Properly analyzed, the collective mythological and religious
writings of humanity reveal that around 1500 BC, a comet swept
perilously close to Earth, triggering widespread natural disasters
and threatening the destruction of all life before settling into
solar orbit as Venus, our nearest planetary neighbor. Sound
implausible? Well, from 1950 until the late 1970s, a huge number of
people begged to differ, as they devoured Immanuel Velikovsky's
major best-seller, Worlds in Collision, insisting that perhaps this
polymathic thinker held the key to a new science and a new history.
Scientists, on the other hand, assaulted Velikovsky's book, his
followers, and his press mercilessly from the get-go. In "The
Pseudoscience Wars," Michael D. Gordin resurrects the largely
forgotten figure of Velikovsky and uses his strange career and
surprisingly influential writings to explore the changing
definitions of the line that separates legitimate scientific
inquiry from what is deemed bunk, and to show how vital this
question remains to us today. Drawing on a wealth of previously
unpublished material from Velikovsky's personal archives, Gordin
presents a behind-the-scenes history of the writer's career, from
his initial burst of success through his growing influence on the
counterculture, heated public battles with such luminaries as Carl
Sagan, and eventual eclipse. Along the way, he offers fascinating
glimpses into the histories and effects of other fringe doctrines,
including creationism, Lysenkoism, parapsychology, and more--all of
which have surprising connections to Velikovsky's theories. Science
today is hardly universally secure, and scientists seem themselves
beset by critics, denialists, and those they label
"pseudoscientists"--as seen all too clearly in battles over
evolution and climate change. "The Pseudoscience Wars
"simultaneously reveals the surprising Cold War roots of our
contemporary dilemma and points readers to a different approach to
drawing the line between knowledge and nonsense.
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