Originally posted by Phobos
Ok, but fair warning. Velichovski is considered to be a crackpot. Be prepared for rebuttles.
Phobos,
Yes, I've heard about the crackpot status.
Here's a conversation Velikovsky had with Einstein about Velikovsky's critics and what Einstein agreed was a form of suppression being employed at the time of the first publications Velikovsky put into the public arena.
"On May 20, 1954 I went to see Einstein. This time I asked to see him. I wished to ask him to read a part of my Earth in Upheaval in manuscript. There was also another subject that I thought I ought to discuss with him.
A few days before a correspondent in California drew my attention to an article in Astounding Science Fiction in which I was accused of inventing my sources. I realized the damage done by the Harvard group had spread into pulp magazines read by common people.
I had not complained to Einstein before about the campaign of suppression and vilification carried on by some groups of scientists against my theory and myself.
He received us this time in his study on the second floor, which has a large window overlooking the garden in the backyard. It was about the time before sunset. He asked:
?Would you like our conversation between four eyes or between eight??
?Between eight,? I replied, my wife and Miss Dukas being admitted.
?The women will listen but not participate,? he said, expecting something important to discuss with me.
?Like in a synagogue,? I remarked. But then I corrected myself. ?No, I feel myself here as Solomon Molcho must have felt in the palace of Pope Clement VII.? I explained that this marrano, i.e, a Jew from a family that had been forcibly converted to Christianity, was sentenced to die for reverting to Judaism and was burned as a heretic in Rome by the Inquisition; but the next day he was alive in the inner chambers of the Vatican discussing philosophical problems with the Pope.
The Pope had let another heretic be burned and hid Solomon Molcho. If only the Holy Inquisition knew where he was! This was my way of referring to what my opponents and detractors among the scientists might think and feel were they to know where I was spending that evening.
?Is he a gentleman who permanently turns his pockets out to show that he did not steal?? I quoted Vladimir Jabotinsky. I could not spend all my time proving that I have not misquoted or otherwise misused my sources. But silence on the part of the accused is understood as admission of guilt.
Einstein agreed with me. And thinking of injustice to a man, he mentioned Oppenheimer, whose removal from the advisory committee to the Atomic Energy Commission caused at that time great agitation.
?But you do not do better,? I said.
Einstein?s face expressed surprise. ?I do not think of you personally, but of your colleagues, the scientists.? He wished to know more. I went down and brought from the car a file with some of the letters exchanged between Harlow Shapley and the Macmillan Publishers.
(Einstein) read them with great interest. But we did not proceed far enough; we had not come to read the letter of Whipple to Blackiston Publishers in Philadelphia, or the statement of Shapley in the Harvard Crimson.1
Einstein was obviously impressed and did not spare harsh words in characterizing some of the actors in the campaign of suppression.
Einstein advised me to make the material public. I should, he said, find somebody with a talent for dramatic writing and entrust him with the task of presenting the case. He was obviously impressed and indignant. ?This is worse than Oppenheimer?s case.? (said Einstein)
I mentioned that in Germany the church also opposed me, and in fact suppressed Worlds in Collision at the hands of its publisher (Kohlhammer of Stuttgart). As in America the book had a great success, and went through five printings in less than a year when the lid fell down.
?But what should the church people have against the book?? asked Einstein, and turned his face to me (as often during our conversations, he was sitting to my left). The opposition of the churches to a work that provoked furor among the scientists must have appeared to him incongruous. All this must have been thought, not said, for my answer followed immediately:
?The church opposed my interpretation of miracles as natural phenomena.? Einstein laughed with his loud, hearty laugh. He wished to read more in the file. But now I was interested in taking up the problem that really occupied my mind?my theories.
Already at one of our earlier meetings, Einstein said to me: ?I know how to explain the great global catastrophes that occurred in the past.?
(Einstein) spoke then of vestiges of an ice cover that were observed in the tropics and referred to an unpublished theory of Charles Hapgood, who thought that growing ice caps can cause a slippage of the terrestrial crust relative to the interior, thus displacing the poles.
This evening Einstein returned to the same idea and said that terrestrial causes could have been responsible for the catastrophes. I told him that the problem of the displacement of the terrestrial pole was already much discussed in the last century by astronomers and geologists. ?By whom and where?? he asked. ?Here,? I said, about to leave, and showed him the second (of three) files of the manuscript of Earth in Upheaval,
?Here you may find the arguments of that old discussion.? First he was reluctant to take another manuscript for reading. The daily mail alone takes so much of his time, he said, and standing at the top of the staircase, while I was a few steps down, showed with his hands how thick was the bundle of his daily mail.
But, hearing that the physical problem of the terrestrial crust moving over the core is discussed in that file, (Einstein) took my manuscript."
Emmanuel Velikovsky
