Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ecsvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) Newsgroups: net.physics Subject: Re: The realm of physics, and the late Immanuel Velikovsky Message-ID: <739@ecsvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 11-Nov-85 18:42:36 EST Article-I.D.: ecsvax.739 Posted: Mon Nov 11 18:42:36 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 14-Nov-85 07:45:20 EST References: <457@imsvax.UUCP> Organization: Duke U Comp Ctr Lines: 60 > . . . I thought you might also like to read what > a couple of PROFESSIONAL physicists have had to say about > Velikovsky. Actually, I've read the comments of more than a couple of physicists on the subject. > Robert Bass is a former Rhodes scholar who ... > . . . is credited > with the only dynamical explanation of Bode's law, and with a > paper in the Summer 1974 issue (# 8) of Pensee which basically > settled once and for all the whole question of whether > Velikovsky's scenarios were "physically possible". As anyone familiar with science or common sense is well aware, no single paper ever settles any question "once and for all." I haven't read the paper in question, but I'm suspicious of anything with an abstract that says "the only explanation for x is y." Again, common sense is sufficient to show that this really means "the only explanation I can think of for x is y." In addition, there have been a number of computer simulations bearing upon the subject of Bode's law so Bass is certainly not the only person to offer a dynamical explanation. Not confining my reading to Pensee, I have seen other, more recent analyses of the possibility of Velikovsky's planetary billiards. The consensus seems to be that only given some extremely unlikely initial conditions is it possible (barely) to make it work. Velikovsky himself, of course, didn't bother with working out the physics of the process. He just said it was so, and that was that. > I don't have to tell any of you who Albert Einstein was. > But did any of you know that he and Velikovsky had been pals at > the Prussian Scientific Academy . . . > . . . Some of his > thoughts on Velikovsky may be read in a letter TO Velikovsky > dated March 17, 1955: So the kindly Dr Einstein in a brief personal letter said some nice things to his old friend about his book? That hardly counts as scientific support by Einstein for Velikovsky's ideas. Now if you could produce a scientific paper by Einstein in support of Velikovsky, that would be something! > I am just an ordinary businessman myself, and know very > little of physics. Therefore, when I read or hear about anyone > ridiculing or "debunking" Velikovsky's theories because they > supposedly violate the "laws of physics", I can only assume it is > because they think they know more about physics than Robert Bass > and Albert Einstein. Or do you perhaps assume that you know more about the subject than the great majority of all the physicists, astronomers, historians, archaeologists, geologists, folklorists, etc. who have rejected Velikovsky's ideas as demonstrably wrong? Not anti-dogma, not too- original, not out-of-fashion, but simply wrong because the man didn't understand what he was writing about? -- D Gary Grady Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC 27706 (919) 684-3695 USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary