Re: "Sagan and Velikovsky" to appear in local book stores
Robert Grumbine (rmg3@access.digex.net)
25 Jan 1995 11:27:42 -0500
In article <3g3pr4$mur@cmcl2.nyu.edu>,
Paul J. Gans <gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Mike Zorn (ozma@kaiwan.kaiwan.com) wrote:
>: A general comment:
>: What bothers me is not so much that everyone (from the
>: scientific community) thought that Velikovsky was wrong, but the way
>: he was attacked, castigated, condemmned, etc., etc. It would have
>: been sufficient to publish: here's what he says; here's where it's
>: wrong, and leave it at that.
Such comments have been made already, repeatedly. It is noteable
that such have had little effect of Velikovsky or his intellectual
descendants. For a fairly trivial example: He has a miles high tide
induced by Venus passing the earth. Although a miles-high tide could be induced
by a Venus which took up residence a couple of planetary radii away
from the earth and stayed there for days, this is explicitly rejected
by Velikovsky (et seq.). So he is wrong. I've never seen a catastrophist
acknowledge this error, even though I've put it to them before.
>His books were published anyway (but not under false
>pretenses) and became best-sellers. I don't doubt that you
>can find them even now in your local library, next to
>von Daniken and similar folk.
Worlds in Collision shows up in the Astronomy section 'next'
(not quite due to alphabetics) to some of Sagan's books. Earth in
Upheaval is in the Geology section, along with some of S. J. Gould's,
as is Gish's (?) _Evolution: The fossils say no!_.
Follow-ups to talk.origins
--
Bob Grumbine rmg3@access.digex.net
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences
|