A. The Catastrophist Problematic
Ever since Immanuel
Velikovsky first wrote his classic masterpiece Worlds in Collision, catastrophism has been the
dominant model in the paleophysical interpretation of ancient
myths. Indeed, Velikovsky’s book was perhaps the first real attempt
to do what I call “paleophysics,” that
is, an examination of ancient mythological texts and legends for
the possibility that they encode scientific, physics related
knowledge and a comparison of that knowledge with existing
scientific theory. Velikovsky’s goal was, for all that, not
scientific but historical, for he sought to illumine overlooked
areas of cosmological history. Nonetheless, his works -
notwithstanding the outcry against them from a scientific
priesthood locked into its own astronomical dogmas - struck an
elegant balance between science and history that has not been
exceeded by any, and equaled by none but a few.
Where Velikovsky
earned - even if undeservedly - the ire of the “scientific”
community was his use of the ancient mythological texts to make
scientific predictions and to formulate new scientific hypotheses,
the two most famous being his assertion that Venus was once a large
comet, and that the solar system was not electrically neutral. As
physicist Anthony Peratt and others in the plasma physics school
have amply demonstrated and ably argued, the latter hypothesis
appears to have some support within contemporary thinking. So
whatever one makes of Velikovsky’s hypothesis that Venus was once a
comet, he stands at least partially vindicated. And if the work of
Clube and Napier and others regarding meteor and comet impacts and
near misses, or if Van Flanden’s Multiple Exploded Planets
hypothesis is considered, then even Velikovsky’s former hypothesis
appears partially vindicated as well: comets can, and moreover,
did, wreak untold destruction in the solar system subsequent to the initial planetary explosion. But
the problem of explaining that initial
explosion remains.
What Velikovsky
discerned, in ancient legends spanning the globe from the Mayans to
the Hebrews, was a discernible pattern
of celestial, cosmic catastrophe that had dire consequences for the
earth’s life, climate, geography, topography, and even its own
celestial mechanics. His examination of these mythological
traditions led him to observe “A torrent of large stones coming
from the sky, an earthquake, a whirlwind, a disturbance in the
movement of the earth - these four phenomena belong
together.”127 But it was what
Velikovsky discerned as the cause of these phenomena that gave
birth to a whole new school of reading such ancient texts and
interpreting them as containing elements of science:
It appears that a large comet must have passed very near to our planet and disrupted its movement; a part of the stones dispersed in the neck and tail of the comet smote the surface of our earth a shattering blow.128
These words gave
birth to a whole new school of mythological interpretation -
catastrophism - and one need only replace the word “comet” in the
above quotation with “meteor” or “asteroid” and one will have its
contemporary version.
Many have followed in
Velikovsky’s footsteps, but none is more capable nor as broadly
read as is Alan Alford, who is perhaps the most learned and
articulate spokesman for this school.