Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization by J. Douglas Kenyon Page A
Authors: J. Douglas Kenyon
Tags: History, Retail, Non-Fiction, Alternative History, Archaeology, Gnostic Dementia, Fringe Science, Amazon.com, Ancient Aliens
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rich published and unpublished body of work.
8 The Perils of Planetary Amnesia
As Evidence of Ancient Cataclysm Mounts, the Legacy of a Rejected Genius Is Reconsidered
Steve Parsons
A t one time, Immanuel Velikovsky was known and respected as a world-class scholar. After studying at Edinburgh, Moscow, Zurich, Berlin, and Vienna, Velikovsky earned a reputation as an accomplished psychoanalyst and enjoyed close ties to Albert Einstein and Freud’s first pupil, Wilhelm Stekel.
But with the 1950 publication by the Macmillan Company of his bestselling book
Worlds in Collision,
Velikovsky’s reputation in the halls of science plummeted all the way to the basement. His stature as a researcher and scholar would not recover for the rest of his life. Overnight, Velikovsky became
persona non grata
on college campuses across the nation, and his work was vilified by mainstream astronomers.
How did this Russian-born Jewish scholar, educated at the world’s most respected centers of learning, bring such a firestorm of criticism upon himself? What caused powerful men of science to denounce Velikovsky as a liar and charlatan on the basis of hearsay, swearing never to read his popular book? Why have respected professionals lost their jobs for committing the crime of recommending an open investigation of Velikovsky’s conclusions?
After examining the ancient records of cultures around the world, Velikovsky made three unusual claims in
Worlds in Collision
. He postulated that (1) the planet Venus moved on a highly irregular course, passing very close to Earth within human history, (2) electromagnetic and electrostatic forces operate on a planetary scale, powerful enough to affect the motions and activity of planets, and (3) the planet Venus took the form of an immense comet in the ancient sky, inspiring great awe and fear in the hearts of our distant ancestors.
Velikovsky’s conclusions were controversial, but this alone cannot explain the intensity of the response from the halls of academe. Controversy alone cannot explain why, over many years, the popular Carl Sagan mounted a personal campaign to discredit Velikovsky. Normally, the marketplace of ideas will accommodate a broad range of thought, from the weird to the boring, but not this time.
The sheer novelty of Velikovsky’s work cannot explain why Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard Observatory, along with ranking astronomer Fred Whipple and other powerful scientists, would force Macmillan to cease publication and fire its own editor, James Putnam, even though
Worlds in Collision
had soared to the top of the best-seller lists. Some have speculated that only the power of truth touching the raw nerve of mass denial could cause grown men to go ballistic like this.
Only a deeply buried trauma in the mass consciousness could erupt with such irrational fury. In the case of the “Velikovsky affair,” the organized, frantic defense of entrenched belief produced one of the most pathological episodes in the history of science. Had Immanuel Velikovsky penetrated the veil of “planetary amnesia”?
As a psychoanalyst, Velikovsky was well qualified to recognize pathology in human behavior. In a later book,
Mankind in Amnesia,
he claims that the ancient sages exhibited a frightened state of mind, haunted by a particular fear based on terrible events their ancestors had experienced when the world was ripped apart by monstrous natural forces. He describes the means by which this deepest of collective traumas was gradually buried and forgotten over the years, but not eliminated.
Aristotle’s cosmology, which dominated scholastic thinking for two thousand years, acted with surprising precision to suppress all lingering fears of planetary disorder. Then in the 1800s, modern science agreed that the solar system, Earth, and all forms of life on Earth had
absolutely never
passed through any kind of wild or disorderly phase in the past. This idea,
8 The Perils of Planetary Amnesia
As Evidence of Ancient Cataclysm Mounts, the Legacy of a Rejected Genius Is Reconsidered
Steve Parsons
A t one time, Immanuel Velikovsky was known and respected as a world-class scholar. After studying at Edinburgh, Moscow, Zurich, Berlin, and Vienna, Velikovsky earned a reputation as an accomplished psychoanalyst and enjoyed close ties to Albert Einstein and Freud’s first pupil, Wilhelm Stekel.
But with the 1950 publication by the Macmillan Company of his bestselling book
Worlds in Collision,
Velikovsky’s reputation in the halls of science plummeted all the way to the basement. His stature as a researcher and scholar would not recover for the rest of his life. Overnight, Velikovsky became
persona non grata
on college campuses across the nation, and his work was vilified by mainstream astronomers.
How did this Russian-born Jewish scholar, educated at the world’s most respected centers of learning, bring such a firestorm of criticism upon himself? What caused powerful men of science to denounce Velikovsky as a liar and charlatan on the basis of hearsay, swearing never to read his popular book? Why have respected professionals lost their jobs for committing the crime of recommending an open investigation of Velikovsky’s conclusions?
After examining the ancient records of cultures around the world, Velikovsky made three unusual claims in
Worlds in Collision
. He postulated that (1) the planet Venus moved on a highly irregular course, passing very close to Earth within human history, (2) electromagnetic and electrostatic forces operate on a planetary scale, powerful enough to affect the motions and activity of planets, and (3) the planet Venus took the form of an immense comet in the ancient sky, inspiring great awe and fear in the hearts of our distant ancestors.
Velikovsky’s conclusions were controversial, but this alone cannot explain the intensity of the response from the halls of academe. Controversy alone cannot explain why, over many years, the popular Carl Sagan mounted a personal campaign to discredit Velikovsky. Normally, the marketplace of ideas will accommodate a broad range of thought, from the weird to the boring, but not this time.
The sheer novelty of Velikovsky’s work cannot explain why Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard Observatory, along with ranking astronomer Fred Whipple and other powerful scientists, would force Macmillan to cease publication and fire its own editor, James Putnam, even though
Worlds in Collision
had soared to the top of the best-seller lists. Some have speculated that only the power of truth touching the raw nerve of mass denial could cause grown men to go ballistic like this.
Only a deeply buried trauma in the mass consciousness could erupt with such irrational fury. In the case of the “Velikovsky affair,” the organized, frantic defense of entrenched belief produced one of the most pathological episodes in the history of science. Had Immanuel Velikovsky penetrated the veil of “planetary amnesia”?
As a psychoanalyst, Velikovsky was well qualified to recognize pathology in human behavior. In a later book,
Mankind in Amnesia,
he claims that the ancient sages exhibited a frightened state of mind, haunted by a particular fear based on terrible events their ancestors had experienced when the world was ripped apart by monstrous natural forces. He describes the means by which this deepest of collective traumas was gradually buried and forgotten over the years, but not eliminated.
Aristotle’s cosmology, which dominated scholastic thinking for two thousand years, acted with surprising precision to suppress all lingering fears of planetary disorder. Then in the 1800s, modern science agreed that the solar system, Earth, and all forms of life on Earth had
absolutely never
passed through any kind of wild or disorderly phase in the past. This idea,
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