Any comments on Velikovsky?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Robert_Sock
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
R

Robert_Sock

Guest
It is a psychological phenomenon in the life of individuals as well as whole nations that the most terrifying events of the past may be forgotten or displaced into the subconscious mind. As if obliterated are impressions that should be unforgettable. To uncover their vestiges and their distorted equivalents in the physical life of peoples is a task not unlike that of overcoming amnesia in a single person.
–World’s in Collision, Velikovsky

As a psychologist, I take the above quote seriously and have to wonder how much of “history” has been forgotten or altered.

Worlds in Collision is a book written by Immanuel Velikovsky and first published April 3, 1950. The book postulated that around the 15th century BCE, Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object, and passed near Earth (an actual collision is not mentioned). The object changed Earth’s orbit and axis, causing innumerable catastrophes that were mentioned in early mythologies and religions around the world. Many of the book’s claims are completely rejected by the established scientific community as they are not supported by any available evidence.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision

Albert Einstein apparently took Velikovsky’s claim that the planets were not neutrally charged quite seriously and was about to undertake experimentation to test his hypothesis when he suddenly died. Ironically, Einstein had Worlds in Collision opened on his desk when he passed away.

I once spoke to a geologist who pointed out all the evidence of that the earth underwent a sudden and powerful change, and not a gradual change that scientists adhere to today.
 
Yes, I read Worlds in Collision twenty or thirty years ago. A lot of his arguments were quite convincing, though the one “fact” that has stuck in my memory is clearly too far-fetched to be taken seriously. The battle fought by Joshua when “the sun stood still in the sky” is explained as follows (from memory, leaving out some details):

Until that moment, the earth had been revolving in the opposite direction, so that the sun rose every day in the west and set in the east. On the day of that battle, due to the gravitational attraction of a passing comet, the earth first slowed to a standstill and then gradually began rotating in the opposite direction, as we know it today. That accounts for the phenomenon described in Josh. 10:13.

However convincing the arguments set out in the other chapters of the book, I’m afraid that this one claim shows Velikovsky to be so extraordinarily ignorant of the basic laws of mechanics than nothing, nothing at all, that he says can be believed unless, of course, you can find confirmation in the works of real scientists.
 
I’m not convinced with his claim of the comet, but I do believe that something catastrophic did happen and that it affected the entire earth. Even scientists today agree that the magnetic field of the earth did change in the course of human history.
 
Robert_Sock said:
I’m not convinced with his claim of the comet, but I do believe that something catastrophic did happen and that it affected the entire earth. Even scientists today agree that the magnetic field of the earth did change in the course of human history.
Click to expand...
The Earth’s magnetic field has change quite a few times in the past 4 or 5 million years. 🙂
 
The magnetic field of the earth can flip-flop without notice to us, except for those to measure the charged-particle radiation from the sun, which would increase as the strength of the field decreased to zero before increasing with the opposite polarity.

However, the idea that the earth could stop rotating in one direction and start rotating in the other direction in one day is totally ridiculous. This can be understood by anyone with a basic knowledge of science. If something were to stop and reverse the rotation of the earth, the air and water would want to keep moving in their original direction. The ocean waters would drain completely away from one side and totally flood the lands on the other side. And the winds at the equator would be in the vicinity of 1000 mph.

Here’s an experiment you can to for yourself to show what would happen. Get a 9x14" baking dish and secure it in the passenger seat of your car. Fill it half-way with water. Start driving and VERY gently increase you speed to 20 mph, and then slam on the brakes. As you’re mopping up the mess on the floor, consider what it would be like if we were talking about the Pacific Ocean, not a pan of water, and a speed decrease from 1000 mph to zero, not 20 mph to zero.

Here’s another experiment: fill a couple balloons with helium and put them in your car with the windows closed, and then drive normally around town. As you accelerate, the balloons will move forward, because the air in the car had been standing still, wants to keep standing still (inertia), and moves to the back of the car. The reverse will true when you come to a stop.
 
I haven’t thought about Velikovsky for some time. His theories about planetary cosmology are rather weird pseudoscience.
 
Fairly recently we launched a spacecraft to impact on a comet (5-6 years ago? Not the one that actually landed) A group of scientists who believe as Velikovsky did that planets, comets, etc. are actually electrically charged predicted that there would be an electrical discharge event between the spacecraft and the comet as it neared impact. see holoscience.com/wp/

They were right. The prediction was poo-poohed by “real” scientists. The real scientists were wrong.

At a time before we sent a spacecraft to Venus, Velikovsky predicted that Venus would be really hot. The real scientists poo-poohed that prediction, they were wrong there too.

BTW - the “comet” that Velikovsky wrote about was Venus, a planet the size of Earth. As I recall he theorized that Venus had actually been “ejected” from Jupiter (and was therefore a young, really “hot” planet) and it gradually assumed it’s orbit between Earth and Mercury. But not before passing very close to Earth where it’s gravity would have a major impact on Earth. And it’s electrical charge would have an even more profound effect because it is so much stronger.

There’s a lot we don’t know about how things really work, and the scientists are continuously telling us that they know just about everything. Global warming predictions have ALL been wrong. So rather than admit defeat, they fudge the data, and when that is discovered they rename it as Climate Change.

I’m not willing to throw Velikovsky under the bus yet. Time will tell.
 
Here is Isaac Asimov on Velikovsky:
“Velikovsky’s views in Worlds in Collision are designed to demonstrate that the Bible has a great deal of literal truth in it, that the miraculous events described in the Old Testament really happened as described. To be sure, Velikovsky abandons the hypothesis that divine intervention caused the miracles and substitutes a far less satisfactory hypothesis involving planetary Ping-Pong, but that scarcely alters the fact that in our theistic society any claimed finding that tends to demonstrate the truth of the Bible is highly likely to meet with general favor.”

Source: velikovsky.info/Isaac_Asimov
 
JimG said:
Here is Isaac Asimov on Velikovsky:
“Velikovsky’s views in Worlds in Collision are designed to demonstrate that the Bible has a great deal of literal truth in it, that the miraculous events described in the Old Testament really happened as described. To be sure, Velikovsky abandons the hypothesis that divine intervention caused the miracles and substitutes a far less satisfactory hypothesis involving planetary Ping-Pong, but that scarcely alters the fact that in our theistic society any claimed finding that tends to demonstrate the truth of the Bible is highly likely to meet with general favor.”

Source: velikovsky.info/Isaac_Asimov
Click to expand...
Did the world undergo a catastrophic change, in the relative not too distant past, whereby we (societies) are now experiencing amnesia?
 
Robert_Sock said:
Did the world undergo a catastrophic change, in the relative not too distant past, whereby we (societies) are now experiencing amnesia?
Click to expand...
Well, socially, at least, the world underwent a catastrophic change with the sexual revolution following which there has been moral amnesia.

But with respect to Earth’s cosmological development, there has always been some sort of change going on, not necessarily catastrophic, except perhaps for the assumed large meteor strike which wiped out the dinosaurs.
 
Isaac Asimov also once made this comment:
“I once received a postcard from someone who said what would you do – this was after an argument about Velikovsky – what would you do if some scientific discovery tomorrow proved that Velikovsky was correct? I replied saying, in that case I would cheerfully accept Velikovskianism and admit I had been wrong. I would also go skating in hell, which by that time will have frozen over.”
Obviously, Asimov did not think much of Velikovsky’s science. Asimov was himself an atheist, but he didn’t so much excoriate Velokovisky for his theism as for his science. I recall reading an article of Asimov’s, not sure where, in which he pointed out that Velikovsky had confused hydrocarbons with carbohydrates.
 
Robert_Sock said:
The book postulated that around the 15th century BCE, Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object, and passed near Earth
Click to expand...
Venus is a rocky world, while moons of Jupiter are ice worlds; in fact, everything solid beyond main belt asteroids is made of ice. Thus, Venus’ origin near Jupiter makes no sense. Also, comets do not originate near Jupiter, they originate from the Oort cloud.
Robert_Sock said:
Albert Einstein apparently took Velikovsky’s claim that the planets were not neutrally charged quite seriously
Click to expand...
Electromagnetism is 10^36 times stronger than gravity. A simple application of high school physics will show you that if planets had any significant charge, they would not move according to Newton’s laws… but they of course do.
BartholomewB said:
Until that moment, the earth had been revolving in the opposite direction, so that the sun rose every day in the west and set in the east.
Click to expand...
Ahem. Looking from Polaris towards the Sun, stuff in the Solar System usually rotates counter-clockwise. The Sun itself rotates counter-clockwise. All 8 planets orbit counter-clockwise. Out of 8 planets, there are only two which rotate differently, which are Uranus (which is lying on its side), and Venus, which rotates clockwise. If you want to claim that Earth originally rotated retrograde as Venus nowdays does, fine, but you have to explain why Earth was originally rotating backwards! Oh, and by the way, you also need a new theory for Moon’s formation, to explain why it is orbiting in line with current rotation of the Earth (counter-clockwise), not the supposed original direction (clockwise).
BartholomewB said:
On the day of that battle, due to the gravitational attraction of a passing comet, the earth first slowed to a standstill and then gradually began rotating in the opposite direction, as we know it today. That accounts for the phenomenon described in Josh. 10:13.
Click to expand...
No, it doesn’t, because Joshua does not mention earthquake or volcanic eruptions. If Venus-sized body passed close enough to disturb Earth’s rotation, the Earth’s crust would have noticably bulged due to tidal forces. The resulting cataclysm would be very hard to miss. Also, Joshua says nothing about the Moon, the movement of which would have also been noticably changed. (If it wasn’t just flung into a solar orbit!) Also, Earth’s orbit would change, resulting in the immediate change of climate. No record thereof either.
DaveBj said:
The magnetic field of the earth can flip-flop without notice to us,
Click to expand...
Not since we have invented a compass.
 
weller2 said:
Venus is a rocky world, while moons of Jupiter are ice worlds; in fact, everything solid beyond main belt asteroids is made of ice. Thus, Venus’ origin near Jupiter makes no sense. Also, comets do not originate near Jupiter, they originate from the Oort cloud.
Click to expand...
Right, Venus is not a comet. So your point is…? Nobody said Venus came from the Oort cloud.

What’s deep inside Jupiter / Saturn is probably a solid core. And the mechanics of what happens inside such planetary bodies is largely unknown.
weller2 said:
Electromagnetism is 10^36 times stronger than gravity. A simple application of high school physics will show you that if planets had any significant charge, they would not move according to Newton’s laws… but they of course do.
Click to expand...
A simple application of high school physics would predict that the effects of gravity are stronger over large distances, whereas the electrormagnetic forces predominate over shorter distances. Shorter distances is what this whole thing is all about. Everything changes over short distances (like a near collision with Earth).

BTW - Did you know that planetary orbits are chaotic - as in the sense that they really CAN’T be predicted over long time periods? In the sense that a tiny deviation in our measurement of location, momentum, direction of planets can dramatically alter the predicted location? Of course, as a first approximation, they do follow those laws, over short time periods.

Galaxies, on the other hand seem to disobey Newton’s laws. Scientists have invented a concept called dark matter, which has never actually been observed, to explain the discrepancy. The definition of dark matter is such that it conveniently has the properties which are necessary to explain away the failure of gravity to account for the movement of stars during galactic rotation. But since no one has ever observed actual dark matter, this is sort of like saying that “the galactic rotation fairies cause it to happen.”

There is much evidence for a universe highly saturated with ionized plasma. Of which the solar wind is a small example. The scientists pushing this emphasis have a good history of predictions contrary to “traditional thinking”. The link I provided in my first post is a good starting point if you want to learn about it.
weller2 said:
Oh, and by the way, you also need a new theory for Moon’s formation, to explain why it is orbiting in line with current rotation of the Earth (counter-clockwise), not the supposed original direction (clockwise).
Click to expand...
New theories for the moon’s formation are a dime a dozen. New ones appear everyday. I just saw one yesterday. Of course, it is absolutely correct, just like all the previous ones were absolutely correct, until this one came along.
weller2 said:
Not since we have invented a compass.
Click to expand...
The reversal of earth’s magnetic field is a well established fact. As lava flows cool, the magnetic materials line up with the current direction of the earth’s magnetic field. Dig through the lava flows and you get a history of earth’s magnetic field for a much longer period than “since we have invented a compass.”

As for how the earth could have survived such cataclysms, I suppose the answer is related to how Jesus resurrected from the dead.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top