Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge Another 'win' for Velikovsky

If a ‘Big Whack’ Made the Moon, Did it Also Knock the Earth on Its Side?

Not Theia, Mars.

Once again, Immanuel Velikovsky's speculations and calculations have been vindicated without credit. Check out Worlds in Collision (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1950).

* For example, his predictions about Venus were borne out once exploratory vessels landed there. He was especially vilified unprofessionally by Carl Sagan in mostly ad hominem fashion.

The reason Velikovsly was vilified by ‘Science’ in general was that he made up a lot of (read: speculated quite wildly in) his cosmological writings while presenting them as Truth*, and (perhaps equally annoying) that he bypassed peer review in publishing his work. Little if anything crucial to his theories was based on verifiable and reproducible observations; at best he made ‘educated’ guesses along his speculative way. The fact that he had some things ‘right’** doesn’t necessarily matter much in science, as that happens all the time and can often be explained by chance alone. The fact that some criticisms deteriorated into ad hominem attacks does matter: imho that’s never defensible. My personal view is that theories as Velikovsky’s—however tastily presented—are likely incorrect as stated, but may contain ideas that merit further consideration in evaluating new data.

*) Velikovsky, a Belarussian Jew who moved to the US before WW2 via Germany and Palestine, had degrees in medicine and psychiatry. He got interested in historical chronology during his work in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and on sabbatical in NYC he set out to refute certain theories about Jewish religious history proposed by Freud. In order to do so, Velikovsky had to ‘revise conventional chronology’ by reinterpreting existing data and he filled in the gaps with what many called wishful thinking. Since his theories on the topic didn’t pass scientific muster, he published them as popular ‘science’ books, earning him further notoriety in scientific circles.

**) I must disagree with your comment that ‘his predictions about Venus were borne out’; 'they' were not, only a few (minor) aspects of them, and then mostly out of context.

Anyone who is interested can check the original sources and other records.

Wikipedia's entry for Immanuel Velikovsky (also footnoted by alternaut) is a good place to start.

As noted there:
Kronos: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Synthesis was founded in 1975 explicitly "to deal with Velikovsky's work". Ten issues of Pensée: Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered appeared from 1972 to 1975.

If nothing else, the "Velikovsky Affair" is instructive in many ways.

I have no problem with someone trying to fill in dimly lit areas with theories, as long as they're clearly marked as such. Theories are made to be proven or disproven, and in either even they advance our understanding of the world. So keep the theories coming! (just don't try to sell them to me as facts)

I think when you say "theory," you mean "hypothesis."

To a (real) scientist, the word "theory" doesn't mean "conjecture," it means "model." A hypothesis doesn't become a theory until it's supported by empirical evidence (hence, theory of gravity, germ theory of disease).

Yeah I don't spend a lot of time trying to distinguish them, I try to assume people aren't wildly spouting hypothesis without having anything to go on.

them: "I hate this, I think it's all xxx fault!"
me: "what makes you think that? why is that at fault?"
them: (blank stare)
me: (walks away)

("come back and we'll resume that discussion when you have some facts...")

In this case the facts appear to be in the definition of terms (emphasis in the following is mine)..

What few, very few, non-scientists comprehend about scientific theory was very neatly summed up by Albert Einstein when he was asked if he could prove one of his theories was true. He quite correctly replied, "No amount of testing can prove my theory to be true, but it only takes one test to disprove it."

Not exactly. The claim is too facile, even if true, to wit:
The test must be 100% specific and 100% sensitive and must be carried out with all relevant artifacts eliminated or definitively accounted for. To prove that, the test must be replicable (to the degree required by the theory, but preferably each and every time conducted, without residue).
The proof of the elusive Higgs boson is a good example.