Talk:Immanuel Velikovsky

Conflate vs confuse
I have not read the book, but I read the blog posting and I am still unsure about usage. The first I think should be confused as carbohydrate = hydrocarbon, but hydrocarbon ≠ carbohydrate I can't see how you would conflate them, but I can see how you would confuse them. - User   00:32, 10 March 2009 (EDT)
 * Conflate is to combine erroneously. Confuse is not to know them apart, or to mix them up.  ħ uman  01:46, 10 March 2009 (EDT)
 * How can you combine something that is a subset of the other erroneously? - User
 * Then the first should be "confused"? Although I can see how (conflate primates with mammals?).  ħ uman  02:01, 10 March 2009 (EDT)
 * Didn't Fox News do that once? - User   02:03, 10 March 2009 (EDT)

As Albert Einstein would have said - God does not play dice, or snooker/billiards.

I... what... but... wait what?
How. Why. WHO. Why does this theory exist?--il&#39;Dictator Mikal (talk) 17:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Welcome to Main. TyBother me 18:37, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

The "Stupid Burns" and the Jovian Structure
I think my thoughts on what to have in the article (keep the joke on the head setting on fire, and my image for Jovian structure) are better supported than Khant's (remove the joke, his image). My reasons are:


 * The joke. After re-reading the community guidelines, RW has a snarky point of view, and the mix-up will make you feel that way if you know anything about Greek mythology. Besides, everybody got mad when I tried to remove the snark from the Arctic article, and we should avoid being hypocritical. Sorry if I was being hypocritical in that. (Meta-hypocrisy!)
 * The image. My image, although more abstract, shows the interior of the Earth as well as the gas giants, as opposed to Khant's image which doesn't. It is also easier to read the text in the image for my version: I had to open up the image page for Khant's in order to tell what the hell the text said.

This is why I support my version. Rather than assume it is objectively better because it is mine (I've learned from Eve), I am providing supports for why I think mine is better. If anybody would care to provide better supports for Khant's image or debunk my supports, I would appreciate it. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 19:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Stop challenging things based on missionality, snarkalist and xality. --il&#39;Dictator Mikal (talk) 23:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * So you get mad at me when I follow the mission to the letter, you get mad when I try to remove the snark, you get mad when I add some snark, and what the fuck is "xality"? AUGH! The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 17:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Zionism
Am I the only one uncomfortable with the fact that the article basically starts with "this guy was a Jew"? --ZooGuard (talk) 18:15, 1 June 2012 (UTC)


 * If you don't know the difference between a Jew and a Zionist, you may be on the wrong website... :)--Feline1 (talk) 20:52, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I might also add: have you actually ever *read* any of Velikovsky's more odious writings about arabs? --Feline1 (talk) 21:03, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Re: 1) Yes, I know it, but I guess I've been around skinhead types too much and I know how it can be read by some people. Note that RationalWiki's target audience is not the people writing it. As I see it, part of its utility is making skeptical material accessible to non-skeptics. Velikovsky is mostly known for his "planetary billiards", so starting the article with "this guy was a Zionist" still looks like poisoning the well to me.
 * Re: 2) No, I am more familiar with him as a astronomy/history crank. If the guy was a xenophobe, this should be reflected in the article, but it's secondary to the pseudoscience aspect, because his lasting legacy is that pseudoscience. People writing shit about Arabs are a dime a dozen these days, and none of them cite him.--ZooGuard (talk) 18:49, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I think you are right to be concerned not to give ammunition to NeoNazi lunatics. So if we can temper the material in some way to help safeguard against that, that would be good. However Velikovsky's rather bizarre confabulation of ideas does make a lot more sense if you understand it in the context of him being a Zionist. In fact it is insperable from it. His entire cosmology is an attempt to find a physical framework for his rewriting of history, which in turn is an attempt to validate the hebrew bible and midrash/talmud... and all rationalised using the 'jewish' science of psychoanalysis. If you read any of his work in detail, instead of snarky summaries designed to stoke poeple interested in astronomy, you'll see that plain as day. It is the answer to "how/why on earth did he come up with all this stuff?!?".--Feline1 (talk) 15:31, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * To put it another way - encountered cold and out of context, V's theories are likely to produce the reaction I see above ("I... what... but... wait what? How. Why. WHO. Why does this theory exist?--il'Dictator Mikal 17:35, 20 January 2012")... lol The psychoanalytic answer is "it is the intellectual reaction of a guy to the holocaust"... a guy who in the pre-war years had been heavily involved into trying to establish the state of Isreal, buying land in Palestine, working there, trying to found a university there. I've seen whole PhD's exploring this. That, I believe, is the only way to, ahem, RATIONALISE (you see what I did there?) Velikovsky's bizarre outpourings--Feline1 (talk) 15:36, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The evidence in the "Zionism" section is rather... Thin. The only clearly Zionist thing he said he done is writing an, according to the author, "Zionist" editorial for the NYP. Bible-thumping doesn't necessarily mean Zionism even when a Jew does it and neither does a cooperation with the Hebrew University.--Kugelschreiber (talk) 14:59, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The New York Post stuff reads as pretty Zionist, but his pseudohistory being based on the Hebrew Bible indeed doesn't particularly necessitate that he's a Zionist. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 15:21, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Scratch the "according to the author", here are his "Observer" articles.--Kugelschreiber (talk) 15:30, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Article rating?
I haven't read the article in detail yet, but what seems obvious is that it is at least of Bronze quality, and quite possibly of Silver quality (though curretly, it does need a lot more sources). And for the record: this is the type of article that could and should be worked on for front page status, in my view. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 01:46, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree, what should we do to get this up to Silver quality? PatGallacher (talk) 00:05, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Freeman Dyson
Should probably mention Freeman Dyson, the physicist, somewhere. He was a good friend of Velikovsky, even though he thought (and told Velikovsky) his ideas were rubbish. He also thought Velikovsky's poetry was greatly underappreciated (though I can't say, having never seen any) - David Gerard (talk) 14:32, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Logical question
If the several planets had 'a fit of going all over the place' how do the Velikovskians explain that they now behave in a proper Newton + Einstein designated way? Was there an invasion of space-time-continuum-warping alien space bats so everything reverted when they left (or perhaps an absence of them)? Anna Livia (talk) 20:04, 9 January 2021 (UTC)