Broca's Brain - Carl Sagan [52]
Another problem with Velikovsky’s method is the suspicion that vaguely similar stories may refer to quite different periods. This question of the synchronism of legends is almost entirely ignored in Worlds in Collision, although it is treated in some of Velikovsky’s later works. For example (page 31), Velikovsky notes that the idea of four ancient ages terminated by catastrophe is common to Indian as well as to Western sacred writing. However, in the Bhagavad Gita and in the Vedas, widely divergent numbers of such ages, including an infinity of them, are given; but, more interesting, the duration of the ages between major catastrophes is specified (see, for example, Campbell, 1974) as billions of years. This does not match very well Velikovsky’s chronology, which requires hundreds or thousands of years. Here Velikovsky’s hypothesis and the data that purport to support it differ by a factor of about a million. Or (page 91) vaguely similar discussions of vulcanism and lava flows in Greek, Mexican and Biblical traditions are quoted. There is no attempt made to show that they refer to even approximately comparable times and, since lava has flowed in historical times in all three areas, no common exogenous event is necessary to interpret such stories.
Despite copious references, there also seem to me to be a large number of critical and undemonstrated assumptions in Velikovsky’s argument. Let me mention just a few of them. There is the very interesting idea that any mythological references by any people to any god that also corresponds to a celestial body represents in fact a direct observation of that celestial body. It is a daring hypothesis, although I am not sure what one is to do with Jupiter appearing as a swan to Leda, and as a shower of gold to Danaë. On page 247 the hypothesis that gods and planets are identical is used to date the time of Homer. In any case, when Hesiod and Homer refer to Athena being born full-grown from the head of Zeus, Velikovsky takes Hesiod and Homer at their word and assumes that the celestial body Athena was ejected by the planet Jupiter. But what is the celestial body Athena? Repeatedly it is identified with the planet Venus (Part 1, Chapter 9, and many other places in the text). One would scarcely guess from reading Worlds in Collision that the Greeks characteristically identified Aphrodite with Venus, and Athena with no celestial body whatever. What is more, Athena and Aphrodite were “contemporaneous” goddesses, both being born at the time Zeus was king of the gods. On page 251 Velikovsky notes that Lucian “is unaware that Athene is the goddess of the planet Venus.” Poor Lucian seems to be under the misconception that Aphrodite is the goddess of the planet Venus. But in the footnote on page 361 there appears to be a slip, and here Velikovsky for the first and only time uses the form “Venus (Aphrodite).” On page 247 we hear of Aphrodite, the goddess of the Moon. Who, then, was Artemis, the sister of Apollo the Sun, or, earlier, Selene? There may be good justification, for all I know, in identifying Athena with Venus, but it is far from the prevailing wisdom either now or two thousand years ago, and it is central to Velikovsky’s argument. It does not increase our confidence in the presentation of less familiar myths when the celestial identification of Athena is glossed over so lightly.
Other critical statements which are given extremely inadequate justification, and which are central to one or more of Velikovsky’s major themes, are: the statement (page 283) that “Meteorites, when entering the earth’s atmosphere, make a frightful din,” when they are generally observed to be silent; the statement (page 114) that “a thunderbolt, when striking a magnet, reverses the poles of the magnet”; the translation (page 51) of “Barad” as meteorites; and the contention (page 85) “as is known, Pallas was another name for Typhon.” On page 179 a principle is implied that when two gods are hyphenated in a joint name, it indicates an attribute of a celestial body—as, for example, Ashteroth-Karnaim, a horned