40th Anniversary of the SIS

[Peter]

40th anniversary of the SIS

The Society for Interdisciplinary Studies was founded to promote discussion and further study of the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky, to supplement and compliment what Velikovsky was doing himself. There was a temptation to call it The Velikovsky Society, but it was thought that people would be put off from participating in the necessary research into geology, ancient history, chronology, physics, chemistry and astronomy let alone sociology, if the Society was to concentrate exclusively on Velikovsky. At a meeting in London on Thursday 31st October 1974 it was agreed to go ahead with the idea of setting up a formal group. In January of the following year a larger group of interested parties met and this meeting agreed to set up a Council to run the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies. The Society’s first meeting was held on the 19th of November 1975 with 70 mostly lay people attending, but including a number of academics from various disciplines. 2015 will be the 40th anniversary of the Society.

It must be considered a great success that the Society has survived 40 years, but while it still has a wide international membership it must be acknowledged that member numbers are now well below peak levels and are ageing. This probably reflects Velikovsky’s published works no longer being in the best seller category, in part due to SIS researchers’ criticisms of his history revision proposals. However, although Velikovsky’s ideas about the Solar System having been unstable during the lifetime of mankind are still resisted it is now generally accepted that the world has experienced catastrophes in the past, so some progress has been made.

The greatest achievement to date has probably been in the Electric Universe field where space exploration is steadily providing data that contradicts conventional astronomers’ beliefs. However, while acknowledging that electromagnetic forces of the Electric Universe could explain an unstable Solar System in the lifetime of mankind and ancient mythology, the proponents of the theory would appear to hope to avoid the vilification and suppression by the Establishment that Velikovsky experienced by not suggesting how their forces might explain continental drift, mountain building and sea level change let alone the world inversions that Velikovsky claimed occurred during the Exodus event.

There remains a great deal for SIS researchers to work on in the fields of history revision and chronology, but as a starting point I believe that they must accept that catastrophes occurred in Biblical times that can be equated with Schaffer earthquake storms and that there were both Venus and Mars disasters as Velikovsky claimed. Furthermore, they must accept that there have been catastrophes that postdate the so-called 7th century BC “Velikovsky divide” and that the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the onset of the “Dark Ages” followed cosmic catastrophes; see Laurence Dixon’s paper -SIS C&C Review 2012, When and Why they Changed the Calendar - From Tiberius to Bede. Another field that needs much further research is geology where, in particular, Derek Allen’s findings about an unexplained Arctic catastrophe that saw a vast crustal collapse, see SIS C&C Review 2001:2 and 2005, needs following up. Once it is accepted that cosmic catastrophes have occurred in the quite recent past it is apparent that the whole field of geology needs almost as much rejection of outdated theory as astronomy.

There seems to be more than enough to do to keep SIS researches active for a further 40 years.