Some Comments on Velikovsky’s Methodology

Abstract

For the 25 years since Worlds in Collision was published, Immanuel Velikovsky has awaited the recognition and acceptance that he feels he justly deserves. Whatever recognition he has achieved has come from outside the scientific community; the vast majority of professional scientists has either not examined his work, or has rejected it with varying degrees of vehemence. Those scientists who have reviewed his earlier works (Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval) have been sufficiently negative in their assessments as to deter the scientific community at large from any extended consideratioa During these 25 years, the scientific community has been under intermittent attack for its alleged failure to give Velikovsky a fair hearing and his theories a fair test As early as 1950, some scientists brought pressure on his publishers, the Macmillan Company, that led to Macmillan transferring the publication of Velikovsky’s books to other publishers who did not have text-book divisions through which they were laid open to threats of boycott in the large academic market. This particular episode has coloured all later discussions of Velikovsky and his theories; it has and probably will continue to re-emerge and haunt the scientific community and while it can possibly be understood in some ways, it can or should in no way be condoned But, no matter how reprehensible that occurrence was, it cannot be taken as lending any strength to the intrinsic merits of Velikovsky’s theories, even though some of his supporters have attempted to draw this kind of inference.