Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site imsvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucdavis!lll-crg!seismo!elsie!imsvax!ted From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: numerous responses Message-ID: <438@imsvax.UUCP> Date: Sun, 20-Oct-85 15:33:35 EDT Article-I.D.: imsvax.438 Posted: Sun Oct 20 15:33:35 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 22-Oct-85 07:22:06 EDT Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD Lines: 336 As anyone can see, I am outnumbered something like 50 to 1 on net.origins. Two or three of my recent postings have drawn so much fire that I simply don't have the time to respond to each of these articles separately. I am going to try to reply to most of the points being raised at one time here. The only completely reasonable article in all of these was Pat Wyant's, so I'll start with his first: AGES of ROCKS ETC. > According to S. Gould (of Punctuated Equilibria fame), Darwin was advised >by T.H. Huxley not to make any mention about the time scales required to >realize evolution. Both a gradual or uniformitarian course and a catastrophic >or sudden moments of evolution were considered. Huxley felt that there wasn't >sufficient evidence to decide which way evolution proceeded, and Darwin would >be putting forth an unsupportable hypothesis by suggesting a time scale along >with the driving mechanisms for evolution (natural selection, competition for >food and reproduction). > Darwin decided to publish by attaching gradualism and uniformity to >evolution in part because such concepts (gradualism and uniformity) were >firmly rooted in the culture and religion of the times. The theory of >evolution using punctuated equilibria would seem to be an updated and modified >rendition of one possible evolutionary course that Darwin considered but then >rejected. Immanuel Velikovsky invented the "punctuated equilibria" notion of evolution (he called it "catastrophic evolution") in 1950, and anyone interested in this should, by all means, have a copy of "Earth in Upheaval" on his shelf. However, pure Velikovskian theories involve such a frontal assault on what I would call the religious tenets of modern science, and such a large-scale invasion of scientific "turf" by an outsider to those turfs, that the American scientific community at large has never been able to hold rational discussions on these topics; their reaction to Velikovsky has always been visceral. Nonetheless, anyone who studies fossils, including Gould, has noticed the same basic truth which Velikovsky describes; that there simply ARE no intermediate forms, and that the changes in fossil records going from one geological epoch to another occur as if, at each such change, "a curtain had been drawn in a play and a complete new cast of characters presented when the curtain was raised again" (Velikovsky's words). In like manner, Clube and Napier of the British Royal Observatory, in their book "The Cosmic Serpent", report on the like obvious fact of global catastrophes (obvious to anyone who has read much in the way of ancient literature) which Velikovsky describes in "Worlds in Collision". Gould, as well as Clube and Napier, are essentially trying to sell versions of Velikovsky's theories which are sufficiently watered-down for public consumption, the public here being scientists. Now, I don't believe in doing anything half-way or in watered-down versions of ANYTHING. If nothing else, "Earth in Upheaval" presents a believable explanation for punctuated equilibria and Gould, to my knowledge, doesn't. It turns out, that some of the major "punctuation" marks are discernable, and include the disaster which Louis and Walter Alverez postulate as having ended the age of dinosaurs, as well as the Noachian Deluge, which most scientists still wrongly regard as a fairy-tale. Of the later, Ovid writes: "Therefore when fires Of newly wakened sun turned towards the earth Where waters still receded from her sides, All living things in multitudes of being, Became her progeny once more. Some were Of ancient lineage and colors And others were mysterious and new. So it seems that Ovid had no problems with the notion of "punctuated equilibrium", though something much closer to Velikovsky's version of it. Ovid claims, three or four lines down, that: "The latest of new creatures was the serpent", and it is interesting to note that the authors of Genesis also thought it necessary to EXPLAIN serpents ("upon thy belly shalt thou (henceforth) go......"). Now, catastrophic evolution (or punctuated equilibria, your choice), applies to human-kind as well as to lower animals. So much radiation was unleashed during the flood that few human children born shortly thereafter were looking completely like their parents, and the strangest case of all was Noah's grandson Canaan. This story gets exactly one sentence (Gen. 9:25) in the Old Testament, although a more complete version of the tale may be found in Louis Ginzberg's "Legends of the Jews"; it is essentially a tale of catastrophic evolution applied to humans. Next Case, Matt Crawford's article: >You should check into your facts, Ted. In the past the cosmologists >have had much younger ages for the universe than the geologists had >for the earth. The geologists have always turned out to be correct. >Their ages were based on physical processes which were much better >understood than the astronomical objects used to measure the universe. Sorry Matt, but no thinking person could buy this line of reasoning. The cosmologists have at their disposal, as Archimedes would have said, a lever and a place on which to stand i.e. something other than theories to work with. They have measurable distances, measurable properties of light, measurable radio emissions etc. and sooner or later would have arrived at correct conclusions regarding the universe as a whole, with or without geologists around. There are many things which argue against the notion of geologists and paleontologists having a "better understanding" of anything than cosmologists do: their (paleontologists) gullible acceptance of Piltdown creatures (man and chicken), the obvious huge differences in the ages assigned to things by geologists and anthropologists in instances in which the techniques of both disciplines are applicable, the obviously false theory of ice-ages etc. > > >> In ancient >> literature, there are numerous stories which clearly describe >> cosmic violence on a global scale, something which nobody could >> take seriously while taking uniformitarianism seriously at the >> same time. > >How many of these stories were written by eyewitnesses? How many >were even supposed to have taken place during the writer's lifetime? >We have many stories of global catastrophe in current literature. >What makes the ancient stories more valid than the newer ones? Some of these stories were committed to paper (at least in the works in which we know them now) centuries after they occurred. However, at least a few of these were eye-witness accounts. Take the prophet Isaiah, for instance, and the relatively minor (although still global scale) catastrophes which were occurring in his time: Isaiah 1:9 Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. Anyone think he's talking about a minor flood or an outbreak of measles? Read a little further then: Isaiah 2:19 And they shall go up into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Isaiah is talking about something very strange here: people hiding out from an earthquake. This would make no sense in our world; we get no warning of major earthquakes. However, if the cause of the earthquake is right there in the night sky for everyone to see, with a predictable estimated time of arrival....... Finally, consider the true gem of the book of Isaiah, chapter 14, verses 12 through 21, more or less: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning (light- bearer, morning star)! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations.... They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof..... This was a hymn of thanksgiving for Venus's having finally settled into a stable orbit which no longer threatened the earth. Isaiah not an eye-witness? You'd better think again. > >> ... I HATE to >> see "scientists" get away with portraying Plato, Ovid, >> Hesiod, Solon, Socrates, the authors of the Old Testament, >> and, generally, every ancient author who ever wrote anything >> about origins in this manner, because they are dead and >> thus unable to defend themselves. > >Do you mean to imply that we must take as truth anything written by >any dead person, because they are unable to answer our refutation? >If so, then may I suggest a way for you to make your arguments more >convincing? Do You mean by joining Piotr Berman on one of his bullshit elephant hunts? Sorry, I may be strange, but I'm not stupid. Next case, Wayne Throop: >As I've said before, it seems quite reasonable to me that even very >large sauropods could get around. There are far more problems with >lessened gravity than with unwieldy sauropods. For one trivial example, >note that the weight estimates are made consistent with depth of tracks >(among other factors). If the gravity was lesser, why did physical >phenomena other than animal size not reflect it? That is, why didn't >tracks and other physical evidence show that things in general were >pressed less forcefully against the ground? I've noticed over the years, that the depth of my own footprints varies in near total accordance with how wet or how dry the ground is. I have a very hard time seeing how any judgments concerning dinosaur weights could be made from depths of tracks unless the scientists involved had a time-machine to see how wet it was on the day the tracks were made. I would appreciate further clarifications on this one, Wayne. ELEPHANTS From Chris Lewis's recent flame: >No large animals in Siberia Ted? Ever heard of a Polar bear? Siberian >Tiger? Caribou? Arctic wolves? Reindeer? Bears? Has it ever >occurred to you that a Woolly Mammoth was woolly precisely because it >was COLD? In fact, they probably couldn't survive long in warmer >climates because they would overheat (remember the volume/surface area >calculations you were so fond of?) My understanding of the basic food chain in the far north is that plankton live with no need for warmth, little fish eat plankton, big fish eat little fish, penguins, seals, and eskimos eat big fish, polar bears and killer whales eat all of above except plankton. Elephants don't figure into any of this; the finding of mammoth bodies, perfectly preserved, in places which have never thawed from the day they died to this day (and hence which could not possibly support mammoths) indicates the occurrence of something very strange. If mammoths were so well adapted to cold weather, they should still be found in the arctic; the way to get there from Novo Sibirsk is there, in winter. Finally, it should be obvious to anybody that caribou and deer migrate somewhat FASTER than elephants. A herd of mammoths might could survive by migrating back and forth between Georgia and Maryland, say, but a herd of mammoths trying to get to Novo Sibirsk from anyplace where they could hope to survive the winter would not even get there in time to turn back. THE LAWS OF PHYSICS AND VELIKOVSKIAN CATASTROPHISM If there's any one question we catastrophists get tired of answering, it's the whole thing about the laws of physics supposedly denying the POSSIBILITY of any of Velikovsky's scenarios. Good answers to this one abound in the literature and, the funny thing is, it's the amateurs who have problems; real physicists like Einstein or Robert Bass have no such difficulties with "the laws of physics". Bass is a former Rhodes scholar who took his doctorate under Aurel Wintner in 1955 and three years of post-doctoral work in non-linear mechanics under national medal of science winner Solomon Lefschetz at Princeton. He is credited with the only dynamical explanation of Bode's law, and with a paper in the Summer 1974 issue (# 8) of Pensee which basically settled once and for all the whole question of whether Velikovsky's scenarios were "physically possible". The abstract for the paper reads as follows: 1) The subtle but fatal flaw in the received opinion regarding the alleged immutability of the planetary distances is the following inadequately recognized fact: whether or not the solar system is stable in any of the senses defined by Laplace, Lagrange, Poisson, or Littlewood, or is quasi- periodic, it need not be orbitally stable. 2) As demonstrated in the text in considerable detail, it is perfectly possible, according to Newton's laws of dynamics and gravitation when three or more bodies are involved, for planets to nearly collide and then relax into an apparently stable Bode's law kind of configuration within a relatively short time; therefore Velikovsky's historical evidence cannot be ignored. 3) If one started Venus in an orbit lying entirely between Jupiter and Saturn, with precisely the appropriate initial position and velocity, it would within less than two decades work its way inward into an orbit lying entirely between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. (This follows from observations of the comet Oterma III and the fact that, in the restricted problem of three bodies, the mass of the smallest body is irrelevant.) 4) There is no plausible explanation for the anomalous (retrograde) rotation of Venus, other than that it originally had prograde spin and was later flipped upside-down by a near collision with some other planet. 5) The fact that the spin rate of Venus is now mysteriously locked in resonance with the rate of revolution of Venus relative to the Earth (so that Venus presents the same face to Earth at every inferior conjunction) may provide a dynamical clue as to which planet Venus encountered. 6) Laplace's theorem allegedly proving stability of the solar system (1773) was shown to be fallacious in 1899 by Poincare; in 1953, dynamical astronomer W. M. Smart proved that the maximum interval of reliability of the perturbation equations of Laplace and Lagrange was not 10**11 years, as stated in 1895 by S. Newcomb, but actually at most a small multiple of 10**2 years. 7) The eminent dynamical astronomer E. W. Brown, in his retiring speech as President of the American Astronomical Society in 1931, quite explicitly stated that there is no quantitative reason known to celestial mechanics why Mars, Earth, and Venus could not have nearly collided in the past. The paper itself amounts to about ten pages of very fine print and I can't reproduce it here without getting thrown out of net.origins for cause. Copies are probably still available from the BYU physics dept. If all else fails, I could photostat copies of this article and send them anyone interested, offer limited to those with advanced degrees in physics, astrophysics etc. since nobody else would have a prayer of understanding it. Contact me by UNIX mail if interested. In a similar vein, Jeff Sonntag writes: > Well, since no experiment has ever shown any relation between gravity >and electromagnetism, and since many types of magnetic field generating systems >can reverse their field without affecting the size of the gravity well they >produce, I'll have to *guess* that the past reversals of the Earth's >magnetic field were unaccompanied by any changes in its gravitational field. That's just a guess, Jeff. Albert Einstein spent the last years of his life looking for that very connection (the unified field theory), and died with a copy of "Worlds in Collision" open on his desk. I have always heard rumors that Velikovsky's theories concerning a historical change in the felt effect of gravity had something to do with Einstein's interest in this area. MORE ON GLIDING AGAINST THE WIND ETC. How many of you readers know what the three basic kinds of landings for a sail-plane are? Good question. They are: 1. The "this county" landing. 2. The "next county" landing. 3. The "next country" landing. For this reason, the wings and stabilizers of sail-planes are of the "knock-off" variety so as to make the whole thing fit into that other necessity of sail-planing, the VW micro-bus. In other words, the whole thing is somewhat more controllable than hot-air ballooning, but not much more so. This wouldn't have helped the Quetzalcoatlus-Northropi's children very much, assuming that creature lived in our gravity and, thus, perforce functioned entirely as a glider. Their lives would have depended on their parents getting back to the nest EVERY time, and micro-buses and knock-off wings weren't available. Note to Pam Pincha-Wagoner on gliding: You seem to have missed the entire section on pterosaurs in my long "ultrasaur" article. Check out Adrian Desmond's "Hot Blooded Dinosaurs", page 182 and thereabouts, for more on the limits of size for flying creatures. Scene from the Wizard of Id Turnkey: "I hear the kings gonna commute your sentence." Spook in dungeon: "That's great!" Turnkey: "They're gonna hang you in the next county."