Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization by J. Douglas Kenyon
Authors: J. Douglas Kenyon
Tags: History, Retail, Non-Fiction, Alternative History, Archaeology, Gnostic Dementia, Fringe Science, Amazon.com, Ancient Aliens
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meteorites contain hydrocarbons.
Correct. By 1951, spectral analysis disclosed hydrocarbons in comet tails. By 1959, hydrocarbons in meteorites were found to be composed of many of the same waxes and compounds found here on Earth.
Evidence of petroleum hydrocarbons will be found on the Moon.
Correct. Samples brought back by the Apollo XI mission had evidence of organic matter in the form of aromatic hydrocarbons.
Jupiter emits radio noises.
Velikovsky made this claim at Princeton in 1953. Eighteen months later, two scientists from the Carnegie Institute announced receiving strong radio signals from Jupiter, then considered a cold body enshrouded in thousands of miles of ice. By 1960, two Cal Tech scientists had found that Jupiter had a radiation belt around it that was emitting 1,014 times more radio energy than Earth’s Van Allen belt.
Quite a few “lucky guesses” and “coincidences,” wouldn’t you say?
Let’s now turn to Velikovsky’s single greatest “crime,” which not only put him in the soup but also kept him there: his interdisciplinary investigations.
VELIKOVSKY: INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC HERETIC
Dr. Lynn Rose, writing in
Pensée: Velikovsky Reconsidered,
in an article entitled “The Censorship of Velikovsky’s Interdisciplinary Synthesis,” noted an automatic tendency toward uniformitarianism in all the scientific disciplines. This condition was born of a profound ignorance concerning evidence of catastrophism found by other disciplines, leading to the ignoring or rejecting of such evidence within any particular discipline.
As Dr. Rose put it: “Each isolated discipline tends to remain unaware of the catastrophic data hidden away as skeletons in the closets of other disciplines. Velikovsky has removed those skeletons from various closets and has been rattling them loudly for all to hear. His suggestion is that when one looks at all the evidence without restricting oneself to the limited number of ‘facts’ usually considered by one group of specialists, it becomes possible to make a strong case for catastrophism.”
To say Velikovsky’s skeletal music was unwelcome to many would be putting it mildly. Said Dean B. McLaughlin, professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan, in his May 20, 1950, letter of protest and threat to the Macmillan Company (as quoted by Dr. Rose): “The claim of universal efficacy is the unmistakable mark of the quack . . . There is specialization within specialties . . . But no man today can hope to correct the mistakes in more than a small subfield of science. And yet Velikovsky claims to be able to dispute the basic principles of several sciences! These are indeed delusions of grandeur!”
Does this explain in part why Velikovsky was essentially crucified, then ostracized, by most of the scientific community?
Does this explain why he was harangued ad nauseum at his “day in court” twenty-four years after
Worlds in Collision
was published? This “day in court” took the form of a special meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in San Francisco on February 25, 1974. It was arranged by Carl Sagan and had been promised to be a fair forum. Instead, it turned into a snide dismissal of Velikovsky, an unprincipled, many-on-one attack on a slow-speaking, seventy-nine-year-old man deluged with objections and assertions and given near zero time to respond. Velikovsky endured two sessions of this abuse, which lasted seven hours, and while he managed to score some good points, to many who participated in this rigged event he came across poorly. Nor was a key paper by Albert Michelson (of speed of light measurement fame), which supported Velikovsky’s arguments, allowed to be read before reporters left to file their stories.
The stunning findings of planetary probes ended Velikovsky’s college exile and overloaded his schedule. Velikovsky died, still researching, in 1979, leaving us a
Correct. By 1951, spectral analysis disclosed hydrocarbons in comet tails. By 1959, hydrocarbons in meteorites were found to be composed of many of the same waxes and compounds found here on Earth.
Evidence of petroleum hydrocarbons will be found on the Moon.
Correct. Samples brought back by the Apollo XI mission had evidence of organic matter in the form of aromatic hydrocarbons.
Jupiter emits radio noises.
Velikovsky made this claim at Princeton in 1953. Eighteen months later, two scientists from the Carnegie Institute announced receiving strong radio signals from Jupiter, then considered a cold body enshrouded in thousands of miles of ice. By 1960, two Cal Tech scientists had found that Jupiter had a radiation belt around it that was emitting 1,014 times more radio energy than Earth’s Van Allen belt.
Quite a few “lucky guesses” and “coincidences,” wouldn’t you say?
Let’s now turn to Velikovsky’s single greatest “crime,” which not only put him in the soup but also kept him there: his interdisciplinary investigations.
VELIKOVSKY: INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC HERETIC
Dr. Lynn Rose, writing in
Pensée: Velikovsky Reconsidered,
in an article entitled “The Censorship of Velikovsky’s Interdisciplinary Synthesis,” noted an automatic tendency toward uniformitarianism in all the scientific disciplines. This condition was born of a profound ignorance concerning evidence of catastrophism found by other disciplines, leading to the ignoring or rejecting of such evidence within any particular discipline.
As Dr. Rose put it: “Each isolated discipline tends to remain unaware of the catastrophic data hidden away as skeletons in the closets of other disciplines. Velikovsky has removed those skeletons from various closets and has been rattling them loudly for all to hear. His suggestion is that when one looks at all the evidence without restricting oneself to the limited number of ‘facts’ usually considered by one group of specialists, it becomes possible to make a strong case for catastrophism.”
To say Velikovsky’s skeletal music was unwelcome to many would be putting it mildly. Said Dean B. McLaughlin, professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan, in his May 20, 1950, letter of protest and threat to the Macmillan Company (as quoted by Dr. Rose): “The claim of universal efficacy is the unmistakable mark of the quack . . . There is specialization within specialties . . . But no man today can hope to correct the mistakes in more than a small subfield of science. And yet Velikovsky claims to be able to dispute the basic principles of several sciences! These are indeed delusions of grandeur!”
Does this explain in part why Velikovsky was essentially crucified, then ostracized, by most of the scientific community?
Does this explain why he was harangued ad nauseum at his “day in court” twenty-four years after
Worlds in Collision
was published? This “day in court” took the form of a special meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in San Francisco on February 25, 1974. It was arranged by Carl Sagan and had been promised to be a fair forum. Instead, it turned into a snide dismissal of Velikovsky, an unprincipled, many-on-one attack on a slow-speaking, seventy-nine-year-old man deluged with objections and assertions and given near zero time to respond. Velikovsky endured two sessions of this abuse, which lasted seven hours, and while he managed to score some good points, to many who participated in this rigged event he came across poorly. Nor was a key paper by Albert Michelson (of speed of light measurement fame), which supported Velikovsky’s arguments, allowed to be read before reporters left to file their stories.
The stunning findings of planetary probes ended Velikovsky’s college exile and overloaded his schedule. Velikovsky died, still researching, in 1979, leaving us a
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