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SHAPLEY, VELIKOVSKY AND THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT

Horace Kallen

Editor,s Note:

Many writers have commented on the furor provoked by the
publication of Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision in 1950.
The name of Dr. Harlow Shapley, then director of the
Harvard Observatory, has arisen in connection with
unethical attempts to suppress the book and defame its
author, charge shapley has denied.  Here Dr. Horace
Kallen, a friend of Shapley,s in 1950 and himself a figure
in the events surrounding Velikovsky's book, attempts to
clarify the record.  Kallen, a co-founder of the New
School for Social Research and former dean of the graduate
faculty, is one of America's most respected scholars. He
was named by William James to edit that writer's
unfinished book, and he became the literary executor of
Benjamin Paul Blood.  His own books on philosophical,
religious, and sociological subjects number over 20,
including Art and Freedom (2 volumes), The Liberal Spirit,
The Education of Free Men, and Liberty, Laughter and
Tears.  Currently Kallen is professor emeritus of
philosophy, and research professor in social philosophy,
New Schoolfor Social Research.  This article is an
abbreviation of a considerably longer manuscript-

One day late in March, 1970, Dr.  Immanuel Velikovsky called me on the 
telephone from Princeton.  Among other things, he mentioned that in April it 
would be 20 years since the publication of the first of his controversial 
books, and that the assault on his personal integrity based on disbelief in 
the conceptions which the books expound had not ceased.  I asked for concrete 
facts.  He named Harlow Shapley, quondam professor of astronomy at Harvard, 
now emeritus.  Because I expressed surprise and shock, Dr. Velikovsky offered 
to send me copies of correspondence between Shapley and Albert Burgstahler, 
professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas, exchanged in 1967; and 
between Shapley and a girl student at Bay Village High School, Ohio, exchanged 
in March, 1969.  To Burgstahler Shapley wrote, "I find little happiness in 
reading or thinking about Velikovsky.  He seems to be one of our most erudite 
charlatans"  To Burgstahler's request for proof of his statement Shapley 
failed to reply.  His reply to Miss Lindeman,s question was: "All professional 
astronomers consider Velikovsky a fraud.  Can't you find a reputable subject 
for your research paper?"

Shapley,s recent comments on Velikovsky, false on their face, seem to me 
variations of a persistent libel begun over 20 years ago practically with the 
libeler's first contact with Velikovsky.  It happens that I had a part in 
furthering the contact, and I cannot help feeling chagrin and disgust over its 
unbelievable consequences.

To Dr. Velikovsky, disagreement regarding facts and theories was integral to 
the scientific enterprise; he expected his views to be met with dissent; 
constructing them as working hypotheses, he hoped that others in the field 
might help him to get them tested by observation and exper- iment.  He did not 
expect that soi-disant scientists would, without reading and reflection, 
blacken his reputation and libel his character because of his scholarly views.

For, as in practically no other vocation, the relations between those who 
engage in any one of the sciences are presumed to exemplify the principles of 
equal liberty and equal safety in the cooperative competition and the 
competitive cooperation on which its achievements depends.  But this 
presumption seems more a compensation in idea for the facts of scientific 
behavior than a description of science seen "like it is."

By and large scientists, however they begin, work at their vocations as 
organization men, serving the vested interests of their establishment, and 
defending the diverse doxies on which they rely in their personal rivalries 
for place, power, and prestige.  Via these rivalries, scientific "truth,' 
becomes a function of the "success" which the establishment awards.  
Alternatives which challenge such sanctioned "truths'' get condemned without 
examination as "unscientific heresies, mad inventions, dishonest 
fabrications".  Their proponents get denounced as crackpots, charlatans or 
frauds.  And this is what the establishment has done to Velikovsky and his 
reconstructions of astronomical processes and human events.

On the record, Harlow Shapley was the initiator and instigator of this 
exemplification of scientific fairplay.  The Ureys, the Whipples, the 
Gaposchkins, the McLaughlins and the rest but followed his strange' 
unpredictable lead.

Reading the exchanges between the emeritus Harvard astronomer' the Kansas 
chemist and the Ohio high school girl, I began to feel that I may well have 
made a mistake in trusting time and the authentic scientific spirit to 
dissipate the Shapley infection.  Maybe only court action would stop Shapley 
and clear Velikovsky's name and fame. I hope still, however, that telling the 
story "like it is" at least in terms of my part in it' will help toward a 
purer air.

I myself had been acquainted with Shapley from my days at Hanard and had come 
to regard him as a true believer in the method of science, with a concern to 
popularize the knowledge which it brings.  Dr. Velikovsky came into my orbit 
soon after his arrival in the United States, by way of an introduction from 
Judge Morris Rothenberg, a leader in Jewish affairs.

Velikovsky had only seen Shapley's name in the papers in connection with 
libertarian causes.  Having read that Shap- ley was to be the principal 
attraction at a college forum luncheon which the magazine Mademoiselle was 
holding in New York on April 13, 1946, Velikovsky sought him out.  He told 
Shapley that, as a result of six years of research, he had come to believe 
that there were changes in the constitution of the solar system.  He now had 
written down his findings, drawn from mankind's ancient records, from 
geological treatises, and the like, and asked that Shapley might be good 
enough to read his manuscript and, if he thought the data sufficient, to 
advise about having "one or two uncomplicated spectroscopic analyses" made.  
Shapley demurred; he was very busy- but if some one he knew were to read the 
manuscript first and recommend it, he would read it, too.  And the 
spectroscopic analysis might be made either by him or his colleague, Professor 
Whipple of the Harvard Observatory.

Among the tasters mentioned to protect Shapley from intellectual poisoning, I 
was one, and Shapley agreed that if I read Velikovsky's manuscript first and 
recommended it, he too would read it.  After canvassing another nominee, Veli- 
kovsky brought his work to me. Meanwhile, Shapley had withdrawn his offer to 
make those spectroscopic analyses because what Velikovsky had written him in a 
brief letter about the atmosphere of the planets did not justify an 
examination of his claims. On May 23, at Velikovsky's request, I wrote 
Shapley, expressing the hope that he would make the proffered analyses.

Concerning Velikovsky,s manuscript I wrote: "I have just finished reading it.  
From the side of the history of ideas and social relations, it seems to me 
that he has built up a serious theory deserving of the careful attention of 
scholars- theory and fact showing a kind of scientific imagination which on 
the whole has been unusual in our times.  If his theory should prove valid, 
not only astronomy but history and a good many of the anthropological and 
social sciences would need to be reconsidered both for their content and 
explanation.  If it should not prove to be valid, it would still be one of
those great guesses which occur far too infrequently in the history of human
thought.

"I am myself so impressed by what Dr.  Velikovsky has had
to say and the way in which he has established his
hypothesis that I feel as eager as he to have it undergo
the crucial test which the spectroscopic analyses he
suggests would be"

To which Shapley replied on May 27:

"The sensational claims of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky fail to
interest as much as they should, notwithstanding his
exceedingly pleasing personality and evident sincerity,
because his conclusions were pretty obviously based on
incompetent data"

this a peculiar comment on a book he hadn't read to one who had read it.  He
continued with the argument that the notion of changes in the constitution of
the solar system in historical times flies in the face of the successful
record of celestial mechanics and their role in man's work.

"The laws of mechanics...have been tested competently and
thoroughly...if Dr. Velikovsky is right, the rest of us
are crazy.  And seriously, this may be the case. It is,
however, improbable."

He concluded by saying that the Harvard Observatory wasn't equipped to make 
the spectroscopic analyses and recommended that Velikovsky get in touch with 
Walter Adams of Mt. Wilson Observatory or Rupert Wildt at the McCormick 
Observatory. These recommendations I sent to Velikovsky.

Meanwhile, the latter had the usual luck of an original mind with publishers.  
Eight turned his book down as unprofitable because of its many footnotes.  But 
Macmillan saw its commercial as well as its intellectual promise, and in May 
1947, gave him a small advance on an option for a contract against royalties 
from publication.  The manuscript had been read for them by several readers, 
among them Gordon Atwater, then cura- tor of the Hayden Planetarium of the 
American Museum of Natural History, who thought it might serve as a scenario 
for another starry show among those he was staging.

With publication by Macmillan in prospect, Velikovsky kept checking and 
rechecking Worlds in Collision. On March 18, 1949, Harper's magazine, having 
learned from James Putnam, the Macmillan editor in charge of Worlds in 
Collision, about its challenging content, asked permission to have one of its 
editors, Eric Larrabee, do a couple of articles summarizing the book.  
Velikovsky hesitated a long time, but finally gave permission in September or 
October of that year.  Larrabee's report appeared in Harper's, January, 1950.  
An editorial comment declared: "No one who has read Mr. Larrabee's article can 
ever again read the Old Testament prophets with the same blind piety or same 
blind skepticism that he felt before".  The intent is carried by the word 
blind.  It is rendered vitally expressive when one realizes that before the 
end of this same January, 1950, Harlow Shapley had entered upon his 
inquisition against the Velikovsky heresy and in defense of the 
establishment's true faith that our scientific and industrial salvation with 
its everidentical solar system changeless through time rests on celestial 
mechanics hallowed through the last three centuries.  He wrote Macmillan a 
subtly worded letter .

He had, he told them in his letter of January 18, heard rumors that they were 
not going to publish Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision.  This was a great 
relief to him.  He had talked about the book with a few scientists, including 
President Conant of Harvard.  All were astonished that a house famous for its 
scientific publications was carelessly venturing into the Black Arts.  
Velikovsky's theory that the sun stood still was the most arrant nonsense of 
his, Shapley's experience.  That the earth still exists is proof that the sun 
couldn't have stood still in historical times.

James Putnam, for Macmillan, replied on January 24 that they were not 
publishing the book as a "scientific publication" but as the statement of a 
theory that scholars of the various fields of science on which the theory 
draws should know about.  He enclosed a summary of Velikovsky's biography and 
offered to send Shapley a copy of the book as soon as it was issuedÑprobably 
in March.  To which Shapley replied on January 25 that Velikovsky's celestial 
mechanics is "complete nonsense". that I (Kallen) had introduced Velikovsky to 
him; that the two had met in some New York hotel where Velikovsky had sought 
Shapley's endorsement of his theory; that Shapley had looked around to see if 
Velikovsky had a keeper with him; that he had tried to explain to Velikovsky 
that if he were right, science was wrong, life on earth would have been 
wrecked and that they couldn't possibly have had this interview in a New York 
hotel.  So likewise, if Macmillan were right, it is the millions not agreeing 
with Velikovsky who need keepers, inasmuch as they refuse to abandon what is 
known of nature and her laws "in the interest of exegesis.   Macmillan must 
prove that they have already published like works "without damage," else 
publishing Velikovsky must cut him, Shapley off from the Macmillan Company. In 
view of the biographical note on Velikovsky, it "is quite possible that only 
this Worlds in Collision episode is intel- lectually fraudulent."

The threat implicit in the Shapley letter scared the head of Macmillan, George 
Brett.  The book was already on the press.  On February I, Brett wrote the 
champion of science words of gratitude for "waving a red flag" and promised 
that he would have the book rechecked by three new readers.  Velikovsky was 
advised that two said Publish, one said Don 't.

Meanwhile, the article in Harper's had started winds of controversy among 
geologists, archaeologists and others who could not possibly have read 
Velikovsky's yet unpublished Worlds in Collision.  Significantly, one 
instrument of inquisition was Science News Letter, which reported its 
president, Harlow Shapley, as saying on behalf of his fellow astronomers that 
Velikovsky's theory was "rubbish and nonsense." For at least one of these he 
could surely speak.  This was a Mrs.  Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a member of 
his staff who, although the book had not yet been published and she could not 
have read it, composed an attack on Velikovsky.  This was first very widely 
distributed in mimeograph and then published in the now defunct Reporter.  I 
am told that Shapley sent out a number of these mimeographs in person, 
including one to the editor of the New York Post, Ted Thackrey.

Mrs. Gaposchkin gagged especially at the suggestion that "the sun stood 
still", might be a report of an actual occurrence.  Her argument that this was 
impossible was Shapleyism garnished with some Gaposchkinism's, astronomical, 
geological and other.  It is this lady-astronomer's broadside which President 
Shapley's Science News Letter reprinted and praised as a "detailed scientific 
answer to Dr.  Velikovsky's theory," still some time before his book was 
available in print.  After it was on sale, Mrs. Gaposchkin, taken to task by 
Larrabee, wrote the Reporter that now she had read it, but hadn't changed her 
mind.

Meanwhile, editor Thackrey had left the New York Post for the New York 
Compass.  He and Shapley seem to have been political kinsmen, close enough to 
call each other by their given names.  Thackrey had republished the Harper's 
article in the Compass, whereupon Shapley wrote him privately on February 30, 
1950, enclosing the prepublication mimeograph of the Gaposchkin confection 
from the Reporter. He suggested that the Compass might like to republish "this 
comment from an American astronomer of the highest standing".  Velikovsky, he 
added, had asked him to endorse his work so that he could get it published, 
and Shapley had pointed out how wrong Velikovsky was, since if he were right, 
"All that Isaac Newton ever did was wrong."

To this editor Thackrey replied March 7, 1950. He wrote that Shapley,'s letter 
had so shocked him that he had to cool off before answering it as frankly as a 
worthwhile friendship requires.  He took sharp exception to Shapley's "wholly 
unwarranted and unfounded" characterization of Dr. Velikovsky and reminded his 
friend how he, Thackrey, had defended Shapley when his political views had led 
to "nearly as unwarranted an assault" upon his own integrity.

Thackrey himself had come to know Velikovsky as "a man of unusual integrity 
and scholarship, whose painstaking ap- proach to scientific theory is at least 
a match for your own."  Shapley, Thackrey wrote, was engaged "in a totally 
unscientific and viciously emotional attack" on Velikovsky and his work, 
pressing Macmillan not to publish it without ever once having taken the 
trouble to examine it or even glance at the research with which it had been 
accomplished.  Shapley, Thackrey charged, was campaigning to destroy a man 
whom he did not know and to damn a theory he obviously knew nothting about. 
His course of action was "both morally and criminally libelous".  As for the 
article Shapley had had Mrs.  Gaposchkin prepare, it was an attack on a book 
the latter had not read, attributing to Velikovsky statements he had never 
made in order to quarrel with them as if he had made them.

To this, on March 8, 1950, Shapley made a "confidential" reply.  He was, he 
wrote, keeping silent on Velikovsky.  He had written hotly only to Thackrey, 
but all kinds of authorities were agreeing with his views.  He did concede 
that no protest against the publication of Velikovsky's book should be made to 
Macmillan by the Council of the American Astronomical Society because "such 
action would give greater publicity to Velikovsky's contributions."  But for 
Macmillan to publish the book would be to "throw doubt', on how they evaluate 
"other manuscripts on which we want to depend".  In a postscript he recalled 
his letters to me back in 1946, and asked if Velikovsky had reached Adams at 
the Mt.  Wilson Observatory or Wildt at Yale.  It seems a curious tangency 
that might intrigue a psychoanalyst.

Thackrey's response to this was dated April 10.  He again charged that Shapley 
was working to prevent Macmillan from publishing Velikovsky; that he had 
written the publisher two letters "so sizzling that your letter to me might 
seem tepid by comparison."  But he, Thackrey, had read the book while Shapley 
and Gaposchkin had written about it without reading it.

To this Shapley responded on June 6.  In the interval, Macmillan had broken 
with Velikovsky, even though Worlds in Collision, published April 3, had 
become the number one bestseller on the national charts.  Shapley's letter to 
Thackrey took note of this success in sales, for which he consoled himself 
with the remark that he had not yet met a scientist of any sort who took 
Worlds in Collision seriously, while many are "unrestrained in their 
condemnation of the one reputable pub- lisher."

The Shapleyist proscription of Velikovsky and his revolutionary astronomical 
concepts extended to all who, even though doubting or questioning the 
concepts, did take them seriously.  One such was Gordon Atwater, fellow of the 
Royal Astronomical Society, curator of the Planetarium, and chairman of the 
department of astronomy at New York's Museum of Natural History, who had read 
the manuscript for Macmillan.  Although Atwater was skeptical of many of 
Velikovsky's findings, and doubted that Venus could have been ejected from 
Jupiter, he took the records of world-wide catastrophes in historical times to 
be eviden- tial. He was dismissed from both his positions with the Museum the 
night before This Week published his review of Worlds in Collision, in which 
he urged open-mindedness toward the book.

James Putnam, for 25 years with Macmillan and the editor who made the contract 
with Velikovsky, was immediately dismissed from that establishment.  Latham, 
the editor-in-chief, left the firm later.  In My Life in Publishing (1965) he 
tells of his feeling of shame at Brett's surrender.

Velikovsky himself was, of course, again and again refused space and place to 
defend his theories against both honest and malicious errors regarding them.  
And in the Harvard Crimson Shapley declared over his signature that it was 
"absolutely false" that he or the Harvard Observatory had any connection with
attempts to suppress the book's publication.

Meanwhile, unintended verifications of Velikovsky's theses began to come from 
unexpected sources.  Mariner probes of Mars, Venus, and the rnoon, as reported 
by NASA, provided evidence of the sort that Shapley had first offered, and 
then said he hadn't the equipment to seek.  A scientist here and a scientist 
there was impressed by the confirming happen- stances, and, like geologist 
Hess and Physicist Bargmann of Princeton and astronomer Motz of Columbia, 
urged that in view of these confirmations, Velikovsky's other conclusions 
should be reexamined without prejudice.

To this I should add that Albert Einstein, who often saw Velikovsky in 
Princeton, had read and re-read his work, and continued as firmly pro-Newton 
as Shapley, but with the open mind of the authentic scientist.  A few days 
before his untimely death in 1955, he offered (after learning that, as 
Velikovsky had predict- ed, radio noises from Jupiter were unexpectedly 
recorded) to help arrange other experimental tests which Velikovsky sought.

Einstein had, I am told, urged Velikovsky to get the story of his proscription 
by Shapley et. al. fully on record, and Velikovsky had written an account 
himself, for Einstein to read, which the latter did. "Ich mochte gl6cklich 
sein,,, he wrote Velikovsky in a letter of comment March 17, 1955, "wenn auch 
Sie die ganze Episode von der drolligen Seite geniessen konnten.,, ("It would 
make me happy if you could savor the entire episode from its amusing side.,,)  
This is a stance I had been recommending to Velikovsky for a long time, 
understandably without effect to date.

Despite the excommunication of his theories by the Shapleyites, curiosity 
about their nature, origin and evidential grounds spreads and diversifies as 
the new instruments disclose new data which may confirm or refute.  When I 
urged Velikovsky to disregard the libelous attacks upon his personal 
integrity, this is what I believed was likely to happen.  The new tools,
bringing in hitherto inaccessible evidence which would either confirm his
conceptions or cause him to abandon them for others, would render his
vindication as a man of science "objective", that is, independent of solely
personal appraisals.

As between Shapley and Velikovsky, the record for integrity is entirely in
favor of Velikovsky.

the following quotes appeared as box insets in the original text:

"As you probably suspect, I find little happiness in
reading or thinking about Velikovsky. He seems to be one
of our most erudite charlatans. "

Harlow Shapley in a letter (July 2, 1967) to Albert
Burgstahler

"All professional astronomers consider Velikovsky a fraud.
Can't you find a reputable subject for your research
paper?"

Harlow Shapley in a letter (March 8, 1969) to Katherine
Lindeman.

"It will be interesting a year from now to hear from you
as to whether or not the reputation of the Macmillan
Company is damaged by the publication of Worlds in
Collision...  Naturally you can see that I am interested
in your experiment.  And frankly, unless you can assure me
that you have done things like this frequently in the past
without damage, the publication must cut me off from the
Macmillan Company."

Harlow Shapley in a letter (January 25, 1950) to James
Putnam of the Macmillan Company.

"The claim that Dr. Velikovsky,s book is being suppressed
is nothing but a publicity promotion stunt...  Several
attempts have been made to link such a move to stop the
book's publication to some organization or to the Harvard
Observatory. This idea is absolutely false."

Harlow Shapley in a statement to the Harvard Crimson,
printed in the Crimson September 25, 1950.

Oddly enough, in its anti-scientific account of the book,
Newsweek has unwittingly done the Doubleday Company a
considerable amount of harm.  They have made public the
high success of the spontaneous boycott of the Macmillan
Company by scientifically minded people...   In any
case, since I believe that the Blakiston Company is owned
by the Doubleday Company, which controls its policies as
well as the distribution of its books, I am now then a
fellow author of the Doubleday Company along with
Velikovsky.  My natural inclination, were it possible, is
to take Earth, Moon and Planets off the market and find a
publisher who is not associated with one who has such a
lacuna in its publication ethics.  This is not possible,
however, so the next best that I can do is to turn over
future royalty checks to the Boston Community Fund and to
let Earth, Moon and Planets die of senescence.  In other
words, there will be no revision of Earth, Moon and
Planets forthcoming so long as Doubleday owns Blakiston,
controls its policies and publishes Worlds in Collision."

Fred Whipple, Shapley's successor as director of the
Harvard Observatory, in a letter (June 30, 1950) to Eunice
Stevens, associate editor, the Blakiston Company.

"With regard to Mr. Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision there
is no change in my attitude or in the situation since the
book was first released nearly a decade [sic] ago.  There
is no truth to allegations that I sought to dissuade the
Doubleday Company from publishing this book or any other
book . . .

Fred Whipple in a letter (July 2, 1970) to Clark Whelton
of The Village Voice.

"Can we afford to have 'freedom of the press, when it
permits such obvious rubbish to be widely advertised as of
real importance?...  Can we afford 'freedom of the press,
when it can vitiate education, as this book can?  Can we
preserve democracy when education in true scientific
principles...can be nullified by the promulgation of such
lies, -yes, lies, as are contained in wholesale lots in
Worlds in Collision?...   Any astronomer or geologist or
physicist could have pronounced it trash of the first
order.  Its geological errors are so absurd that even I,
an astronomer, can identify them at a glance!...  No, I
have not read the book...  And I do not intend to waste my 
time reading it..."

Dean McLaughlin, professor of astronomy, University of
Michigan, in a letter (May 20, 1950) to G.P. Brett, Jr.
president of Macmillan Company.

"Velikovsky is a tragedy. He has misguided people like you
in great numbers, and my advice is to shut the book and
never look at it again in your lifetime."

Harold Urey, professor of chemistry, University of
California (San Diego), in a letter (March 7, 1969) to
Katherine Lindeman.

Dr. Urey, on his own admission, has not read Velikovsky's
books.  Editor.

Albert Einstein, having received from Dr. Velikovsky a
copy of Ages in Chaos as a birthday gift, wrote the
following letter one month before his death.

March 17, 1955.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Velikovsky!

At the occasion of this inauspicious birthday you have
presented me once more with the fruits of an almost
eruptive productivity.  I look forward with pleasure to
reading the historical book that does not bring into
danger the toes of my guild.  How it stands with ths toes
of the other faculty, I do not know as yet.  I think of
the touching prayer: "Holy St. Florian, spare my house,
put fire to others!"  I have already read carefully the 
first volume of the memoirs to "Worlds in Collision" and 
have supplied it with a few marginal notes in pencil that 
can easily be erased.  I admire your dramatic talent and 
also the art and the straightforwardness of Thackeray 
[Thackrey] who has compelled the roaring astronomical lion
[Shapley] to pull in a little his royal tail, yet not
showing enough respect for the truth.  Also, I would feel
happy if you could savor the whole episode for its
humorous side.  Unimaginable letter debts and unread
manuscripts that were sent in, force me to be brief.  Many
thanks to both of you and friendly wishes.

Your

A. Einstein

reprinted with permission from Pensee journal
May 1972

END