History Commons^™

The Pseudo-Science Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky And The Birth Of The Modern Fringe, Christoper Bader

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

"Gordin (history, Princeton Univ.; Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly) presents here an account of what has become known as the Velikovsky affair. Immanuel Velikovsky, a Russian catastrophist who published Worlds in Collision in 1950, ignited a national controversy when he argued that Jupiter ejected Venus like a comet nearly 20,000 years ago and the passing planet caused Earth's orbit and axis to change, thus spurring the natural disasters mentioned by early mythologies and religions around the world. Gordin, who is remarkably evenhanded, tells the story of the man, his extraordinary ideas, their …