Gordin's book

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Gordin's book

Postby Trevor » Fri 09 Nov 2012 8:55 pm

As some of you will know, a book by Michael Gordin, entitled The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe, has been published recently. It's not yet had any reviews on the Amazon.co.uk web-site, but there has been much discussion about it on the American Amazon.com site, including some acrimonious exchanges between two former senior members of the Kronos editorial team, Lewis Greenberg and Leroy Ellenberger. Also, Ev Cochrane has reviewed the book on Alfred de Grazia's Quantavolution web-site. I've yet to see the book, but am hoping to get hold of a copy soon, to be able to judge the contents for myself. Have any of you managed to read it yet and, if so, what do you think about it?
Trevor
 
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Re: Gordin's book

Postby Phillip » Sat 10 Nov 2012 9:01 am

Is this book the source of the rash of multi recipient emails from Leroy? I've been putting them straight into a Leroy folder without reading them. Leroy seems to accept large chunks of conventional wisdom and yet he is fixed on Clube and Napier. Perhaps we should pick his brains sometime, and get him to write something up on the Clube and Napier model.
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Re: Gordin's book

Postby Trevor » Sat 10 Nov 2012 10:13 pm

Yes, it's Gordin's book that has stimulated a lot of recent activity from Leroy Ellenberger, both in terms of exchanges with Lewis Greenberg on the Amazon.com web-site and the email communication of these to all and sundry. Little of what's been said seems relevant in terms of moving catastrophism forward. Much of the "discussion" between Ellenberger and Greenberg seems to have been about incidents which occurred during the late 1970s, when both of them were fully-committed to Velikovsky's model of planetary catastrophism. That was before Ellenberger came to believe during the 1980s that, in view of recent discoveries, planetary catastrophism was no longer viable, although cosmic catastrophsim in general still remained so, and he transferred his allegiance to the Clube and Napier theory.

As for the book itself, it seems that none of us have yet read it, so there's no point in having a discussion about it until that situation changes.
Trevor
 
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Re: Gordin's book

Postby David » Tue 13 Nov 2012 10:00 pm

I have read most of the book, which is very detailed about the discussions and arguments in the USA in the 1970's and 80's. There are only passing references to the SIS, although we are referred to as having the longest lasting publication in C&C Review. Gordin has had access to the Velikovsky archive, and there is detailed reference to who said what and what the reply was. The whole book is about the Velikovsky story, going up to 1979 in detail, although the author is in theory discussing the emergence of pseudoscientific ideas since 1950, and what characterises such theories. Velikovsky was much more active in lobbying influential people about his ideas, and pressing scientists to do tests etc. than I had imagined.
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Re: Gordin's book

Postby Val » Sun 25 Nov 2012 4:41 pm

A recent review of the book by Ev Cochrane was rejected as being too favourable to Velikovsky. Ev has submitted a paper to us for consideration on the matter and it will be going around the Editorial Team shortly.
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