· Protagoras (485-411 BC) was best known of the Sophists – a term that meant ‘teachers of wisdom’.
· He stated that since perception was the only source of knowledge, there could be no absolute truth.
· Man is the measure of all things – any given thing is to me as it appears to me to be, and, if it appears different to you, is what it seems to you to be. Each perception is true for each perceiver.
· Democritus (460-362 BC), a Greek philosopher, stated that since knowledge is based on perception, all truths are relative and subjective.

Socrates said one should not give knowledge to those unprepared to deal with it. He likened the Sophists to a woman who gave her beauty for money alone.

Agreed, but who defines who is prepared to deal with it?

Confucius says;

The moral duty for the intellectual to criticize the ruler (even at the risk of their lives) when he was abusing his power, or when he oppressed the people.

Analect 7:7 I never denied my teaching to anyone who sought it, even if he was too pour to offer more than a token present for his tuition.

The Sophists were doing it for the money?

Philosopia and Philosophos (love and lover of wisdom).

Those who work at developing fuller understanding and do not merely cater to the politicians or priests of their day - like the Sophists - is how Socrates saw it.

For me - I think your sage who gave with no concern of the return or payment was like Socrates. He gave to those who he QUESTIONED and taught through questioning or the Dialectic. He also did so at risk of losing his life or having to move - which he refused to do.

And in doing so he did lose his life.

Were they not contemporaries? Eastern religion / Western thought. And both precursors to Jesus, the Christ.

Jesus syndrome?

Are you willing to lose your life for what you preach?

I come from a long line of martyrs and Socrates has been my number one hero since before I turned ten.

Plato was more of the Yeshua or Merovingian sort. Jesus is an amalgam that certain Empire-Builders put words in the mouth of. It is pretty much agreed among scholars that any resemblance to Yeshua is pretty minimal. See Jesus and the Gnostic Cathars - my book. Full of quotes from the likes of John Dominic Crossan, Eisenmann and others.

Socrates taught Plato and Aristotle and is the Father of all Sciences according to the Arabic Encyclopedia by Roshdi Rashed - that includes alchemy (unusual to have any truth about it in academia).

Yes, I have committed my life to this - TOTALLY!

But preach - never.
QUESTION - always.

I meant 'preach' as a metaphor, as I had just mentioned Jesus, and it was't meant literally.

Doesn't Aristotle tell us in 'Metaphysics' that Thales was the founder of philosophy?

Philosophy first began when someone asked the question: "What is the foundation (arche) of this world?"

Thales had two followers, Anaximander and Anaximenes, and they formed what is known as the Milesian school or the Ionian school of natural philosophy.

Questions lead to answers, but you have to know what questions to ask.

And, do you want to ask those questions, because then you have to develop those answers into your relative reality?

Then, after development occurs, what happens with these new found insights?

Here is some preaching.

Scripture: Matthew 5:13-16

13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men. 14 "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. 15 Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

In his light we see light ( Psalm 36:9). His word is a lamp that guides our steps (Psalm 119:105).

Questions are like all knowledge and lead to wisdom but not answers of a definite sort - they lead to more questions.

No Greek is actually the originator of much and Thales was one who passed along some of the earlier knowledge just like Pythagoras as we have discussed already.

Are we talking cyclically again, and again, and again.. infinity?

What about Heraclites? He was a pre-Socratic, Ephesian philosopher, known as the riddler and the enigmatic one.

He was Confucius' contemporary and not Socrates as I mistakenly stated above.

The creative insights of are pretty thought provoking.

Everything flows.
You can't step in the same river twice.
Those who approach life like a child playing a game, moving and pushing pieces, posses the power of kings.

Quote from Velikovsky, "In the Beginning."

"I realized very soon that the ancient sages lived in a frightened state of mind, justified by the events they or their close ancestors had witnessed. The ancients’ message was an anguished effort to communicate their awe engendered at seeing nature with its elements unchained. The moderns, however, denied their ancestors’ wisdom, even their integrity, because of an all-embracing fear of facing the past, even the historically documented experiences of our progenitors, as recent as four score generations ago. "



"Worlds in Collision is a book of wars in the celestial sphere that took place in historical times. In these wars the planet earth participated too. [...] The historical-cosmological story of this book is <based in the evidence of historical texts of many people around the globe, on classical literature, on epics of the northern races, on sacred books of the peoples of the Orient and Occident, on traditions and folklore of primitive peoples, on old astronomical inscriptions and charts, on archaeological finds, and also on geological and paleontological material>." - Worlds In Collision, Preface.

Is this <> not basically what you are doing with some of your writing?

Enlightenment tends to consume the oxygen around it like any flame.

www.varchive.org/ is a great Veliskovkian site.

I don't think so - maybe in a fiction book - but I have not done one at all like that.

I did a fictional one at the time they built the Pyramid that had a major war of the worlds (on Earth from earth and by Earthians) with things most people would not think they could do - and nothing real fancy but pretty interesting stuff that actual artifacts and common sense would dictate they could do.

When you ask questions like what about Heraclitus you are not working and you are not really asking a question. Going through life dropping names with trivial tidbits is impressive but not useful.

Yes, I quote him and Herodotus and Hecateus and deal with Ephesus and all other Phoenician colonies of the Phocaean/Miletus sort. Are you trying to fathom what I am about? Seeking some label or box perhaps?

"Diverse Druids", by Robert Baird, from the way I read the 1st chapter, it sounded like a similar approach. That is what I was trying to infer.

Just intrigued by your pattern of thought.

Confucius says:
2:10 Find out why a man acts, observe how he acts, and examine where he finds his peace. Is there anything he could still hide.

What is it they say about projection?

"What is important is that we each make a sincere effort to take seriously our responsibility for each other and for the natural environment." Nobel Prize Lecture ~The Dalai Lama

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." - Henry David Thoreau

"I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions are generated." - Bertrand Russell

“The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages...will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests.” — Rothschild Brothers of London communiqué to associates in New York June 25, 1863

“I have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam & Eve left in every country, & left free, it would be better than it now is... The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest.” - Thomas Jefferson
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” -- Paine, Common Sense, 1776.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Who am I quoting now?

Merovingians mostly - BEES and Hibernians too. As I say - I do it in their own words.

Velikovsky and I are alike in our academic willingness to QUESTION and OBSERVE - no matter where it goes. I do not think he came from the same place or background (acts or conditioning - intuition or INTENT) though we may have to agree in many places.
Trust me - I like the comparison - but there is much MUCH more - and Diverse Druids only sets the stage with little of the esoterics.

All in all, with all things being said, I believe Velikovsky was on to something and it is the rest of scientific paradigm that is false. The plutocrats of the world are scared of what kind of reaction this information would illicit from peoples of the world, if they advocated his beliefs ( through rigorous non - 'Acedemia" research). Can you imagine worlds in collision, Venus the cause of much of historical/biblical catastrophes. The reason the water went red in Egypt, the parting of the sea for Moses, the list goes on and on. When I read it for the first time (with an open mind, of course), I couldn't believe what he was writing. However, as i continued to plow through his words and his pattern of reasoning, the whole concept of undiscovered and covered-up celestial dynamics became very plausible. I only agree because of the quality of his references which I dare say might rival yours. Society could not accept an intellect who cognizizied like Velikovsky during the years of intellectual subjugation experienced during the dark ages of the last century, i.e. the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's. A writer like you can, today, get away with pushing the bounderies of hyper-spatial, multidimensional truth. It is more accepted today than say in Velikovsky's, Socrates', Jesus', day.

The planet Venus did not exist until recently. Some 3500 years ago in the guise of a gigantic comet, it grazed Earth a couple of times, after having been ejected from the planet Jupiter some indefinite time earlier, before settling into its current orbit.

A Velikovskian assertion.

I hope you are right but the truth is this - Velikovsky got support from the ROM and when I call there after giving them nothing but facts from top archaeologsts and research of the records - the curator will not even return my call.

ROM?

Royal Ontario Museum.

They're holding clandestine material? Of what sort?

Or, do you mean that, you were calling there in an attempt to discredit his discreditting information, with your own new-found (land) information?

William Whiston and the Deluge
The years 1680 and 1682 were years of unusually bright comets. Many pamphlets were printed, especially in Germany, on the imminent end of the world; at the very least, great catastrophes were expected. There was nothing new in such prognostications. In earlier centuries and also earlier in the seventeenth century, comets were regarded with awe and every possible evil effect was ascribed to them. Thus a scholarly author, David Herlicius, published in 1619 a discourse on a comet that had appeared shortly before, in 1618, and enumerated the calamities that this comet, and comets in general, bring with them or presage:


Desiccation of the crops and barrenness, pestilence, great stormy winds, great inundations, shipwrecks, defeat of armies or destruction of kingdoms . . . decease of great potentates and scholars, schisms and rifts in religion, etc. The portents of comets are threefold—in part natural, in part political, and in part theological.(1)

David Herlicius also quoted Cicero: “From the remotest remembrance of antiquity it is known that comets have always presaged disasters.� (2)

The fear and even horror caused by the comet of 1680 was just beginning to calm down when in 1682 another great comet appeared.

Edmund Halley was twenty-six years old when this comet of 1682 appeared. He had experience in astronomical observations and calculations, having spent time on the island of St. Helena, cataloguing there 341 southern stars; he had observed the transit of Mercury, and made pendulum observations. Now he calculated the orbit of the comet of 1682, and predicted its return in 1759. Actually, the periodicity of comets was not first discovered by Halley. The ancient authors knew that comets have their time of revolution. Seneca wrote in his treatise De Cometis—in some respects still the most advanced discussion of this subject—that the Chaldeans counted the comets among the planets.(3) A comet with a periodicity of about 70 years was known to the rabbis.(4)

Nevertheless, only little aware of the works of the ancients, the modern world acclaimed Halley to be the discoverer of the periodicity of comets; however, this acclaim came only after his prognostication realized itself. The comet of 1682, or Halley’s comet, returned in 1759. It came somewhat retarded on account of its passage near the planets Jupiter and Saturn. This delay had been calculated, though not quite accurately, by Halley. On the grave of Halley these words are engraved: “Under this marble peacefully rests . . . Edmundus Halleius, LL.D., unquestionably the greatest astronomer of his age.�

But when Halley offered his theory of the periodicity of comets, and of the return of the observed comet after seventy-five years, this theory was not received immediately with enthusiasm. Yet in the mind of a contemporary mathematician the idea of a periodic return of comets was the beginning of a broadly-developed theory of the origin of the world and of the nature of the deluge.

William Whiston, born in 1667, published in 1696 his New Theory of the Earth. In this book he claimed that the comet of 1682 was of a 575&half year periodicity; that the same comet had appeared in February of 1106, in +531 in the consulate of Lampadius and Orestes, and in September of -44, the year of Caesar’s assassination.(5) Whiston further asserted that this comet had met the earth in -2346, and caused the Deluge.(6)

Whiston found in classical literature references to the change in inclination of the terrestrial axis and, ascribing it to a displacement of the poles by the comet of the Deluge, concluded that before this catastrophe the planes of daily rotation and yearly revolution coincided and that, therefore, there had been no seasons. He also found references to a year consisting of 360 days only, and although the Greek authors referred the change to the time of Atreus and Thyestes, and the Romans to the time of Numa, ca. -700, Whiston ascribed these changes to the effect of the Earth’s encounter with the comet of the Deluge. Whiston thought that the Earth itself was once a comet.

Whiston was chosen by Isaac Newton to take over his chair of mathematics at Trinity College in Cambridge when Newton, after many years, retired in order to dedicate himself to the duties of the president of the Royal Society. Whiston, like Newton, was a Unitarian. He was also close to being a fundamentalist. He was certain that only one global catastrophe was described in the Scripture—that of the Deluge. Of the phenomenon described in the book of Joshua, he wrote: “The Scripture did not intend to teach men philosophy, or accomodate itself to the true and Pythagoric system of the world.�

It is difficult to say what caused Newton, who selected Whiston as his successor, to oppose Whiston’s election to the membership of the Royal Society. We have another similar instance a century later, when Sir Humphry Davy, the mentor of Michael Faraday, conducted a strenuous campaign to keep Faraday from being admitted to the Royal Society, of which Davy was president.

But the very idea of a periodicity of comets, gleaned by Whiston from Halley, was not yet accepted. In 1744 a German author wrote: “It is well known that Whiston and others like him who wish to predict the comings and goings of comets, deceive themselves, and have become an object of ridicule by the entire world.� (7)

Still later Whiston was ridiculed by Georges Cuvier, himself a proponent of a catastrophist theory:


Whiston fancied that the earth was created from the atmosphere of one comet, and that it was deluged by the tail of another. The heat which remained from its first origin, in his opinion, excited the whole antediluvian population, men and animals, to sin, for which they were all drowned in the deluge, excepting the fish, whose passions were apparently less violent.�

References


“Ausduerrung des Erdbodens und unfruchtbarkeit, Pestilenz, grosse mechtige Sturmwinde, Erdleiden, grosse Wasserfluthen, Schiffbruch, verenderung der Regimenten, oder verstoerung der Koenigreich . . . abgang grosser Potentaten und gelaerter Leute, Rotten und Secten in Religion, etc. Sind also die significationes oder Bedeutungen der Cometen dreyerley, etliche sind Naturales oder natuerlich, etliche Political oder weltlich, etliche Theological oder gestlich.�


Cicero, De Natura Deorum: “Ab ultima antiquitatis memoria notatum cometas semper calamitatum praenuntios fuisse.� The Pythagoreans believed that great comets appear at great intervals of time. Posidonius, Fg. 131b, L. Edelstein and I. G. Kidd eds., (Cambridge, 1972), p. 123.


Quaestiones Naturales IV.1. The same opinion was ascribed to Hippocrates.


In the second century of this era, Rabbi Joshua said “There is a star which appears every 70 years and misleads the captains of boats.� It has been suggested that this statement is a reference to Halley’s comet. (W. M. Feldman, Rabbinical Mathematics and Astronomy (New York, 1931), pp. 11, 216.


[The 575&half year periodicity of the comet of 1682, and its previous returns beginning in -44, were first proposed by Halley and accepted by Newton (Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica third ed., 1726, Book III, Proposition XLI, Problem XXI).]


“The Cause of the Deluge Demonstrated, being an Appendix to the 2nd edition of the New Theory of the Earth� (London, 1708). Whiston changed the date calculated by the earlier cometographers so as to have a multiple of 575½ years. David Rockenbach, Seth Calvisius, and Christopher Helvicus had fixed the date at -2292, and Henricus Eckstormius and David Herlicius at -2312.


S. Suschken, Unvorgreifliche Kometen-Gedanke (1744), p. 8. “Gewiss ist es, dass Whiston und andere, welche den Auf- und Untergang der Cometen vorher sagen wollen, sich selbst betrogen, und vor aller Welt zu Spott gemacht haben.�

In the Tree of Life, the various sephirah (spheres) might be the sole study of a whole lifetime! Just one sephirah can be a life’s work; it is not merely logic. Here is something that deserves a lot of evaluation from www.viewzone.com and an article by James Bowles:


©James Bowles
PROLOGUE
30,000 Years Ago from yesterday is the story of the discovery that the giant figures that sprawl the mountain mesa above Nasca, Peru relate the same events, in fact they illustrate the events told to us in the Creation Texts of ancient Egypt, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. [1] These wondrous artifacts have their origin in the Alaskan Era, 30,000 Years Ago from yesterday in the Golden Age of the gods.
A chance overflight of the Cordilleras range in Central Peru in the years prior to WW-II [2] was the event leading to the re-discovery of the line figures on the plateau, the Pampa Jumana-Colorada, above Nazca where for centuries these pastoral images that speak in silent voice to a lost legacy of the past, lay hidden. Unremarkable on their own, except for their intricacies, their immense size, and the apparent reference to life through the belabored display of the genitals, but yet compelling, these graphic patterns were thought by some investigators to be religious or astronomical exhibits from a long lost generation. We are to learn different!
In his book, Beyond Stonehenge, Gerald S. Hawkins describes the unchanging scene of the Peruvian mesa:
".. suspended below the violet mountains, was an ancient Peruvian holy place, an abode of spirits [3] ... dead, unspeaking, (with) geometric patterns, rectangles, triangles, zigzags. Nothing changes. Footprints stay for years, [4] (and) because of the flatness, because of the sameness, a feature 800 yards long could not be seen." [5]
Hawkins continues...
"It was a moonscape of dust and rock. Without landmarks there was a feeling of disorientation ... It was an endless desert-sea, with an unreal coastline ... I had the sensation of moon-blindness at Nasca, directionless walking. The sun was no help ... it was overhead, intense, white, swollen. The underlying soil is a light-yellow mixture of sand, clay, and calcite ... fragments are red-colored underneath, hence the name Colorada. The top is blackened with a thin coat of desert varnish -- manganese and iron oxides -- caused by long term exposure to the atmosphere ..." [6]
Nearly a century earlier and some 7000 miles east of Nasca, the chance discovery of 4000 lines of hieroglyphic text inscribed on the walls of the ancient pyramids of Saqqara, Egypt, was going to change our understanding of the Ancients forever.
Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, co-authors of, The Orion Mystery, [7] give a detailed accounting of the discovery.
(In or around 1881 AD) ".. a jackal was spotted… near a crumbled pyramid in the necropolis of Saqqara .. the animal sauntered toward the north face of the pyramid, taunting his observer (a head workman or reis), and disappeared into a hole. The bemused Arab .. slipping through the narrow (opening found himself in a) chamber covered from top to bottom with hieroglyphic inscriptions. These were carved with exquisite craftsmanship into the solid limestone and painted over with turquoise and gold." [8]
These crumbled pyramids, and the Texts they contain, are said to be from the reign of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasty Kings of ancient Egypt, [9] although the evidence that we’re about to examine, suggests that the Texts were ancient before the construction of the pyramid complex was ever contemplated. If this is correct, and the evidence suggests that it is, than this complex was simply a repository of the ancient literatures .. it was a library!
These primal Texts are Creation stories. They are about Atum Rá, the primeval god who evolved from the Chaos, and of Thoth, the ithyphallic monkey, [10] they are about Seth, the brother of Osiris who in a fight with Horus lost his testicles, and of Horus, the allegorical son of Osiris, who lost his eye in the conflict with Seth ... and each story, as we'll see in a moment, is illustrated on the Peruvian mesa.
The story of Atum Rá opens with the creation of the Ennead.
(§ 1248) ‘Atum Rá is he who (once) came into being, (The primeval god who evolved from the Chaos.) who masturbated in On. He took his phallus in his grasp that he might create orgasm by means of it, and so, (§ 1249) … were born the twins Shu and Tefénet ..!’ (On refers to the ecliptic.)
Atum Rá is sculpted in ghostly ithyphallic form on a rocky projection with his back at about 60 degrees, in this sense he is Erect, and consistent with his orgasmic form of creation. His feet are not shoe-like, but more like testicles. The lines that make up the contours of his body .. are like veins. He is portrayed as an erect penis, and he is shown pregnant! His right arm is raised as if to acknowledge a higher Being, and to demonstrate the physical capacity to accomplish the creative act!
The Pyramid Texts are not alone in conveying the message of the Nascan graphic narratives, for in a more modern time and in another style, the ballad of The Phoenix Bird, by Hans Christian Andersen, [11] captures the same essence!
(born) "In the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, His flight was like the flashing of light, his plumage was beauteous, and his song ravishing. He wings his way in the glimmer of the Northern Lights over the plains of Lapland, and hops among the yellow flowers in the short Greenland summer ... The Phoenix Bird, dost thou not know him? The Bird of Paradise, the holy swan of song ... On a lotus leaf he floats down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eye of the Hindoo maid gleams bright when she beholds him."
If the reader would compare the following phrases from Hans Christian Andersen's The Phoenix Bird, with the adjoining illustration of the Nascan figures it would become apparent to them that these phrases originated from Nasca and the Texts. Our ignorance of these artifacts must be of VERY recent origin indeed!

a) the Garden of Paradise
the Tree of Knowledge
c) The Phoenix Bird
d) a lotus leaf
e) the eye of the Hindoo maid gleams (see (§ 976) below that reads in part, "The Eye of Horus gleams."
The continuing story of the Peruvian plateau, as with the Texts of Saqqara, is one of creation, and it played out in the mystic period of the Alaskan Era. It played out the themes that later spawned the lore and the legends of Raven, who as a creator called humans up from the earth or from clamshells, and it spawned the myths of the sometimes benevolent, sometimes malicious, sometimes spiritual, sometimes corporeal Thunder Birds of the native tribes of the Americas.� (End of the article by Bowles.)
Even then a Sephardic Jew will probably never understand each one until he has completed all others. The integration of knowledge when true allows a great deal to be recalled through mnemonics and something akin to tapes which keep things in order. I have many such tapes but whenever I find a lie or uncertainty among one it trips me up. Perhaps this is why people like Hume (who lie) are inclined to think there is no merit to the verbal traditions.
From the first time I noticed the Tree of Life cropping up in widely separated cultures around the world I knew there was pre-Columbian world travel. At present I am not familiar with the Ha Qabala or 'Table of Destiny' that some claim is the fountain of all culture. In these claims I do find Hume and Gibbon are often right. I do not know the origin of knowledge or culture and those who are certain of it seem self-serving at best. It was my intention to include many other things in this book. The potential North Bay site of Queen Hatschepsut’s expedition has not graced much ink or pages in our effort. The words of Rameses III as reported by Velikovsky in his Sea Peoples book would be good to read. Even the pot holes near my cottage that have always made me wonder and the associated five lined skink or prickly pear cactus didn't get the coverage I had started out believing was necessary. But thanks to people like Professor Scherz of the University of Wisconsin we had great things to offer that were more important in my view.
In closing allow me another divergence to the present or future state of mankind. A Sicilian scholar/friend tells me the Romans made Sicilians name their children with Roman names and destroyed ethnic pride. The Arabs who took control in later times allowed the island to grow and they fostered mutual respect. It appears we have a need to return that favour.

"Antediluvian kicking against the pricks," Dewey.

Alot of new info from above.

I will digest it and try to discern any parallels to Velikovsky, in particular:

"fragments are red-colored underneath."

What are those references? German.

This is a chapter from a free book of Velikovsky on the web.

It indicates Velikovsky is a promoter of the questionable origin of Unitarian ecclesiastical structure that LGK has posited as well.

Plato's 'History of Atlantis":

"And I will tell you the reason of this: there have been, and there will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes. There is a story which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Phaëthon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long intervals of time: when this happens, those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the sea-shore; and from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing savior, saves and delivers us. When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, among you herdsmen and shepherds on the mountains are the survivors, whereas those of you who live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea; but in this country neither at that time nor at any other does the water come from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below, for which reason the things preserved here are said to be the oldest. The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer sun does not prevent, the human race is always increasing at times, and at other times diminishing in numbers. And whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed--if any action which is noble or great, or in any other way remarkable has taken place, all that has been written down of old, and is preserved in our temples; whereas you and other nations are just being provided with letters and the other things which States require; and then, at the usual period, the stream from heaven descends like a pestilence, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and thus you have to begin all over again as children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves. As for those genealogies of yours which you have recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children; for, in the first place, you remember one deluge only, whereas there were many of them; and, in the next place, you do not know that there dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, of whom you and your whole city are but a seed or remnant. And this was unknown to you, because for many generations the survivors of that destruction died and made no sign."

(Velikovskian?) Celestial dynamics.

or

Hurricane Charlie, and the like.

or

Are they one and the same?

I am most intrigued by the data Velikovsky supplies in, 'In the Beginning.'

Have you ever followed and observed a Bee during the course of it's daily, natural routine, and then, intercede into that routine and observe it's response?

I did. I just spent the last c.10 minutes following what started out with a hornet and concluded with a Bee. Clever little Bee.

Personally I think it is far too oriented to the Bible Myths and most has subsequently been disproven including the Three Pillars of Ignorance that Velikovsky himself did.

Yes, it was explicitly slanted biblically. There was such an implicit intuitiveness to his idiosyncratic writing style, that, to me, there is a sense of truthness about it, how he seemed to connect so many seemingly unconnected dots.

"Truth is so infinitely important when its important at all, namely, in records of events and descriptions of existences," Dewey.

The dominant interest working throughout the minds of masses of men has to be clarified, a result which can be accomplised only by selection, elimination, reduction, and formulation; it has to be intellectually forced, exaggerated in order to be focused, to be in consciousness.

Have you seen the latest high resolution photos of NASA's Cassini Spacecraft (Sky and Telescope, September - 2004)?

Check out the celestial dynamics that Saturn's 'Phoebe' encountered and endured.

Fascinating photos.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-releases.cfm

Is this your thoughts about consciousness requiring intellectual reduction and clarification? It seems counter-intuitive to me.

Only in questing to develop awareness at a global community level, a true universal understanding, truth.

One needs to know to have intuitive insight, because, how can one have intuition if they don't know what there insightfully intuiting?

The following information is adapted and enhanced from a post to sci.skeptic and talk.origins on 14 Aug 1997 by Tim Thompson for Leroy Ellenberger who has no direct access to Usenet. Having discovered Elizabeth Anderson's 21 July 1997 request for information on Velikovsky on DejaNews, Ellenberger offers the expanded text of the postcard sent to 135 people in January 1997:



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TOP TEN REASONS WHY VELIKOVSKY IS WRONG
ABOUT WORLDS IN COLLISION
By Leroy Ellenberger


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DISCLOSURE: This Top Ten list is based on 30 years exposure to Velikovsky's ideas which includes 8 years as an insider at the Velikovsky journal Kronos (1978 - 1986), confidant to Velikovsky (4/78 - 11/79), invited "Devil's Advocate" at Aeon ('88 - '91), and 13 years as a turncoat/critic interacting with Velikovsky's defenders and/or successors at conferences, in private, and in Usenet ('94 -'96) & list-serve forums. I apologize for the stridency in what follows, but I continue to be passionate about the issues involved. I hope the tone of what I say does not obscure the accuracy of my analysis. (L.E., 11-XII-99)


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10. The "sequence of planetary orbits" that conserves angular momentum does NOT conserve energy, creating an enormous energy surplus, far more serious than Rose's mere "energy disposal problem," [in Editors of Pensee, _Velikovsky Reconsidered (1976)] which is an example of the _petitio principii_ fallacy (see Kronos II:4, p. 60 [and below]). [The excess energy produced by Velikovsky's sequence of orbits equals ca. 10,000 cal. per gram of Venus, Mars, and Earth, according to Rose & Vaughan in _Vel. Recon._ (reprinted from Pensee IVR VIII). This is enough energy to melt all three planets several times over, no trivial excess ostensibly to be dissipated by tidal friction.] [However, Rose & Vaughan's "sequence of orbits" is incorrect, in a narrow sense, because Velikovsky actually believed, according to material deleted from _Worlds in Collision_ prior to publication in 1950, Venus originated from Jupiter close to Earth's present orbit, not at Jupiter's present orbit, as Rose & Vaughan figured. Furthermore, the "sequence of orbits", in a global sense, is fatuous and asinine because the seasonal rhythms preserved in the Newark Basin shales (25 million years worth, 200 million years ago; see <http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/pis.html>) show, according to Paul E. Olsen & Dennis V. Kent at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, that all the major planets were in the same orbits they have today; see Larry Krumenaker, "Rhythm Section: The pulse of planetary cycles...", The SCIENCES, Nov/Dec 1995, pp. 14-16. (10-XI-98)] [This means that solving the "energy disposal problem" by having Mars interact with a large asteroid that was either ejected or sent on a long elliptical orbit is an irrelevant exercise, besides the fact that all conservative "sequence of orbits" scenarios begin with the untenable condition of Earth being closer to the Sun than Venus now is and, thus, outside the Sun's "habitable zone"; see "The Habitable Zone", Kronos X:1, 1984, pp. 91-92. (5-V-99)] [These realizations (i.e., that either Worlds in Collision begins with Earth at about the present orbit of Venus or with Jupiter near Earth's present orbit) render irrelevant Dr. C.J. Ransom's oft-recited rebuttal to Dr. M.M. Nieto at the McMaster Conference in 1974 that the Titius-Bode Law (or Bode's Law) can be modified trivially to show the present solar system orbits sans Venus (Pensee VIII, pp. 5-7) because when Venus was absent in Velikovsky's scenario either Earth was not in its present orbit or Jupiter was not, not to mention the alleged former location of Mars, according to Rose & Vaughan's "sequence of orbits" work cited above. For all of Rose's and Ginenthal's perspicacious nit-picking criticism of outsiders over the years it is surprising they never publicly exposed (though either one or both may have found) this gross inconsistency in Ransom's supposed defense of Velikovsky. Although Ransom's manipulation was conceived only to show Bode's Law is not a proper disproof of Worlds in Collision, many of Velikovsky's acolytes, including Lewis Greenberg at Kronos, erroneously took Ransom's demonstration as support for Worlds in Collision, which it is not.So much for peer review. It just may be so that, with a tip of the hat to an old David Steinberg routine, the pursuit of Velikovskian studies is moribund. (8-XII-99)] [Thus, Rose's invocation, in _Sun, Moon, and Sothis_ (1999), of the "Velikovsky Divide" at ca. 687 BCE, beyond which retrojecting present orbits is supposedly not valid, is nothing but a red herring unless and until Rose, or someone, presents coercive physical evidence for Earth having been so close to the Sun prior to 1500 BCE because "There is no reason to believe in a phenomenon for which no physical evidence exists (Milton Rothman, _A Physicist's Guide to Skepticism_ (1988), p. 157). Rose & Vaughan's _interpretation_ of the Venus Tablets as showing Earth's orbit with a greater eccentricity than now is simply not a strict enough criterion. When Rose admonishes "People who refer to years of 365 1/4 days or months of 29 1/2 days must have lived on this side of the Velikovsky Divide" (p. 118), he himself indulges in "sophistry and illusion" because he ignores the fact that the shafts from the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid point to ritually significant stars at the epoch of its conventionally-reckoned date of construction, ca. 2450 BCE, (see R. Bauval & A. Gilbert, _The Orion Mystery_, 1994), which alignments do not obtain "in the first half of the first millennium" (p. 272) where Rose would have it built. (2 XI 99)] [Postscript: As a purely academic point, Laurence Dixon recently published a set of orbits for Earth, Mars, and Venus based on Velikovsky's "sequence of orbits" that conserves both angular momentum and energy without using an extraneous asteroid (C&C Review 2001:2, pp. 40-41) in which Earth starts even closer to the Sun (semi-major axis = 0.58 A.U.) than in Rose & Vaughan's solution. (14 VI 02)]

9. Orbit of Venus CANNOT circularize on Velikovsky's time scale, regardless what Einstein allegedly said in 1955; electromagnetism is no panacea & chaos theory cannot save the phenomenon, contrary to the wishful thinking of Bass.

8. Circular, resonant orbits of the moons of Earth & Mars betray no sign of recent disturbance, indicated by Velikovsky, or later capture, as Van Flandern noted [to Ellenberger] in 1979& of which Rose is willfully ignorant. [This point, extended to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, also applies to the "Saturn thesis" of Dave Talbott and his merry band of fellow amateur mythologists, with respect to the disruption of the "polar configuration" and the transition to the present Solar System (which transition also does not conserve angular momentum and orbital energy).]

7. Since close encounters drastically increase inclination, the small inclinations of the orbits of Venus & Mars belie the multiple near-collisions outlined by Velikovsky. [This point is obscured by the 2-dimensional n-body simulations that were performed on talk.origins in 1994 while testing Grubaugh's model of the "polar configuration" presented in Aeon 3:3, 1993,; refuted by Dr. V. J. Slabinski in Aeon 3:6, 1994. Grubaugh's trivial modification intended to circumvent Slabinski's criticism was refuted by T. C. Van Flandern on talk.origins, 17 Dec 1994, message-ID: <3cvphu$kfl@nkosi.well.com>. The suggestion by Bass that tidal friction acts in the direction of stability in the "polar configuration" is irrelevant until it is shown that tidal friction in fact can stabilize the wildly unstable system. [Talbott's 07/18/1996 discussion of these and related issues on talk.origins was hopelessly muddled and confused, as Paul J. Gans showed. Also, contrary to Talbott, there never was a challenge on talk.origins to simulate a particle librating about the L-3 position and Bass never showed that tidal friction could stabilize the "polar configuration". (2-V-00)] Regarding the problem of parallax in the "polar configuration," see Wayne Throop's analysis: <http://sheol.org/throopw/polar-offset.html>; the symbols are concentric circles that resemble lunar and solar halos, while the view from low latitudes would have been decidedly off-center.]

6. The debris Venus allegedly deposited in Earth's atmosphere causing 40 years of darkness after the Exodus left no trace in the world's ice caps or ocean bottoms, [See "Ice Cores", Kronos X:1, 1984, 97-102, or Appendix D at end of <http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cle/cle-contra-cochrane.txt>.] a test ignored by Rose [and an example of negative evidence with which Velikovskians do not have a good track record of dealing. N.B.: The "Worzel Ash" touted by Velikovsky and his epigoni is known to be volcanic (to the exclusion of any other source) from eruptions in Central America, limited in extent (i.e., not global), and far older than 3500 years; see "The Worzel Ash," Kronos X:1, 1984, 92-94 or section "The 'Worzel' Ash" in Mewhinney's "Minds in Ablation". (12-III-99) .] [However, long overlooked by Velikovskians, but recently disclosed by Philip Plait, is the fact that for Venus to get close enough for its air to flow onto Earth, thereby depositing the raw materials for all that manna, requires Venus "to be closer than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the surface of the Earth" (BAD Astronomy, 2002, p. 181). Such an encounter would have sterilized Earth's biosphere and flung the Moon into interplanetary space. Neither happened and, in fact, ancient lunar calendars and observations show that the Moon's orbit has not changed significantly in the past 5,800 years. (14 VI 02)]

5. The bristlecone pine survived the global catastrophe at 3500 BP that Velikovsky claimed killed all trees, to which he replied [to Ellenberger on Palm Sunday 1978] "So? They survived," indicating a cavalier attitude toward disconfirming evidence. [See "Tree Rings," Kronos X:1, 1984, 94-97. Dennis Rawlins noted this "could stand by itself as a complete disproof of [Worlds in Collision]" in his critique "Freudian Astronomy or Do Planetary Orbits, Bristlecone Pines, & Velikovsky'sBelievers Suffer from Collective Amnesia?" ms. dated August 1972, distributed by Ellenberger in August 1990 at Reconsidering Velikovsky Conference, Toronto. Velikovsky and his epigoni have no respect for the absolute-veto power of negative evidence because they have a quasi-religious belief/faith the events really happened whether Worlds in Collision or the assembly and dismantling of the "polar configuration".]

4. The continuity of flora & fauna on islands such as Hawaii [first noted by Roger Ashton at San Jose, CA, Conf. in 1980 and later in C&C Workshop 1986:1, p. 5] shows they were not overrun by globe-girdling tidal waves at 3500 BP when the "Sun" stood still for Joshua, as Velikovsky claimed, an illusion produced by a post-perihelion comet passing *behind* Earth, as Bob Kobres explained for Phaethon; [see <http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/phaeth.html>]. [N.B.: Regarding "Joshua's long day", axial tilt as an alternative to a rotational effect is really no help, as Robert W. Bass explained at the Glasgow Conference, April 7-9, 1978 (S.I.S. Review VI:1-3, p. 74). A tippe top motion (i.e., one in which the body inverts while the spin axis does not) as invoked by Peter Warlow in "Geomagnetic Reversals?" (J. Phys. A 11, 1978, pp. 2107-30, reprinted in S.I.S. Review III:4, 1979, pp. 100-12) is also untenable, as explained by then COMSAT astrodynamacist Victor J. Slabinski (J. Phys. A 14, 1981, pp. 2503-7, reprinted in S.I.S.R. V:2, 1980, pp. 54-6; and developed further in Kronos VII:2, 1982, pp. 94-96)]. [Warlow's inversion would require the close passage of a body 31% more massive than Jupiter! Rejecting a dynamo in the core as the source of Earth's magnetic field, Warlow believed, along with Velikovsky, that Earth's magnetic field was produced by the rotation of an electrically-charged Earth and that magnetic reversals happened when Earth turned over inside the electric field. While a charged, rotating sphere does create a magnetic dipole field, it would not resemble the geomagnetic field and its observed behavior. Of the more than dozen ways to create a dipole field, a core dynamo is the only way to produce Earth's actual field. Despite Warlow's failure to deliver his promised rebuttal to Slabinski, fellow S.I.S. member and retired British Aerospace systems engineer David Salkeld argued that Earth could be turned over by a gigantic "filament" of water, launched from Saturn by some "ejection process", impinging upon us (imagine a water stream from a hose interacting with a beach ball) for up to 13.8 days, a duration derived from the minimum torque in Warlow's invalid, simplistic analysis (Salkeld, C&C Workshop 1987:2, p. 30 & 1988:2, p. 20 and C&C Review XI, 1989, pp. 29-34). This cataclysm left no tell-tale mark on Hawaii or anywhere else and Salkeld cited no model-specific physical evidence in his favor. Evidently, he believes in the same "powerful forces of somewhat more benign nature" once fantasized by Earl Milton (C.S.I.S. Newsletter III:2 [1985], p. 3). Salkeld's insistence on an inversion lasting more than a day was beside the point because Warlow's motivation was to lend credence to "Joshua's long day" in Worlds in Collision (Warlow, S.I.S.R. IV:1, p. 8; Warlow to Sizemore, 4 Aug. '78; Warlow to Ellenberger, 19 Feb. '80); he used a day as the basis for evaluating the examples in his J. Phys. A paper; and his book The Reversing Earth (London 1982) illustrated a one day inversion (Ellenberger, Aeon 2:5, 1991, pp. 83-90 & 3:1, 1992, pp. 97-8). Richard Huggett reports "Warlow believed that the process of reversal would take about a day!" (Catastrophism: Systems of Earth History, New York 1990, p. 123). Peter James and Nick Thorpe also agree that Warlow envisioned a one day inversion while describing the paradigm shift from Velikovsky's planetary fantasy to Clube & Napier's Taurid complex-based "coherent catastrophism" (Ancient Mysteries, New York 1999, pp. 145-7). Why Warlow permitted Salkeld to persist in his delusion is not known. It is interesting to note that in the early 1990s Slabinski's refutation of Warlow was affirmed by an Israeli space scientist who knows him well in response to a query from Velikovsky's daughter Shulamit Kogan. In their unbounded enthusiasm for exploring Velikovskian speculations, armchair investigators such as Warlow and Salkeld are of a piece with Kingsley Amis' "Lucky Jim", revelling in pseudo-research, shedding new light on a non-subject! (22 VIII 02).] .

3. The year was not 360 d. between 3500 BP & 2700 BP, as Velikovsky claimed, because at 3200 BP [according to Joseph Needham] the Chinese reckoned the summer solstice recurred 548 d. after the winter solstice, i.e., 365.25x1.5=547.875, a datum smugly ignored by Rose in "From Calendars to Chronology," making the "Velikovsky Divide" a fraud & delusion, [in D.A. Pearlman (ed.), _Stephen J. Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky_ (1996) wherein Rose avers "I have always wanted revenge on the various villains of the Velikovsky Affair, whether from 1950 or from 1965 or from 1974" (p. 702). The book is a petty, ponderous, mean-spirited, wrong-headed, and vindictive collaboration of Ginenthal [compiler of _Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky_ (1990/1995)], Wolfe, Rose, Cardona, D.N. Talbott, & Cochrane].

2. Magellan images of Venus [show 35+ km. wide craters and thereby] reveal a crust too thick to have been molten 3500 years ago, & if the 900 large craters on Venus were so young then Earth would be expected to have more than the <20 craters of comparable size it does have. [NOTE Added by Tim Thompson: Also see my article "Is the Planet Venus Young?" <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/venus-young.html>.] [The crust on Venus is so dry that it is far less viscous than wet terrestrial rocks would be at the same high temperatures (Mackwell, S.J., et al., LPSC XXV, 1994, p. 81). Thus, the craters on Venus can be a few hundred million years old, contrary to Ginenthal's dissembling. The conditions and processes on Earth that erase craters over geologic time are for the most part absent on Venus. Since the atmosphere below the clouds is stable against convection, i.e., the temperature lapse rate is subadiabatic (Seiff, A., in Hunten, D.M., et al. (eds.), Venus (1983), p. 215), no massive, on-going volcanism exists, as Velikovskians require. George R. Talbott's cooling model (Kronos IV:2, 1978), recently lauded uncritically by sci-fi writer James P. Hogan [author of Cradle of Saturn (1999), a naive homage to Velikovskian catastrophism] on WWW, is thus irrelevant because Talbott assumed on-going massive volcanism for which no evidence exists and other evidence contraindicates, e.g., the large craters and stagnant atmosphere below the clouds. Given the stagnation in the lower atmosphere, the enigmatic superrotation in the upper atmosphere can have nothing to do with a Velikovskian origin. Velikovsky's "youthful" Venus is a delusion so firmly held by true believers that Ginenthal led two audience rebellions against this speaker's keynote address at a meeting in Haliburton, Ontario, in August 1992 when the Pioneer and Magellan evidence disproving Velikovsky was presented. (6-IV-00)]

1. Since Venus is too massive EVER to have had a VISIBLE tail, cometary behavior ascribed to the DEITY Inanna-Ishtar applies NOT to PLANET Venus, as Velikovsky & such naive epigoni as Dwardu Cardona, Cochrane, [Dave Talbott, Lewis Greenberg] & Lynn Rose claim, but to a real COMET, now defunct or absent, which was ALSO sacred to Inanna-Ishtar, as Clube & Napier propose in _The Cosmic Winter_ (1990); lesson: Inanna does not necessarily refer to Venus since she was ALSO associated with Moon, Sirius, etc. Thus, Inanna, NOT Venus, was hailed by the Mesopotamians as "Queen of the Zenith" [--an allusion to Sirius, a position never occupied by Venus in the putative "polar configuration"]. [Furthermore, the birth of the Greek goddess Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus cannot apply to Venus, as Velikovsky proposed, because the Greeks did not identify Pallas Athene with the planet Venus, as James Fitton explained in "Velikovsky Mythistoricus", Chiron I:1&2, 1974, pp. 29-36, which is an indictment of Velikovsky's methodology that has been totally ignored by Velikovsky's defenders although they have discussed other topics in Chiron. (17 VIII 98)] [The attempt to explain "a comet-like tail" on Venus as a natural consequence of her putative origin from Jupiter within the past 10,000 years by Charles Ginenthal in _The Velikovskian_ IV:2, 1998, 77-97, is hopelessly misguided on "on every . . . score", starting with the absence of any possible, feasible fissioning or other parturition process [about which Jim Hogan is clueless in Cradle of Saturn]; and see No. Ten, above. (10-XI-98)] [N.B.: The very _raison d'etre_ for associating Venus with the Exodus in _Worlds in Collision_ has been refuted by Cardona, who recently revealed: "The comet CALLED Typhon [or Set] and the Typhon of Greek mythology are NOT the same.... [T]he comet [at Exodus] called Set/Typhon had nothing to do with the Greek demon called Typhon [which can be associated with Venus, according to Cardona].... It has never been ascertained on what evidence, if any, Rockenbach associated this comet with the Exodus" (Thoth II:7, April 15, 1998; reprinted in S.I.S. Internet Digest 1998:1, p. 15) (17-I-99).]

0. The revised chronology fares no better because the 10th century BCE, where Velikovsky places the XVIIIth Dynasty pharaohs coeval with the Minoan eruption of Thera, contains no signal for this eruption [or any eruption in the Greenland ice cores]. [Correction (8 VI 98): The GISP2 ice core from Greenland does contain a volcanic acidity signal at 962 B.C. However, this does not nullify the point because the eruption of Thera is associated with the reign of Thutmose III which began several decades later in Velikovsky's revised chronology, according to the chart by John Holbrook, Jr., in Pensee IV.] [When Velikovsky affirmed the date for the Minoan eruption of Thera at 1500 B.C. (the date in the standard chronology), he overlooked the fact that his revised chronology required a 10th century date, as Jerry Pournelle first reported in Feb. 1975 Galaxy, pp. 82-83, by noting that the eruption is associated with Late Minoan I ceramic phase and also with the XVIIIth Dynasty and that, whereas Velikovsky dated Minoan Linear B writing to ca. 700 B.C., it "is contemporary with the Thera disaster which Velikovsky himself dates to -1500." Israel M. Isaacson, a.k.a. Eddie Schorr, on ceramic and other grounds reported the same deduction in Kronos I:2, June 1975, pp. 93-97. (18 VIII 00)] [Furthermore, contrary to Velikovsky in _Ages in Chaos_ (1952), Hatshepsut of the XVIIIth Dynasty was not the Queen of Sheba who visited King Solomon, as explained by Egyptologist David Lorton (1984/1999) and Biblical Scholar John Bimson (C&C Review VIII, 1986, pp. 12-26), another datum on which Panglossian Rose is curiously silent. (3-XI-99)] [Hatshepsut did not visit Jerusalem, as Velikovsky claimed, but rather a Semitic coastal trading settlement of northeast Africa, perhaps Somaliland, as indicated by the flora and fauna pictured by Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahari which are diagnostic to a Gulf of Aden provenance to the exclusion of a Mediterranean one. (18 VIII 00)]

[These reasons present a prima facie difficulty for Velikovsky's position and support R.G.A. Dolby's arguments in S.I.S. Review I:3, 1976, 26-30 (adapted from Social Studies of Science 5, 1975, 165-175) and implicitly refute H. Meynell's reply to Dolby in which he claimed "...the impressiveness of Velikovsky's thesis is due as much to its coherence within itself as to its correspondence with ascertainable fact....that _one_ at first sight extremely improbable hypothesis, which should be liable to falsification in any number of ways, is in fact apparently confirmed in as many ways" (S.I.S. Review I:4, 1977, 5-8). The foregoing "Top Ten" would appear to contradict this assessment.]

[These "Top Ten Reasons..." also nullify Lynn Rose's willfully ignorant remark that Velikovsky's "theory is not in conflict with any clear-cut _facts_ unearthed by other disciplines and claims to the contrary have never been substantiated" ("The Censorship of Velikovsky's Interdisciplinary Synthesis", Pensee I, pp. 28-31; reprinted in Velikovsky Reconsidered (N.Y., 1976)). This rosey outlook is contradicted by the absence of visible debris in the world's ice caps marking the first alleged Venus catastrophe (No. 6), continuity of flora and fauna on islands (No. 4), and the "survival" of the bristlecone pines (No. 5). In his 1950 review of Worlds in Collision in New Statesman and Nation, J.B.S. Haldane, citing Swedish varves and Atlantic bottom cores, noted "The data of geology absolutely negate the possibility of worldwide floods in the last 10,000 years"; but Velikovsky ignored this criticism when discussing Haldane's review in Stargazers and Gravediggers, pp. 199-202. (14 X 00)]

["But it is not possible to understand the relation of myth to reality without some INDEPENDENT knowledge of the reality" [emphasis added], TLS, 4-14-72. Jerome Lettvin expressed the problem as "You can't even guess what is meant [in myth] unless you know what is meant" in "The Use of Myth: The tales of the Makers are the first language of science," Tech. Rev., June, 1976, 52-59. The latter-day Velikovskians, esp. the "Saturnists" following Dave Talbott, have no appreciation of this requirement.] [Their highly-touted inductive, "comparative method" of mythological interpretation/exegesis is seriously flawed to the extent it is not supported by independent evidence, preferably physical or explicit text, i.e., A=C, not A=B, B=C, therefore A=C, because such relations or identifications or equations in mythology, which are often metaphorical, are not necessarily transitive, as Hertha von Dechend explains, in effect, in Hamlet's Mill, Appendix 39: "Thus, it would be the very confidence in the custom of giving many names to the same topos -- and in 'synonyms' in general -- which enforces, so to speak, distorted translations" (p. 449). Following Harald A.T. Reiche (classicist, M.I.T.), who was one of von Dechend's few academic exponents, my "Mongoose vs. Cobra" postcard (15-VI-93) observed: "Indeed, as scholars the 'Saturnists' are entirely too naive, literal & unsophisticated, as with Sun=Saturn. The notion of 'equation' & 'identity' deserves a more sensitive treatment. One must distinguish between substantive, functional, temporary, shorthand, & topographic 'identities' and consider the possibility that Semitic languages _lacked_ the sort of _precision_ that the Greeks and we routinely employ (cf the Luther-Zwingli debate concerning the Eucharist). 'Saturnists' don't know cow chips from kumquats when it comes to subtlety and nuance." The reader will search in vain in Kronos, Aeon, The Velikovskian, Chronology & Catastrophism Review, and Usenet fora to find a "Saturnist" principal discuss these issues other than to label the writer "certifiable", or some other amateur psychological diagnosis. This lack of critical approach also applies to their intellectual allies which includes Dr. E.J. (Ted) Bond (philosophy), Prof. Lewis M. Greenberg (art history), [James McCanney (pseudo-scientist whose personal hero is T.J.J. See),] Dr. Hugo Meynell (religious studies), Dr. William Mullen (classics and coiner of "cenocatastrophism"), Dr. C.J. Ransom (physics), Mr. Martin Sieff (journalism), Dr. Brian Stross (anthropology), Dr. George R. Talbott (interdisciplinary science studies), Dr. Roger W. Wescott (linguistics), and Mr. Clark Whelton (dilettante) when engaged in and/or promoting Velikovskian and/or "Saturnist" studies. (7-XII-99)]

Lynn Rose says "To undermine [an] argument, we need simply identify [the] false premisses[sic]." His false premises include (a) equating Inanna solely with Venus, a crude, ignorant reductionism, ( treating religious texts as historical evidence for actual events instead of metaphors, & © over-emphasizing predictive power. In Kronos II:4, he should have said "to prove Velikovsky right you must assume Velikovsky right" & thereby ignore all the contrary physical evidence, which has priority over "historical" evidence which is subject to interpretation. Since Rose denies the absolute veto power of relevant evidence, he ignores it when he cannot pervert it (e.g., with the Greenland ice core evidence in Kronos XII:1 & XII:2, 1987, whose outright fraud and mendacity were exposed in Sean Mewhinney, "Ice Cores and Common Sense," _Catastrophism and Ancient History_ XII:1 & XII:2, 1990; since ignored by Rose as of 12/99). When Rose says "Velikovsky's critics had no decent arguments against him" & Wolfe says "there is no reason why Velikovsky...should be wrong _a priori_," [in Pearlman (ed.)] they merely show they, too, along with Ginenthal are each TRULY "an ignoramus masquerading as a sage"--deluded beyond redemption. [One of the gimmicks in Pearlman (ed.) is the classic Velikovskian tactic of turning a critic's words against him so that at every opportunity Henry Bauer is shown to be "an ignoramus masquerading as a sage", as Bauer showed Velikovsky to be in _Beyond Velikovsky_ (1984).] [Clearly, the foregoing "Top Ten..." indicate that Velikovskian apologists such as Lynn E. Rose (philosophy), I. Wolfe (English & deconstructionism), and C. Ginenthal (education), by virtue of their lacking a proper, formal scientific background, operate from a profound depth of ignorance, not to mention an almost irrational pro-Velikovsky bias. (10-XI-98)] [Clearly, the vaunted "interdisciplinary synthesis" of Velikovskians has failed to incorporate all the relevant data and, for as much as they accuse others of the _petitio principii_ fallacy (i.e., begging the question), they are past masters of it while not being able to see the forest for the trees. (3-XI-99)]


Comments/questions welcome:
< c.leroy@rocketmail.com >



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For a review of Ruth V. Sharon, ABA: The Life of Im. Velikovsky, see J. Sci. Explor. 10:4, 1996, 561-569. For a copy, send $1.00 P&H & also get a copy of V's audacious 3-31-47 letter to Shapley sent with Cosmos w/o Gravitation (whose significance, contrary to G'thal & Rose, is that since it shows V. did not understand physics his challenge to science was presumptuous in the extreme), a letter curiously absent from _Stargazers & Gravediggers_ and Velikovskian apologetics [such as Pearlman (ed.)].

Leroy Ellenberger, 3929A Utah Street, St. Louis, MO 63116, USA
Jan. 1997
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/velidelu.html>
<http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cle>, 9 "cle-" files listed, from 1994's flame war with Cochrane & Talbott, in Contents: see, esp., "cle-contra-cochrane", "cle-talbott", and "cle-ginenthal-factor".



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"Suffer from Collective Amnesia," Velikovsky.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle - IDEA

Geddes was mentor to Lewis Mumford:

The Myth of the Machine – The Pentagon of Power ( ? ) – Lewis Mumford

At every point in development, the concrete, the empirical, and the historical on the one hand and the abstract, the mathematical and the analytical on the other, have both been necessary for forming an adequate picture of reality.

Types of business personalities: finders, collectors, fabricators, manipulators, etc.

Every man is a dabbler, if not a master in all knowledge. Every man is a divine, a physician, and a lawyer to himself, as well as a counsellor to his neighbours.

16th century mechanistic conversion of society – purely mechanical forms were superimposed upon every manifestation of life, thereby suppressing many of the most essential characteristics of organisms, personalities, and human communities.

16th century depersonalized world picture – mechanical activity and interests took precedence over more human concerns.

Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton were the driving forces in this transformation. Also note Boyle, Maxwell and Planck.

Marxist historians see feudalism as a universal historical stage through which all societies must pass before the emergence of capitalism.

Whereas many of the older ideologies of life had mistakenly accepted a static, earth centred world, with only the most limited possibilities of change, mostly of a cyclical or apocalyptic order, the new ideology fostered an intense interest in space, time, motion, in their widest cosmic setting, not the settings in which organisms actually function in their earthly habitat, intermingled with other organisms, pursuing their own further life potentialities.

Abstract motion took possession of Western mind. the rotation of the earth, the majestic geometric path of the planets, the swing of the pendulum, the arc described by hurtling projectiles, the exact motions of clockwork, and the rotations of watch wheels.

Speed shortens time, time was money, and money was power.

Farther and farther, faster and faster, became identified with human progress.

Metaphors and analogies derived from the machine were applied shrewdly, if coarsely, to organisms in order to reduce life to its quantitative mechanical and chemical components. This seemed an infallible method of eliminating the ultimate mystery of life itself.

Western man’s views of the new world – the geographic new world, with the Sun as the centre of the universe, the mechanical new world, and historical time, which released man from the grasp of his unconscious past, with its buried traumas and its futile repetition of attested errors.

The human figure as a mechanized automaton – that which is self-moving, self-acting machine; a mechanical contrivance, which imitates the arbitrary or voluntary motions of living beings; a person who acts mechanically.

Mechanization of the world picture.

Yes, the Platonists are a weasly lot to be sure. Reductivism and gradualism as some ideal with Euro-centric values or materialism had some value but to throw out all other possibilities is ludicrous.

Technics and Civilization (1963) – Lewis Mumford

18th century automation, step from naturalism to mechanisms.

The next move is to remove the organic symbol entirely.

Mechanization and regimentation have been projected and embodied in organized forms, which now dominate every aspect of our existence.

Surrendering to the machine.

Three phases of the machine and civilization: 1. The first wave came in the 10th century in an effort to achieve order and power by purely external means, turned away from the momentous moral and social difficulties that it had neither confronted nor solved. 2. The second wave came in the 18th century, where external regimentation and internal resistance went hand in hand. 3. Modern day.

The characteristic properties of emerging order – its patterns, its planes, its angles of polarization, and its colours.

Can one, in the process of crystallization, remove the turbid (muddy, not clear) residues left behind by our earlier forms of thought?

Machines have developed out of a complex of non-organic agents for converting energy, for performing work, for enlarging the mechanical or sensory capacities of the human body, or for reducing to a measurable order and regularity the processes of life.

The tool lends itself to manipulation, the machine to automatic action.

The Universe as ordered by God.

No two cultures live conceptually in the same time and space.

Kant “Time and space are categories of the mind.”

Velikovskian.

Definition - The re-emamination of doctrinal formulations.

"The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Cosciousness Defines by The New Physics," Danah Zohar.

"....at the Quantum level of reality, the whole picture of continuous movement through space and time breaks down. Quantum physics is of 'lumps' and 'jumps'. The lumps appeared in the early days of Quantum theory when Max Planck proved that all energy is radiated in individual packets, called Quanta, rather than in flowing streams over a continuous spectrum; the jumps appeared later when Niels Bohr demonstrated that electrons jump from one energy state to another in discontinuous 'quantum leaps,' the size of which depending on how much quanta of energy they have absorbed or given off.
The original Bohr atom was like a minute solar system. It had a comparitively large nucleus at the centre in the place of the sun and the various electrons circling about in their individual orbits, each orbit representing a given energy state that an electron can occupy. There was no rhyme or reason as to when an electron might leap from one orbit to another, or how big of a leap it might take."

This makes it sound like Velikovskian cellestial dynamics could be a potential possibility.
Venus eluding Jupiter's orbit and grazing the Earth's surface, etc.

I wonder if Velikovsky was riding the beginning waves (undulations) of Quantum thought, either knowingly or not, mere intuition.

Are you saying he got the intuition and misinterpreted in as planetary when it related to the atom? IN any event he was wrong on this one.

I think I meant it as a metaphor between the quantum dynamics of the atom and Velikovskian celestial dynamics. There is, I believe, no right or wrong on this one, just an analogy of both to each other.

A Quantum leap of thought if you like.

That could be, that he very well might have misinterpreted his intuition and placed it in the wrong realm of thought. However, I'm not completely convinced that Velikovsky was wrong. You never know, anything is possible. Data shmata I sometimes say.

In this reality he was wrong. There are alternative 'possibilities' of course.

Indoctrinated reality or my eyes are wide open reality?

http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ancient.htm#sec-1

http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/

wow....this was a good thread!

I just read it again after along while....fascinating stuff.