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"You're not only fighting the man in the ring, Ed.
You're also fighting the referee and the three
judges."
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Ed Conrad
> http://ww.edconrad.com
> Man as Old as Coal
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>
> THE VELIKOVSKY AFFAIR
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In 1963, the editors of American Behavioral Scientist magazine
were convinced of the merits of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky's science
-- contained in "Worlds in Collision" and "Earth in Upheaval,"
published in the early 1950s -- and were aware of the mushroom
cloud of denial that had been generated from within the scientific
community.
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The editors considered these events to be of major im****tance
to the history of science.
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Therefore, they displayed tremendous courage by devoting their
September 1963 issue to defending Velikovsky.
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It contained three papers dealing with the Velikovsky controversy --
by Ralph Juergens, Livio Stecchini and publisher Alfred de Grazia, as
well as a paper submitted by Velikovsky himself.
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Three years later -- in 1966 -- this edition of American Behavioral
Scientist wound up as a hard-cover book entitled "The Velikovsky
Affair: The Warfare of Science and Scientism," edited by de Grazia
and published by University Books Inc., New Hyde Park, N.Y.
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> =================
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> "THE VELIKOVSKY AFFAIR"
> Foreward
> (by Alfred de Grazia)
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In 1950, a book called "Worlds in Collision," by Dr. Immanuel
Velikovsky, gave rise to a controversy in scientific and intellectual
circles about scientific theories and the sociology of science.
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Dr. Velikovsky's historical and cosmological concepts, bolstered by
his acknowledged scholar****p, constituted a formidable assault on
certain established theories of astronomy, geology and historical
biology, and on the heroes of those sciences.
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Newton, himself, and Darwin were being challenged, and indeed
the general orthodoxy of an ordered universe.
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The substance of Velikovsky's ideas is briefly presented in the first
chapter of this book.
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What must be called the scientific establishment rose in arms, not
only against the new Velikovsky theories but against the man himself.
Efforts were made to block dissemination of Dr. Velikovsky's ideas
and even to punish sup****ters of his investigations.
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Universities, scientific societies, publi****ng houses, the popular
press were approached and threatened. Social pressures and
professional sanctions were invoked to control public opinion.
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There is no doubt that in a totalitarian society, not only would Dr.
Velikovsky's reputation have been at stake, but also his right to
pursue his inquiry, and perhaps his own personal safety.
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> As it was, the "establishment" succeeded in building a wall of
> unfavorable sentiment around him. To thousands of scholars
> the name of Velikovsky bears the taint of fantasy, science-fiction
> and publicity.
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He could not be suppressed entirely. In the next few years
he published three more books. He carried on a large
correspondence. And he was helped by friends and by a large
general public composed of persons outside of the establishments
of science.
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The probings of spacecraft tended to confirm -- never to disprove --
his arguments.
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> Eventually, the venomous aspects of the controversy,
> the efforts at suppression, the campaign of vilification
> loomed almost as large, in their consequences to science,
> as the original issue.
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Social scientists, who had been generally aware of Dr. Velikovsky's
work, now found themselves in the thick of the conflict.
The involvement of the social and behavioral sciences in the
scientific theories of Velikovsky was higher than had been earlier
appreciated.
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The social sciences are the basis of Velikvsky's work. Despite his
proficiency in the natural sciences, it is by the use of the
methodology of social science that Velikovsky launched his challenge
to accepted cosmological theories.
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No one pretends that this method is adequate. New forms of
interdisciplinary research are needed to wed, for example, the study
of myth with the study of meteorites.
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Nor does one have to agree that Velikovsky is the greatest technician
of mythology, even while granting his great conceptual and
synthesizing powers.
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Whatever the scientific substance, the controversy itself could not
be avoided or dismissed by behavioral science.
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>The problem of scence is one of the agitating problems
> of the 20th century. The issues are clear: Who determines
> scientific truth? Who are its high priests, and what is their
> warrant? How do they establish their canons? What effects
> do they have on the freedom of inquiry, and on public interest?
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In the end, some judgment must be passed upon the behavior of the
scientific world and, if adverse, some remedies must be proposed . . .
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It is our hope that the publication of these papers in the present
volume (a revised and enlarged version) will make it less easy for
Velikovsky's new work to be suppressed, or lightly dismissed.
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We hope, too, that they will help scientists and interested laymen
everywhere to rehearse the problems and to reform the errors
of the vast enterprise of science.
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