Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Velikovsky 21, Scientific Paradigms 0, July 13, 1999
This is a very good book for updating Velikovsky's theories propounded in Worlds in Collision. The original book (please see my comments under Worlds in Collision), and the others in the series, put forth theories crossing many branches of science, from astronomy to physics, from archeology to anthropology. The Pensee book reviews many of the scientific theories and predictions first suggested in the fifties, and reviews them in the light of subsequent scientific investigation over the next decades. Velikovsky predicted that Venus was a hot planet, against all theories of the time. He was right. He predicted the composition of Venus' atmosphere, again going against all existing "knowledge": and he was right. Velikovsky predicted the presence of residual magnetism in moon rocks (impossible: the Moon does not have a magnetic field), and made a last minute plea to NASA that they record the physical orientation of moon rocks collected on Apollo 11. NASA ignored him, but when they found the magnetism in Apollo 11 rocks, (resulting from the Moon's passing through the magnetic field of a planet that got too close) they adopted Velokovsky's suggestion for later missions. Velikovsky's suggestion of tremendous electrical discharges between planets passing close to each other grew from theories that the solar system is electrically powered. Subsequent theories may support this as well. In total, the book reviews the scientific discoveries following Worlds in Collision, and reports that the scientific community has found more and more evidence that Velikovsky was correct. Velikovsky 21, Scientific Paradigms 0
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A little dated, a little biased, a lot hard to read, December 8, 2003
Velikovsky Reconsidered looks at the current state of the scientific arguments surrounding the weird and wonderful theories put forward in the 1950 text "Worlds in Collision", by the famous, (or infamous) Immanuel Velikovsky. In the original book ,and his writings hence, Velikovsky, a psychiatrist and historian by profession, has studied the catastrophes mentioned in the texts of ancient civilizations from across the globe and constructed a theory that attempts to explain things like the Plagues of Egypt and Noah's Flood that usually fall outside the normal scientific literature. The theory he comes up with revolves around the planet Venus rampaging around the Solar System like a comet, spitting fire, lightning and asphalt and generally terrifying the hell out of the ancient civilizations.
Needless to say, this sort of thinking didn't sit well with the established academics of the time, whose faith in Uniformitarianism ("The present is the key to the past") had rather ruled the scientific thinking of the world since the time of Hutton, Smith and Darwin.
I've personally been interested in Velikovsky (I.V.) for a while now, but this is the first opportunity I've had to track down literature concerning him. It seems when this book was written (1977) certain discoveries were emerging from the Apollo missions and astrophysical observations that seemed to back up some of the stuff I.V. had mentioned in his comprehensive interdisciplinary thesis. For example, every schoolboy now knows that Venus has an extraordinarily high surface temperature. Back in 1950, Venus was though to be around the same temperature as the Earth, however I.V. claimed that as it was only ejected from Jupiter less than 10,000 years ago, it must still be hot. The book itself is a compendium of papers from the University of Oregon Student Academic Freedom Forum magazine called "Pensee", which over the years has made a strong case for I.V's theories to be given more heed from the scientific community. The papers range from letters between I.V. and the famous geologist Hess, to stories of how the "Scientific Mafia" tried to prevent the book being published and then a serious of more scholarly articles trying to find some theoretical basis for his claims.
Overall though I wouldn't recommend this book to others. The very format of the book makes it difficult to read. Short papers on incredibly detailed topics of celestial mechanics sit beside other, more random topics such as the purpose of Stonehenge. This gives the book a very scattershot approach, and generally the level of detail is baffling to the outsider. For example, I'm working toward a Ph.D. in geology, but my knowledge of Infrared Reflectivity Wavelengths of various hydrocarbon species (both gaseous and particulate) isn't quite up to the point where I can judge if the claims and counterclaims made in the book are viable. One merely has to take the authors word at face value and say that perhaps I.V's theory does have something going for it, but then again the authors, and I say this with the utmost sensitivity and respect, aren't exactly academia's leading lights. An optical engineer writing on Orbital parameters of Venus? A Researcher for The Carborundum Company, Niagara Falls, New York dissecting Keplerian orbits? None of the papers either manage to prove I.V. right, and it seems to me that they need to make large assumptions in his favor just to keep him in the game. All in all I think this might be the real reason why I.V's theories have received such a cold shoulder from the scientific community. It's not that they're terrified that Velikovsky will suddenly disprove everything that we thought we knew - it's just that they're very busy people, with promising research leads of their own tied up with teaching students and writing papers and chasing grant money and frankly no-one has the time to spend a month testing out some crack-pot theory, where the right combination of all the orbits of the planets plus some fudge factor relating to the as yet unproven electrical attraction between celestial bodies, might just validate the ideas of some guy who died a long time ago. It sounds pretty cruel, but that's the reality of the modern world. "If I.V. wants to prove his theory he can damn well do it himself!"
26 years have now passed since this book was written (36 since some of the papers that lie within) and the scientific communities view of the world has changed too. Great leaps forward in understanding such things as Plate Tectonics, Earth/Climate interactions and Space Phenomena have been made, and the Universe is now viewed as much more chaotic now than it was then, with a lot more emphasis on random catastrophes added into the Uniformitarianismist* principles. For example, in 1977 who would've thought that an Asteroid might've killed off the Dinosaurs?! However, none of this later knowledge and vast improvement in computing power and research techniques have turned up much in the way of support for I.V's thesis (which also requires a certain amount of jiggery-pokery in the dating of ancient civilizations to prove they all collapsed at the same time). So I'm not sure this book is exactly cutting edge anymore, but I'd be interested to know if there was a more recent, more balanced, and more easily understood book out there that is. I'm sure it'll make more great reading.*I know that in all likelihood this is not a word, but I thought it'd be nice to write it...
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Just a tad outdated, December 10, 2004
Velisovsky reconsidered is a follow up to Velisovsky's Worlds in Collision. Velisovsky published in the 1950's on a theories about the planet Venus. He thought that it had broken off from Jupiter about 10000 years ago and argued that it would be hot since it hadn't had time to cool. Between Velisovsky arguing this against the logic of the day, which believed that Venus had a similar surface temperature to earth, and the publication of Velisovky reconsidered, our ideas of surface temperature in Venus had fallen into line with his theories. Velisovsky had many more theories about Venus and what he proposed as its wandering unpredictable course through the solar system.
So there are some compelling connections and fulfilled predictions of Velisovsky's that emerged after his theories were published. However this book has an axe to grind. It is a seven part book, and one of those parts is devoted to articles on the scientific coverup of all these amazing theories about Venus. Oh yes, this book is a bound compilation of articles on different subjects by different authors. Many of these are the original works be Velisovsky which cover subjects from the pyramids to stonehinge to the moon to Venus (lots of Venus). Then there are followups to Velisovsky's articles that introduce the modern science. It is kind of a mish-mash.
Velisovky Reconsidered was published in 1976, and is a compilation of papers published earlier. Since then our understanding of science has developed a great deal. By now the followups published in the 1970's are going to have been expanded or the facts as we know them are going to have changed. This book is more historical than scientific now. If you are seriously interested in Velisovsky's theories then try to find a more recent book on them.
Chapters:
Part I
The Scientific Mafia - David Stone
The Censorship of Velisovsky's Interedisciplinary Synthesis - Lynn E Rose
Shapley, Velisovsky, and the Scientific Spirit - Horace M Kallen
H H Hess and My Memoranda - Immanuel Velisovsky
Part II
The Orientation of the Pyramids - Immanuel Velisovsky
On Decoding Hawkins' Stonehenge Decoded - Immanuel Velisovsky
Babylonian Observations of Venus - Lynn E Rose
Earth Without a Moon - Immanuel Velisovsky
Giordano Bruno's View on the Earth Without a Moon - A M Paterson
Part III
How Stable is the Solar System? - C J Ransom
Could Mars Have Been an Inner Planet? - Lynn E Rosen
The Orbits of Mars, Earth, and Venus - Lynn E Rosen and Raymond C Vaugn
The Orbits of Venus - C J Ransom and L H Hoffee
Velisovsky and the Sequence of Planetary Orbits - Lynn E Rosen and Raymond C Vaugn
Venus' Circular Orbit - Chris S Sherrerd
Footnote by Immanuel Velisovsky
Gyroscopic Precession and Celestial Axis Displacement - Chris S Sherrerd
Plasma in Inter planetary Space: Reconciling celestial mechanics and Velisovskian Catastrophism - Ralph E Juergens
Part IV
Venus Clouds: Test for Hydrocarbons - William T Plummer
Venus and Hydrocarbons - Immanuel Velisovsky
The Nature of the Cytherean Atmosphere - Albert W Burgstahler
Venus' Atmosphere - Immanuel Velisovsky
Footnote by Albert W Burgstahler
A Letter from Peter R Ballinger
Part V
Are the Moon's Scars Only Three Thousand Years Old? - Immanuel Velisovsky
Lunar Rocks and Velisovsky's Claims - Derek York
When Was the Lunar Surface Last Molten? - Immanuel Velisovsky
Effects of Volatility on Rubidium-Strontium Dating - Robert C Wright
Magnetic Remanence in Lunar Rocks - Robert Treash
Is Venus' Heat Decreasing? - Immanuel Velisovsky
Part VI
The Center Holds - William Mullen
and an index
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by Goldsmith Donald
by Immanuel Velikovsky
by J. Douglas Kenyon
