Ladewig
I lost an avatar bet.
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2001
- Messages
- 28,828
That's right, he put a bunch of stuff together and then made some predictions to test his theory. Yes the theory may not be completely right. But that's how you make advances in science - putting forward hypotheses and testing them.
I think I have seen enough evidence for me to conclude that no amount of facts or evidence will get you to even consider the possibility that Velikovsky's theories were completely wrong. So I'm done with that topic. The last thing I will say about it is that you might have been better off focusing on how unfair the establishment treated Velikovsky.
Carl Sagan (from Cosmos):
The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that his hypotheses were wrong or in contradiction to firmly established facts, but that some who called themselves scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky's work.
Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental new insights.
As I said earlier in this thread, Velikovsky got a bum deal. Threatening book publishers is not how science advances. Closely examining theories is how science advances. Velikovsky's theories have been closely examined and have been found to be false. He was not "on to something;" he was not close to something. He was wrong.

