The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe

304 Pages·2012·2.208 MB·English

by  Michael D. Gordin

The Pseudoscience Wars
immanuel velikovsky (1895–1979), circa 1977. Source: IVP 145:2.
THE Immanuel Velikovsky
and the Birth of the Modern Fringe
PSEUDOSCIENCE
WARS
Michael D. Gordin
The University of Chicago Press chicago and london
michael d. gordin is a professor in the Department of History
at Princeton University. He is the author of A Well-Ordered Thing:
Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table; Five Days in
August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War; and Red Cloud at Dawn:
Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2012 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2012.
Printed in the United States of America
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-30442-7 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-30442-6 (cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-30443-4 (e-book)
isbn-10: 0-226-30443-4 (e-book)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gordin, Michael D.
The pseudoscience wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the birth of the
modern fringe / Michael D. Gordin.
pages; cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-30442-7 (cloth: alkaline paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-30442-6 (cloth: alkaline paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-30443-4 (e-book)
isbn-10: 0-226-30443-4 (e-book) 1. Pseudoscience—History—
20th century. 2. Velikovsky, Immanuel, 1895–1979—Appreciation.
3. Velikovsky, Immanuel, 1895–1979—Infl uence. 4. Lysenko, Trofi m
Denisovich, 1898–1976. 5. Creationism—History. 6. Eugenics—
History. 7. Science—History—20th century. I. Title.
q172.5.p77g674 2012
523.2—dc23 2012003653
This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
for erika,
who was there at the beginning and the end
No probability, however seductive, can protect us from
error; even if all parts of a problem seem to fi t together like
the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that the
probable need not necessarily be the truth, and the truth
not always probable.
sigmund freud, Moses and Monotheism
Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is a very
important science.
attributed to saul lieberman
contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Bad Ideas 1
1 The Grand Collision of Spring 1950 19
2 A Monolithic Oneness 49
3 The Battle over Lysenkoism 79
4 Experiments in Rehabilitation 106
5 Skirmishes on the Edge of Creation 135
6 Strangest Bedfellows 163
Conclusion: Pseudoscience in Our Time 195
Abbreviations and Archives 213
Notes 215
Index 281

acknowledgments
This book began in the archives, and my greatest debts are to those who
made the research possible. At the Princeton University Library, I would
like to thank Ben Primer and especially Don Skemer for taking the time
to discuss with me how they came to acquire the Immanuel Velikovsky
Papers. The entire staff at the Manuscripts Reading Room also provided a
wealth of help at all stages of this project, as did the Article Express and
Interlibrary Loan offi ce, who once again managed to acquire for me publi-
cations that seemed to have sunk without a trace. I could never have writ-
ten this book without them.
I would also like to thank the librarians at the American Philosophical
Society Library, the Manuscripts Room of the New York Public Library,
and Harvard University Archives for making their collections available to
me. All of these institutions, as well as the Albert Einstein Papers Project,
kindly granted me permission to reproduce materials from their holdings.
My parents, Gila and Rafael Gordin, put me in touch with Rafael Vieser,
formerly of the Hebrew University Library, and he kindly informed me
about the Velikovsky collections there.
Many friends and colleagues have been exposed to a great deal of Ve-
likovskiana over the last few years, and I extend thanks to all of them (you
know who you are). Peter Brown, Nathaniel Comfort, Angela Creager,
Yaacob Dweck, James Gilbert, Owen Gingerich, Matthew Jones, David Kai-
ser, Joshua Katz, Philip Kitcher, Michiko Kobayashi, George Laufenberg,
Patrick McCray, Erika Milam, Bhavani Raman, Matthew Stanley, Robin
Wasserman, Eric Weitz, and Nasser Zakariya read parts or all of the manu-
script, and their comments have improved the result in innumerable ways.
I presented various parts of this project at the University of Maryland–
College Park, Caltech, Tel Aviv University, both the History of Science Pro-