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THE VELIKOVSKY STORY: The Scientific Mafia

David Stove

The story of Velikovsky's theory, its reception, and its subsequent
confirmations, constitutes one of the most fascinating chapters in the entire
history of thought; and it is one which is still unfolding.  This paper can be
no more than a sketch of a sketch of it.  Those who wish to know more can best
begin by reading "The Velikovsky Affair," ed. A.  de Grazia (University Books,
1966).  A book called "Worlds in Collision" was published in the USA in 1950.
According to its author, Venus as a planet is only some 3,500 years old.  The
proto-planet, in effect an enormous comet, had originated, at some earlier
time, by disruption from Jupiter.  It moved for centuries on a very eccentric
orbit, and about 1500 B.C. made its two closest approaches to the Earth.
During the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., the comet-Venus repeatedly
approached Mars, and Mars in turn menaced our planet.  Only after all these
encounters did Venus finally lose its last cometary characteristics and settle
down to its present planetary behavior.  The effects of these encounters,
especially the earlier ones, on the Earth, are portrayed as truly
catastrophic.  Oceans were displaced, continents drowned, mountains built and
demolished, organic populations extinguished, civilizations overwhelmed, the
diurnal motion interrupted, the month and year lengthened, the axis of
rotation changed, etc., etc.  The author was one Immanuel Velikovsky, a
Russian Jew, born in 1895.  He graduated in medicine in Moscow in 1921, and
after various other occupations and places of residence he was to be found
practicing psychoanalysis in Tel Aviv in the Thirties. A book he projected on
Freud's heroes was the unlikely germ of all his later work, for it led him to
think about Moses and the Exodus.  Now the Bible portrays the Exodus as taking
place amid a series of extraordinary natural disasters; and especially when
Velikovsky found an Egyptian document which seemed to refer to the same
events, he began to wonder whether the disasters might not have been real.

Natural Catastrophism

Ten years later "Worlds in Collision" presented his evidence, accumulated from 
testimony, tradition, legend, and religions the world over, for the story of 
the birth of Venus as a planet after a period in which earth, sea and sky were 
convulsed.  The next few years saw the publication of his "Earth in Upheaval",
which assembles geological, paleontological, and archaeological evidence for
the same theory- and of "Ages in Chaos", Velikovsky's revised chronology of
Egyptian history (which he needs to shorten by 500 years).

It does not need an expert in the history of geology to recognize in 
Velikovsky's theory a revival of 18th century catastrophism.  It differs from 
most earlier catastrophisms, however, in not attributing catastrophies to a 
supernatural agent; in attributing them to an extraterrestrial agent; and in 
supposing catastrophes to have occurred in historical times.  There have been 
other theories in this century of catastrophies due to a natural 
extraterrestrial agent.  But I am sure that no catastrophism has ever been 
developed with so much ingenuity and comprehensiveness as by Velikovsky.  The 
range of subjects on which his theory has led him to novel suggestions is 
really almost in- credible: from the chemistry of Mars' atmosphere to the 
original of the "plumed serpent" of Mexican mythology; from the nature of 
manna to the cause of (the ending of) the quaternary ice age; from the origin 
of species to the identity of the Queen of Sheba; and so on, forever.

"Worlds in Collision" quickly became a best-seller. Such a book has, of 
course, enormous appeal to what I call the "anti-flouride belt" in modern 
societies.  But it also quickly became the target of nearly universal abuse 
and derision.  The Dallas News thought it was a Russian propaganda ploy.  The 
Daily Worker saw in its popularity a sure sign of the dying days of bourgeois 
society.  Well, one doesn't expect a great deal from the Dallas News; or 
anything at all from a communist newspaper.  But what of that mighty 
intellect, J.B.S. Haldane, in Bri- tain?   He thought that the book was an 
attempt by the U.S. warmongers to soften us up for the atomic war they were 
preparing to launch!

The professional scientists' campaign against "Worlds in Collision" began well 
before the book appeared. Harlow Shapley, probably the best-known American 
astronomer alive today, led an energetic attempt to stop the publisher, 
Macmillan, from publishing the book.  He arranged for denunciations of the 
book, still before its appearance, by an astronomer, a geolo- gist, and an 
archaeologist, in a learned journal.  None of them had read the book.  When it 
did appear, denunciatory reviews were arranged again in xeveral instances, 
professors who boasted of never having read the book.  Velikovsky was 
rigorously excluded from access to learned journals for his replies.  Then 
Shapley and others really got busy on the old-boy circuit.  They forced the 
sacking of the Senior Editor of Macmillan responsible for accepting the 
Velikovsky manuscript. (He had been with the firm 25 years.)  They forced the 
sacking of the director of the famous Hayden Planetarium in New York, because 
he proposed to take Velikovsky seriously enough to mount a display about the 
theory.

Then Macmillan representatives all over the country began to report that 
science professors in the universities were refusing to see them.  Macmillan 
finally caved in, and prevailed on Velikovsky to let them transfer their 
best-selling property to a competitor, Doubleday, which, as it has no textbook 
division, is not susceptible to professorial blackmail.

"Administrative Measures"

The process thus begun did not stop.  In 1964 the Bulletin of the Atomic 
Scientists -that famous organ of the kind of scientific conscience of which 
the late Robert- Oppenheimer was the most adored representative- hired an 
ignorant journalist to deride Velikovsky on his Egyptological expertise, and 
other matters equally atomic. But Velikovsky could not get space for a reply.  
All this belongs on the level of what the Russians call "administrative 
measures.  " What of the intellectual level?  Well, a great many "refutations" 
of Velikovsky's theory have appeared in print, some by very famous people, 
such as Donald Menzel at Harvard, and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, also of 
Harvard, the author of the well-known astronomical textbook.  I cannot enter 
into any details of them here. They are chiefly remarkable for dishonesty or 
incompetence. They misquote the text they are criticizing.  They wilfully 
misrepresent the theory Velikovsky advanced. And they are replete with errors 
of fact and theory.  But they are now of only historical interest, for they 
aimed to prove too much, far too much: that a theory of this kind is 
impossible. Whereas it would, I am sure, now be generally admitted that a 
story like the one Velikovsky told cannot be excluded on grounds of its 
conflict with any deeply-entrenched law or theory; for there is no such 
conflict. The theory is a local, historical one, and has to be assessed as 
such.

What, then, of the positive evidence for the theory?

As to the evidence assembled in Velisky's books- well, you must read them, and 
see for yourself what you think that great mass of evidence is worth.  ror my 
part, the books convinced me ot two things: that a thesis of extraterrstrial 
catastrophes in historical times is at least a distinctly live option; and 
that in historical times Venus has done- something peculiar, at any rate.

Startling Evidence

But I must mention some of the more startling pieces of evidence that have 
come to light since Velikovsky published.  According to Velikovsky, there were 
tremendous electrical discharges between the earth and the giant comet, and 
between the comet's head and tail.  This among other things, led him to 
ascribe an altogether novel importance to electrical and magnetic forces in 
the solar system.  You must remember that this was in 1950- i.e., before the 
dawn of the space age; these were the good old days when inertia and 
gravitation were still thought to be equal to every task (plus only a little 
help from the sun's light-pressure, to blow comet-tails the right way.)

Well, the whole trend of discovery since then has of course been Velikovsky's 
way.  He did not actually predict the Van Allen belts, but he said that the 
earth must have a magnetosphere much stronger, and extending much further into 
space, than anyone else believed possible.  He did predict that Jupiter would 
be found to be a radio source, long before the astonished radio-astronomers 
found it so.  And there is much more like that.  According to Velikovsky, 
there were all over the world, as folklore alleges, rains of burning pitch.  
This, among other things, led him to assert in 1950 that the clouds of Venus 
must be very rich in petroleum gas.  All contemporary knowledge of the 
chemistry of the planet's clouds was flatly against it.  Yet it has turned out 
to be so. If you think this is a bit creepy, you have heard nothing yet.

According to Velikovsky in 1950, Venus must  still be very hot, because of the 
circumstances or its recent birth and subsequent career.  The astronomers had 
long "known" that it was cool, and as late as 1959 accepted estimates of its 
temperature, such as 59 degrees centi- grade, were still being revised 
slightly downward.  Yet it has turned out that the planet has a surface 
temperature around 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

Backward Venus

This would be hard enough to reconcile with any "uniformitarian" theory which
requires a common origin for all the planets.  But worse was to come. For
Mariner II put it beyond doubt that the rotation of Venus is retrograde- that
is, while it revolves in the same direction as that in which all the other
planets both revolve and rotate, it rotates in the contrary sense!  No doubt
ad hoc amendments will be tried, to fit this fact into conventional theories
of the origin of the planets (just as desperate ad hoc amendments to a
"greenhouse" theory are still being made to account for the temperature); but
this one will test their ingenuity, that is certain.

Of things that have come to light since the de Grazia book was published, two 
deserve mention, however briefly.  First, the fantastically turbulent and hot 
state of Jupiter- the enormous explosions it suffers, the changes in its speed 
of rotation, and a surface temperature perhaps around 1,000 degrees F. 
(Remember your astronomical textbooks, and all that ice, miles thick, on 
Jupiter?  We all. "knew," ages ago, how cold and dead Jupiter is.) Second, 
what appears to be a vestige of an earlier gravitational "lock" of the earth 
on Venus: for Venus is found to turn the same face to us at each inferior 
conjunction! (For references on these two matters, see Yale Scientific 
Magazine 41, [Aprio, 1967}

well, this is how things are going.  The process of silently "borrowing" 
Velikovsky's ideas began as soon as he first published; but as can easily be 
imagined, with everything going his way, this industry has become enormous. 
(One distinquished archaeological career has been made out of a single 
paragraph in "Worlds in Collision".)  But still no power on earth, apparently, 
is strong enough to oblige a single professional scientist to give Velikovsky 
the smallest footnote acknowledgement in a learned publication. The stony 
silence continues perfectlv unbroken

Psychoanalysis and Fundamentalism

There are certain observations I want to make which are quite independent of 
the question whether Velikovsky's theory is true.

First, on the reception of the theory, and the light this throws on the 
intellectual and moral quality of contemporary science, and contemporary life.

Consider how different the reception of Velikovsky's work would have been if 
it had been Christian fundamentalism say, or fashionable French metaphysical 
anthropology.  Or psychoanalysis; suppose Velikovsky had interpreted the 
folklore of catastrophe as distortions of infantile or intrauterine 
experience.  Of course it would have gone down smooth as silk!  You could get 
degrees in it by now.  Think about that.

Consider, again, how different the reception would have been if Velikovsky had 
produced a work of literature.  Who can imagine science professors conspiring 
to suppress an avant-garde play or novel however vicious or insane its 
contentsi Far from it, they would be scandalised by any such attempt at 
censorship, and would rally to the author's aid.  You think about that!  C. P. 
Snow was wildly wrong here: scientists have not succumbed less than the rest, 
but if anything more, to the aesthetic propaganda of the present cen- tury.  
The treatment accorded to Velikovsky is one of the pleasant fringe-benefits we 
get from 50 years of popular preaching in praise of art.

But it is on professional science itself that the case throws the most 
revealing light. We all grizzle about specialization professionalization, 
departmental empire- building, etc. But unless and until you read the details 
of this case, you can have no idea of the pitiless ferocity or the 
organizational muscle that organized science can display. Talk about the 
"military-industrial" complex! We need a Wright-Mills to begin to do justice 
to this almost unacknowledged locus of power in modern society.  The great 
Italian probability-theorist, de Finetti, speaking in 1964 about Velikovsky's 
case, compared the scientific complex to a "despotic and irresponsible Mafia."

Second, some bried observations arising from the theory itself, but still 
independent of its truth.  One is this, that if anything remotely like 
Velikovsky's theory is true, what vistas it opens up for the whole study of 
religion, and of the fear of the skies in general!  (Though Velikovsky himself 
nev- er says a word about this.)

Another is this. If anything remotely like Velikovsky's theory is true, the 
whole range of humanistic studies, clas- sics, history, archaeology, 
psychology, anthropology takes on an entirely new interest, through being 
brought into living connection with astronomy and the earth sciences.  The 
18th century convinced men that old books-the Bible, etc.-were "literature".  
Thereupon mankind quite properly lost interest in them.  Now however, it 
becomes possible to regard them as something else; and suddenly old books are 
important again.

Finally, thanks to the degree of success that Velikovsky's theory has already 
had, even if it has no more, we can begin to see in perspective the character 
of the world-wide view which has just died, but into which everyone here was 
born.  The solar system as a gigantic clock, the parts of which are separated 
by perfectly clean space, and among which only gravitation and inertia
operate; with all the planets originating together, and subject there- after
to no disastrous mutual interference whatever.

This is the world view which Newton bequeathed almost single-handed to the 
following centuries.  It is the world-view of the French Academy, which until 
1803 continued to classify all stories of the fall of meteorites from the sky 
with astrology and superstition.  It is the world- view of the conventional 
historians of astronomy, who confidently compute the time and path of eclipses 
thousands of years ago, down to the second and the inch- for all the world as 
though they were Laplacian calculators.

Disrupted Heavens

As Livio Stecchini points out in the de Grazia volume, it is a 
neo-Aristotelian world-view. It sets a gulf between the heavens, where all is 
perfect order and perpetual peace; and this lower world of ours, where 
disorder and strife are not unknown.  It furnished the basis on which the 18th 
century could set aside revelation, put all its money on the argument from 
design, and proclaim the religion of reason and nature.  Alas for the 
Voltaires!  What they insisted on taking for a demonstrated consequence of 
Newtonian laws- the stability of the solar system- was something agonizingly 
different for newton himself: viz., an absolutely essential premise for the 
argument from design, yet one for which he could never find adequate support.
Hence, inter alia, his terrible falling- out with his former protege, Whiston,
who ascribed the Nochian deluge to the close approach of a huge comet!

Anyway, that's all over now.  The neo-Aristotelian age of Newton died as the
space age came in.  We can even date its demise specifically to 1962, when
Mariner II confirmed the retrograde rotation of Venus.  The new air is
wonderfully exhilarating; but also chilling.  Of course, the Copernican new
air was dreadfully chilling, in its time.  But then, when Newton had completed
the Copernican revolution, the earth, although it was no longer still, and no
longer at the center, had received a great compensating advantage: it was
safe.  Now that's gone too.

David Stove is an Australian and senior lecturer
in the department of philosophy, University of Sydney
and author of "Probasbility and Hume's Inductive
Skepticism", Oxford University Press.

this article was firt publlished in Pensee journal
May 1972, Vol II, No. 2