Ironically, it is the Venus tablets that are once again important here. * * * Like the post-Beth-horon calendars, the Venus tablets feature thirty-day months. With an Earth eccentricity of at least five or six times the present eccentricity, the months of thirty days on the Venus tablets could not be observational either, and would have to be schematic or at least mean months. Since Vaughan and I would put Years 1 to 17 on the Venus observations early in the eighth century, this problem would not necessarily affect the post-Beth-horon period or Stage 3. It depends upon whether the first Earth-Mars interaction did or did not precede Year 1 of the Venus observations. If it did, then the Venus observations would lie entirely within Stage 4. If it did not, and if there was an Earth-Mars encounter in Year 9, then Years 1 through 8b of the Venus observations would presumably lie at the very end of Stage 3. Since Years 1 through 8b do not display the requisite circularity, the Venus tablets would then have to be counted against Velikovsky's view that the post-Beth-horon or Stage 3 months were observational rather than schematic. On the other hand, if we accept Velikovsky's view as correct, then it would of course follow that Years 1 through 8b of the observations were in Stage 4, not in Stage 3, and the problem would be avoided. But none of this can be regarded as settled yet. It should be pointed out that Velikovsky's views on Stage 3 calendars remained most emphatic. During the Evening Session of the A.A.A.S. Symposium, he spoke as follows (my transcription): "First, I will respond to what was said, namely, about the month of thirty days and twelve months in a year without intercalating days into the year, which were added later. I am very proud of these chapters of mine toward the end of Worlds in Collision [see Chapters 7 and 8 of Part II], because I succeeded to quote from practically every ancient civilization, from Peru, to Mexico, to Rome, to Greece, to Babylon, to Assyria, to Persia, to Hindu, to China, to Japan, and to Egypt, and to Palestine, Judea, and probably several more civilizations, always [a] quotation not by myself, always by [a] specialist, always expressing the same wonder that [there were] no intercalary days - the year was just this: twelve months of thirty days - for a period of time, which was discontinued at the beginning of the eighth century. "Soon after that time, in all places, in all civilization[s], one or another reform was done, and five or five and a quarter days were added by all civilizations. The reform was [carried out] almost simultaneously - at least during one and the same century. And expressions were not just about months - about the Moon, the Moon travels in thirty days. Half of the Moon is fifteen days. Such great errors as a half a day every month, to do was never done." Or, as Velikovsky put it several minutes later: "So it is not so simple to explain everything: the ancient [s] did not know anything, they did not care, half a day does not count. No such thing." The "half a day" refers to those who claim that the mean synodic month was always just over 29.5 days, and that the reported thirty day month is but a rough approximation. I am not yet prepared either to accept or to reject Velikovsky's views about the post-Beth-horon year consisting of twelve non schematic months of thirty days each, with no intercalation. The sort of evidence that is compiled in Worlds in Collision in support of these views is indeed substantial, but it may not be as unequivocal or as exhaustive as Velikovsky thought, and there may even be some counter-evidence . The entire matter requires further study. Perhaps what is most important is that Velikovsky's suggestion that there were changes in the orbit of Earth as recently as about twenty-seven centuries ago remains entirely plausible. The Venus tablets seem to provide extremely strong support for that suggestion of Velikovsky's, though Velikovsky himself did not expressly recognize this. The Venus tablets are discussed in a section of Worlds in Collision entitled "Venus Moves Irregularly"; this section is on pages 198-200 - that is, still in Part I of the book. Velikovsky there presumes that the strangeness of the Venus observations is due to Venus' being "an errant comet" that was on an orbit radically different from the present orbit of Venus. In other words, Velikovsky presumes that the Venus tablets pertain to a time prior to the arrival of Venus onto its present orbit. At first, Vaughan and I approached the Venus tablets in much the same way, but we eventually came to suspect that the Venus tablets show Earth, not Venus, on an orbit radically different from its present orbit. Thus Vaughan and I would prefer to see pages 198-200 of Worlds in Collision in Part II ("Mars") rather than in Part I ("Venus"). For the Venus tablets seem not to pertain to how "Venus Moves Irregularly" in any orbital sense; that is, they apparently do not show Venus on an orbit radically different from its present orbit. Rather, they seem to show Earth on an orbit radically different from its present orbit. The implication is that the orbit of Earth must thereafter have changed substantially. Any such changes would apparently have been later in the eighth century and/or early in the seventh century, and would of course have had more to do with Mars than with Venus. The information that Earth underwent radical orbital change is far more valuable to us than would be any information that Venus or some other planet underwent such change. For if all we knew was that Venus or some other planet underwent such change, that would not provide clear and direct evidence that Earth itself - within historical times - participated in one or more interplanetary near collisions (and experienced one or more global catastrophes). Thus, as it turns out, the Venus tablets provide even stronger support for Velikovsky's overall theory than Velikovsky himself had anticipated, but that support pertains to Act Two of the cosmic drama that is described in Worlds in Collision, not to Act One. (This is perhaps just as well. If we can judge from the way many "supporters" of Velikovsky accept Act One and the related chronology, but reject Act Two and the related chronology, it may be that Act Two can use the support more than Act One anyway! Besides, when Act Two has been solidly established, arguing for Act One should be all that much easier.) * * * Although the Venus tablets provide strong support for Velikovsky's Martian episodes, they do not provide any real support for his views about post-Beth-horon calendars - despite the fact that the thirty-day months of the Venus tablets were sometimes mentioned by Velikovsky as part of the evidence for the post-Beth-horon calendars. As was noted above, Vaughan and I have found that the Venus tablets seem to reflect a situation in which Earth's orbital eccentricity was at least five or six times its present value. An immediate consequence of that finding - regardless of whether the Venus tablets are entirely in Stage 4 or partly in Stage 3 is that the thirty-day months on the Venus tablets must be either schematic or else mean months, not strictly observational as Velikovsky thought. And if the thirty-day months on the Venus tablets are non-observational, it would seem quite plausible that the thirty-day months of the post-Beth-horon period are non-observational also. That is precisely why Vaughan and I have not rushed to revise our Stage 3 figure of 0.090 for Earth's eccentricity. Such a figure may be difficult to reconcile with Velikovsky's views, but perhaps this is one occasion when we are better off not trying to model Velikovsky's views. I concede that the figure of 0.090 does not model Velikovsky's views here, but that figure might still turn out to be a fairly good estimate of the Stage 3 eccentricity, and there is no need to be in any hurry about modifying the Tables. To keep all of this in proper perspective, we should remember that what is most important about the post-Beth-horon calendars is not what they were in exact detail, but rather that they were not reflective of the present orbital arrangements. In this respect, Velikovsky remains correct, even if some of his detailed ideas about the post-Beth-horon calendars may eventually have to be reconsidered. Footnote 1. This warning comes too late to help Henry Bauer (the gullible author of Beyond Velikovsky), who has already swallowed de Grazia's book as if it were historical fact; see Bauer's review of Cosmic Heretics in Skeptical Inquirer IX: 3, pages 284-288 . _________________________________________________________________ \cdrom\pubs\journals\kronos\vol1103\056answr.htm