Velikovsky has bitten off more than he can chew
Immanuel Velikovsky has been one of the giants of pseudo-science/pseudo-history. Pseudoscience is an examination of events, happenings or phenomenon through a perspective which lacks sufficient supporting evidence, which is not verifiable to the extent required for it to be categorised as scientific, and which lacks clear and convincing proof. In essence, it fails to satisfy even the minimal conditions that the scientific community asks for before accepting any theory or explanation.
Velikovsky relies on a technique that can, at a most general level, be categorised as ‘comparative mythology’. By comparing the accounts mentioned in the earliest works of literature, the scriptures of various religions, and the myths and legends prevalent in various parts of the world, he tries to understand the world of antiquity and reconstruct events that, supposedly, actually happened, but which gradually got lost in folklore and metaphors used in all of the above works.
Velikovsky’s principal claim is that the human race has faced a series of catastrophes throughout its existence, including cosmic collisions involving inter-planetary bodies. Just like a victim of a trauma, who tends to repress memories of the event by pretending as if the event never happened, the trauma of these events has taken the form of repressed memories in the human collective, passing down from generation to generation.
Additionally, the last such cataclysm happened before effective means of recording information had developed. As a result, the knowledge of the happenings could only be passed down orally and thus took the form of legends over the centuries.
To begin with, Velikovsky must be commended for the amount of research he has done. He quotes from the Old and New Testament and from the writings of Plato with equal ease; he delves into ancient Egyptian mythology as comfortably as ancient Greek mythology. It is but obvious that rigorous research is a prerequisite for the kind of hypotheses that he puts forward, especially since it is predestined to receive intense opposition.
Therefore, the principal issue with the book is not in misrepresentation of facts, but in their misinterpretation.
Velikovsky starts off with a few pertinent ideas. For example, he says Plato was able to understand the violent past that mankind had suffered, and repeatedly tried to give such signs through his writings. However, his disciple Aristotle could never agree with his teacher and tried to spread uniformitarianism, for example, by giving the idea of Celestial Spheres, according to which the stars and planets were so placed that no collision among them was even theoretically possible – thus being diametrically opposed to the supposed ideas of his predecessor.
Again, he quotes from the journals of Darwin where he noted observing collections of bones of dead animals of a wide range of species – both extinct and extant – spread over large areas. This was clearly an indication that it was one single sudden event that led to their deaths, and very unlike the mass extinction events that took place over millions of years – for example the Permian-Triassic extinction event.
In both these cases, Velikovsky claims, Aristotle and Darwin gave ideas that were most suited to man’s sense of security.
Aristotle’s Spheres appealed to the people as it assured that they were safe – no cosmic bodies could possibly come hurtling towards them and end their lives in an instant. Similarly, Darwin’s idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ augured well for man as it almost justified the right of the more powerful and ‘fitter’ (human species) to exploit the weaker species (flora and fauna) according to its needs. Darwin’s findings, Velikovsky notes, touched such primitive parts of the human psyche, that they even readily accepted their descent from monkeys, if only it could assure them that their home, the Earth, was a safe and secure place.
However, in his zeal, Velikovsky ends up presenting such crude examples and tries to find forced patterns in such areas where, quite clearly, none exist, that the quality of the narrative nosedives into absurdity, almost amnesiac of the quality of the previous chapters.
He quotes Darkness by Lord Byron and says it is the spontaneous outpour of the repressed memories present in every human, Lord Byron in this case. He says psychiatry was capable of preventing the World Wars as the leaders were only falling prey to their darkest inner fears and repeating the mistakes mankind had made in the past. This is such a simplistic and reductionist interpretation, that even I will reduce my arguments against it. Then, he mentions the periodicity of 17 years at which locusts appear, and for which “no terrestrial or extra-terrestrial cause is obvious”, and somehow tries to draw a parallel with a periodicity of 104 years at which important wars have been fought since the start of the eighteenth century, with wars of correspondingly lesser degrees at 52 years and 26 years as well.
The appearance of locusts every 17 years has a brilliant bit of evolutionary logic behind it, which I can’t explain here due to lack of space, but maybe it had not been discovered in Velikovsky’s time. I do not know.
Then in some areas, for example Chapter 3, “In Fear and Trembling”, he goes into a frenzy of quoting from various sources. Velikovsky tries to find literal meanings in metaphorical accounts, and does this so often that it loses its novelty value.
Velikovsky’s work is pseudoscience for precisely this reason – after a point it is nothing but speculation. It stays consistent within its boundaries but the moment it steps out to be scrutinised, it stands absolutely no chance. His ideas are radical and revolutionary. But they cannot stand if there is not enough proof to support them.