Velikovsky-genius or charlatan?
In an interview, controversial scientist explains views, problems
By DON WALKER
To a handful of today's scientists, Immanuel Velikovsky presents a provocative challenge worth considering; to the majority, he is a charlatan from whom science and the public must be protected.
Orthodox science tells us the heavens have worked rhythmically, mechanically like a timepiece almost since eternity. The earth has slowly progressed through glacial and tropical ages, molding forms of life as it goes.
Velikovsky espouses a theory of celestial cataclysm and consequent terrestrial upheaval.
He contends that twice in ages past, once in the 15th century B.C. and again in the 8th century B.C., a comet approached the earth and set off such global catastrophes as
flaming skies, tidal waves, a shift in the earth's axis, and a momentary slowing of the earth's rotation.
Those events on earth, Velikovsky said, were described by the sages of the Hebrews and other ancient cultures and are known to us as the events of Exodus.
He regards as valid such ancient writings as the Bible and the Hindu Vedas. For him, these are historical records, opposing modern historians and theologians who dismiss them as allegory.
He draws on paleontology, geology, archaeology, physics, and astronomy as well, and his data from each impinge on the others.
IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY
VELIKOVSKY WAS BORN in Vetebsk, Russia, in 1895. In 1921 he received his medical diploma from the University of Moscow.
The first written product of his labors was "Worlds in Collision," a 1950 documentary on cosmic cataclysm and sequential catastrophes on earth. Although the book was popular with the public, topping the New York Times best-seller list for 20 weeks, it was anathema to most of the scientific community.
Velikovsky felt the warfare of science when textbook-writing scientists boycotted his publisher, the Macmillan Company, forcing the company to drop him.
It was on the subject of science's campaign against him that we began our interview with this protean mind.
KANSAN: Newsweek magazine has said the scientific community responded to your theories with "a highly unacademic fury." Why have scientific administrators fought so hard to prevent publication of your theory?
VELIKOVSKY: One reason for this is that my theory is in conflict with practically every field
of natural and social science to a very definite degree. Less in history and mass psychology, but certainly in natural science like geology, paleontology, celestial mechanics, and cosmology. A number of fields are vaunted. They demand that a person belong to that field. He cannot invade their field and offer such definite visions.
KANSAN: Do your findings contradict or merely modify Darwinian evolution?
VELIKOVSKY: Only modify it in the sense that I consider there were periods of very rapid and intense changes, genetic changes, and that it was not all due to competition for survival. I view these changes of the past as not accumulating slowly through eons of time, but going through periods of genetic mutations which account for extinction and origin of new species.
Certainly this cataclysmic evolution is further away from those views Darwin attacks.
KANSAN: You maintain that cosmic cataclyms affected the earth in the 15th and 8th centuries B.C. Were some parts of the earth struck harder by those catastrophes?
VELIKOVSKY: Yes, in those places where a tidal wave passed. In other places, charges were originated due to the earth's coming into a strong magnetic field, and some currents traveled more in formations where there are metals than in other formations.
Again, in several parts of the world there was destruction due to some bituminous stuff falling from space as described in so many ancient sources.
Conflagrations and other paroxysms would certainly not favor survival of species or races. Survival was most probably collective. It was not survival of the fittest. It was survival of the most fortunate.
KANSAN: Did all ancient civilizations have records of catastrophes?
VELIKOVSKY: The ancient Chinese, Hindu, Iranian, Mesopotamian, Syrian, Philistine, and Egyptian, and even the Greek and Roman civilizations do have in their literature survival of many of these traditions. From Mexican civilization, we have mainly records in art, but some also in writing.
KANSAN: Exodus 14:21 and 22 describe the escape of the Israelites from Egypt through the divided sea. You claim this miracle, similarly described in the literature of the ancient Indians of Mexico, was caused by the close approach of another heavenly body. Could Moses predict this miracle or was it coincidence that the Israelites stood before the sea when it parted?
VELIKOVSKY: No, it was not coincidence. I believe that the ancient sages, the skywatchers, knew that some danger was in the sky, and for centuries they were prepared for some great events.
KANSAN: Has your training as a psychiatrist aided you in developing your theory?
VELIKOVSKY: Having worked as a psychoanalyst, I have observed and trained myself to understand the memories that are sometimes not entirely or not immediately clear. I believe that I can approach the ancient memories of the human race as I would approach the early memories of a
single person. The phenomenon of submersion of the memory of a traumatic experience in the single person is possibly not different from what would happen to a race.
KANSAN: You claim your findings have implications for mass psychology. For example?
Continued on page 7
VELIKOVSKY: Certainly there is a phenomenon which could be called collective scotoma—the inability to read what is plainly written. When you open the Old Testament and you read there
Daily Kansan 3
Monday, May 22, 1967
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Scientist defends—
Continued from page 1
"I HAVE NOT yet seen how Velikovsky's theory fits in with relative chronology." Miss Haviland said.
Continued from page 1 The second definition of time, Miss Haviland said, is "relative." Rather than literate, this implies a "relative sequence of events," determined from artifacts.
Seaver said, "My first reaction is that he doesn't use historical evidence the way a modern historian does.
This, Velikovsky stressed, he attempts to do in his next book.
Another objection, Seaver said was that Velikovsky "does not bring in much negative evidence." As an example he used the Hittites.
VELIKOVSKY ASSUMES that all evidence is of equal value, rather than literate or archeological, Seaver said.
is, "How will you resolve the remainder of history?"
Terming Velikovsky's theory the "collapse of chronology," she said it is unlikely the dating of artifacts is so far off as to suggest the accepted chronology is wrong.
The Hittites existed in Turkey from 1600 B.C. to 1190 B.C. during which time they communicated with the Egyptians.
"He equates sources of a great variety to support his work." Seaver said. "I think he is not selective enough."
But, Seaver said, Velikovsky fails to find a place for them in his revised chronology.
bringing the Hittites into historical focus." Seaver said.
Velikovsky admitted that the main argument against his work
"I THINK MUCH of the acceptance of his work rests on
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