Beyond amnesia

Velikovsky and his keeper 

"The Pseudoscience Wars" by Professor Michael Gordin is a non-Velikovskian look at the controversies surrounding Immanuel Velikovsky, a Russian-born psychoanalyst and polymath whose "catastrophist" speculations about cosmology and Biblical history were immensely popular in the United States during the 1960's and 1970's...except among scientists, who regarded the man as a crank. While Gordin's book is cast as a sociological study of the "boundary problem" between science and pseudo-science, most of the work is a relatively straightforward retelling of the history of the "Velikovsky Affair" (or rather affairs), based on the extensive written files of Dr Velikovsky himself. Gordin has also interviewed the main players (except, of course, Velikovsky, who died in 1979), but has decided to rely on written sources (usually private letters), since he sees these as less tainted by memory loss and later rationalizations. While Gordin never tells us his position on Velikovsky's claims, the book is mostly critical of the gadfly-polymath and his movement, while (curiously) maintaining that "pseudo-science" doesn't exist, being a mere label scientists pin on certain movements deemed beyond the pale.

A comparison between "The Pseudoscience Wars" and Alfred De Grazia's pro-Velikovskian "The Velikovsky Affair" is instructive, since Gordin questions De Grazia's narrative on several key points. Thus, Gordin claims that no organized attempt was made by scientists to suppress Velikovsky's first book, "Worlds in Collision", published by Macmillan in 1950. The publishers overreacted to stray threats to organize a boycott and a few boycott-like incidents, but there was never any actual and sustained boycott campaign, and the actions that did happen were certainly not led by Harlow Shapley, otherwise Velikovsky's most vociferous critic. I'm not sure if I really buy this, since Macmillan certainly believed a major boycott was imminent, and therefore signed over the rights to "World in Collision" to Doubleday, a competing press. The fact that the mere threat of a boycott gave Macmillan cold feet surely shows that the scientists had considerable leverage over the publishing house (which mostly published scientific textbooks). On many other points, however, I feel that De Grazia has exaggerated in Velikovsky's favor. Thus, several of the referees who supported "Worlds in Collision" during Macmillan's "peer review" didn't actually believe in the book's main thesis, but recommended publication anyway for purely commercial reasons. Gordon Atwater, who was fired from the New York planetarium due to his support for Velikovsky, wasn't a real astronomer, but an ordinary museum employee. Yet, Velikovskians constantly imply that he was a scientific martyr for their cause. Velikovsky's editor, James Putnam, was fired from Macmillan, but it seems his involvement in "Worlds in Collision" was simply a pretext. The publisher had wanted him out for quite some time for other reasons. And while it's true that many of Velikovsky's critics hadn't read the book before attacking it, they had read an earlier text by him, entitled "Cosmos Without Gravity", and deemed it crackpot. Obviously, they had also read extensive pre-publication summaries published in the press...

Other things also stand out. Thus, many of Velikovsky's cosmological speculations about planetary collisions weren't published during his lifetime, and still exist only in manuscript form (although available on the web). For instance, Velikovsky believed that the planet Mercury had collided with Earth during the Biblical event known as the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel, and that Saturn had once been the "pole star" of a moonless Earth. Why should scientists take a theory seriously, if large portions of it are secret? It turns out that Velikovsky had contacts with other players in the alternative knowledge milieu, including George McCready Price, the "founder" of modern creationism, and J B Rhine, the "father" of parapsychology. Apparently, the Russian-born polymath also had a soft spot for some of Trofim Lysenko's Lamarckian speculations. He also denied that the velocity of light is constant. In passing, Velikovsky accepted the idea of alien visits in the past á la Däniken, claiming that the Nephilim may have been alien-related. While the above doesn't necessarily disprove "recent catastrophism", it does show where Velikovsky came from: the fringe or the "cultic milieu". Even more interesting is the fact that Velikovsky's speculations are really based on a kind of psychoanalysis writ large. Mankind is in "amnesia", having suppressed the psychologically taxing knowledge of recent cosmic catastrophes. Velikovsky is the "analyst" who discloses the truth to humanity, who then reacts with irrational aggression or quasi-religious devotion. Thus, the opposition of the scientists to the theory is itself proof for the theory - a move typical of conspiracy theorists, cultists and (perhaps) psychoanalysts...

The Velikovsky Affair was entangled with politics, as well. Many of Velikovsky's scientific opponents were Communists or liberals (presumably of the Roosevelt-Wallace variety). Shapley appered before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) when, according to De Grazia's version, he was busy conspiring against Macmillan and Velikovsky! Conversely, Velikovsky was a Zionist of long standing, and all his speculations really served the end of proving that the Hebrew scriptures contained reliable (albeit secular) history. Indeed, he had originally entered the United States with the explicit purpose of using the library resources in New York to disprove Freud's book "Moses and Monotheism", which he deemed too un-Biblical! At least initially, support for Velikovsky came from conservative, anti-Communist quarters. The liberals regarded Velikovsky as a kind of crackpot Senator McCarthy, and believed that "science" (and themselves) were the ones under attack. Here, I think Gordin lets the scientists off the hook too easily: if Velikovskians and other "fringe" elements are characterized by a "paranoid style", weren't Shapley and his colleagues equally paranoid when they saw Velikovsky in particular as some kind of stool pigeon á la HUAC?

Gordin is on firmer grounds when he describes how Velikovsky himself (the great martyr of free thinking) policed his own movement, expelling people deemed too heterodox (combining Velikovskianism with Wilhelm Reich's orgone was a no-no) and stopping others from ever entering it (he rebuffed D W Patten, a creationist-Velikovskian hybrid). Another estranged heretic was Peter James, who much later would write the interesting study "Centuries of Darkness", only to be castigated by the archaeological establishment as a...Velikovskian. Velikovsky's autocratic attempts to control every organization set up in his support led to most of them folding, including the immensely successful magazine Pensée, which had broken the party line by publishing articles critical of the great genius. Despite Velikovsky's frequently self-destructive genius-complex, his popularity grew during the late 60's and early 70's, in particular among college and high school students, often "counter-cultural" ones. This was ironic, given Velikovsky's conservative politics (privately, he opposed the counter-cultural rebellion). Tolkien and "Lord of the Rings" is another example of a conservative author/novel which gained popularity during the hippy era. Gordin's book isn't a study of the social composition of Velikovsky's movement, but such a work would be an interesting read!

So is Gordin's book, so I therefore gladly give it five stars.

Of course, the $ 10,000 question is: What if Velikovsky was right? I believe Shapley (the pinko liberal, remember?) was on the spot when he said: "If Velikovsky is right, the rest of us are crazy". If Velikovsky's speculations - too extensive to be summarized here - are correct, then everybody else is indeed wrong, not just poor Freud but Einstein, Darwin, Newton and (I suppose) Kenneth Kitchen! I'm not necessarily opposed to alternative knowledge claims. Thus, I found James' book "Centuries of Darkness" and David Rohl's "A Test of Time" interesting. Both are freely based on Velikovsky's chronological revisionism. Yet somehow, I find it hard to believe that one man, a *psychoanalyst* to boot, can disprove centuries of science just by a sudden flash of inspiration. Indeed, isn't that very idea somehow *religious* in character? Isn't the sudden flash of insight really a revelation, in the religious sense of that term? While I'm not necessarily opposed to religion either, I believe we should be suspicious of claims about "our" material-temporal reality made through revelation - too many such "revelations" have proven to be in error or even absurd. Velikovsky's speculations comes perilously close to being a kind of secularized revelations. Perhaps the crypto- or pseudo-religious aspect is the key to the stunning success of Velikovskianism, the zealous evangelicalism of its supporters, and (ironically) the hysteria of its opponents. Velikovsky was at bottom an ersatz Biblical prophet and his speculations a substitute religion for a secular age obsessed with outer space. His thesis about "mankind in amnesia", with himself cast in the role of the "analyst" who rends the psychic veil, is also familiar. It strikes me as similar to the concept of Gnosis in mystery cults, communicated to the faithful by a hierophant...

According to Gordin, Velikovskianism as a mass movement pretty much died during the 1980's, although more or less fascinating fragments still exist, often on the web. Yet, the spiritual needs expressed through Immanuel Velikovsky are forever new, so I confidently predict new attempts to awaken us from our amnesia in the future...