Scientists Confront Velikovsky [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This book does exactly what the title indicates. It consists of
scientists criticizing Velikovsky on scientific terms. It is significant that they don't criticize so much on historical terms, which is the approach Velikovsky used. The longest chapter is by Carl Sagan, and he did include historical criticisms. This book was originally intended to include all speeches from a 1974 session of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That would have included both Velikovsky himself and one sympathizer. But, not due to the editor, both of those chapters never made it into the book. Instead, another critic was added, and Isaac Asimov was invited to write a foreword, and Goldsmith himself wrote an introduction. So the title fits the final form.
At the 1974 AAAS meeting Velikovsky was 77 years old and it was 24 years after the publication of "Worlds in Colision," which was the topic of the meeting.

The title is quite misleading. In fact, probably the only real scientist at the Cornell Symposium was Velikovsky; a disgraceful event which, its organisers admitted, was never intended to objectively look at Velikovsky's ideas. The purpose, from the very beginning, was to "warn off" the public; a public which had become increasingly attracted to his work. And the syposium had the desired effect. Velikovsky was repeatedly and outrageously mistrepresented and never permitted, either there or in any of the respected academic journals, which Sagan and co had free access to, to present his own case. This nasty little book was the result of the "proceedings" from the event. Don't bother to read it. Apart from the fact that it's boring and virtually unreadable from a layman's viewpoint (page after page of mathematical equations "proving" Velikovsky's catastrophes couldn't have happened), it doesn't honestly address a single issue raised by him. Let me provide a few examples:

1. How, Velikovsky asked, could ancient writers connect unusual events in the cosmos with catastrophes such as volcanic eruptions and tidal waves on the earth? We now know, thanks to Newton, that should another planet, or planetoid, such as the moon, approach the earth, then the earth's tectonic plates would go into convulsions and giant tides would be raised. But how did the ancients, who knew nothing of the law of gravitation, know this? (No answer)
2. How, Velikovsky asked, do we explain the sudden demise of the mammoths, some of which, though their flesh is perfectly preserved in the ice, have undigested flowering plants, such as buttercups, in their mouths and stomachs? These animals were evidently grazing in summer temperatures, when they were overwhlemed by some force, transported into the Arctic regions, and their flesh frozen so quickly that it can still, in some cases, be eaten. How to explain this without a cataclysm? (No answer).
3. How, Velikovsky asked, do we explain the evidence of recent rapid mountain-building encountered all over the globe. For example, on the Pacific coast of South America a raised beach, a thousand metres up, complete with sand and sea-shells, runs the length of the continent. If mountain-ranges rise extremely slowly, as the textbooks now tell us, by no more than a couple of centimetres per century, then there should be many intermediate beaches between the present seashore and the raised beach. Shellfish and other marine life quickly colonize new shorelines. The fact that there are no intermediate beaches between the raised beach and the present shoreline indicates that the raised beach was raised very quickly indeed. (No answer).
4. All over the Antarctic continent, Velikovsky noted, often hundreds of kilometers from the shore and hundreds of metres about sea-level are found the bodies of whales, seals, fish and other sea-creatures. How did these cadavers get there, without giant tidal waves? (No answer).
I could go on and on, but this provides a tiny sample of the many volumes of first-class evidence Velikovsky presented, and which was (and still is) consistently ignored by the "experts," who instead to try to baffle the reading public with mathematical equations and other hand-waving exercises. Nothing of the evidence Velikovsky presented is addressed.
Instead of the nonsense presented in this book, I would recommend instead, "Scientists confront scientists who confont Velikovsky", by the editors of Kronos.

If you want an honest appraisal of the 1974 symposium in which several establishment scientists opposed Immanuel Velikovsky, this is not it.

When Velikovsky put forth his catastrophic cosmic thesis in Worlds in Collision in 1950, establishment scientists rose en masse to denounce him as a charlaton, a crank and a fraud. Most had not read the book. And Dr. Harlow Shapeley of Harvard University inspired a boycott of MacMillan by universities across the nation who purchased their textbooks from MacMillan. If this book was the pack of lies they claimed it was, why be so afraid of it?

The slander and vile demonizing continued in the 1960s and 70s, led by Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov. In this symposium, five different specialists delivered their own papers while Velikovsky was severely limited in time and space to respond to them all, as if he was responding to only one. It was five against one, and to limit him so was like tying a boxer's arms behind his back. Sagan's paper was the sloppiest and most error-filled, and he published it in several places. It was a kangaroo court, and a public who knew no better, who saw Sagan as the great popularizer of science, believed the liars.

If you want an honest assessment of Velikovsky's work and its impact, read Scientists Confront Scientists Who Confront Velikovsky, as well as Velikovsky Reconsidered and The Age of Velikovsky. You will get fair, unbiased treatment, and the truth there. You will not find it here.