Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84; site inuxm.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!inuxc!inuxm!arlan
From: arlan@inuxm.UUCP (A Andrews)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.research,net.misc
Subject: Re: Newman, Edison, Velikovsky
Message-ID: <301@inuxm.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Nov-85 17:10:09 EST
Article-I.D.: inuxm.301
Posted: Thu Nov  7 17:10:09 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Nov-85 22:07:28 EST
References: <175@tulane.UUCP>, <441@looking.UUCP> <2960@ncsu.UUCP> <180@opus.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Consumer Products, Indianapolis
Lines: 77
Xref: watmath net.physics:3511 net.research:324 net.misc:8853

> > That Newman has no formal training means that he is unlikely to know
> > what to say to get the attention of trained scientists.  It is the
> > duty of the scientists to say "If you want to convince me of that,
> > this is what you'll have to do."...
> 
> Not fair.  Scientists, in general, don't have the time or the reason to
> guide everyone with no formal training through learning whatever scientific
> principles are needed.  It would be fairer to say that it is Newman's duty
> to say, "What do I need to do to convince you of ?..."  At the least,
> get the ball in Newman's court to start with; it's HIS machine after all.
> 
> >...The scientific establishment makes
> > an ass of itself when it gets angry about people like Velikovsky
> > and Newman...
> 
> I objected before when someone tried to make some comparison between Newman
> and Edison.  I object now to grouping Newman and Velikovsky together.  For
> all we can tell so far, Newman may be nothing more than misguided.
> Velikovsky has shown himself to be a charlatan of the first order--and a
> nasty one at that.  The scientific establishment has ample reason to be
> angry with him; they've got to deal with the crap he's slinging.
> -- 
> Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
>    ...At last it's the real thing...or close enough to pretend.

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***


Briefly, in l950, Immanuel Velikovsky proposed a reconstruction of history
and a new look at how the Solar System attained its present status.  For
those of us being taught in school in those days that thee system had
coalesced in blobs to form the planets, in a very uniform process over
billions of years, it was a ridiculous book:  why, in 1950, that crackpot
predicted that the face of Mars would be pockmarked by craters and would
have long cracks caused by other celestial phenomena; he said that Jupiter
would have radio noise as a result of interaction with charged particles
spewing from the sun; he indicated that Venus would be in a near-molten state
because it was still cooling down from its history as a recently-formed
planet; he said that the Earth's magentic field effects extended beyond the
Moon, and even that the Moon would show remnant magnetism, and evidence of
recent cometary impacts; he said that the Sun would have a measurable 
electrical charge; he said that some petroleum deposits would carbon-date
(or otherwise be dated) in thousands of years, rather than millions; he
concluded a wild and crazy origin for Linear B script (a great mystery in
those days).

Why, that crazy guy evn said that all cultures on earth have legends of
a universal flood, of comets that gave rise to the dragons of Mayan, Chinese,
and European mythology; he claimed that carbon-dating the pyramids and
pharoahs would upset then-existing chronology of Egyptian history vis-a-vis
the history of the rest of the Mediterranean; he said that there were
celestial and geological reasons for the events enumerated in the Exodus
book of the Bible, and reported also, event-for-event by the Egyptians.

In summary, that crackpot, that charlatan, why he upset the uniformitarian
paradigm of 1950.  Of course, we all know by knowledge from space probes,
from Lunar landings, and from iridium deposits around the world, that the
earth has had a nice, uniform history, that space contains no electrical
phenomena, that Jupiter does not radiate anything at all, that the rocks
on the Moon never showed any externally-applied magnetism, that Venus has
cool oceans, that Venus is not phase-locked with the earth, and that all
planets rotate, North pole at top, that layer after layer of sediment has
collected, undisturbed, for billions and billions of years, and that no
species has ever become extinct abrutply, that the earth's magnetic field
does not quickly shift, and that the continents don't drift.

Good thing that old boy died a few years back; with his kind of crackpot 
theories, why, next thing you know, he'd be claiming that an asteroid
wiped out the dinosaurs, or that Uranus rotates 90 degrees to the eclitptic
or some such nonsense.

Sure glad to hear from all yall skientisks who know that dude were craazy.

--arlan andrews
analog irregular
anarchist
reader of crazy s--- (incl. Usenet)