Gebruiker:Thor NL/Onderhanden werk/Immanuel Velikovsky

[[Image:Ivfn.jpg|right|thumb|Immanuel Velikovsky, rond 1974 geportretteerd door Fima Noveck]]

Immanuel Velikovsky (June 10, 1895 (NS) – November 17, 1979) is best known as the author of a number of controversial books on prehistory, in particular, the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950. Earlier, he played a role in the founding of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was a respected psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

His books use comparative mythology and ancient literary sources (including the Bible) to argue that Earth has suffered catastrophic close-contacts with other planets (principally Venus and Mars) in ancient times. Velikovsky argued, without reliance on existing scientific evidence or theories, that electromagnetic effects play an important role in celestial mechanics. He also proposed a revised chronology for ancient Egypt, Greece, Israel and other cultures of the ancient Near East. The revised chronology aimed at explaining the so-called dark age of the eastern Mediterranean (ca. 1100-750 BCE) and reconcile biblical history with mainstream archeology and orthodox interpretations of Egyptian chronology.

Velikovsky's theories have generally been rejected or ignored by the academic community. Nonetheless, his books have sold well for more than fifty years; claims of unfair treatment by institutional science have inspired support for Velikovsky among laymen. The controversy surrounding his work and its decidedly mixed, and sometimes vituperative, reception is often referred to as "the Velikovsky affair".

Biografie

Jeugd en opleiding

Immanuel Velikovsky was born in 1895 to a prosperous Jewish family, in Vitebsk, Russia (now part of modern-day Belarus). The son of Shimon (Simon Yehiel) Velikovsky (1859-1937) and Beila Grodensky, he learned several languages as a child, and, recognized as a promising student, he was sent away to study at the Medvednikov Gymnasium in Moscow, where he performed well in Russian and mathematics. He graduated with a gold medal in 1913. Velikovsky then traveled in Europe and visited Palestine before briefly studying medicine at Montpellier in France and taking premedical courses at the University of Edinburgh. He returned to Russia before the outbreak of World War I, enrolled in the University of Moscow, and received a medical degree in 1921.

De Berlijnse jaren

Upon taking his medical degree, Velikovsky left Russia for Berlin. There, with the financial support of his father, Velikovsky edited and published a pair of volumes of scientific papers, translated into Hebrew, entitled Scripta Universitatis Atque Bibliothecae Hierosolymitanarum ("Writings of the Jerusalem University & Library"). He enlisted Albert Einstein to prepare the volume dealing with mathematics and physics. Once completed, this project was a cornerstone in the formation of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the fledgling university was able to donate copies of the Scripta to the libraries of other academic institutions, who would then send complimentary copies of their own publications, thus helping the Hebrew University to stock its library.

In 1924, Velikovsky married Elisheva Kramer, a young violinist.

Velikovsky's carrière als psychiater

From 1924 to 1939 Velikovsky lived in what was then Palestine, practicing medicine (both general practice and psychiatry), and also psychoanalysis (he had studied under Sigmund Freud's pupil, Wilhelm Stekel in Vienna). During this time he had a dozen or so papers published in medical and psychoanalytic journals, including, in 1930, the first paper to suggest epilepsy is characterized by abnormal encephalograms, now part of the routine diagnostic procedure, and papers in Freud's Imago, including a precocious analysis of Freud's own dreams.

Emigratie naar de VS en een carrière als auteur

In 1939, with the prospect of war looming, Velikovsky travelled with his family to New York, intending to spend a sabbatical year researching for his book Oedipus & Akhnaton (which, inspired by Freud's Moses and Monotheism, explored the possibility that Pharaoh Akhnaton was the legendary Oedipus). Within weeks of his arrival, World War II began. Soon, taking a tangent from his original book project, Velikovsky began to develop the radical catastrophist cosmology and revised chronology theories for which he would become notorious (see below). For the remainder of the Second World War, now a permanent resident in New Jersey, he continued to research and write about his ideas, searching for a means to disseminate them to academia and the public. He privately published two small Scripta Academica pamphlets summarising his theories in 1945 (Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History and Cosmos Without Gravitation). His pressing a copy of the latter onto astronomer Harlow Shapley was to have particular repercussions.

In 1950, after eight publishing houses rejected the Worlds in Collision manuscript, it was finally published by Macmillan, who had a large presence in the academic textbook market. Even before its appearance, the book was enveloped by furious controversy, when Harper's Magazine published a highly positive feature on it, with what would today be called a creationist slant. This came to the attention of Shapley, who opposed the publication of the work having been made familiar with Velikovsky's claims through the pamphlet Velikovsky had given him: Cosmos Without Gravitation. Shapley threatened to organize a textbook boycott of Macmillan for its publication of Worlds in Collision and within two months the book was transferred to Doubleday. It was by then a best seller in the US. In 1952, Doubleday published the first installment in Velikovsky's revised chronology, Ages in Chaos, followed by the Earth in Upheaval (a geological volume) in 1955.

For most of the 1950s and early 1960s, Velikovsky was persona non grata on college and university campuses. After this, he began to receive more requests to speak. He lectured, frequently to record crowds, at universities across North America. In 1972, Velikovsky's public profile was raised still higher when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired a one-hour television special featuring Velikovsky and his work, and this was followed by a thirty-minute documentary on the BBC in 1973.

The remainder of the 1970s saw Velikovsky devoting a great deal of his time and energy rebutting his critics in academia, and continuing to tour North America and also Europe, delivering lectures on his ideas. By now an elderly man, Velikovsky suffered from diabetes and intermittent depression, which according to his daughter may have been exacerbated by the academic establishment's continuing rejection of his work, and many wondered if the remaining promised volumes of his work (including a prequel to Worlds in Collision and the projected sequels to Ages in Chaos) would ever see publication.

The last two years of his life finally saw publication of two volumes of the aforementioned Ages in Chaos series: Peoples of the Sea (1977) and Rameses II and his Time (1978). Velikovsky died tended by his wife at his Princeton home in November 17, 1979.

Bezorging en beheer van Velikovsky's literaire nalatenschap

Legal wranglings appear to have dogged the release of remaining unpublished work. Velikovsky had appointed Professor Lynn E. Rose as his literary executor, with plans to issue several more volumes. However, his family managed to retain control of his literary estate. Under the supervision of Velikovsky's wife, two posthumous books appeared: the psychoanalytic work Mankind in Amnesia (1982) and also Stargazers and Gravediggers (1983), which chronicled the hostility of academia to Velikovsky's work.

For many years Velikovsky's estate was controlled by his two daughters, Shulamit Velikovsky Kogan (b. 1925), and Ruth Ruhama Velikovsky Sharon (b. 1926), who generally resisted the publication of any further material. (Exceptions include the biography ABA - the Trial and the Torment, issued in the mid-1990s and greeted with rather dubious reviews; and a Hebrew translation of another Ages in Chaos volume, The Dark Age of Greece, was published in Israel.) In the late 1990s, a large portion of Velikovsky's unpublished book manuscripts, essays and correspondence became available at the Velikovsky Archive website. In 2005, Velikovsky's daughter Ruth Sharon, presented his entire archive to Princeton University Library.

Velikovsky's ideeën

Notwithstanding Velikovsky's dozen or so publications in medical and psychoanalytic journals in the 1920s and 1930s, the work for which he became well known was developed by him during the early 1940s, whilst living in New York. He summarised his core ideas in an affidavit in November 1942, and in two privately published Scripta Academica pamphlets entitled Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History (1945) and Cosmos without Gravitation (1946).

Rather than have his ideas dismissed wholesale because of potential flaws in any one area, Velikovsky then chose to publish them as a series of book volumes, aimed at a lay audience, dealing separately with his proposals on ancient history, and with areas more relevant to the physical sciences. Velikovsky was a passionate Zionist, and this did steer the focus of his work, although its scope was considerably more far-reaching than this. The entire body of work could be said to stem from an attempt to solve the following problem: that to Velikovsky there appeared to be insufficient correlation in the written or archeological records between Jewish history (as recorded in Biblical and other sources) and the history of the adjoining nations (especially Egypt).

Velikovsky searched for common mention of events within literary records, and in the Ipuwer Papyrus, he believed he had found a contemporary Egyptian account of the Israelite Exodus - moreover, he interpreted both accounts as descriptions of a great natural catastrophe. Velikovsky attempted to investigate the physical cause of the Exodus event, and extrapolated backwards and forwards in history from this point, cross-comparing written and mythical records from cultures on every inhabited continent, using them to attempt synchronisms of the historical records, yielding what he believed to be further periodic natural catastrophes which can be global in scale.

He arrived at a body of radical inter-disciplinary ideas which might be summarized as:

• Planet Earth has suffered natural catastrophes on a global scale, both before and during mankind's recorded history.
• There is evidence for these catastrophes in the geological record (here Velikovsky was espousing Catastrophist ideas as opposed to the prevailing Uniformitarian notions) and archeological record. The extinction of many species had occurred catastrophically, not by gradual Darwinian means.
• The catastrophes which occurred within the memory of mankind are recorded in myths, legends and written history of all ancient cultures and civilisations. Velikovsky pointed to alleged concordances in the accounts of many cultures, and proposed that they referred to the same real events. He put forward the psychoanalytic idea of "Cultural Amnesia" as a mechanism whereby these literal records came to be regarded as mere myths and legends.
• The cause of these natural catastrophes were close encounters between the Earth and other bodies with the solar system - not least what were now the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Mars, these bodies having moved upon different orbits within human memory.
• To explain the celestial mechanics necessary to permit these changes to the configuration of the solar system, Velikovsky thought that electromagnetic forces might somehow play a greater role to counteract gravity and orbital mechanics.
• Velikovsky argued that the conventional chronology of the Near East and classical world, based upon Egyptian Sothic dating and the king lists of Manetho, was wholly flawed. This was the reason for the apparent absence of correlation between the Biblical record and those of neighbouring cultures, and also the cause of the enigmatic "dark ages" in Greece and elsewhere. Velikovsky shifted several chronologies and dynasties from the Egyptian Old Kingdom to Ptolemaic times by centuries (a scheme he called the Revised Chronology), placing the Exodus contemporary with the fall of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. He proposed numerous other synchronisms stretching up to the time of Alexander the Great. He argued that these eliminate phantom "dark ages", and vindicate the biblical accounts of history and those recorded by Herodotus. For further details, see the Ages in Chaos article.

Some of Velikovsky's specific postulated catastrophes included:

• A tentative suggestion that Earth had once been a satellite of a "proto-Saturn" body, before its current Solar orbit.
• That the Deluge (Noah's Flood) had been caused by proto-Saturn entering a nova state (a distinct impossibility), and ejecting much of its mass into space.
• A suggestion that the planet Mercury was involved in the Tower of Babel catastrophe.
• Jupiter had been the culprit for the catastrophe which saw the destruction of the "Cities of the Plain" (Sodom and Gomorrah)
• Periodic close contacts with a cometary Venus (which had been ejected from Jupiter) had caused the Exodus events (c.1500 BCE) and Joshua's subsequent "sun standing still" incident.
• Periodic close contacts with Mars had caused havoc in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.

As noted above, Velikovsky had conceived the broad sweep of this material by the early 1940s. However, within his lifetime, whilst he continued to research and expand upon the details of his ideas, he released only selected portions of his work to the public in book form:

• Worlds in Collision (1950) discussed the literary and mythical records of the "Venus" and "Mars" catastrophes
• Portions of his Revised Chronology were published as Ages in Chaos (1952), Peoples of the Sea (1977) and Rameses II & His Time (1978)
• Earth in Upheaval (1956) dealt with geological evidence for global natural catastrophes

Several key portions of the Revised Chronology remained unpublished (although the manuscripts are readily available in the Velikovsky Archive and thus the details of the entire scheme are known). Numerous other authors (such as Donovan Courville, Peter James and David Rohl) have since taken a cue from Velikovsky to develop their own proposed chronological revisions.

Velikovsky's ideas on his earlier Saturn/Mercury/Jupiter events were never published, and the available archived manuscripts are much less developed.

Of all the strands of his work, Velikovsky published least on his ideas regarding the role of electromagnetism in astronomy. In fact he retreated from the propositions in his 1946 monograph Cosmos without Gravitation, a work he and his supporters preferred to ignore subsequently, and a probable catalyst for the aggressively antipathetic reaction of astronomers and physicists from its first presentation. However other Velikovskian enthusiasts such as Ralph Juergens, Earl Milton, Wal Thornhill and James McCanney have embraced and developed these themes to propose a scenario where stars are lit not by internal nuclear fusion, but as the anode focii of galactic-scale electrical discharge currents. Such ideas have zero support in the conventional literature.

Kritieken

"Velikovsky is neither crank nor charlatan — although to state my opinion and to quote one of my colleagues, he is at least gloriously wrong.... Velikovsky would rebuild the science of celestial mechanics to save the literal accuracy of ancient legends"

— Stephen Jay Gould

Velikovsky's ideas have been almost entirely rejected by mainstream academia (often vociferously so) and his work is generally regarded as erroneous in all its detailed conclusions. Moreover, his unorthodox methodology (for example, using comparative mythology to derive scenarios in celestial mechanics) is viewed by scholars as an unacceptable way to arrive at conclusions.

Kritiek op Werelden in Botsing

Velikovsky's bestselling and consequently most-criticized book is Worlds in Collision. Astronomer Harlow Shapley, along with others such as Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, were highly critical of Macmillan's decision to publish the work.. The fundamental criticism against this book from the astronomy community was that its celestial mechanics were irreconcilable with physics requiring planetary orbits which could do not conform with the laws of conservation of energy and conservation of angular momentum.

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.

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, featuring (among others) Velikovsky himself and Carl Sagan. Sagan gave a critique of Velikovsky's ideas (the book version of Sagan's critique is much longer than that presented in the talk, see below). His criticisms are available in an essay in the book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Sagan's arguments were aimed at a popular audience and he did not bother to remain to debate Velikovsky in person, facts that were used by Velikovsky's followers to attempt to discredit his analysis (see Ginenthal in References below). Sagan rebutted these charges, and further attacked Velikovsky's ideas in his PBS television series Cosmos.

It was not until the 1980s that a very detailed critique of Worlds in Collision was made in terms of its use of mythical and literary sources, when Bob Forrest published a highly critical examination of them (see below). A short analysis of the position of arguments in the late 20th century is given by Dr Velikovsky's ex-associate, and Kronos editor, C. Leroy Ellenberger, in his A Lesson from Velikovsky.

More recently, the absence of supporting material in ice-core studies (such as the Greenland Dye-3 and Vostok cores) have removed any basis for the proposition of a global catastrophe of the proposed dimension within the later Holocene period.

Kritiek op de Herziene Chronologie

Velikovsky's "Revised chronology" has been rejected by nearly all mainstream historians and Egyptologists. It was claimed that Velikovsky's usage of material for proof is often very selective. In 1965 the leading cuneiformist Abraham Sachs, in a forum at Brown University, dismissed Velikovsky's use of Mesopotamian cuneiform sources. Velikovsky was never able to refute Sachs' attack.

In 1978, following the much-postponed publication of further volumes in Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos series, the UK's Society for Interdisciplinary Studies organised a conference in Glasgow specifically to debate the revised chronology. The ultimate conclusion of this work, by names including Peter James, Jon Bimson, Geoffrey Gammonn, and David Rohl, was that the Revised Chronology was untenable. Specifically, Michael Jones contended that it was impossible to separate the 18th, 19th and 20th Dynasties by centuries as Velikovsky proposed, presenting evidence from genealogies of construction workers which spanned the three dynasties contiguously. However, inspired by Velikovky's original premise that the Manethian chronology of Egypt was flawed, James, Rohl and several other authors have gone on to publish their more conservative chronological revisions, which have also failed to find any acceptance in the mainstream academic community. Historian Emmet Sweeney has published works supporting the Revised Chronology, but these, too, have not found mainstream acceptance.

"De Velikovsky Affaire"

Such was the hostility directed against Velikovsky from some quarters (particularly the original campaign led by Harlow Shapley), that some commentators have made an analysis of the conflict in itself. The most prominent of these was a study by American Behavioral Scientist magazine, eventually published in book form as The Velikovsky Affair. This framed the discussion in terms of how academic disciplines reacted to ideas from workers from outside their field, claiming that there was an academic aversion to permitting people to cross inter-disciplinary boundaries.

The scientific press generally refused to permit Velikovsky a forum to rebut his critics. Velikovsky claimed that this made him a "suppressed genius" and he likened himself to Giordano Bruno who was burnt at the stake for preaching heliocentrism.

The storm of controversy created by Velikovsky's publications may have helped revive the catastrophist movement in the second half of the 20th century; however 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.

Bibliografie

All published by Doubleday:

• Worlds in Collision (1950)
• Ages in Chaos (1952)
• Earth In Upheaval (1955)
• Oedipus and Akhnaton (1960)
• Peoples of the Sea (1977)
• Rameses II and His Times (1978)
• Mankind in Amnesia (1982)
• Stargazers and Gravediggers (1983)

Referenties

• Abell, George O. (1981). Scientists and Velikovsky, in Paranormal Borderlands of Science, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Prometheus Books.

• Allan, D.S. and J.B. Delair (1995). When The Earth Nearly Died. Gateway Books, UK. published in USA as Cataclysm by Bear & Co, 1997. A précis is here.
• Bauer, Henry H. (1984). Beyond Velikovsky. The History of a Public Controversy. University of Illinois, Urbana.

• Bauer, Henry H. (1980). Passions and Purposes: A Perspective, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol 5, #1, Fall 1980, 28-31. Reprinted in Paranormal Borderlands of Science, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Prometheus Books.

• Robert Todd Carroll (2003). The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-27242-6. Pages 396-401.

• Alfred de Grazia, Ralph E. Juergens, Stecchini L.C. (Eds.) (1978). The Velikovsky Affair - Scientism versus Science. 2ed., Metron Publications, Princeton, New Jersey. Also online.

• Forrest, Bob (1981). Velikovsky's Sources. In six volumes, with Notes and Index Volume. Privately published by the author, Manchester.

• Forrest, Robert (1983). Venus and Velikovsky: The Original Sources, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol 8, #2, Winter 1983-84, 154-164.

• Frazier, Kendrick (1980). The Distortions Continue, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol 5, #1, Fall 1980, 32-38. Reprinted in Paranormal Borderlands of Science, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Prometheus Books.

• Garder. Martin (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, chapter 3, Dover ISBN 0-486-20394-8

• Ginenthal, Charles (1995). Carl Sagan & Immanuel Velikovsky. New Falcon Publications, Tempe Arizona

• 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.

• Oberg, James (1980). Ideas in Collision, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol 5, #1, Fall 1980, 20-27. Reprinted in Paranormal Borderlands of Science, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Prometheus Books.

• Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia (1952). Worlds in Collision, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol 96, Oct. 15, 1952.

• Pearlman, Dale, (Ed.) (1996) Stephen J. Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky. Ivy Press Books, Forest Hills, N.Y.

• PENSÉE. 1972-1975. Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered. I - X. Student Academic Freedon Forum, Portland.

• Ransom, C.J. (1976) The Age of Velikovsky. Delta, New York.

• Philip Plait (2002). Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax", John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-40976-6. Chapter 18.

• Rohl, David (1996) A Test of Time. Arrow Books.

• Sagan, Carl, (1979) Broca's Brain. 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. Originally appeared in Scientists confront Velikovsky.

• Talbott, Stephen L. (1977) Velikovsky Reconsidered. Warner Books, New York.

• Marriott, David (2006) The Velikovski Inheritance.

• Bauer, Henry H. (1999): Beyond Velikovsky: The History of a public controversy. University of Illinois Press.

• Sweeney, Emmet (2006) Empire of Thebes or Ages in Chaos Revisited, Algora Publishing.

Externe links

Online beschikbare Velikovsky-werken

• The Velikovsky Archive - an online collection of unpublished works, including audio recordings of lectures, and a video of the 1972 CBC documentary
• Immanuel Velikovsky Papers at Princeton University Library
• The Velikovsky Affair - Second edition of the Alfred de Grazia book (see References)

Organisaties die zich bezighouden met Velikovsky's werk

• Aeon: The Journal of Myth and Science
• Kronia
• Kronos Press
• Society for Interdisciplinary Studies
• The Velikovskian, A Journal of Myth, History and Science

Kritieken op het werk van Velikovsky

• Jerry Pournelle's commentaries on Sagan's arguments at the AAAS meeting.
• Velikovsky in Collision - Stephen Jay Gould
• Ice Core Evidence - Charles Ginenthal
• Minds in Ablation Sean Mewhinney responds to Ice Core Evidence
• Worlds Still Colliding letter from C.Leroy Ellenberger
• An Antidote to Velikovskian Delusions - Leroy Ellenberger
• A lesson from Velikovsky - Leroy Ellenberger
• Top Ten Reasons why Velikovsky is wrong about Worlds in Collision - Leroy Ellenberger
• El-Arish Revisited - Sean Mewhinney
• Abraham Sachs' address at Brown University 1965 on cuneiform sources
• Short Bio, Raw data actually supports Velikovsky - Ted Holden

Category:1895 births Category:1979 deaths Category:Belarusian Americans Category:Belarusian historians Category:Mythographers Category:Pseudohistory Category:Pseudoscience