Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 18:45:20 -0500
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Got Milk?
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Cathy Green wrote:
>
> Since the Lees are discussing pseudoscience, I'm
> hoping one of them can identify the author and exact
> title of a book my dad once told me about.  According
> to my dad, there is a book with a title something
> along the lines of "the day the earth stood still"
> (and no I'm not referring to the movie) where a guy
> argues that the real reason the walls of jericho fell
> down is because the earth briefly stopped moving.
>
> --cathy

As others have said, sounds like Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds in
Collision". Velikovsky was a really world-class crank, but the hoohah
that "Worlds" stirred up was almost as interesting as his loopy physics.

Problem was that the book was published by MacMillan, a respected
textbook publisher.  Scientists were appalled, and threatened to boycott
MacMillan unless they pulled the book.  MacMillan handed it off to
Doubleday, and the fuss essentially guaranteed that it would be a
bestseller.  Even now, the "Velikovsky affair" is a really excellent
example of scientists acting exactly like priests trying to burn
heretics.

Basically, Velikovsky was a psychiatrist and amateur historian who got
the idea that the accepted chronology of ancient Egypt was 500 years out
of line.  In particular, the Exodus (in his view) had to happen at the
time of the eruption of Santorini.  Unfortunately, it didn't.
Eventually, he backed himself into the position of saying that *all*
folkloric events had to have happened just exactly the way they were
described, with physical laws to be altered as needed to fit.

Historians and folklorists have just as much contempt for his theories
as physical scientists.  However, they don't try to start a war every
time somebody mentions his name.

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."