More like "embarassing joke" rather than "pariah" and it's rather difficult to describe him as a scientist or part of the scientific community.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/velikovsky-ghost.htm The Russian-born scholar was a friend and colleague of Albert Einstein, a student of Freud's first pupil Wilhelm Stekel, and Israel's first practicing psychoanalyst. Some of his writings appeared in Freud's Imago. In 1930 he published the first paper to suggest that epileptics would be characterized by abnormal encephalograms. He was the founder and editor of the scholarly publication, Scripta Universitatis, the physics and mathematics section being prepared by Einstein.
It was while researching a book on Freud and his heroes that Velikovsky first wondered about the catastrophes said to have accompanied the Hebrew Exodus, when fire and hailstones rained upon Egypt, earthquakes decimated the nation, and a pillar of fire and smoke moved in the sky. Biblical and other traditional Hebrew sources speak so vividly that Velikovsky began to wonder if some extraordinary natural event might have played a part in the Exodus.
To explore this possibility, Velikovsky sought out a corresponding account in ancient Egyptian records, finding a remarkable parallel in a papyrus kept at the University of Leyden Museum, called the Papyrus Ipuwer. The document contains the lamentations of an Egyptian sage in response to a great catastrophe overwhelming Egypt, when the rivers ran red, fire blazed in the sky, and pestilence ravaged the land.
Velikovsky also encountered surprising parallels in Babylonian and Assyrian clay tablets, Vedic poems, Chinese epics, and North American Indian, Maya, Aztec, and Peruvian legends. From these remarkably similar accounts, he constructed a thesis of celestial catastrophe. He concluded that a very large body -- apparently a "comet" -- passed close enough to Earth to violently perturb its axis, as global earthquakes, wind and falling stone decimated early civilizations.
Before Velikovsky could complete his reconstruction, he had to resolve an enigma. He had found that in the accounts of far-flung cultures, the cometary agent of disaster was identified as a planet. And the closer he looked, the more clear it became to him that this planet was Venus: The converging ancient images include the Babylonian "torch-star" Venus and "bearded star" Venus, the Mexican "smoking star" Venus, the Peruvian "long-haired" star Venus, the Egyptian Great Star "scattering its flame in fire" and the widespread imagery of Venus as a flaming serpent or dragon in the sky. In each instance, the cometary language is undeniable, for these were the very symbols of "the comet" in the ancient languages.
By following the evidence, Velikovsky discovered that Venus holds a special place among the world's first astronomers. In both the Old World and the New, ancient stargazers regarded Venus with awe and terror, carefully observing its risings and settings, and claiming the planet to be the cause of world-ending catastrophe. These astronomical traditions, Velikovsky reasoned, must have had roots in a traumatic human experience, though modern science has always assumed that the planets evolved in quiet and undisturbed isolation over billions of years.
Based on extensive cross-cultural comparison, Velikovsky concluded that the planet Venus, prior to the dawn of recorded history, was ejected violently from the gas giant Jupiter, displaying a spectacular comet-like tail. Its later catastrophic approach to the Earth (around 1500 B.C.) provided the historical backdrop to the Hebrew Exodus, Velikovsky claimed.
In Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky argued that the terrifying "gods" of the ancient world were planets -- those inconspicuous specks of light we see moving with clock-like regularity, as if to deny their chaotic roles in the past. The book recounted two close encounters of the comet or protoplanet Venus with the Earth. Included in the same volume was a large section on the ancient war god, whom Velikovsky identified as the planet Mars. He claimed that centuries after the Venus catastrophes, Mars moved on an unstable orbit intersecting that of Earth, leading to a series of Earth-disturbing events in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.
With the first reviews of the book, the publisher Macmillan came under fire from astronomers and scientists. But sales of Worlds in Collision skyrocketed, and it quickly soared to the top of the bestseller lists. Dr. Harlow Shapley, director the Harvard Observatory, branded the book "nonsense and rubbish," but without reading it. A letter from Shapley to Macmillan threatened a boycott of the company's textbook division. The astronomer Fred Whipple threatened to break his relations with the publisher. Under pressure from the scientific community, Macmillan was forced to transfer publishing rights to Doubleday, though Worlds in Collision was already the number one bestseller in the country. Macmillan editor James Putnam, who had been with the company for 25 years and had negotiated the contract for Worlds in Collision, was summarily dismissed.
In the wake of Macmillan's publication of Worlds in Collision, one scientific journal after another denounced Velikovsky's work. The eminent astronomer and textbook author Donald Menzel publicly ridiculed Velikovsky. Astronomer Cecilia-Payne Gaposchkin launched a campaign to discredit Velikovsky, without reading Worlds in Collision. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists produced a series of articles grossly misrepresenting Velikovsky. And Gordon Atwater, curator of the respected Hayden Planetarium, was fired after having proposed in This Week Magazine that Velikovsky's work deserved open-minded discussion.
For many years after publication of Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky was persona non grata on college campuses. He was denied the opportunity to publish articles in scientific journals. When he attempted to respond to critical articles in such journals, they rejected these responses. The attitude of established science was typified by the reactions of astronomers. Michigan astronomer Dean McLaughlin exclaimed, "Lies -- yes lies." In response to a correspondent, astronomer Harold Urey, wrote: "My advice to you is to shut the book and never look at it again in your lifetime."
For Velikovsky, this was the beginning of a personal "dark age". But remarkably, his friendship with Albert Einstein was unaffected, and Einstein met with him often, maintaining an extended correspondence as well, encouraging Velikovksy to look past the misbehavior of the scientific elite. In discussion with Einstein, Velikovsky predicted that Jupiter would be found to emit radio noises, and he urged Einstein to use his influence to have Jupiter surveyed for radio emission, though Einstein himself disputed Velikovsky's reasoning. But in April 1955 radio noises were discovered from Jupiter, much to the surprise of scientists who had thought Jupiter was too cold and inactive to emit radio waves. That discovery led Einstein to agree to assist in developing other tests of Velikovsky's thesis. But the world's most prominent scientist died only a few weeks later.
Velikovsky expected other discoveries through space exploration. He claimed that the planet Venus would be found to be extremely hot, since in his reconstruction, the planet was "candescent" in historical times. His thesis also implied the likelihood of a massive Venusian atmosphere, residue of its former "cometary" tail. And he claimed that the Earth would be found to have a magnetosphere reaching at least to the moon, because he was convinced that in historical times the Earth exchanged electrical charge with other planetary bodies.
Arrival of the space age was a critical juncture for Velikovsky, as data returned from the Moon, from Mars, and from Venus begin to recast our views of these celestial bodies. In 1959, Dr. Van Allen discovered that the Earth has a magnetosphere. In the early sixties, scientists realized, much to their surprise, that the planet Venus has a surface temperature as high as 900 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead. "The temperature is much higher than anyone would have predicted," wrote Cornell Mayer.
Things grew more promising for Velikovsky. In 1962, two scientists, Valentin Bargmann, professor of physics at Princeton, and Lloyd Motz, professor of astronomy at Columbia, urged that Velikovsky's conclusions "be objectively re-examined." In support of this reconsideration, they cited his prior predictions about radio noises from Jupiter, the terrestrial magnetosphere, and an unexpectedly high temperature of Venus.
In July 1969, on the eve of the first landing on the Moon, the New York Times invited Velikovsky to summarize what he expected the Apollo missions to find. Velikovsky responded by listing nine "advance claims," including remanent magnetism, a steep thermal gradient, radioactive hot spots, and regular moonquakes. All told, it was a remarkably accurate summation of later findings. But still, the scientific community was silent.
Then, in 1972, at the invitation of the Society of Harvard Engineers and Scientists, Velikovsky returned to the site from which the original boycott was launched. His presentation produced a standing ovation. "I survived, as you see," he said. "I have been waiting for this evening for 22 years. I came here to find the young, the spirited, the men who have a fascination for discovery."
Also in 1972, a small student journal in Portland, Oregon called Pensée began publishing a series of full issues devoted to Velikovsky, with contributions from the pioneer himself. The Pensée series "Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered" recounted the history of the Velikovsky affair, bringing international attention to the scientific misbehavior involved, and reviewing space age findings lending support to Velikovsky's revolutionary thesis of planetary catastrophe. Clearly, it was time for a reassessment of Velikovsky's work, and the Pensée series produced a groundswell of interest in the Velikovsky debate. The first issue became the number one best seller on several college campuses and inspired stories in Readers Digest, Analog, Time, Newsweek, Physics Today, National Observer, and many other publications.
Now filled with optimism, Velikovsky began receiving numerous invitations from university campuses. The British Broadcasting Corporation produced a special documentary on Velikovsky, shown twice because of popular interest. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also showed a documentary on Velikovsky. And an international symposium was held in Toronto, Ontario. Velikovsky also gave a talk at the NASA Ames Research Center, suggesting experiments and procedures to test his claims.
For about two years after the appearance of "Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered," the scientific elite remained eerily quiet. The resurrection of a heretic, long presumed dead, seemed all too easy.
Then came a counterattack through the American Association for the Advancement of Science. America's largest scientific organization scheduled a symposium on Worlds in Collision for an "open discussion of Velikovsky." The proceedings of the 1974 San Francisco AAAS gathering would feature the popular astronomer Carl Sagan in a direct "debate" with Velikovsky.
The gathering had all the trappings of a media event, and like so many such events, it brought no clarity to the subject at all. Yet for years afterward it was dutifully remembered in mainstream journals as the "definitive refutation" of Velikovsky.
The AAAS meeting was the beginning of a relentless campaign against Velikovsky. In the years that followed, Sagan devoted a substantial section of each book he published to debunking Velikovsky. And science editors of newspapers across the country, no longer accustomed to looking up anything for themselves, simply reported what they were told by local astronomers: the Velikovsky question was now a dead issue.
Before he died in 1979, Velikovsky grew darkly pessimistic, telling those close to him that the battle was over, that the critics had won. Mainstream science, he said, would never permit an objective hearing on the subject of Worlds in Collision.
But in the awakening of public interest seven years earlier, something had occurred that Velikovsky did not anticipate. Even as the controversy faded into the background, a number of independent researchers labored quietly in their own fields, seeking out the remaining pieces of the puzzle Velikovsky had laid before them. Unanswered questions ranging from the role of electricity in the universe to the mysteries of Venus and the origins of ancient mythology would preoccupy these researchers for decades. For several of them, the investigation emerged as a life's work. Over the years they began to communicate with each other, then to actively collaborate, while developing quiet liaison with open-minded authorities in the sciences and in the study of the human past.
Today, almost fifty-five years after publication of Worlds in Collision, those who forged this independent inquiry WILL be heard. They are no longer dependent on established journals and academic institutions to gain a public hearing. Though the Internet is a "virtual-world" carnival, it is also an unprecedented vehicle for mobilizing communication. When official pronouncements are filled with misrepresentations, these CAN be answered. And people are now communicating with each other at lightning speed.
As for misrepresentations: David Morrison began by describing Velikovsky as a "loner" who would not submit his ideas for scholarly or scientific review. McCanney did not challenge the statement, but AGREED with it. Yet the assertion is LUDICROUS. Einstein discoursed with Velikovsky for years, and the two met privately at Einstein's residence innumerable times. Velikovsky took every opportunity to communicate directly with leading authorities in the sciences. Without this diligence the astronomers Bargmann and Motz (noted above) would never have called for an open consideration of Velikovsky's hypothesis. Of course there were many who already "knew" that Velikovsky could not be correct, but others responded with personal meetings and extended correspondence. The preeminent French archaeologist Claude Schaeffer certainly saw SOMETHING in Velikovsky's claims. Their communication spanned years. On the vital issue of dating ancient cultures, Schaefer wrote to Velikovsky, "You will be the first among those who get the information before my publication I am not concerned with opinions and chronological schemes, but only with the advance of our knowledge."
The distinguished Harvard historian Robert Pfeifer, former chairman of the Department of Semitic Languages at Harvard, showed a strong personal interest in Velikovsky's work and took personal initiative on his behalf. Well before the publication of Velikvosky's Ages in Chaos, Pfeiffer wrote in 1942, "I regard this work--provocative as it is--of fundamental importance." And in 1945: "I am firmly convinced that the publication of this book would be of immense value to historical studies."
Velikovsky's ability to anticipate scientific discovery produced a surprising statement from the renowned geologist Harry Hess, chairman of the Department of Geology at Princeton, with whom Velikovsky conversed continuously. In an open letter to Velikovsky in 1963, Hess wrote: "Some of these predictions were said to be impossible when you made them. All of them were predicted long before proof that they were correct came to hand. Conversely, I do not know of any specific prediction you made that has since been proven to be false. I suspect the merit lies in that you have a good basic background in the natural sciences and you are quite uninhibited by the prejudices and probability taboos which confine the thinking of most of us."
Other scientists and social scientists that showed deep interest in Velikovsky's work included astronomer Walter S Adams; archaeologist Cyrus Gordon; and Horace Kallen, one of America's most respected scholars. In 1950, when Worlds in Collision came out, Kallen was a personal friend of Harlow Shapley, the Harvard astronomer who led the original scientific attack on Velikovsky. But later, Kallen recounted Shapley's role in the "Velikovsky Affair," and he ridiculed the hasty and pretentious manner in which the defenders of orthodoxy had dismissed Velikovsky's hypothesis.
Kallen's biting criticism of scientific dogmatism is every bit as appropriate today as it was 30 years ago. In the debate with McCanney, Morrison opined that Velikovsky may have sounded intelligent to the untrained, but that when you look more closely, "nothing is there." Velikovsky was "simply wrong," said Morrison, "demonstrably wrong."
Here, on the other hand, is the opinion of the two authors of Thunderbolts of the Gods, each having investigated the thesis of Worlds in Collision for more than three decades. David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill write: "The authors of this book believe that Velikovsky was incorrect on many particulars, some of them crucial to a proper understanding of ancient events. But his place among the great pioneers of science will be secure if he was correct on the underlying tenets"
Talbott and Thornhill do not accept Velikovsky's specific chronology of events, and they place the age of planetary upheaval just prior to the flowering of monumental civilization, which they see as a creative act of human REMEMBERING. Rather than declare Velikovsky to be categorically "right" or "wrong", they cite these claims as crucial to any assessment of Velikovsky's contribution to science--
1. The present order of the planets is new. In geologically recent times the planetary system was unstable, and at least some planets moved on much different courses than they do today.
2. Erratic movements of the planets led to global catastrophe on Earth.
3. Through rigorous cross-cultural comparison of the ancient traditions, an investigator can reconstruct the celestial dramas.
One more principle must also be included, according to the authors. Velikovsky said that the key to reconciling his claims with scientific theory would be ELECTROMAGNETISM, a force in which astronomers and cosmologists had no interest in 1950. He stated that if the Sun and the planets are not the "electrically neutral" bodies astronomers assume, then even "the law of gravitation must come into question."
In the years since Velikovsky wrote these words, a new perspective has emerged from space age discovery. A universe teeming with charged particles-the "Electric Universe" of Wallace Thornhill and others -- is redefining everything we see in space. But you would not know this by listening to David Morrison, whose words still echo the electrically inactive, purely gravitational 1950's vision of the heavens.
The electrical theorists say that the picture of the universe has changed, and all of the theoretical sciences will give way to a revolution in human understanding. The authors of Thunderbolts of the Gods summarize the new view in these words:
"From the smallest particle to the largest galactic formation, a web of electrical circuitry connects and unifies all of nature, organizing galaxies, energizing stars, giving birth to planets and, on our own world, controlling weather and animating biological organisms. There are no isolated islands in an 'electric universe.'"
(Excerpt.)