Any body read books by ; Immanuel Velikovsky

My point being that I don't think that it's necessary to give Velikovsky credit for reviving catastrophism. It was always present in the culture, if not in scientific thinking. And I don't think that Velikovsky had enough influence among working scientists to have that kind of influence anyway. Like the more conventional catastrophists, Velikovsky was influenced by the Bible and the cosmic-historical pretensions of Genesis, but his innovation seems to have been wanting to read that as history while eliminating God and miracles from its interpretation. So he invented a totally speculative dynamic astrophysics to replace the hand of God, and tried to recruit Egyptian and Mesopotamian myth to support his scheme.
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But is what your thinking about ; Velikovsky true ?
 
Velikovsky was a crank.

His scientific arguments never stacked up, and are generally implausible. His main "evidences" were based on rationalisations using the biblical texts. Maybe he didn't realise that the bible is not a science book.
 
Yazata said:
My point being that I don't think that it's necessary to give Velikovsky credit for reviving catastrophism.
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I was not crediting him was having revived catastrophism, but for having recognised its possible signature. Catastrophism, as currently accepted in mainstream geology, was very much forbidden territory in the 50's and 60's and possibly beyond.
 
river said:
...but also based on science .

river
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Riiiight! Like the passage of Venus stopping the Earth's rotation. Here's the actual science on that: Even with Venus just sitting above the surface of the Earth, it would take 100's of thousands of years for tidal action to slow the Earth's rotation to a stop. But Venus can't just sit above the Earth like that, it would have to orbit. But at that distance, it orbital period would be less than the rotation period of the Earth and tidal action would tend to increase the Earth's rotation. So you have would have to move it to a higher orbit, but even then, it couldn't stop the Earth rotation, only match it to its own period. So even if we give some lee way and just say that the Earth didn't stop, but just slowed down a whole bunch, you have to move Venus a good distance away, but the time for tidal locking increases by the distance to the power of 6. Which means that the time needed increases to 100's of millions of years. Secondly, in order to get the Earth spinning back up again, Venus would have to orbit around the Earth at geosynchronous orbit distance for another few million years. Venus would have to enter orbit, stay there just long enough for tidal locking to take place and then leave orbit. This orbit would have to be in the plane of the equator( a pretty lucky coincidence). Even if tidal action with Venus could stop the Earth in the time frame needed, most of the energy from tidal friction is converted to heat, which would be enough to the Melt the Earth's crust.

Or let's take the part about passing through the tail of comet Venus producing the fire from the sky during the plagues of Egypt. For one, a comet tail would pass as a pretty good vacuum here on the Earth. And hydrocarbons present would not have any noticeable effect. Besides, it this were true, we would expect that Venus' present atmosphere would be rich with the same combustible components; it is not. And it gets worse, he then goes on to say that the left over components rained down out of the sky to provide the "manna from Heaven" for Moses' followers later. Hydrocarbons have suddenly and magically become carbohydrates!

If Velikovsky's aim to to provide non-supernatural explanations for these events, he failed miserably. The events above being caused by the passage of Venus would require supernatural intervention, and more so than it would to have taken to have just stopped and started the Earth's rotation, made fire rain from the sky or provide manna for the wandering Hebrews.
 
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