Re: "Sagan and Velikovsky" to appear in local book stores
Paul J. Gans (gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu)
24 Jan 1995 21:01:24 GMT
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.
: Another case, more recently, is the way Halton Arp was banished
: to Europe for not following the party line.
: It appears that Science is not much different than Religion in
: the espousal of different views.
Before you get carried away, it would be good to go dig up some
of the contemporary sources. The problem in a nutshell is that
Velikovsky wanted his book published as a mainstream science
text.
Content, after all, has something to do with truth. I doubt
you'd make the statement you've made above about an author
who wanted his tract on "Negative Numbers Don't Exist" published
as an algebra text.
The fuss would have been microscopic if he had wanted his book
published under mythology, legend, religion, etc.
The fuss had little to do with the fact that his views were
different. As physics, astronomy, and chemistry they were
WRONG. They still are wrong.
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.
----- Paul J. Gans [gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu]
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