Worlds in Collision

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Worlds in Collision book cover.

Worlds in Collision is a book written by Immanuel Velikovsky and first published on April 3, 1950, by Macmillan Publishers (ISBN 1-199-84874-3). The book, Velikovsky's most criticized and controversial, was an instant New York Times non-fiction bestseller. ^[1] Despite this popularity, overwhelming rejection of its thesis by the scientific community led Macmillan to stop publishing it and to transfer the book to Doubleday within two months (Friedman 1995:14).

1 Core ideas
2 Critical reaction and controversy
3 References in popular culture
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Core ideas

"Worlds in Collision is a book of wars in the celestial sphere that took place in historical times. In these wars the planet earth participated too. [...] The historical-cosmological story of this book is based in the evidence of historical texts of many people around the globe, on classical literature, on epics of the northern races, on sacred books of the peoples of the Orient and Occident, on traditions and folklore of primitive peoples, on old astronomical inscriptions and charts, on archaeological finds, and also on geological and paleontological material." - Worlds in Collision, Preface.

The book proposed that around the 15th century BCE, a comet or comet-like object (now called the planet Venus), having originally been ejected from Jupiter, passed near Earth. The object changed Earth's orbit and axis, causing innumerable catastrophes which were mentioned in early mythologies and religions around the world. Fifty-two years later, it passed close by again, stopping the Earth's rotation for a while and causing more catastrophes. Then, in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, Mars (itself displaced by Venus) made close approaches to the Earth; this incident caused a new round of disturbances and disasters. After that, the current "celestial order" was established. The courses of the planets stabilized over the centuries and Venus gradually became a "normal" planet.

These events lead to several key statements that were claimed in the book:

Venus must be still very hot as young planets radiate heat.^[2]
Venus must be rich in petroleum gases, and hydrocarbons.^[3]
Venus has an abnormal orbit in consequence of the unusual disasters that happened.

Furthermore, some of the ideas that can be derived from these claims are:

Jupiter emits radio waves.
The magnetosphere of Earth reaches at least up to the moon.
The sun has an electric potential of approximately 10¹⁹ volts.
The rotation of earth can be affected by electromagnetic fields.

Velikovsky arrived at these proposals using a methodology which would today be called comparative mythology - he looked for concordances in myths and written history of unconnected cultures across the world, in particular following a rather literal reading of their accounts of the exploits of planetary deities. In this book, he argues on the basis of ancient cosmological myths from places as disparate as India and China, Greece and Rome, Assyria and Sumer. For example, ancient Greek mythology asserts that the goddess Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. Velikovsky identifies Athena with the planet Venus. The Greek counterpart of the Roman Venus was Aphrodite. Velikovsky identifies Zeus (whose Roman counterpart was the god Jupiter) with the planet Jupiter. This myth, along with others from ancient Egypt, Israel, Mexico, etc. are used to support the claim that "Venus was expelled as a comet and then changed to a planet after contact with a number of members of our solar system" (Velikovsky 1972:182).

[edit] Critical reaction and controversy

The plausibility of the theory was summarily rejected by the physics community and the book was even banned in some institutions. Although some express doubts whether many scientists even read Velikovsky, the cosmic chain of events was regarded as simply contradicting the basic laws of physics.

Velikovsky's ideas had been known to astronomers for years before the publication of the book, partially by writing to astronomer Harlow Shapley of Harvard, partially through his 1946 pamphlet Cosmos Without Gravitation,^[4] (Friedman 1995:11), and partially by a preview of his work in an article in the August 11, 1946 edition of the New York Herald Tribune. An article about the upcoming book was published by Harper's Magazine in January 1950, which was followed by an article in Newsweek (Bauer 1984:3-4).

Shapley, along with others such as astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (also at Harvard), instigated a hostile campaign against the book before it was even published. They were highly critical of publisher Macmillian's initial notion to include it on their textbook list. Within two months of the books initial release, the publishing of the book was transferred to Doubleday, which has no textbook division.

The fundamental criticism against this book from the astronomy community was that its celestial mechanics were irreconcilable with Newtonian celestial mechanics, requiring planetary orbits which could not be made to conform to the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of angular momentum (Bauer 1984:70). Velikovsky conceded that the behavior of the planets in his theories are not consistent with Newton's laws of motion and universal gravitation. He proposed that electromagnetic forces could be the cause of the movement of the planets, although such forces between astronomical bodies is essentially zero (Friedman 1995:11-12).

Velikovsky tried to protect himself from criticism of his celestial mechanics by removing the original Appendix on the subject from Worlds in Collision, hoping that the merit of his ideas would be evaluated on the basis of his comparative mythology and use of literary sources alone. However this strategy did not protect him: the appendix was an expanded version of the Cosmos Without Gravitation monograph, which he had already distributed to Shapley and others in the late 1940s — and they had regarded the physics within it as egregious.

In the 1960s, some of Velikovsky's specific predictions which appeared to be confirmed by space probe findings, for instance:

the high surface temperature of Venus.
hydrocarbons in the atmosphere of Venus.
Jupiter's generation of radio noises.

However in all such cases, the scientific community did not accept that these successful predictions could be used as proof of Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision scenario, preferring alternative explanations such as a "runaway greenhouse effect" on Venus.

By 1974, the controversy surrounding Velikovsky's work had permeated US society to the point where the American Association for the Advancement of Science felt obliged to address the situation, as they had previously done in relation to UFOs, and devoted a scientific meeting to Velikovsky. The meeting featured, among others, Velikovsky himself and Carl Sagan. Sagan gave a critique of Velikovsky's ideas and attacked most of the assumptions made in Worlds in Collision. His criticisms are present in his book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science and is much longer than that given in the talk.^[5] Sagan's arguments were popular in nature and he did not remain to debate Velikovsky in person, facts that were used by Velikovsky's followers to discredit his analysis.^[6] Sagan rebutted these charges, and further attacked Velikovsky's ideas in his PBS television series Cosmos. The controversy that still surrounds the book today can be attributed to Sagan.

A thorough examination of the original material cited in Velikovsky's publications, and a severe criticism of its use, was published by Bob Forrest.^[7] A short analysis of the position of arguments in the late 20th century was given by Dr. Velikovsky's ex-associate C. Leroy Ellenberger, the former editor of Kronos (a journal to promote Velikovsky's ideas) (Bauer 1995:11), in his essay.^[8] Almost ten years later, Ellenberger attacked some of Velikovsky's ideas in the book in another essay.^[9]

The storm of controversy that was created by Velikovsky's works, especially Worlds in Collision, may have helped revive the Catastrophist movements in the last half of the 20th century; it is also held by some working in the field that progress has actually been retarded by the negative aspects of the so-called Velikovsky Affair. Works with similar themes, such as those of de Santillana and von Dechend,^[10] Allan and Delair,^[11] and Clube and Napier,^[12] ^[13] have met in part with an academic tolerance never experienced by Velikovsky himself, and even with acclaim by critics of the originals.

More recently, the absence of supporting material in ice core studies (such as the Greenland Ice-3 and Vostok cores), bristlecone pine tree ring data, Swedish clay varves, and ocean sediments has ruled out any basis for the proposition of a global catastrophe of the proposed dimension within the later Holocene period.

[edit] References in popular culture

In the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Worlds In Collision is mentioned as "must reading" by Veronica Cartwright's character.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

^ Velikovsky, Immanuel (1950). Worlds in Collision, MacMillan. ISBN 1-199-84874-3.
^ W in C, "The Thermal Balance Of Venus" (Ch. IX): "The night side of Venus radiates heat because Venus is hot. [..] Venus experienced in quick succession its birth and expulsion under violent conditions; an existence as a comet on an ellipse which approached the sun closely; two encounters with the earth accompanied by discharges of potentials between these two bodies and with a thermal effect caused by conversion of momentum into heat; a number of contacts with Mars and probably also with Jupiter. Since all this happened between the third and the first millennia before the present era, the core of the planet Venus must still be hot."
^ W in C, "The Gases Of Venus" (Ch. IX): "On the basis of this research, I assume that Venus must be rich in petroleum gases. If and as long as Venus is too hot for the liquefaction of petroleum, the hydrocarbons will circulate in gaseous form. The absorption lines of the petroleum spectrum lie far in the infra-red where usual photographs do not reach. When the technique of photography in the infra-red is perfected so that hydrocarbon bands can be differentiated, the spectrogram of Venus may disclose the presence of hydrocarbon gases in its atmosphere, if these gases lie in the upper part of the atmosphere where the rays of the sun penetrate."
^ Immanuel Velikovsky, "Cosmos Without Gravitation: Attraction, repulsion and electromagnetic circumduction in the Solar System" (1946)
^ Sagan, Carl, (1979) Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Random House. Reissued 1986 by Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-33689-5. reprinted as chapter 15 of Science and the Paranormal: Probing the Existence of the Supernatural, edited by George O. Abell and Barry Singer, Scribners, 1981, ISBN 0-684-17820-6. Originally appeared in Scientists confront Velikovsky.
^ Ginenthal, Charles (1995). Carl Sagan & Immanuel Velikovsky. New Falcon Publications, Tempe Arizona.
^ Forrest, Bob (1981). Velikovsky's Sources. In six volumes, with Notes and Index Volume. Privately published by the author, Manchester.
^ Ellenberger, Leroy (1986). A lesson from Velikovsky. Skeptical Inquirer, 10 (4), 380-81.
^ Ellenberger, Leroy (1995). An antidote for Velikovsky delusions. Skeptic, 3 (4), 49-51.
^ de Santillana, Giorgio and von Dechend, Hertha (1977). Hamlet's Mill: an Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time. Godine, Boston.
^ Allan, D.S. and Delair, J.B. (1995). When The Earth Nearly Died. Gateway Books, UK. published in USA as Cataclysm by Bear & Co, 1997. A précis is available here.
^ Clube, V. and Napier, Bill (1982). The Cosmic Serpent. Universe Books, New York.
^ Clube, V. and Napier, Bill (1990). The Cosmic Winter. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

[edit] References

Bauer, Henry H. (1995). Velikovsky's place in the history of science: A lesson on the strengths and limitations of science. Skeptic, 3 (4), 52-56.
Cochrane, Ev (1995). Velikovsky still in collision. Skeptic, 3 (4), 47-48.
Morrison, David (2001). Velikovsky at fifty: Cultures in collision at the fringes of science. Skeptic, 9 (1), 62-76.
Linse, Pat (1995). Velikovsky's believe it or not: Some basic claims of Velikovsky. Skeptic, 3 (4), 46.
Forrest, Robert (1983). Venus and Velikovsky: The original sources. Skeptical Inquirer, 8 (2), Winter 1983-84, 154-164.
Frazier, Kendrick (1980). The distortions continue. Skeptical Inquirer, 5 (1), Fall 1980, 32-38. Reprinted in Paranormal Borderlands of Science, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Prometheus Books.
Oberg, James (1980). Ideas in collision. Skeptical Inquirer, 5 (1), Fall 1980, 20-27. Reprinted in Paranormal Borderlands of Science, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Prometheus Books ISBN 0-87975-148-7.
Abell, George O. (1981). Scientists and Velikovsky, in Paranormal Borderlands of Science, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Prometheus Books ISBN 0-87975-148-7
Bauer, Henry H. (1984). Beyond Velikovsky. The History of a Public Controversy. University of Illinois, Urbana ISBN 0-252-01104-X
Friedlander, Michael W. (1995). At the Fringes of Science, Westview Press, ISBN 0-8133-2200-6, 9-16.
Gardner, Martin (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, chapter 3, Dover ISBN 0-486-20394-8.
Goldsmith, Donald (Ed.) (1977). Scientists confront Velikovsky. Norton. Proceedings of a symposium at the 1974 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Miller, Alica (1977). Index to the Works of Immanuel Velikovsky. Glassboro State College, Glassboro.
Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia (1952). Worlds in collision. in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 96, Oct. 15, 1952.
Pensée (1972-1975). Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered. I - X. Student Academic Freedom Forum, Portland.
Ransom, C.J. (1976). The Age of Velikovsky. Delta, New York.
Rohl, David (1996). A Test of Time. Arrow Books.
Talbott, Stephen L. (1977). Velikovsky Reconsidered. Warner Books, New York.