Conference hydra::dejavu

    Re .0:
    
    It's been a long, long time since I've had brushes with Velikovsky's
    works.  One thing that early stuck in my craw was:
    
 >His most dramatic hypothesis is that Venus was once part of Jupiter,
>& was torn off by tidal forces. Venus entered a cometary orbit which
>decayed after trading momentum & atmosphere with Mars, Terra & Luna.
 
    Fortunately (or otherwise), I know a tad about orbital mechanics,
    and without even asking the embarrassing question of how an
    even-expelled-at--better-than-escape-velocity mass could make it
    through past the outer Roche limit of Jupiter without being dissipated
    rather than forming a comet, it's sufficiently embarrassing to ask
    how Comet Venus could have an orbit that decayed to that with the
    least eccentricity (approximately: deviation from perfect circularity)
    in the Solar System.
    
    Not that the books weren't entertaining reads.
    
>..................................................His contradictions of
>prevailing authority sparked a campaign to discredit  Velikovskian 
>theories which included notables such as Astronomer Harlow Shapely.
 
    The campaign was perhaps the most shameful incident in the annals
    of science publishing.   Whether Valikovsky's theories stood up
    under close analysis or no, the real problem was that his books
    were first published by a technical publisher specializing in
    scientific books, and many leading scientists who were regularly
    published by that firm _insisted_ that the company stop publishing
    Velkikovsky's work, on pain of none of them ever sending the publisher
    another manuscript.  The publisher complied (cutting into the profits)
    and the Velikovsky book was then published by another company more
    aligned with popular texts, and that company made a fortune, and
    gave Velikovsky's work a far larger audience.
    
    Hysteria and name calling are never good ways to "win" an argument.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr. 

    
    	His final book, _Mankind_In_Amnesia_, was published posthumously
    in the early '80s.    This book gives the final summation of his
    theories, with emphasis on material he felt was too sensitive
    to publish while he was alive.   (Understandable, given the furor
    around the publication of _Worlds_In_Collison_)
    
    	Velikovsky was a psychiatrist by trade.  He became interested
    in history and made his life's work the analysis of mankind's
    racial trauma.   He believed that mankind had been collectively
    traumatized by geological and celestial catyclysms.
    
    	I consider _Mankind_In_Amnesia_ to be one of the best books to
    read for understanding the effect of the collective unconscious
    on the process of history.   He documents the conflict between
    theorists who espouse catyclysmic views of history and geology,
    with those who believe in steady state or slow evolution theories.
    I believe he domonstrates that the catyclysmic theories are based
    on evidence and observation, while steady state and slow evolution
    theories are based on collective fears of sudden change or disaster.
    
	The furor that was aroused by the publication of _Worlds_In_
    _Collision_ was an example of the fear induced repression that
    meets catyclysmic theorists.   I found his analysis of the source
    of such collective fears to be very enlightening, since I had not
    previously known that collective repressions had such an effect
    on the popular acceptance of scientific theories.

	Alan.

	RE: .1  (Hi Steve!)
    
    	Velikovsky may have been the first person to note that the
    planets are charged bodies, and that the science of orbital
    mechanics had been developed before the complete understanding
    of electrical forces.
    
    	I believe his Venus theories have some holes, but he based
    them on recorded observations.   (*old* observations).
    Perhaps the present circularity of Venus's orbit will be more
    understandable when electric and magnetic forces are added to
    the model of planetary mechanics.   There is some evidence that
    all the planets are negatively charged, and thus would repel
    each other.   I don't believe that gravitational forces alone can 
    account for the even distribution of planetary orbits.   (was that
    Kepler's law? )
    
    	He based a lot of his theories on old mythic stories;  Was Venus
    said to have been born by springing from the brow of Zeus (Jupiter)?
    When Zeus was said to have thrown thunderbolts at Mars, Velikovski
    interpreted this as an actual lightning bolt between unequally
    charged planets during a time when those planets passed close
    together.   
    
    	There are many difficulties with his methods.   To his credit,
    he gave more validity to historical sources when he could
    find parallel accounts from other cultures.   In many cases he
    could find parallel accounts in Chinese, Mayan and Biblical stories.

    	Alan.

    Re .3 (Alan):
    
    >Perhaps the present circularity of Venus's orbit will be more
    >understandable when electric and magnetic forces are added to
    >the model of planetary mechanics. 
    
    That's been tried, but it can't account for the extreme circularity
    of the Venusian orbit.
    
    >....        I don't believe that gravitational forces alone can 
    >account for the even distribution of planetary orbits.   (was that
    >Kepler's law? ) 
    
    Actually, the closest anyone's come to a "law" about the distribution
    of planetary orbits is the so-called Bode-Titius Law, which is a
    mathematical expression on the form of 
    
    
                       [3(2^n)+4]/10 for n = -(infinity), 0, 1, 2, ...
    
    which gives a _fairly_ accurate expression for the distribution
    of orbits, if you include the median distance for the asteroid
    belt and exclude the orbit of Neptune. 
    
    The mechanism for that distribution seem best explained by C. F.
    von Weissacker, who went into some detail in the mid 1940s on the
    development of protoplanets at their current positions.  All done
    with straightforward Newtonian mechanics.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    For me, perhaps the most interesting of Velikovsky's theories is
    the one that states that Pharaoh Akhenaten (of 'One (Nameless) God'
    fame) was the historical figure behind the Oedipus myth.
    
    karl moeller

    
    	RE: .4 (Steve)
    
>    	"the development of protoplanets in their current positions"...

        Here this theory seems bent on proving how the planets were always
    in the positions they are in now.    The real stickler with
    Velikovsky's ideas is;  what do we do with all those *old*
    recorded observations of Venus's position, that if correct,
    indicate that Venus' orbit only became circular recently.
    	This has been the problem with Velikovsky's theories all along.
    If we decide that the solar system is (has been) stable over
    millions of years, these steady state theories are just so much bull
    if ancient observations of Venus were correct.    
    	Velikovsky started with the old recorded observations, then
    went on to develop a theory that explained them.   This still
    seems more sensible to me than imagining how the solar system
    ought to behave, then generating theories to prove that.   If
    it has been proven that the solar system is stable in the long
    term sense, (which I don't accept) then we still need some
    explanations for frozen mammoths in Siberia and historical accounts.
	
    	One example Velikovsky'ian fact;
    
	The day the sun stood still, is recorded in the book
    of Joshua, in the bible.   In China it was recorded that the
    sun stood on the horizon, the Mayan's recorded an extra long
    night at that time.   If the Earth actually ceased rotation
    for part of a day, we would expect flooding, and earthquakes.
    Velikovsky did find references to such associated events.
    Such an event would only seem possible given a large external
    force on the planet, such as might be caused by a near miss
    by a body of planetary size.  (which Velikovsky believed to
    be Venus).
    	These all remain theories with arguable portions, and dubious
    elements.   I, for one, will not be convinced by the steady
    state theorists until I hear an adaquate explanation for all
    those *old* observed facts.   (of course a lot of his view of history
    is not all so verifiable, but I believe much of it will stand)
    
    	In response to my comment on adding electrical and magnetic forces
    to the model, you answered;  "That's been tried, but it can't
    account for the extreme circularity..."      I think it may be
    a little soon to conclude that all possible theoretical models
    have been tried and found wanting.     Who has developed such
    a model ?   Did it include the possibilty of charge or magnetic
    field of a planet changing ?

    	Alan.

    Re .6 (alan):
    
    Last first:
    
    >	In response to my comment on adding electrical and magnetic forces
    >to the model, you answered;  "That's been tried, but it can't
    >account for the extreme circularity..."      I think it may be
    >a little soon to conclude that all possible theoretical models
    >have been tried and found wanting.     Who has developed such
    >a model ?   Did it include the possibilty of charge or magnetic
    >field of a planet changing ?  
    
    My memory's not absoluterly photographic (aklas), but I recall several
    computer simulations being reported about a dozen years ago, using
    both charges and differing magnetic fields.  The joker here is
    that presumably not every conceivable combination has been or can
    be chosen, so unlikely as any event of the sort might be, you can't
    prove it "never" happened unless you've run an infinite number of
    scenarios over time.
       
    >	The day the sun stood still, is recorded in the book
    >of Joshua, in the bible.   In China it was recorded that the
    >sun stood on the horizon, the Mayan's recorded an extra long
    >night at that time.   If the Earth actually ceased rotation
    >for part of a day, we would expect flooding, and earthquakes.
    >Velikovsky did find references to such associated events.
    >Such an event would only seem possible given a large external
    >force on the planet, such as might be caused by a near miss
    >by a body of planetary size.  (which Velikovsky believed to
    >be Venus). 
    
    And indeed, if the Earth actually ceased rotation, not only would
    there be floods, earthquakes, and the like, but the delicate structures
    in caves, some of which started hundreds of thousands of years before
    Joshua, like stalactites, would have snapped, if it were a worldwide
    event.  Nonwithstanding the tidal stresses that would accompany
    such a close approach, assume the mechanism stopped the Earth for
    the required period; the dynamics to start it up again would be
    more than a little interesting.  The Khemite calendar was well
    established prior to the event, and there would have been a deviation
    after the fact (that calendar was as accurate as a modern one, and
    was a lot more sanely organized).
    
    >	Velikovsky started with the old recorded observations, then
    >went on to develop a theory that explained them.
    
    If I recall correctly, he got the idea first and then went to the
    old records to find evidence of his hypothesis.
    
    >...............................................................If
    >it has been proven that the solar system is stable in the long
    >term sense, (which I don't accept) then we still need some
    >explanations for frozen mammoths in Siberia and historical accounts.
    
    Frozen mammoths in Siberia are just as explainable as sabre-tooth
    tigers in the La Brea tar pits; they got caught when something local
    happened.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr. 

    	RE: several (Steve)

    	hmmm...
    
    	Each hypothesis (yours, mine, Velikovsky's) seems to be based 
    on some limited set of "facts".   Many of these facts remain
    disputable, so this arguement will not be resolved here.
    
    	I read recently how the dead bodies of animals are suspended
    from trees near certain springs, and are found to be completely
    petrified in a short time.   Meanwhile there are well qualified
    geologists who will authoritativly state that petrification takes
    a very *long* time.    Well, those geoligists are just *wrong*,
    since they have never heard of those mineral springs, and they
    just aren't working with the same set of facts.    In a similar
    vein, the formation of stalactites and stalagmites is *not* a
    completely understood process.
    
    	Also there are problems with dating techniques;   It has been
    discovered that radioactive bodies will decay at a different rate
    if they are electrically charged.    If the charge on the whole
    planet were to change suddenly (through encountering a charged
    comet or meteorite) then the decay rate of carbon 14 would change
    simultaneously, all over the planet.    We calibrated our carbon
    14 dating techniques during a period where the charge on the
    planet did not change.   If the charge on the planet *did* change
    a few thousand years ago, then old dates verified by this method
    may have suspect accuracy.
    
	The Velikovsky problem remains a problem.   He calls into
    question so many accepted theories and assumptions, it makes
    it too easy to dismiss his ideas.   Yet there is an internal
    consistency in his work that I find fascinating.   Of course
    there is a certain danger in trying to make sense of the theories
    of (pick one or more;) 1) rejected scientists, 2) crackpots, 
    3) science fiction writers.....       I like to collect the anomalies
    in the theories, and see where they line up.   Like Charles Fort
    said; "The science of tomorrow is concealed in the rejected facts
    of today."  ( <<-  I may have mangled CF's quote there a little,
    but not much !  8^>  )
    
    	I think you may have trouble defending the view that the mammoths
    frozen in siberia with tropical vegitation in their mouths,
    were caught by a local weather change.   The change from tropic
    to artic must have been slighty more than "local".

	Alan.

    RE: .8
    
    What is this about mammoths and tropical vegitation?  That's a new
    one.
    
    BTW, there is a big difference between petrification and being coated
    with minerals.
    
    John M.

re: .8

So how does Velikovsky compare with Fort, or Von Daniken, or
even John ("The View Over Atlantis") Michell?  More or less
scholarly/overheated/factual/speculative/etc.?  Any comments?

    
    	RE: .10
    
	On Velikovsky's writing;
    
    	He is very scholarly, and has a lot to say.   He sometimes
    takes a long time saying it.   He overwhelms with footnotes
    and references.
    	I haven't read John Mitchell's "View Over Atlantis" to
    compare, but Fort and Von Daniken I've read and found far
    less impressive than Velikovsky.   Fort merely collected
    anecdotes.  They are well written but there is little in the
    way of explanation or underlying theory in Fort's work.
    Von Daniken writes lightweight science for people unused
    to digesting facts. 
    	Velikovsky is in a different class.   He proposed many
    theories in his life, some of which have proven right and
    some wrong, as science has advanced.   He used unusual
    methods in taking data from old texts as arguements for
    advancing new scientific theories.   Undoubtedly he made
    some mistakes (as I may make in interpreting him), but he
    is a serious thinker worth taking seriously.
    	My favorite hobby is reading about unusual or even wild
    theories.   I enjoy them the most, the harder they are to 
    refute, and Velikovsky's are among my favorite.   Velikovsky 
    made serious scientific and historical arguements in his 
    works, which I believe are educational even if you don't buy 
    into believing his thesis.   
    	I, myself, don't believe he's proved his point about Venus,
    and suspect other causes may have been involved in the events
    he studied, still for the most part I believe he was quite
    correct in pointing out the catyclysmic "Earth changes" that
    happened in historical memory and were recorded as the
    great flood, and also during the time of the plagues on Egypt
    recorded in the book of Exodus.   I think he would agree with me
    when I say his ideas are for thinking about, not just swallowing
    whole.   He is serious, scholarly, factual and speculative.  He 
    didn't expect to convert people with emotion, but with theories 
    and facts.   I do believe his work was very important, and that 
    *some* of his ideas will be "recognized" in a few generations.

    	Alan
    
    PS:  If you liked Velikovsky, try the books by Zecharia Sitchin
         He also rewrites history, with a lot of reinterpreting old
         texts, but comes to very different conclusions than Velikovsky!

    
    	RE: .9 ("Live long and phosphor!")
    
    	I'll check my references on the mammoths and the petrification,
    and get back to you in a few days, with a little more information.
    
    	But from memory;  the mammoths were frozen suddenly, and had
    never thawed since.   The meat was still fresh, enough so that
    sled dogs would eat it.   The plants included some broadleafs that
    did not grow at cold latitudes.   This seems to indicate a sudden
    and permanant change in climate.
    
    	Alan.

That should arose interest among those unfamiliar.  Yes, they are an 
easy read, and the anecdotal format makes them easy to browse/nibble.
Whatever you think of Dr. Velikovsky's theories, he coorelates a lot 
of interesting stuff, especially if you are intrigued by mythology.

It's difficult to avoid mentioning the Comet Venus Theory, they're
other less controversial proposals in the books, but that one stirs
'em up.  Carl Sagan was one of the few who gave him a forum.

I didn't know about _Mankind_In_Amnesia_, I'll look for a copy.
I'd appreciate any comments or content from whoever's read it.
Earlier books didn't fully develop racial memory repression.

I think both Velikovskian and Lamarckian theories have serious
holes, but I have to lean toward Cataclysm.  Whatever caused 
disturbance in the past, massive local effects happened.
The books probably helped the recent asteroid-collision
theory of dinosaur extinction gain some acceptance.

To paraphrase _Upheaval_ "The mammoths and like inhabitants of the 
sub-tropical artic basin were inundated in a massive tsunami as 
Terra's crust shifted on the core during a planetary close encounter.
They were frozen into deposits in the new Artic Polar climate during 
lunch.  Soviet islands of frozen sand, mammoths, trees & ectopic 
boulders, Alaskan/Canadian high mountain crevices consisting
of a decayed mixture of the above."  No two-minute warning.

Planets/comets dueling in the Velikovskian sky, pillars of smoke,
shifting earth, seas parting before prophets at stone calenders,
armies clashing in meteor showers, manna from flaming heavens,
years of darkness under dusty skies, irregular seasons & days,
boulders the size of an actor's ego moving out of state...
The sound stage would bankrupt Spielberg and Lucas...

Why is Venus so hot, what is the Red Spot in Jupiter?
Why did Terra's magnetic field change periodically?
Why is magnetic rock on Luna if it cooled first? 
Where is the planet between Mars & Jupiter?
Why do moons of Jupiter show stresses?
What happens to decimated races?
Do they get nervous
when the sun 
rises late?
Do you?
I do.
MWR

    	RE: .9 (John)
    
    	I asked about the petrification, we no longer have the
    book here, but collectively remember the following facts;
    
    	The book;  _Geological_Enigmas_ by William Corliss
    
    He says there's a spring in England somewhere where some dead 
    animals have been hung from nearby trees and have petrified 
    very quickly.     A cat had it's head broke off, and it had 
    been petrified all the way through, leaving no sign of internal 
    organs.
	Maybe not entirely convincing, with only one report, but
    it shook my certainty that petrification had to take long
    geological periods of time.
	Can we get any confirmation of this report from well 
    travelled noters?
    
    	Alan.

    I'd like to hear more about his writings.  This is a very interesting
    note.
    Mary

    re .8:
    
	"Also there are problems with dating techniques; It has been discovered
    	that radioactive bodies will decay at a different rate if they are
	electrically charged."

    Absolutely, completely, 100% false. Radioactivity is *not* affected by
    charge!
    
    	Jon

    Time to jump in.
    
    By all means read Sagan's extensive essay on Velekovsky (sp?)
    
    I read V. a long time ago.  His theories are patchworks, he grabs
    a fact here, a theory here, a misconception (the famous hydrocarbons
    becoming carbohydrates in the space of a single paragraph) here,
    and throws them together with a lot of wild speculation.  Anything
    which doesn't fit gets ignored.
    
    His supporters claim accuracy in predictions which he didn't make,
    or for predictions where he was simply echoing one of a number of
    theories extant at the same time.  They claim "wins" when V. made
    an accurate prediction for what has been clearly demonstrated to
    be the wrong reasons.
    
    Example: The dominant (though not the only) theory at the time of
    Worlds in Collision about the heat of Venus was that it would be
    a bit warmer than Earth.  This was on the weak (and everyone knew
    it was weak) assumption that the atmosphere had roughly Earthlike
    properties.  The *real* prediction was that Venus would be rougly
    in thermal equilibriam with solar influence and internal heat sources
    not too different from Earths.  Even so the latter was a weak
    assumption.
    
    Well, we got there -- the atmosphere was radically different from
    Earth's, and as a result thermal equilbriam is *much* hotter than
    for Earth.  So Venus is "hot" as V. predicted but it is at least
    very close to thermal equilibriam as V. categorically denied.  You
    can't count accuracy if someone predicts that Reagan will stub his
    toe and turn into an alien if he only stubs his toe.
    
    To give V. his credit, his theories were scientific in the sense
    that they were falsifiable.  Unfortunately they were born already
    falsified.  He simply denied the existence or the relevance of the
    falsifying evidence.  Despite a few wild-card accurate predictions
    (and claimed accurate predictions, like that the rate of radioactive
    decay is influenced by electrical charge), he is even more wrong
    now than he was then.
    
    It is certainly true that V. got an unseemly response from the
    scientific community.  It is certainly true that there was a powerful
    bias in favor of uniformitism.  This bias has died out both in geology
    and in astronomy.  You will find many examples of scientifically
    respectible cataclysism in the literature today.  But the evidence
    for it is better than "If John was Peter, and the toast was eggs
    and the juice was ham than Peter can be *proven* to have eaten ham
    and eggs."  They do not claim observations by one group as proof
    and the lack of observations by another as proof since it proves
    that there was something horrible that they had to forget.  They
    don't ignore energetics and momentum, etc. etc. etc.
    
    V.'s speculations are exciting.  If they had been made in the late
    17th century they might have even been good science.  As it stands
    they are just good fiction whose reception tells us some interesting
    things about the sociology of science.
    
    					Topher 

    
    	It's certainly hard to defend any of Velikovsy's ideas.
    Now I have to go off and hunt up the references to the stuff
    on radioactive decay times being influenced by electrical
    charge. ??     I believe Velikovsky referred to this in a
    book with a title something like "Stargazers and Graverobbers".
    I was just quoting him on this radioactive decay stuff.   Do
    you have details that can refute this ?   It makes a lot of
    sense to me that ions will have different amounts of electrical
    tension, and may decay at a different rate than uncharged
    atoms would.    I'll look up the reference tonight, if I can
    find it....
    
    	It's certainly easier to just read his books without trying
    to verify all the speculation.   I can't swallow all his ideas
    myself, but I'll try to deal with them one at a time, and not just
    accept or reject them all.    The problem is that his ideas go
    into so *many* areas of expertise, there is so *much* to verify
    or refute.    Even aside from the emotions aroused by such
    speculations, I suspect I could get into endless problems in
    this topic.

    	Alan.

    An astronomer and an historian met, and got to talking about
    Velikovsky's ideas.  (I think the astronomer was Carl Sagan.)
    The astronomer said, ~I know his ideas about astronomy are bunk,
    but his history sounded really good to me.~  The historian said,
    ~That's odd.  I know his ideas about history are bunk, but I had
    thought his astronomy was good.~  Then they set up the Velikovsky
    seminar.
    
    Some individual points:
    
    * Velikovsky would use an event as support for his theory, even if
    it occured a *thousand* years off from the correct time.
    
    * The catastophism/gradualism views have had "punctuated equilibrium"
    added to them as a theory (c.f. S. J. Gould.).
    
    * We now had tree ring dating to augment our use of radiocarbon
    dating; it's been a big help.  (It's proper name is dendro-something.)
    Using that, we've been able to "recalibrate" radiocarbon readings
    to compensate for variations presumed due to changes in ambiant
    radiation levels in the past.
    
    * I have in my hands a book which talks about the orbit of Venus in
    ca. 1900 b.c.e..  Is that "old" enough for you?  In it, Venus is
    described:
    
    	At the end of the day, the Radiant Star, the Great Light
    		that fills the sky,
    	The Lady of the Evening appears in the heavens.
    
    and in the next hymn:
    
    	The Lady of the Morning is radiant on the horizon.
    
    That sound like the current orbit of Venus to me.
    
    							Ann B.

    I'm pretty sure you're right about the scientist being Sagan.  I
    have my disagreements with Sagan, but I think he dealt fairly with
    this issue.
    
    > Velidovsky would use an event ... occured a *thousand* years off
    > from the correct time.
    
    That's why the issue of dating (carbon-14 and other) is important.
    When the dates didn't fit his theories he disagreed with the dates.
    When hard evidence would be presented to support a date, he would
    simply reject the evidence -- if it doesn't fit his theory its not
    true.
    
    > We now have tree ring dating ... (It's proper name is
    > dendro-something).
    
    Dendrochronology -- dendro for tree, chron for time, ology for study
    of.
    
    > I have in my hands a book ...
    
    It's relevant to whether or not Venus was in roughly her present
    orbit, but not as to whether it was then much more eliptical then.
    And of course Velikovsky would simply deny the date of the work,
    whatever evidence existed for it.  Since his theory is TRUTH and
    it disagrees with the book's date, the date must be wrong.  Its
    easy to prove anything if you can assume that anything which is
    contrary to your theory is wrong.  (This is not, by the way, a
    technique only used by "pseudoscientists" -- it is the primary argument
    of many of the critics of parapsychology).
    
    					Topher

Right, it is very difficult to defend Velikovsky's theories.
Thats why I took the cowards' way out by pointing out the books,
rather than championing the cause.  The resulting discussion has
been very informative, and impossible to resolve completly.
As with many controversial thinkers, the content gets blurred
by the conflict.  If he stirs critical thought, he's worth reading.
The irony in the scientific reaction to his work was to cause it
to be more widely read by less critical minds.

Skepticism is only valuable if applied uniformly.  If we can reject
the new idea critically, we must be able to apply the same criticism
to established and accepted theory.  If Cataclysmic scenarios are
more accepted today, we're closer to a true history of our race.
I'd still like to hear more about racial trauma repression, even
if the source of the trauma wasn't Velikovskian.

Re: "Problems with dating techniques."  Well I'm an expert here,
     whenever I couldn't get a date, I read a book...........MWR

Radioactive decay is not affected by charge.  The force required to
'hold' electrons to the nucleus is pretty small.  That force is overcome
in thousands of teeny instances whenever you see a lighbulb light or hear
the static as you put on a sweater.

The force holding a nucleus together (physicists crypticall refer to it
as the 'strong' force :-)) is many many orders of magnitude 'stronger'.
When one such bond is broken - you get carbon decay, a few more - Pilgrim,
and lots more - old newsreel photos of Hiroshima.

Now to the cataclysm ideas --

NOVA (last week?) had a show on volcanos.  They covered evidence that
vulcanism has had some BIGTIME consequences throughout history.  For
example, the total amount of dust released by Mount St. Helen's was
about 1/3 cubic mile.  Such an eruption is somewhat common and can be
expected somewhere every decade or so.  An eruption which releases
10 cubic miles of dust (they gave Timor? in the early 1700's in South
Seas as an example) happens every few hundred years.  That eruption
caused the 'year without a summer' in Europe and North America.  Snow
covered the ground throughout the year, crops died, folks starved.

Every few thousand years, a larger eruption can be expected, releasing
hundreds or thousands of cubic miles of debris.  One example they gave,
of an eruption in Yellowstone, left a caldera >50 miles in diameter
and correlates reasonably with the beginning of the last ice age.

Similar events in the Yellowstone volcano happened repeatedly.  There
is evidence of at least *16 layers* of petrified forest in the park.
Each forest was buried in debris and petrified.  Thousands of years
later, the forest had regrown only to be buried again.

Next?
Dave

    
    	Well, on the racial trauma theory;
    
    	Velikovsky, in _Mankind_In_Amnesia_ used as his main example
    the writings of Plato and Aristotle.   

        Plato went to Egypt, and talked to the priests who told him
    the world had gone through catyclysms.   Plato recorded some
    of this conversation, which now appears to be one of the earliest
    references to "Atlantis".    I seem to remember some reference to
    tracking the courses of the planets, the Egyptians felt that
    tracking planets was necessary for predicting such disasters.
    Velikovsky felt that Plato was telling the truth, and honestly
    passing on what the Egyptians had told him.
    
	Aristotle, on the other hand, developed a "steady state" model
    of the solar system, that placed the planets on eternally stable
    "epicycles".   (Interesting to note that Aristotle's system was
    a practical form of Fourier analysis, breaking the elipitical
    orbits into circular components.)    Velikovsky tries to demonstrate
    that Aristotle deveoloped this system because he was psychologically
    uncomfortable with the thought of an unstable or unsafe planet.
    Although Aristotle was Plato's student, he disagreed with many
    of Plato's ideas, without openly breaking with him.   Aristotle
    apparently gave little credence to the history that Plato had 
    found in Egypt.
    
	In general Velikovsky tries to show that Plato was an honest
    historian while Aristotle was driven by unconscious emotional
    needs to distort history and science to create the idea of an
    eternally stable planet.

    	It's been a few years since I read this book, and don't have
    my own copy, so I am just giving you this from memory.   He had
    several other examples of what he believed to be distortion of
    history in this book.    For me, this was the most interesting of
    Velikovsky's books.
    
    	Alan.

    Omni had an article this month on the Yellowstone volano.  Seems
    as if it is forming a dome.  The article mentioned something about
    the lake "tilting backwards".  They are apparently studing the extent
    of the activity now.

RE: .23
        
    Either Velikovsky is even further from reality than I thought or
    your memory is a bit faulty.  As I remember it, there is absolutely
    no evidence that Plato ever went to Egypt.  He said that he got the
    story from another Greek (Solon?) who supposedly got it from the Egyptians.
    It is not at all clear that Plato intended to do anything other
    than present an elaborate alegory, and it is not clear whether or
    not he simply made it up.  One example of the modern acceptance
    for cataclysmic explanation is the respect given the theory that
    Atlantis was based on the erruption of Sanotini/Theara and the
    consequent destruction of the then dominant Minoan civilization.
    
    That the Egyptians had a form of astrology, imported from Babylonia,
    which they felt helped them predict disasters is not in dispute.
    Babylonian astrology (on which modern astrology is based) is quite
    well understood and does not require that the "planets" (in quotes
    because it includes the sun and the moon) start acting like billiard
    balls.
    
    Aristotle did not invent the system of epicycles.  Ptolemy, who
    also synthesized astrology into the basis of its modern form, is
    generally credited with this masterpiece of conception (he may have
    been wrong by modern standards, but given what he had to work with
    the epicycle theory of Ptolemy is a work of genius).  He based it
    on ancient Babylonian records.  I suppose that one could argue that
    the records were expergated to remove the irregularities.  You
    couldn't, however, blame this on Ptolemy's emotional problems, and
    you *certainly* couldn't on Aristotle's.
    
    Interestingly enough.  This description of Aristotle's and Plato's
    philosophy almost completely inverts their stands.  Plato was primarily
    a mathematician and a physicist (using today's terms).  He believed
    in a "plane" of perfect, mathematical archetypes, without irregularity
    or discontenuity.  The physical plane was a distorted projection
    of the plane of perfect ideals.  He cited the smooth, perfect motion
    of the heavens as an example of where this projection could be observed
    with virtually no contamination.
    
    Aristotle, on the other hand, despite extensive writings in almost
    all areas of "natural philosophy", was principally a naturalist.
    He rejected the concept of ideals, and instead concentrated on
    observations and the derivation of categories.  He was quite happy
    with discontenuity.  The concept of gradualism, did not really come
    about in the scientific community until the late 18th century/ early
    19th century, when it was faught against tooth and nail -- its
    opponents frequently citing Aristotle in support of their belief.
    
    It is certainly true that individuals will suppress ideas which
    make them uncomfortable and will forget things which do not fit
    their preconceptions.  Velikovsky's only evidence for its complete
    application to major events for complete cultures is that they
    don't remember what he felt that they *should* remember.  His evidence
    is predicated on the assumption that his theories are true.
    
    					Topher

    Re .23 (Alan):
    
    >    Plato went to Egypt, and talked to the priests who told him
    >the world had gone through catyclysms.   Plato recorded some
    >of this conversation, which now appears to be one of the earliest
    >references to "Atlantis". 
    
    Actually, I don't believe Plato went to Egypt.  An earlier Greek
    (Solon, perhaps) did, and Plato read the accounts that one had written
    and from that developed the story of Atlantis.
    
    >tracking the courses of the planets, the Egyptians felt that
    >tracking planets was necessary for predicting such disasters.
     
    I've run across relatively few astrological/astronoomical writings
    of the Khemites; the real sky-watchers of the period were the
    Babylonians, whose stuff was so advanced that it rather intimidated
    visitors.
    
    >	Aristotle, on the other hand, developed a "steady state" model
    >of the solar system, that placed the planets on eternally stable
    >"epicycles".   (Interesting to note that Aristotle's system was
    >a practical form of Fourier analysis, breaking the elipitical
    >orbits into circular components.)  ...
    
    It's a little more complicated than that.  First, a technical nit:
    the magor orbit was called a "deferent"; a _point_ on the deferent
    moved in a steady motion around the earth; the epicycle orbited
    this point.  Over time, with more accurate observations, this model
    didn't quite do the job, so the epicycle had a smaller epicycle
    on its path, etc., for however many levels of epicycles were required
    to account for anomalies in the path in the sky.  Indeed, it was
    a primitive example of Fourier analysis.
                        
    >.... Aristotle deveoloped this system because he was psychologically
    >uncomfortable with the thought of an unstable or unsafe planet.
    
    However, Aristotle wasn't the real developer of this theory; Ptolmey
    did before him, and others afterward.  There was ast least one
    heliocentric Solar System theory contemperaneous with Aristotle;
    the Greeks just gradually adopted the Ptolmeic model.  Which remained
    in place until Copernicus.   [Oddly, Copernicus correctly put the
    Sun as the center of the Solar System, but still thought all orbits
    should be circular; therefore, he kept deferents and epicycles;
    it was just that his resulting model was simpler.  It took Kepler
    to break out of the "pure circle" mode.]
    
    >	In general Velikovsky tries to show that Plato was an honest
    >historian while Aristotle was driven by unconscious emotional
    >needs to distort history and science to create the idea of an
    >eternally stable planet.  
    
    The only problem was that Plato wasn't an historian at all; he was
    a philosopher, and in his Socratic dialogues, he used what he wished
    in order to make a point.  In the dialogue "Meno," for example,
    Sokrates supposedly extracted the Pythagorean Theorem from a young
    slave boy.  Did it really happen?  Perhaps, but it seems more a
    parable to prove a philosophical point.         
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    
    

    
    RE: 25,26  (Topher, Steve)
    
    	Gak!   Well, I *said* it had been a few years, and that
    I was just trying to pass on what I remembered of the book.
    If you really want to tear it apart, why don't you go read
    it, rather than tearing at my vague memories of it, which
    I admitted may be flawed.   In essence though, I remember him
    as being pro-Plato and anti-Aristotle, and I thought he defended
    his view well.   (Although it appears that *I* did not do so
    well defending his thesis.)
    
        Alan.

    Re .57 (Alan):
    
    Coincidentally, Topher and I entered our remarks at a nearly
    _identical_ time [talk about synchronosity]; I got a "deadlock"
    signal; the first in all my years of noting.
    
    Speaking for myself, _I'm_ not trying to "tear it apart"; however,
    if you pull up something from memory and present it, others will
    discuss it, including me.
    
    Your observation on the Fourier Analysis aspect of deferents and
    epicycles, though, which I agree with, is obviously your input,
    and well worth mentioning.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    RE: .28  (Steve)

    	Yeah,  I don't take it personally,  but it does give me
    a feel for how Velikovsky might have felt once he embroiled
    himself in these continual arguements.   I find the whole picture
    he presented to be fascinating, but to argue about each detail
    in the picture degenerates into hundreds of separate arguements,
    each of which hangs on others.   
    
    	Here you (Steve and Topher) have been defending the
    status quo, while I have been trying to set out as much
    as I can remember from Velikovsky's theories.    I really
    don't *agree* with all of it myself, I just find it *interesting*.
    
    	When I get in the mood for wild theorizing, I guess I
    sort of;
    		"SET /NOSKEPTIC/NO_ABORT_ON_SEVERE_ERROR"
    Hopefully later I remember to return to my default state;
       		"SET /SKEPTIC/ABORT_ON_SEVERE_ERROR"
    When I'm in my open minded state I guess I just find it easy
    to accept the *possibility* that Velikovsky was right and
    all the rest of them wrong.
    
	Gee, I may be ready to sink into a similar trap in the
    "Wilhelm Reich" topic I just started.    People like Reich
    and Velikovsky questioned EVERYTHING, and managed to cast
    doubt on myriad forms of conventional knowledge.   I'm not
    sure a person can really grasp his ideas without reading the
    books and getting the feel for his approach as a whole.
    
    	I'm not sure how much more time I'm willing to devote
    to this topic.   It feels kind of pointless defending the
    ideas of a man I don't entirely agree with, or even understand
    completely.   But I haven't quite given up yet, I'll look
    up some of the electrical charge stuff when I get home.
    (then I can tell you what *he* said, not just what I remember.)

        Hopefully this all is of interest to those DEJAVUers, who are
    getting their introduction to this old controversy.
    
	Alan.

    Well, I have to apologize for misstating Velikovsky's views
on electromagnetism and charged planetary bodies.   I went and 
looked up the references I remembered in _Stargazers_&_Gravediggers_ 
"Memoirs to Worlds In Collision".  
    I couldn't locate any section relating charge to nuclear decay,
but I didn't reread the whole book... sorry, for that misleading item.

    I'll let him speak for himself, this is most of a three page chapter 
called "Writing The Epilogue"; (I may omit a few sentences here and 
there using [...] to mark the place.)

	    "In the case of _Worlds_In_Collision_, I deliberated with
	myself about the last pages of the Epilogue, set and proofread:
	whether to include them in, or omit them from, the book.  They
	dealt with celestial mechanics.

		In the Epilogue I discussed the problems in the fields
	of history and chronology, Bible criticism, development of 
	religion, mass psychology, geology, paleontology, astronomy,
	and physics.   I wrote:

		   Having discovered some historical facts and having solved
		a few problems, we are faced with more problems in almost
		all fields of science.... Barriers between sciences serve
		to create the belief in a scientist that other scientific
		fields are free from problems, and he trusts himself to
		borrow from them without questioning.   It can be said here
		that problems in one area carry over into other scientific
		areas, thought to have no contact with each other.
		   We realize the limitations which a single scholar must be 
		aware of on facing such an ambitious program of inquiry into
		the architechtonics of the world and it's history.   [....]
		Today, with knowledge becoming more and more specialized,
		whoever tries to cope with such a task should ask in all
		humility the question put at the beginning of this volume:
		Quota pars operis tanti nobis committitur -- Which part of
		this work is committed to us?

	    So I finished my book, Originally I had written another chapter
	and had let it be set.   I foresaw the arguments of the astronomers,
	and I intended to meet them.   The phenomena I described were deduced
	by me from ancient literature and folklore.  I could, of course, 
	remain in my domain, offer no physical solution at all, and allow
	the astronomers to take over where I had left off.   This would
	probably have been the way that any other historian or folklorist
	would have chosen in a similar situation.  Or I could try to 
	reconcile my findings with the conventional tenets in astronomy.
	But there was a growing conviction on my part that it was 
	justifiable to question the exclusive role in the celestial
	mechanics of a law established in 1687, a time when electromagnetic
	forces were not known and reckoned with.
	    In January and February of 1950 I consulted with a few physicists.
	I engaged several instructors in the Physics Department at Columbia
	University to calculate the rate of decrease with distance of the
	magnetic field created by a rotating charged body (the sun) in which
	field electrically charged bodies revolve.   I received most divergent
	answers.
	    Then I visited Lloyd Molz, professor in the Astronomy Department
	at Columbia University, and showed him the pages intended as the
	concluding chapter of my book.   There I gave a long series of
	physical phenomena unexplainable in the framework of existing theories.
	He went through the chapter carefully.
	    I found Molz to be a man of clear thinking, good heart, and high
	principles.   In order to protect him from later being accused of
	cooperating with a heretic, I suggested that his help take the form
	of private paid instruction.   We discussed various aspects of the
	problem; he always adhered to conservative notions, yet he explored
	the possible actions and counteractions in the event that the sun
	and planets are charged.
		Molz read with me the foundry proofs of the pages dealing
	with celestial mechanics.   My own feeling against their inclusion
	in the book was dictated by two factors:  I had no quantitative
	solution to the problem, and though I wished to meet the arguments
	of astronomers by showing where their concepts conflict with facts,
	I did not wish to make _Worlds_In_Collision_, a book of humanistic
	studies, into a book which, because of these additional pages, 
	astronomers would declare themselves supreme arbiters.   But
	this they did anyway, as we shall see.
		I read of the brilliant impression a young German physicist,
	Carl Friedrich von Weizacker had made   [...]  -- he kindly discussed
	with me some points of the problem that occupied my mind.   His own
	theory in cosmogony was a revival of the Kant-Laplace nebular theory.
	Between 1900 and 1950 this teaching was considered discarded and
	was supplanted by the catastrophic theory of T. C. Chamberlin and
	F. R. Moulton, according to which planets had been born from the sun
	disrupted by a passing star in a gigantic near collision or -- in a
	later variant -- from a companion star of the sun shattered by a
	passing star.   Weizacker claimed that the old Kant-Laplace nebular
	theory could be freed of the mechanical possibilities inherent in
	it.
		Weizacker calculated the strength of the magnetic field
	necessary to stop the Earth and it was not exceedingly great.
	[footnote: A much smaller magnetic field would be required to 
	merely tilt the terrestrial axis.]   But he advised me not to 
	include the section in question in my book because all we can 
	say at present is that _if_ the sun is a charged body to the 
	extent that it can influence the planets and comets on their 
	paths, the celestial mechanics is faulty.   However he did not 
	believe that such is the case.
		[...]
		In Molz's judgment, if the terrestrial globe were retarded
	In its rotation, or stopped, or even reversed, it would not necessarily
	be destroyed, depending on the time element involved, though
	civilizations would be destroyed.   And this is what actually
	happened, according to the sources that served me in writing
	_Worlds_In_Collision_.
		 I have not abandoned my idea of presenting the problems of
	cosmology which, in my opinion require reexamination of the
	fundamentals in the kinetics of the universe.   Not being a physicist
	In intend to tackle the subject in the framework of the history of
	science, showing the development of the theory of celestial motion
	from the time of Aristarchus; explaining the mechanism Gilbert
	and Kepler had in mind (the sun as a magnet), the theory of Descartes
	concerning vortices or fields of force in motion, the argument
	Newton put forth against Kepler (a magnet cannot be hot and preserve
	its quality), the opposition of Leibniz to Newton, the role 
	Voltaire played in the victory of Newton over Descartes, and much more,
	carrying the problem into the light of modern discoveries.   I still
	hope to complete this book, "The Orbit."   [ footnote:  Several
	essays of this incomplete manuscript will be published posthumously.]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Whew!   That's it for that quote!   most of pages 76..79 from 
_Stargazers_&_Gravediggers_.    I've not seen this book "The Orbit".
Sounds interesting!
	Alan.
    

    
    Well Alan, I find the whole discussion interesting.
    
    Carole
    

    I want to hear about it because I know from USENET that there are
    few places his ideas can be discussed and I believe in intellectual
    freedom.  In dejavu things don't HAVE to be scientifically accurate,...
    just interesting!!_:-)

I've had nothing to contribute but I've found this note to be very interesting.

		Dave

	_Velikovsky_Reconsidered_   Warner Books   1966
	PREFACE;		COLLIISIONS AND UPHEAVALS
	A Fragmentary Scenario Based on Velikovsky's
	Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval
	This is only a summary, no references included.

"Global cataclysms fundamentally altered the face of our planet
more than once in historical times.  The terrestrial axis shifted.
Earth fled from its established orbit.  The magnetic poles reveresed.
Great convulsions emptied seas onto continents, the planet's crust
folded, & volcanos erupted into mountain chains.  Lava flows a mile 
thick spilled out over vast areas of the Earth's surface.  Climates
changed suddenly, ice settling over lush vegetation, while green meadows
and forests were transformed into deserts.

In a few awful moments, civilizations collasped.  Species were exter-
minated in continental sweeps of mud, rock, & sea.  Tidal waves crushed
even the largest beasts, tossing their bones into tangled heaps in the
valleys and rock fissures, preserved beneaath mountains of sediment.
The mammoths of Siberia were instantly frozen and buried.

Surviving generations recorded these events every means available:
in myths and legends, temples and monuments to the planetary gods,
precise charts of the heavens, sacrificial rites, astrological canons,
detailed records of planetary movements and tragic lamentations amid
fallen cities and destroyed institutions."

	_Velikovsky__Revisited_    PREFACE "All is ruin"

"Aware of a link between the circuit of heavenly bodies and the
catastrophic ruin of previous generations, the ancients ceaslessly
watched the planetary movements.  Their traditions recalled that
when old epochs dissolved, the new "Age," or "Sun," was marked by
different celestial paths.  Astronomers an seers diligently watched
for any change which might augur approaching destruction and the 
end of an age.

Prior to the second millenium B.C., ancient Hindu records spoke of
four visible planets, excluding Venus.  Babylonians, meticulous in
their, observations, failed to report Venus.

But long before 1500 B.C., Jupiter, for centuries chief among the
dieties, shattered the serenity of the skies.  A brilliant, fiery
object, expelled from that planet, entered upon a long ellipitcal
orbit around the Sun.  The feared god Jupiter had given birth to
the comet and protoplanet Venus.

Terrified, men watched the "bright torch of heaven" as it traversed
its' elongated orbit, menancing the Earth.  Venus, a Chinese astro-
nomical text, recalls, spanned the heavens, rivaling the Sun in
brightness.  'The brilliant light of Venus,' records an ancient
rabbinical source, 'blazes from one end of the cosmos to the other.'

The fears of the star watchers were justified.  As Venus arched away
from one perihelion passage during the middle of the second millen-
nium B.C. (-1450), the Earth approached this intruder, entering first
the outer reaches of its cometary tail.  A rusty ferrugious dust
filtered down upon the globe, imparting a bloody hue to land and sea.
The fine pigment chafed human skin, and men were overcome by sickness.
Those who sought to drink could not.  Rivers stank from the rotting
carcasses of fish, and men dug desperately for water uncontaminated
by the alien dust.  'Plague is throughout the land.  Blood is every-
where.'  bewailed the Egyptian Ipuwer.  'Men shrink from tasting,
human beings thirst after water...all is ruin.

As recalled by the Babylonians, the blood of the celestial monster
Tiamat poured out over the world.

But as the Earth's path carried it ever more deeply into the comet's
tail, the rain of particles grew steadily more coarse and perilous.
Soon a great hail of gravel pelted the Earth.  '...there was hail and
fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like
it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.'  So recorded
the author of Exodus.

Fleeing from the torrent of meteorites, men abandoned their livestock
to the holocaust.  Fields of grain which fed great cities perished.
Ipuwer 'no fruits, no herbs are found.  That has perished which yes-
terday was seen.  The land is left to its weariness like the cutting
of flax.'  These things happened, say the Mexican _Annals_of_Cuauh-
htitlan_, when the sky 'rained, not water, but fire, & red-hot stones.'

As our planet plunged still deeper int othe conet's tail, hydrocarbon
gases enveloped the Earth. exploding in bursts of fire in the sky.
Unignited trains of petroleum poured onto the planet, sinking into
the surface and floating on the seas.  From Siberia to the Caucasus
to the Arabian desert, great spills of naphtha burned for years, their
billows of smoke lending a dark shroud for human despair.

Our planet was pursuing a near-collision course with comet's head.

The Earth rocked violently; its axis tilted.  In a single convulsed
moment, cities were laid waste, great buildings of stone leveled, 
and populations decimated. 'The towns are destroyed.  Upper Egypt 
has become waste...All is ruin...The residence is overturned in a 
minute.'  Around the world, oceans rushed over mountains and poured 
into continental basins.  Rivers crashed together, while the shifting 
Earth generated a global hurricane which destroyed forests and swept 
away the dwellings of men.

In China, the Emporer Yahou spoke of waters which 'overttopped the
great heights, threatening the heavens with their floods.'  Decades
of labor were required to drain the valleys of the mainland.  Arabia
was transformed into a desert bt the same paroxysms which may have
dropped the legenday Atlantis beneath the ocean west of Gibralter.

Survivors lay in a trance for days, choking in the smoky air.

The tilting axis left a portion of the world in a protracted darkness,
another in extended day.  From the Americas to Europe to the Middle East,
records tell of darkness persisting for several days.  On the edge of
the darkness, the peoples of Iran witnessed a threefold night and a
threefold day.  Chinese sources speak of a holocaust during which the
Sun did not set for many days and the land was afflame.  Peoples and 
nations everywhere, uprooted by disaster, wandered from their homelands."

    This was suppose to happen around or about 1500 - 1450 BC?
    
    (It was good reading...)

	_Velikovsky_Reconsidered_  PREFACE "Celestial Dragon"

"Led by Moses, the Israelites fled the devastation which brought Egypt's
Middle Kingdom to an end. As they rushed toward the Sea of Passage, the
glistening comet, in form like a dragon's head, shone through the tempest
of dust and smoke.  The night sky glowed brightly as the comet's head and
its writhing, serpentine tail exchanged gigantic electrical bolts.

The great battle between the fiery comet's head and the column of smoke-
between a light god and a leviathan serpent-was memorialized in primary 
myths around the Earth.  Babylonians told of Marduk striking the dragon
Tiamat with bolts of fire.  The Egyptians saw Isis and Set in deadly combat.
The Hindus described Vishnu battling the 'crooked serpent.'  Zeus, in the
account of Apollodorus, struggled with the coiled viper Typhon.

The fugative Israelites, having reached Pi-ha-khiroth, at the edge of the
Red Sea, were pursued by the Pharaoh Taoui-Thom(Typhon). The great sea lay
divided before the slave people, its waters lifted by the movement of the
Earth and the pull of the comet.  Crossing the dry sea bottom, the Israelites
escaped from Egypt.

As the comet made its closest approach to Earth, Toaui-Thom moved his armies
into the sea bed.  But even before the entire band of Israelites had crossed
to the far side, a giant electrical bolt flew between the two planets.  
Instantly the waters collapsed. The Pharaoh, his soldiers and chariots, and
those Israelites who still remained between the divided waters were cast
furiously into the air and consumed in a seething whirlpool.

The battle in the sky raged for weeks.  A column of smoke by day, a pillar
of fire by night, Venus meted destruction to nations large and small.  To
the Israelites, however, it was an instrument of  national salvation.

Through a series of close approaches, the comet's tail, a dreadful shadow
of death, cinctured the Earth, wreathing the planet in a thick gloomy haze
that lasted for many years.  And so, in darkness, a historical age ended.

Possible, the human race would have become extinct, but for a mysterious,
lif-giving substance precipitated in the heavy atmosphere-the nourishing
'manna' and 'ambrosia' described in the ancient records of all peoples.
It fell with the morning dew, a sweet, yellowish hoarfrost.  It was
edible.  The ambrosial carbohydrates, possible derived from Venus'
hydrocarbons through bacterial action, filled the atmosphere with a
sweet fragrance.  Streams flowed with 'milk and honey'.  When heated,
this 'bread of heaven' dissolved, but when cooled, it precipitated into
grains which could be preserved for long periods or ground between stones.
Its presence allowed man and beast to survive.

In the new age, the Sun rose in the east, where formerly it set.  The 
quarters of the world were displaced.  Seasons no longer came in their
proper times.  'The winter is come as summer, the months are reversed,
and the hours are disordered,' reads an Egyptian papyrus.  The Chinese
Emporer Yahou send scholars throughout the land to locate north, east,
west and south and draw up a new calendar.   Numerous records tell of
the Earth 'turning over'.  An Egyptian inscription from before the tumult
says that the Sun 'riseth in the west'.

While men attempted to determine the times and seasons, Venus continued
on its threatening course around the Sun.  Under Joshua, the Israelites
had entered the Promised Land, and again Venus drew near.  It was while
the Canaanites fled from before the hand of Joshua in the valley of
Beth-horon, some fifty years after the Exodus - that the daughter of
Jupiter unleashed her fury a second time.  'The Lord cast down great
stones from heaven upon them into Azekah, and they died.'  The terrestrial
axis tilted.  Once more, the Earth quaked fiercly.  Cities burned and 
fell to the ground.  Above Beth-horon, the Sun stood still for hours.
On the otherside of the Earth, chroniclers recorded a prolonged night,
lite only by the burning landscape.  This occurred, Mexican records report,
about fifty years after an earlier destruction.

As in its first encounter with the young comet, the Earth's surface was
torn with great rifts and clefts, and hurricanes scoured the land.
Strata pressed against strata, rising thunderously into mountains or
engulfing cities.  But the Earth and some of its inhabitents survived.

Anticipating renewed devastation following another fifty-year period,
nations bowed down before the great fire goddess.  With bloddy orgies
and incantations, they enjoined the dreaded queen of the heavens to remain
far removed from the juman abode.  'How long wilt thou tarry, O lady
of heaven and earth?' inquired the Babylonians.  'We sacrifice unto
Tistrya,' declared a priest in Iran, 'the bright and glorious star,
whose rising is watched by the chiefs of deep understanding'."

    I find this topic very interesting.  In regards to the ancient Chinese
    account of the sun standing still, I read an article in the Denver
    Post a couple of weeks ago that I think relates.  It said some 
    astromers had come up with a explanation for this happening.  I don't
    remember what the explanation was but it involved some kind of 
    unusual alignment of the sun and earth.  They used a computer program
    to generate the locations of the sun and the planets at that period.
    They took into account variations in the speed of rotation etc and
    came up with a scenario that fit.  The sun didn't actually stand still
    or set twice but it appeared to do so.  I got the impression it was
    sort of like the sun never setting for weeks at a time in the higher
    lattitudes.  This looked like a wire service story.  Did anyone else
    see it?

    Mike

	_Velikovsky_Reconsidered_  PREFACE "Mars"

"In both hemispheres, men fixed their gaze anxiously on the comet as,
for centuries, it continued its circuit, crossing the orbits of both
Earth and Mars.  Before the middle of the eighth century B.C., astro
logers observed dramatic irregularities in its wanderings.  Viewed
from Babylonia, Venus rose, disappeared in the west for over nine
months, then reappeared in the east.  Dipping below the eastern
horizon, it was not seen again for over two months, until it shone
in the west.  The following year, Venus vanished in the west for
eleven days before reappearing in the east.

But this time it was Mars, not Earth, that endured a cosmic jolt.
Passing by the smaller orb, Venus pulled Mars off its orbit, sending
it on a path that endangered the Earth.  A new agent of destruction
was born in the unstable solar system.

This occurred in the days of Uzziah, King of Jerusalem.  (Lucian,
thge _Bamboo_Books_ of China, the Hindu _Surya-Siddhanta_, the Aztec
_Huitzilopochtli_ epos, the Indo-Iranian _Bundahish_, ets.) Aware of 
the baleful meaning of irregular celestial motions, the prophet Amos,
echoed by other observers of the sky, warned of new cosmic upheavals.
Events soon vindicated the pessimistic seers.

As Mars drew near, the Earth reeled on its hinges.  West of Jerusalem,
half a mountain split off and fell eastward; flaming serraphim leaped
skyward.  Men were tossed into streets filled with debris and mutilated
bodies.  Buildings crumbled, and the Earth opened up.

These cataclysms were associated with the founding of Rome (747BC?) and
with the death of Rome's legendary founder, Romulus.  'Both the poles
shook,' Ovid relates, 'and Atlas shifted the burder of the sky....
the sun vanished and rising clouds obscured the heaven...'  Mars, the
lord of war, became the national god of Rome.

Much smaller than Earth, Mars could not equal Venus in destrtuctive
power.  But again the Earth altered its course around the Sun.  The
old calendar, with 360-day years and 30-day months, became outdated.
Emporers and kings directed their astrologers to delelop a new calendar."

RE: .38
    
    I read about it in Science News or NewScientist (or maybe both).
    My vague recollection was that it *rose* twice, but I may be
    misremembering.  The mechanism was actually quite simple.  I'll
    describe it as I remember it (two dawns), though I am completely
    unsure.
    
    What was believed to happen was simply that a total eclipse occured
    while the sun was just below the horizon from the location from
    which the record was made.  So what they observed was the sky getting
    lighter, as normal and at the normal time.  Then it got dark again
    (because of the eclipse).  Finally it got light again.
    
    When the archeoastronomers (people who study ancient astronomy) saw
    the reference they thought it might be something like that.  They
    found that an eclipse occured at the right time for this effect.  This
    allows them to make their interpretation of ancient dates more
    accurate.  Figuring out ancient dates -- when the date mentioned
    is something like "the third year of the second reign of What Ho"
    -- is quite difficult and being able to date astronomical occurances
    like this is a godsend to archeologists.
    
    					Topher

    I remember that article Topher.  It was in Omni also, either the
    latest issue or the one before that.

	_Velikovsky_Reconsidered_ PREFACE "Battle of the Gods"

"Mars and Venus now competed for the alliegence of men.  Tribes moved
from their homelands, confronting new ememies while petitioning Mars
or Venus for a swift victory.  Cities and temples were dedicated to
the two planetary gods who determined the fate of nations.

The era of conflict between Mars and Earth continued until 687 B.C. Hebrew
prophets after 747 B.C. cried apoclyptically of upheavels yet to come.  
Reminding the Israelites of their passage out of egypt, they declared that
once more the whole Earth would quake, the Moon turn to blood, the Sun
darken, and the Earth be consmed in blood, fire & pillars of smoke.

The catastrophe, as Mars hurtled past the Earth, came in the year 721 B.C.,
on the day Jerusalem's King Ahaz was buried.  Under the influence of Mar's
passage, the Earth's axis tilted, and the poles shifted.  Earth's orbit
swung wider lengthening the year.

Israelites observed the Sun hastening by several hours to a premature setting.
Thereafter, the solar disk made its way across the sky 10 deg. further south.

Seneca records that on the Argive Plain, in Greece, the early sunset
came amid great upheaval.  The tyrant Thyestes beckoned the entire universe
to dissolve.  The Great Bear dipped below the horizon.  In the days which
followed, states Seneca, 'The Zodiac, which, making passage throughthe sacred
stars, crosses the zones obliquely, guide and sign-bearer for the slowmoving
years, falling itself, shall see the fallen constellations.'

Once a peaceful, barely noticed planet, but now the 'king of battle', Mars was
still not finished with his work of destruction. In 687 BC, a powerful Assyrian
army led by Sennacherib, marched toward Judah.  On the evening of March 23, the
1st night of Hebrew Passover, Sennaherib & his army camped close to Jerusalem.
Mars made a last fateful approach to Earth. A great thunderbolt, a 'blast from
heaven' charred the soldier's bodies, leaving their garments intact.  The dead
numbered 185,000.  Ashburbanipal, Sennacherib's granson, later recalled the
'perfect warrior' Mars, 'the lord of the storm, who brings defeat'.

The same night, March 23, 687 B.C., in China, the _Bamboo_Books_ reveal, a 
disturbance of the planets caused them to go 'out of their courses'. In the
night, stars fell like rain.  The 'Earth shook'.  Romans would celebrate the
occasion: 'The most important role in the Roman cult of Mars appears to be
played by the festival of Tubilustrium, on the twenty-third day of March.'

The Sun retreat, due to a 10 degree tilt of the Earth's axis, corrected
the axis shift of 721 B.C. 'So the sun returned, ten degrees, by which
degrees it was gone down', read Isaiah 38.8.

From one continent to another, men, oppressed with terror, watched Mars battle
Venus in the sky, speed fiercly toward the Earth bringing blast of fire,
retreat, and engage Venus once more.  Perhaps the most startling literary
account of this theomanchy, or battle of gods, is contained in Homer's Iliad,
(Velikovsky places homer later than 747 B.C.).  As the Greeks besieged Troy,
Athena (Venus), 'would utter her loud cry.  And over against her spouted Ares
(Mars), dread as a dark whirlwind...all the roots of many-founted Ida were
shaken, and all her peaks'.  The river 'rushed with surging flood.' and 
'The fair streams seethed and boiled.'

Mars was thrown out of the ring; Venus emerged a tame planer pursuing a near-
circular orbit between Mercury and Earth.  Where once it ranged high to the
zenith, now it became the morning and evening star, never retreating more than
48 degrees from the Sun.  Isaiah, who had witnessed the planet's destructive
power, sang of its disgrace: 'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son
of morning!  How thou art cut down to the ground, which didst weaken
nations!  For thou has said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will
exalt my throne above the stars of God."

    Could all this explian why humans have a 25 hour dinural period?
    Or is that another rumor also?

    
    	RE: .42
    
    	Actually it is quite possible that the calendar might "accidently"
    be 360 days with 30 day months, without this requiring an overwhelming
    coincidence;
    
    	Even now the daily rotation of the Moon is equal to it's period
    of rotation around the Earth, this being why it always faces the
    same face toward the Earth.     In a sense, the Moon's orbit could
    be said to be harminically related to it's daily rotation.   It
    certainly fell into this rhythmic pattern of rotation, because this
    patterned rotation takes less energy.  (less energy would be lost
    to 'moon tides')     In a similar manner, it seems that Mercury
    always faces the same face toward the Sun (and the opposite toward
    Venus) when it passes directly between the Sun and Venus.
    ( this obscure fact on Mercury's orbit was gleaned from 
    _The_Cycles_Of_Heaven_, by Guy Playfair and some other author who's 
    name I don't recall...)
    
    	If it is true that the planets have motions that may be
    harmonically related to each other  (in a complex manner, such
    as the Mercury example, or in a simple harmonic relation, such
    as in the Moon example), it seems quite possible, to me, that in
    ancient times the moon might have rotated *exactly* twelve times
    per year.

	Alan.

    re: .45
    
     One factor influencing the rotational period of the moon (and I
    presume Mercury as well) is the unequal distribution of mass within
    the moon.  Although it appears spherical, it is lop-sided as far
    as weight-distribution is concerned (as is the earth).  It seems
    that the synchrony between its rotational and orbital periods is
    most likely a direct result of lop-sided gravitational effects
    (with the heavy side always pointed towards the earth) more than
    any harmonic effects.

     Thus the moons _rotational_ period may have been adjusted by a
    dampening effect to match the moons _orbital_ period, yet I see no
    implied correlation between the _orbital_ period of the moon and
    the _orbital_ period of the earth.  I agree with .42 that the
    durations have most likely always been fundamentally unrelated.

	    				Todd 

RE: .45,.46
    
    I agree with Todd, I would have to do a lot of calculations which
    I'm very rusty on to be sure, but my gut reaction is that the tidal
    retardation effect on the Earth/Moon system is very, very small
    (it would be due to the relatively small equitorial bulge of the
    sun -- remember that tidally speaking (inverse *cube* law) the
    Earth/Moon system is much further away from the solar mass than
    the Moon is from the terrestrial mass, even after the large differences
    in mass are taken into account).  I would guess many, many times
    the current age of the solar system, if ever, before any kind of
    synchronization occured.
    
    					Topher
    

    Is it alright to assume that at one point, the moon had a different
    time of rotation than orbit?
    
    Then how long did it take to become "stable?"
    
    How stable is it?  Does it swing a little to the east and west
    (like a ball rolling up and down sides of a trench).  If it is
    perfectly stable, how long does it take to reach that level of
    stability?  We may find that our theories on gravational drag are
    off my a few magnitudes.
    
    Dave

RE: .44
    
    > Could all this explain why humans have a 25 hour diurnal period?
    > Or is that another rumor also?
    
    It's not a rumor -- its very nearly true.  Under natural conditions
    humans have a diurnal period of 24 hours, but under special conditions
    where there is absolutly no queues to the length of the day, the
    human "clock" "free runs" at over 24 hours, 25 hours being fairly
    typical.
    
    Although this *could* be explained by a change in the length of
    the day, there is a perfectly adequate explanation without it.
    
    If you are building a clock and want to sycnchronize it with an
    outside signal then you have three choices:
    
    	1) You can make the clock free-run slightly slower than than
    	   the expected synchronization signal, then speed it up to
    	   catch up when you get the signal.
    
    	2) You can make the clock free-run slightly faster than the
    	   expected synchronization signal, then slow it down so the
    	   signal can catch up when it comes.
    
    	3) You can try to set it as accurately as possible and then
    	   either slow or speed it up when you get a synchronization
    	   signal.
    
    It turns out that under almost all conditions the first alternative
    is the best engineering practice (clarification of terminology:
    since the clock is running slow, the "day" it measures will be longer
    than normal).  From your quartz digital watch to the super-precise
    "atomic clocks" this is how synchronized timers are built.  It is
    not surprising that evolution hit upon the same principle.
    
    						Topher

RE: .48
    
    Yes it is reasonable to assume that at one point the moon was not
    tidally locked; at least its an assumption that scientists have
    made rougly since Newton's time.
    
    How long for it to reach stability depends on what its "inital" rate
    of rotation was.  It is a standard exercise in intermediate physics
    classes to do this calculation.  I forget the required time to reach
    the present level of synchronization from reasonable initial
    assumptions about its rotation but it is many times smaller than
    the conventional age of the Earth/Moon system.
    
    Yes there is some "swing" but not as part of the stablization process
    (I would guess that there is some from that cause but it would be
    very, very small, as would be expected from a relatively small force
    acting over a long period of time).  The reason for the swing is
    that the Moon's orbit is not circular, so it is at times moving
    faster than its rotation and at time slower.  It averages the same.
    I forget the percentage but we can observe significantly more than
    50% of the Moon's surface because of this.
    
    If tidal drag is off by a few orders of magnitude than there is
    a lot of satellite data (among others) which needs explaining. 
    A *very* small difference is believable (and, for that matter,
    predicted by General Relativity -- we still do almost all calculations
    of such things using Newton), but a large one is not -- what we
    have works too well.
    
    						Topher
    

>	If the experiments for "free-running" were the ones 
	involving subjects who stayed in 
					 front of terminals
	for days during a blizzard with all system clocks
	disabled and the level of consciousness in keystrokes
	per hour is charted against admitted chronological age...
	
    					( 8-)

Re .23

That Plato was "an honest historian" and went to Egypt is not impossible but 
completely outside the evidence.  He talks about Solon going to Egypt and 
there hearing the tale of Atlantis, but this is in one of his Socratic
Dialogues.  All these dialogues are in the form of plays and, so far as we
know, were never intended to be anything but fictional vehicles for
philosophy, not history.  Solon, by the way, was one of the founding fathers 
of democratic Athens and lived generations before Plato; Plato probably hung 
the story on him for the impressive sake of his name.  No one else has ever 
heard of an Egyptian story of Atlantis, in any clear form, so it is likely 
that Plato made up Atlantis root and branch, as a fictitious example for a 
discussion of political philosophy.

Re .26

Minor nit: Ptolemy lived several centuries after Aristotle and, great though 
his contribution to astronomy was, did not invent the epicycle.  He inherited 
it from Hipparchus.

About Velikovsky generally:  I once did a paper on him as my project for a 
class in science journalism.  He was fascinating.

It is true that, so far as I can see, his theories are a tissue of delusions 
in both history and astronomy.  It is also true that he was persecuted by the 
scientific community.  But not a whole lot.

He started the fight, so to speak, by not going through channels.  Usually, a 
scientific theory first appears as a paper submitted to one of the 
professional journals.  Velikovsky's work first appeared in "Harper's 
Magazine" with a dramatic, Cecil B. De Mille-style picture of an ancient city
being demolished by a meteor shower.  This was in the early 50s.

The astronomers denounced it at once.  The historians didn't both to; they are 
more accustomed to crackpots in their field.  Having read the theory and the 
denunciations, I would say that the astronomers were, so far, fair.

When Velikovsky went to have his work published in book form, the scientists 
did commit the sin of persecution by sending letters to the publisher, 
threatening to boycott their science texts if they published Velikovsky.  The 
publisher merely sold the rights to another company that had no science text 
market and thus was immune to this pressure.  Velikovsky's books have been 
re-printed from that day to this, very successfully, and Velikovsky was able 
to present himself as a persecuted martyr for the rest of his life.  It was a 
disgrace to the scientists, but as persecutions go it was pretty weak.

Around 1970, I think it was, Carl Sagan got interested in Velikovsky and 
decided the scientific community ought to expiate its sins and give the old 
crank a fair hearing.  He managed to convince the AAAS to give Velikovsky his 
day in court.  Sagan and another astronomer explained why they found his 
theories incredible.  Velikovsky got up and uttered a powerfully purple speech 
about how the young minds of the rising generation would embrace his cause and 
said absolutely nothing about evidence or facts or proof or experiment.  The 
standard science journalists adjudged Velikovsky to be the same nut they had 
always known, while "Kronos," the house magazine of the Velikovskians, 
proclaimed a stunning victory and complained of shady tactics on the part of 
the AAAS which, so far as I can tell, were not used.

I'll be interested to see how much longer Velikovsky's following outlives its 
founder.  For instance, does anyone know if "Kronos" magazine is still being 
published?

Earl Wajenberg