[shunyadragon]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (glenn_w_l,)
Velikovsky was a psychiatrist who wrote a series of books on history and astronomy that created much controversy in the 50's and 60's.
His most controversial book 'Worlds in Collision' attempted to establish (mainly from historical data) that Venus was a new planet which had been ejected from Jupiter, and that it had disrupted the old order of the solar system and passed close to the Earth causing a major catastrophe which is remembered as the Flood. The companion book to WIC was 'Earth in Upheaval' which examines the geological evidence of the catastrophe. He also wrote a series of three historical books 'Ages in Chaos', 'Ramses II and his Time', and 'Peoples of the Sea'. In these books he identifies a six hundred year period where ancient Egyptian history has been accidentally duplicated so that the same sequences of people and events recur (with different names) after an interval of six hundred years. Much of the confusion in ancient history is caused by this duplication. He wrote a book called 'Oedipus and Akhnaton' in which he uses historical and archaeological evidence to identify the Egyptian king Ahknaton as the original model for the Greek Oedipus legend. His final book was 'Mankind in Amnesia' which compares the loss of memory and strenuous denial of the catastrophe to the psychiatric condition of amnesia after the experience of a severe shock.
I read all of his books many years ago and they considerably influenced my thinking.
Apart from the novel hypothesis that Venus was the cause of the catastrophe, worlds in collision and earth in upheaval are a modern resurrection of the widely held catastrophist arguments that were (perhaps unjustifiably) supplanted by uniformitarianism in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The three historical books are very interesting and original, though less well known, and in my opinion place Velikovsky in the genius category. Oedipus and Ahknaton is a cameo of this period which demonstrates how the fusion of Mythology, Ancient History, and Archaeology can resolve with amazing detail events of long ago.
Mankind in amnesia is interesting but dry, and suggested that war might be the expression of the repressed memory of the catastrophe.
Interesting follow-up books were published, mainly 'Velikovsky Reconsidered' (for) and 'Scientists Confront Velikovsky' (against).
Also very interesting is the book 'The Velikovsky Affair' by Alfred de Grazia, which narrates the trials Velikovsky suffered, mainly from the degree of hostility shown by establishment scientists opposed to the publication of his work.
The main value i derived from reading his books was that Velikovsky taught me to 'think outside the square'.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

Very good post. I read 'Worlds in collision' and 'Earth in Upheaval' and due to my strong scientific background I rejected Velikovsky completely, because his catastrophic theories were so far off my knowledge of basic physics, geology and astronomy. I saw an excentric genius underieing his work, but lost patience and went no further. I was deeply disapointed in the lack of basic scientific knowledge and understanding expressed by him and the millions of people who supported him during the peak of his popularity.

It would be interesting read his historical works.

I feel I have an open mind and definitely think outside the square, but concerning science I am probably a fanatic concerning the scientific method and respect for the great thinkers like Einstein. My renewed interest in Velikovsky has to with his great popularity at the time he wrote and the fact that today he has faded into the near oblivion except for the older generation. The limited response to this thread demonstrates this. It appears interest in him and his theories has been replaced by a greater interest in 'Young Earth Creationists.'