QUANTAVOLUTION: COSMIC HERETICS: Part 1: Chapter 3: CHEERS AND HISSES

Deg found himself losing status in the eyes of his children, who had through their earlier years seen and heard much of important personages, partly because all of them went through a rebellious adolescence during years when he was respectful, helpful, and obviously orienting his thoughts toward V., so that they found a weakness in their father -- his rare complaisance -- and could, through being critical and slightly disdainful of V., get at him twice, directly in himself and indirectly through rejection of V. It was not, as it had been put from time to time at home, that he gave too much of his crowded time to his venerable friend. Indeed, the children could have done well in their troubled group life at school by carrying the banner of Velikovsky (and their father) for V. could easily be fit (no one knowing his character) into the mold of anti-authoritarian ideas and leadership exceedingly popular among those in that era, town, and age group.

On a summer day in 1963 Deg ushered his family of eight persons aboard the U. S. ocean liner "Atlantic" bound for Lisbon, Naples and Genoa. The boat was a slow last effort of the collapsing merchant marine but, he thought, just as several years earlier they had crossed the American continent on a railroad train from California to Chicago, they ought to have the experience of an ocean voyage. He then returned to Princeton and moved the family's possessions and his office from Queenston Place to Linden Lane, from a large old house to a small old house, aided by daughter Jessica's lovesick young boyfriend. His magazine was left in the custody of Ted Gurr. Then he flew to Lisbon, joined his family on the boat, and all sailed for Italy.

Deg made final corrections to the ABS Velikovsky issue at Marjorie Ferguson's villa in Marina di Massa, fuming at his four boys on the beach across the street who, instead of swimming out to sea like little Shelleys, had transferred with insouciance from the pinball machines of Princeton to soccer machines in Italy. "Dear Ted," he wrote,

You will be pleased to note that I have incorporated most of the suggested changes... I could not accept the idea that the political network paragraphs were irrelevant and unnecessary.( This referred to intimations that the furious attacks against Velikovsky were prompted in part by frustrations of Shapley and other scientists at being attacked for "red" affiliations by Joe McCarthy and his during these years.)

I felt forced to deal with them and did all I could to make them objective. What is 'innuendo', after all, is a question of motive. There is no innuendo here therefore. If a trace of poison is found in a deceased's blood, do you ban its reporting on grounds that it constitutes an innuendo? Every generalization of science implies a stereotype, to take another case. Must we then never generalize?

Later, Norman Storer and others picked up the theme, which social psychologists might best appreciate, most historians of science being too narrowly educated for such subtleties, or too constrained to deal with them.

By the way, Lucca Cavazzo [an Italian supporter of the ABS] and wife had a baby. He was dining with me just before it happened. He calls his Federico Julio, two emperors yet! [Ted had begun his family.]

Now the special issue of September 1963 appeared and before long was reprinted. The response was strong, but within the ABS orbit was almost entirely of social scientists and humanists. Prompted by free copies and alerted by word of mouth, natural scientists nevertheless played deaf and dumb, and so did those dependent upon them directly.

In the files of Deg no new voice from a natural scientist comes forth amidst the many letters of a type to warm the cockles of an editor's heart. The scientists simply stooped low to avoid the flying bullets and returned the silent message, "Science is truth; truth is one; who defies the truth is no scientist; whatever happens to him he deserves." A few ducked because they had no recourse and feared the collective or public opinion of science, perhaps retaliation. It was a small step, which the sociologically untrained scientific mind can easily take, from witnessing a fellow supporting the case of Velikovsky to disdaining him erroneously for supporting his theories. Some would have been just normally lazy. Dr. Robert Jastrow, Director of the Institute for Space Studies, wrote Deg on October 20, 1980: "I had, of course, read your earlier very fine pieces on Velikovsky and his theories and had drawn on them in preparing my own article." But maybe this was later.

The New York Times ignored the American Behavioral Scientist and did not review the book when it later appeared. A brave letter came from an editor of the Christian Science Monitor (This newspaper, you may appreciate, is one of the world's finest, and has a disproportionate scientific audience.) "May I say," wrote G. Wiley Mitchell to Deg, on December 12, 1966, "that I have read your book through, consider it a real contribution and am very regretful that neither my efforts, nor those of some of my colleagues who agree with me, have been successful in getting my paper to publish a review. The Velikovsky smearers have been effective! (Mind you, I am not at all sure I endorse his theories in toto. But I think his method is sound and his theories are certainly no weaker than others that gain a hearing simply because they come with the right 'credentials. ')"

An attorney at NASA (and I must point out that he was Dan, the son of David Arons, a Gimbel Bros. executive and an acquaintance of V.) wrote happily to his father that he had "received a call from Dr. Newell [head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration] this morning bright and early who told him that

.... he had read the articles in the American Behavioral Scientist which I sent him and was 'aghast at the inquisition' to which the Velikovsky books have been submitted.

He said he had noted some of the comments made back in the 50's but these articles place them all in a pattern. He particularly noted a remark of Fred Whipple to the effect that scientists ought to send back the postage paid postcards to publishers who use them to advertise such books as Velikovsky's. Dr. Newell thought this was very 'vindictive' and 'uncalled-for. ' While Velikovsky 'might be wrong' he is entitled to 'dispassionate review and criticism. ' Dr. Newell said that he had already discussed this matter with some of the 'leading lights' at NASA including Arnold Frutkin, Director of International Programs. He requested that he be permitted to keep the copy he has and be provided with additional copies.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone here makes a statement on Velikovsky in the near future....

But of course, there were no actions taken. Involve NASA in such a demonstration? Impossible!

There was another case, which V. pinned his hopes upon for a time, pathetically, a President of the grand University of Southern California, Murphy by name, who had indirectly voiced sympathy for the Velikovsky problem and V. had barged in to suggest that he appoint a commission of inquiry. The response: polite, and routinely cordial; but no interest, the matter being out of bonds. No University was going to dirty its hands with the nitty-gritty of scientific conflicts. If V. had been more of a sociologist, he could draw the appropriate parallels with the Catholic Church at the time of Galileo, reluctantly drawn to support his enemies, a case V. knew well -- up to a point.

There came Peter Tompkins to Princeton and Jill and Deg had him to lunch, along with their neighbor, Thomas Kuhn. Peter had published the story of his wartime escapade in German-occupied Rome, a feat which Deg, a few miles away at the time, thought to do but had not done, and Peter had written The Eunuch and the Virgin, which Stecchini had shown to V. and which he had rejected, even though Tompkins could throw light on two points of importance: the sexual derivations from cosmic disaster (which V. had recognized) and the descent of great bureaucratic institutions from the same obsessional terror (which Deg but not V. was attending to). His Secrets of the Great Pyramid was ultimately to achieve fame. Tom Kuhn's book on scientific revolutions was beginning to gather kudos for himself as a historian of science. Deg had footnoted it in his study of the reception system, for old time's sake, since the book hadn't come to hand until the manuscript was ready to print, and praised it in the ABS. Deg had wondered why so little attention was paid to the materials of politics and sociology on revolutions. When the ABS was publishing its Velikovsky Issue, Kuhn was publishing an essay on the function of dogma in scientific research, in a book edited by A. C. Crombie; there he argued that science is and must be dogmatic and the present balance between dogmatism and open-mindedness appeared to be a healthy one.

Kuhn and Tompkins got into a bristling argument over parascience. They were such formidable-looking men, especially at the moment. Deg felt embarrassed, as their host. Neither had the energy to spare for Dr. V. Tompkins was rebuffed because of V.'s heavy anxiety over associating with the scientific fringe, especially if sex reared its head. Tom volunteered no support, not then, not later. The presence of the great Velikovsky archive went unnoticed by him, too. Deg thought, well, Kuhn is in the grip of the Princetonian academia and is an historian of science, a field of nitpickers, excepting a few like Kuhn, ignorant of the springs of human ingenuity, clumsy handmaidens of the technical scientists.

Deg could see continually in science the ghosts of politics concealed by their shrouds. One of his old-time acquaintances was Don Price, an epiphenomenal career man of the public service, who launched from the pioneering Public Administration Clearing House alongside the University of Chicago to Washington, to the headship of the John F. Kennedy Center at Harvard, to the Presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Deg wrote him concerning the Velikovsky affair, seeking moral support. The answer: bland, perfectly unobjectionable, priceless.

Not having gotten his support for the report of 1963, Deg wrote Price again in 1966 asking him to intervene to get a communication of V. into Science. He repeated the pledge and passed the buck. Thus, on December 22, 1966, with "a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" Price writes:

I am glad of course to have the opportunity to read it and will forward it immediately to the Editor of Science. It is the general policy of the Officers and Board of Directors of AAAS not to interfere with the editorial judgment of the Editor and his editorial advisers. Since I believe that the Editor should be aware of your opinion, and that of Mr. Wigner, I am sending a copy of your letter as well as the note itself on to Dr. Abelson, and I am sure that they will be useful to him.

For many years, Deg had preached that science could be regarded as a branch of administration and administration, the huge corpus of civilized routines, as the outward expression of human habits, largely unconscious, and therefore excusably termed obsessions.

Science, and all that goes by the name in discourse and actions is almost entirely a process of administering deductions in the name of an ideology. [Actually, this is a paraphrase of what Deg had written for the Administrative Science Quarterly a decade earlier. I am trying to exclude from this book whatever he has printed elsewhere, as I promised him, but I am like the oaf who quit his job grading potatoes because all the choices between big and little made his head hurt: at times I find such distinctions imperceptible.]

On December 9, 1966, not long after the publication of the Velikovsky Affair in book form, Dr. Douglas Shanklin delivered an address on child-bed fever at the College of Medicine, University of Florida, applying Deg's model of the reception system to J. P. Semmelweis and Oliver Wendell Holmes. They had independently proposed infection as the source of the often fatal puerperal fever, and are famous therefore. But Charles White of Manchester, England, had insisted upon absolute cleanliness in the lying-in hospital in 1773 and Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen, Scotland, stated the theory of infection in 1795. Holmes was an illustrious poet before he published in 1843 his theory of infection as the source of the fever that killed so many women in the hospitals of the nineteenth century; he did not hold an academic position at the time, but later became Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the Harvard Medical School. The dogmatic opposition persisted until the science of bacteriology of the next generation overwhelmed it. Holmes died at 85, highly regarded.

Semmelweis was a Hungarian Jew practicing medicine at the Maternity Department of the Vienna General Hospital when, in 1847, he introduced the practice of washing hands with chlorinated water before examining women in labor. Although the results were a five-fold decrease in the mortality rate, he was attacked and forced out of his position, and took a new post in his native Hungary. There he published a massive book on the etiology, concept, and prophylaxis of childbed fever (1861). Four years later he cut himself during a post-mortem examination, became infected, was mentally deranged, and died soon after, at 47 years.

Holmes' essay was well-written and without first-hand experience. Semmelweis' work was intimidating, ponderously written and he was fully experienced. Holmes republished his own essay a dozen years after its first publication in a medical journal, declaring: "When, by the permission of providence, I held up to the professional public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison from one young mother's chamber to another, for doing which humble office I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though nothing else should ever come to my life, I had to hear the sneers of those whose position I had assailed, and, as I believe have at last demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among the ruins."

Semmelweis was persecuted for his heresy. Shanklin writes of Semmelweis' tragedy:

A few people acted with bold imagination and foresight, accepting the data at its face value and effectively saving many lives... the overwhelming majority dealt either from a power base or a dogmatic base, steeped in the irrational. The net effect for an interval was described in the indeterminacy model. Truth was accepted here and rejected there and by gradual exchange assimilation was finally achieved. Additional proofs with the evolution of a new technique wrote the final chapter of the saga of Semmelweis.

It took about a century from White's obsessive insistence upon cleanliness in Manchester's lying-in wards to consensus about a matter that should have been simple enough to grasp, if one recalled that peasants used salt, alcohol, and herbs on wounds and they isolated persons associated with plague by the most cruel means. That the use of hospitals for parturition increased and that the doctors and their students increased their post-mortem dissections in this environment escalated the puerperal fever mortality rate. These two "advances" confused the issue, just as "advances" in agriculture, particularly in the U. S. A., have caused devastation of the soil, water resource depletion, and new chemical diseases. In the middle of advances, regressions are minimized or even denied scornfully. Obviously the scientific process is largely understandable by sociological and psychological analysis.

Deg did not enjoy any illusion that there would be a direct rational line from publicizing V.'s poor reception in the sciences to the acceptance of his views and their incorporation into science. For one thing, he felt certain that if V.'s ideas, or anyone else's including his own, would succeed, they had to be first disassembled, torn to shreds, and then reassembled by thousands of people from the nearly unrecognizable shreds. Only much later might some historians recognize the many truths and even the valid general theories in their work.

Nonetheless, the exposition of such large ideas and the controversy over them would perform the first major task of any revolution, namely the refocusing of attention and the conditioning of the minds of scientists and teachers to the new frame of thought. In these very days of the 1960's, the leaders of the movement for women's liberation were stressing "consciousness-raising;" many blacks were doing the same by stressing "negritude" (as the French blacks called it) and accusing pro-black liberal whites, "their best friends," of necessarily being racially prejudiced; radical students caught on also to the effectiveness of "irrational," often destructive, behavior as a way of getting the attention of the civil and educational authorities.

Adverse publicity is a shock to the generally sheltered scientists and effectively alters their perceptions. The demoralization of a supreme power such as the scientific establishment with its credo and foci can occur by the exposure of weaknesses among a few leaders and heroes and proceed with the underlying economic forces that limit rewards and positions; demoralization then moves to the rank-and-file individuals who pay less respect, work less hard, ask more money and benefits, and pay attention to supernatural or heretical interests. In a democracy, the withdrawal of any substantial amount of public support for the ideas and position of any institution, including science, results in some demoralization. A perfectly normal remark, if publicized, can invite latent opposition to take form. When the renowned astronomer and public scientist par excellence, Harlow Shapley, declared "If Dr. Velikovsky is right, the rest of us are crazy," what would appear to be a humorous truism set up, when publicized, a rallying point for all who were even slightly concerned about this or that fallacy of science; what many scientists believed to be only an absurd contrast gave to many a premonition that, yes, all scientists are crazy.

Although Deg believed that he had substantially accounted for the scientific behavior witnessed in the Velikovsky case, one of the most common questions asked of him in discussions and at lectures over the following years was "Why did the scientists make such a fuss?" It did not seem to matter that often the people assembled had come because they already knew the answer. There would, of course, always be on hand for analysis new cases of idiotic name-calling and denigration of V., but the causes agitating the scientists remained essentially the same: dogmatism (fueled by the need for respect), expressions of power (agitated by personal ambitions and feelings of insufficient influence), indeterminacy (the frustrated wish to know, and the denial of confusion and uncertainty) and rationalism (narrowly defined, and therefore inadequate against ideas of quantavolution, which seem so easy to refute and dismiss but turn out to be remarkably rich and resilient).

Exposing the mental and social operations of science produced an effect almost entirely favorable. Some addressed Deg for bringing justice to V. Others praised him for introducing the issue of justice into the scientific process. Some others commented upon the novelty of the approach. Mentions of unusual courage were frequent. Social scientists recognized the phenomena of establishment defensiveness and crowd behavior; they expressed little surprise. The letters of surprise came from persons who had undergone a conversion experience; they professed humiliation and disenchantment because of scientific conduct. Several urged that Deg turn his attention to cases which they believed to be similar. Deg objected, when I thought to print some of the encomia that his magazine (1963) and book (1966) evoked, saying that rehearing old praise can be bittersweet, to editors as to the aged of stage and screen. To most it is a bore, old or new. Blurbs are the medium of exchange between producer, salesman, and customer. If it is necessary, if it's never been printed, OK, let it be brief.

So this is brief -- but it's important, because it shows that the message was intelligible, and got through in the larger intellectual world. A comparison may be pertinent: it was widely believed that scientists took up their pens en masse to castigate Macmillan Company when it published Worlds in Collision. In 1983, when Leroy Ellenberger delved into the appropriate files he found only twenty-one of such letters.

The favorable correspondence received by Deg and the ABS in 1963 and 1966 exceeded the unfavorable mail received by Macmillan Company in what the Company regarded as a massive assault upon its integrity and its ability to do business with scientists. The gutless behavior of well-intentioned institutions is proverbial; Senator Joe McCarthy and a few assistants reduced the mammoth State Department and other agencies of the Federal Government to terrorized submission around the same time.

Some figures in the forefront of scientific method in the social sciences, then or later, responded to the issue forcibly, a "most interesting" from Herbert Simon; "used to very good teaching purposes" from Bernard Barber; "both fascinating... and important... a splendid account," from Hadley Cantril; "beautifully makes the point about the psychology of scientists... grateful" from James C. Davies, a "signal service" from Arthur S. Miller; "a superb example of the sociology of knowledge," from Wendell Bell; "sobering and helpful," from Renato Tagiuri; "an outstanding contribution on so vital an issue... not only the matter of methodology but also one of political toleration and scientific craftsmanship" from Ralph M. Goldman; "fascinating... excellent..." from Wayne A. R. Leys; "splendid... outstanding... personal congratulations" from George A. Lundberg; and a grumpy reassessment by Stuart Chase, "I can see your point." Sociologist George Lundberg's letter to Deg pointed to a different type of reception system problem in science, one in which he had once been personally involved:

The question has a great many aspects. In the first place, there is the problem all editors face in discriminating between work of a crackpot and the work of a genius. As has often been pointed out, they are hard to distinguish, especially on the more advanced levels. A very different problem (not involved in the Velikovsky case) faces the conscientious editor when he gets a paper the validity of which he does not question, but which, if published, will in the editor's opinion give aid and comfort to a group hostile to a viewpoint which the editor personally shares, on grounds reflecting the most creditable public spirit.

Lundberg also noted, "It appears that Velikovsky's ideas have been widely circulated in spite of the hostility of the Establishment... Is it possible that the enormous growth in communication technology has made it practically impossible to suppress new ideas for long?"

I think you have done a magnificent job of l'affaire Velikovsky in the September ABS. The care with which you worked up and presented the complete case in the three articles, with excellent refereeing throughout, was a historic achievement in challenging and improving methodology in the Behavioral Sciences. I particularly admire the way you did not go into the controversy of the correctness of Velikovsky's theories, leaving that to the specialists concerned. Your editorial statement of the issues involving the mores of both the physical scientists and the social scientists as scientists in accepting and sifting new scientific work is a skillfully done job.

On the humanities side Mose Hadas, Horace Kallen, William T. Couch, Jacques Barzun, William Sloane and August Heckscher wrote Deg supportively. Medicine, social work, psychiatry, and law were among the fields of applied science reporting interest and conveying congratulations. Several ABS readers arranged meetings for Dr. V. at their campuses. Articles based on the ABS issue originated in Italy, England, Australia, and elsewhere during the 1960's. Reviews of the book when it appeared two years later were favorable; however, no scientific journal dealing with the natural sciences reviewed it. Ultimately, the book was republished in England, and translated and published by Bertelsman-Goldman in Germany.

Deg introduced the second, English Edition of the Velikovsky Affair in 1977. Brain Moore, the librarian of Hartlepool and a cosmic heretic, reviewed the work in the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies Review, III: 2 (1978), 38. Crediting the book "a 'classic'in its field" with "the renaissance of scholarly interest in Velikovsky" he quoted its preface:

We dedicate this book to people who are concerned about the ways in which scientists behave and how science develops. It deals especially with the freedoms that scientists grant or withhold from one another. The book is also for people who are interested in new theories of cosmogony -- the causes of the skies, the earth, and humankind as we see them. It is, finally, a book for people who are fascinated by human conflict, in this case a struggle among some of the most educated, elevated, and civilized characters of our times.

The area to which the ABS addressed itself was apparently much in need of attention. Sociologist Lundberg thought "that the AAAS, not to mention individual scientists and groups, must now prepare a detailed answer," and he added, as did others, various matters of investigation in the reception system of science. David Wallace wrote happily, "I hope you get sued."

The American Political Science Review, which had carried negative reviews of, or ignored, Deg's iconoclastic or deceptively simple works in political science sprang to attention with the Velikovsky Affair. John Orbell opined that "it represents a most significant contribution to the sociology of science." He applauded Deg's most valuable chapter on the scientific reception system and concluded: "Behavioral scientists might be expected this time to have been on the side of the angels; they were, after all, nearly alone among scientists in not having some fundamental notions challenged by Velikovsky." Stecchini wrote to Deg, then in Italy, on Oct. 2, 1963: "There has just appeared a manifesto by [Robert Maynard] Hutchins and others of his coterie on Science, Scientists, and Politics. It says in general what the ABS has said, but it does not give any evidence. Hutchins begins by saying that in his experience the scientists are the most unscrupulous and power-motivated members of the academic community. The concluding paper by Lynn White, Jr. [historian of science] declares that scientists do not understand philosophical issues and often have philosophical prejudices."

One sponsor of this manifesto was Harrison Brown, a renowned scientist whose reviews of V.'s books were madly mediocre, which goes to say something of the significance of works of the Hutchins kind that do not name names, and makes recommendations that are not specific. Deg liked and admired Hutchins, even when strongly critical of him, ever since he had attended a seminar of that handsome, brave, relatively intellectual, self-contained, and slightly phony cavalier, then President of the University of Chicago.

There came shortly afterwards to Deg another letter from Albert Schenkman, Publisher of Cambridge, Mass., breaking a lance against the ABS. Ted Gurr, minding the ABS, wished to publish it and Deg replied "Dear Ted: It is cruel of you to hound me across the Big Pond with Mr. Schenkman's letter with a request that I reply. He is in a state of awful confusion. Print it if you will, with or without my comments," and he suggested that Gurr put the comments alongside the appropriate paragraphs of the letter. Gurr did not print the comments.

Philip Converse, who at this writing is President of the American Political Science Association, on Oct. 9, 1963 congratulated Deg on "a superb document." Unlike most, he had followed the case from its inception in the early 1950's. Unlike most, too, he directed his thoughts to measures of policy and control.

... In accordance with the principle of open public challenge and rebuttal, why not publicly invite those of the principals on the other side (certainly Shapley, Gaposhkin, Harrison Brown, perhaps Abelson, etc.) who are still active to respond to this issue in an ensuing number? I assume they would be willing actually to read the whole issue before writing rejoinders. I trust such an invitation could be handled without devolving into a Counter-Inquisition. That is, the profound ignorance in some coupled with the arrogance of success, has had material consequences for the development of the behavioral sciences, and I am sure leaves many social scientists in a counter-inquisitional frame of mind. On the other hand, it is we who purport to understand the psychology of the inquisition, and we contend among other things that they are unlikely to. I think it is fair game to make the basic points and make them vigorously, while a classic case is still fresh. Yet if our claimed perspective on such matters has any merit at all, it should both permit us and require us to handle the matter with some noblesse oblige, out of respect for the gross differences between the two camps in comprehended information concerning these social and psychological processes. This is true not only because of the negative consequences of the unfettered inquisition spirit, but also because of our beliefs that the problems are principally system-level ones, not good-guys and bad-guys, and ones moreover that social scientists have not to date resolved operationally themselves. So a personal vote for increased discussion and allocation of resources toward remedy, but not the pillory or the witch hunt.

Deg at Florence was sent a copy of the New York Times of August 16, 1963 about "the first definitive list of books assembled for the White House Library," John F. Kennedy being President and Jacqueline, his wife, being interested in such matters as the White House decor and French poetry. Professor James Babb, librarian of Yale University, directed the task. "Those on the arduous project included the best brains of the Library of Congress, the editor of the Adams and Jefferson papers, members of the White House Fine Arts Advisory Committee and a host of distinguished scholars, librarians, publishers and experts in many fields throughout the nation." Deg's book, Public and Republic, was on the list, his father said, and in response to a plea from the allegedly poverty-stricken White House for donations, his father had sent in the autographed copy Deg had given him years before.

Deg examined the list and wrote a brief essay about it. In his usual way, he managed to scold everybody, the pretentiousness of the scheme, the great works left out, the silly books entered, the illiteracy of Presidents, and the antiquated view of the methodology of politics and history evidenced by the list. Most pertinent here are his remarks on the treatment of science in this super-list:

Nor do we understand why the natural sciences are excluded. Certainly there is room for some principal articles and books. If readability is the criterion, they are as likely to be read as several hundred other works in the collection. Besides the originals, there should be present at least Sarton, Conant, Whitehead, and Santillana. It is as important that the mythical President who reads should read science as that he should read "Little Women."

This is probably another aspect of the escapism which shuns the future. The immense and fertile American planning community is scarcely heeded. The best predictions and estimates of what can be done in the natural sciences in the next century are absent. The best proposals for the control of war are not available. If indeed the President were to read randomly in this collection, we should fear for the nation.

The tools with which an active presidential mind might work are not dominant here.

The incident displays Deg as something of a misanthrope, but what meaning has this word -- a hater of one's fellow humans or, like Le Misanthrope of Moliere's drama, an idealist and severe critic of others? It is clear that he was the latter; he had the two tell-tale signs of this Misanthrope: he was a harsh judge of himself, subjecting himself to daily Augustinian interrogations of his activities, his use of time, his ideas, his conduct towards others, his intellectual and logical rigor, and his failures. Second, he had an inflated hope for others: for educating the uneducable, giving to the undeserving, organizing the unorganizable, loving the unlovable, bringing peace to the world; worse, he could see good in everyone: his opponents, madmen, silly women, gangsters, wicked politicians. Even at the moment of judging harshly, he was sympathizing secretly. One reason why he was attracted to V. was V.'s simple unidimensional moral quality: there were enemies and friends; the friend of your enemy is your enemy; the enemy of your enemy is your friend; the friend of your friend is your friend. The fourth category -- the enemy of your friend is your enemy was not so well accepted by V., or to most others who went so far as to accept the first three propositions. So it is not all simple, but nothing is, and all generalizations are false to a degree.

Princeton, April 7, 1966

I was abruptly pulled out of the relaxation of homecoming when I visited Velikovsky. He was haranguing me about Livio's misspelling of the Pharaoh's name and I was sipping tea and listening respectfully but comfortably and even amusedly when the telephone rang and he answered it. I could hear him asking who it was and then "jail," and "marijuana," and "most regrettable," and "I am in full agreement," but then "I am not the man for you. I have here with me Professor de Grazia, Professor Alfred De Grazia," and "Let me have him speak with you... He is better qualified to deal with this subject."

He lumbered in and explained that a gentleman on the phone wished to have a Dr. Timothy Leary introduced. This Dr. Leary had been sentenced to thirty years in prison for possessing marijuana. He was a psychologist... I began to recall Leary... Harvard... experiments with LSD... and reluctantly but with some interest I picked up the receiver and received an invitation to come to Town Hall on Tuesday (this was Monday) at 8 p. m. and introduce Dr. Leary to the audience. The caller, Mr. Bogart, stated that under the circumstances of the sentencing, it would be helpful if Dr. Leary were not to go 'cold' on stage but be preceded by some supportive words. I replied that I might do so but wished to look into the matter and call him back the same afternoon. I hung up and V. said, "You should do it, Alfred, it is a very good and useful thing to do." I felt that I should probably do it, but did not finally decide until I had read a little of the background of the case and an article of alarmist nature in Life magazine regarding LSD.

Sizemore joined us at V. 's and we examined some of the long-sought- for Macmillan correspondence on V. 's case. Miraculously, after it had appeared first that Macmillan would never let us see what they had in their files from the days of the crisis over the publication of Worlds in Collision, and then later they said that they had destroyed the files, Sizemore learned that the files had actually gone with many other files over to the New York Public Library for some future literary historian. Well, history had already begun. Sizemore requested the materials and they were brought up for him. He was not supposed to remove them, but he did so temporarily, reproduced them by Xerox, and returned them immediately. So now we might read the full texts of the letters of the scientists Shapley, McLaughlin and the rest to Macmillan, the notes of Mr. Brett of Macmillan agitating the question of whether or not to ditch V. 's book, and related letters and papers. We were now in position to back up what some people regarded as exaggerated statements concerning the dispute with actual quotations corroborating our charges.

The matter of introducing Leary bothered me a bit. V. and Jill both spoke of my acceptance as an act of courage. So did Eddie [Deg's brother] when I called him that evening for information. So also several others in the next day or two. I feel uneasy when people say I am generous, kind, understanding or courageous. Partly I doubt that I am any of these things. Or if I think I am, it is upon occasions when nobody in the world notices; but then when I act normally and naturally, it seems to me, as in the case of Dr. Leary, I am explicitly informed of my virtues. I have long been convinced intellectually of the absolute lack of coordination between good deeds and rewards but their lack of coincidence in practice never ceases to bother me and unsettle me. I don't know how to put it: it seems that I do praiseworthy things in quiet, boldly, but when a public approves my conduct, far from plunging forward even more enthusiastically, I tend to pull up a bit and examine my conduct: am I being rash; what am I doing that is extraordinary? I almost never find that I am fully in accord with the applause.

Eddie told me on the telephone from Washington that Leary's case had several legal possibilities, that it was worth trying in court. He urged me to talk to Allen Ginsberg about Leary, since he recalled Ginsberg having an interest in the matter. He then spoke with A. G., I believe, the next morning, for G. phoned me at my office, speaking unexpectedly in a smooth, organized way, and we arranged to meet at the Faculty Club at 3: 45 that afternoon for the first time.

At the appointed time, having speedily dispatched a batch of phone calls, letters, papers, and other miscellany from the piles of homecoming mail, I was at the Faculty Club and Ginsberg came in soon thereafter. The apparition is nothing to dismiss, especially if it occurs in the framework of the old Federal architecture and furnishings of Washington Square North. He was more completely uncouth than I thought possible. Full grown hair and beard flying in every direction, disheveled attire of ditch, barn, and beach. He said Peter was parking the car and would be in, so we began to talk while we waited and after twenty minutes Peter came in with his tam, long red braids, and grimy gym suit and tennis shoes, bringing along also his brother. By then Allen and I had come to terms and he could introduce Peter's brother nonchalantly as "Julius, Peter's brother. We've taken him out of the insane asylum where he's been for thirteen years. He's become our ward." Peter said, "Sit here, Julius!" and Julius staring far far out of this world, sat straight and mechanical on a chair and said nothing nor scarcely moved a muscle for the hour or more that we talked thereafter.

The trio was spectacularly disgusting. Several professors and the manager poked their heads inquiringly our way and I gave them a polite "hello!" My own feeling was of warmth and fondness. They were completely reversed characters. All the evil in them was in their appearance, while inwardly they revealed a beauty and kindness that was holy. They are in the great tradition of the blessed spirits -- the hermits who live in caves and on poles, the beggars of St. Francis, Ginsberg is an man of surpassing intelligence, aside from all else, and Peter a kind of saintly inquirer. They are not more celibates, or even better-than-ordinary men. They stand on the other side of Evil, having passed through it or flown over it.

I invited them to the bar downstairs for a drink, but they took me instead to their party, where they were tardy. Present when we arrived was the hostess, Miss Beach, daughter of the first publisher of Joyce, a Frenchman who has just translated Ferlinghetti, a Solomon who had just been freed from nine years in a mental hospital (this must be Allen's great early friend) and a pretty young man who looks like Edgar Allen Poe and publishes Fuck you: a Magazine of the Arts.

I stayed for a while, then left despite their invitation to dinner, because I had to put down some words for my Introduction. I signed into the Stanford hotel for the night, scribbled hastily for half an hour and then walked to Town Hall (taking a cab the last couple of blocks, since I turned E rather than W) and arrived a little late to spend time with Leary before the address. It was as well for he was busy with the press and TV until the moment he had to appear. He welcomed me and we went on stage to a house three-fourths filled. A young crowd, I observed. My introduction went off well, and Leary's small strange eyes lit up warmly when I finished and he shook my hand cordially. He rambled on nicely for over an hour under painful white lights. They bothered me more than him but he had indicated he wished me to sit on stage alongside the rostrum and I complied. (Now I must see what mode of exploitation there will be of the films that were made. If I am on display I shall want to be sure of the context and qualifications.)

Leary's message was simple and harmless. He spoke of the levels of consciousness and asserted that the deepest was provoked by LSD. He argued that the knowledge one gained thereby was to the good (automatically, I suppose, as the naturalist fallacy has it that all fact and truth is good and wreaks good, no matter the context or the controls). It wasn't much. Leary has been the patient amicus adolescensis of boys and girls seeking self-awareness and thrills of sensation, and is adulated for this and for his troubles and for his pursuit of a vague set of psychological and theological ideas that hover in the experiences of drug-taking.

I bid him goodnight afterwards, ate a poor solitary meal at a late diner, and slept well,

Princeton, October 6, 1966 Bad headache. Hot flashes, apparent heart palpitations after lunch.

Query: alcohol? Alcohol plus fine crop of my garden mushrooms "coprinus" for dinner last evening? barometric pressures possibly related to hurricane Inez? something more functionally severe? Poor mood, anyhow, Louise S --- our house guest again. A beautiful woman, so well turned out, and 52 years old. She had a torrid affair with a young Greek and spent weeks with him on a primitive island in the Aegean this summer.

Walked with Franny [their shepherd dog] along the streets in the balmy night air. Stopped by Velikovsky to give him an article on "Magnetic Pressures" that describes the newest successes in building up tremendous magnetic charges. What artifice can do, nature may have done and may do. Hence V. 's theories about the possible role of electromagnetic charges in cosmic events and catastrophes may be supported or considered in new light.

He insisted I stay and despite my headache, we talked for nearly two hours. He had me read his latest correspondence and advise him on letters to Sullivan of the NYT and others. We spoke of his archives and I repeated my thoughts about a foundation to take over his home and archives. He is very anxious about his many remaining tasks. Fifteen they were, he said. I said "I have fifteen not counting you as a project." He joked about the peasant pushing the old ass and saying, in response to a remark of a by-stander: "Between us we are 100 years old."

Deg's Journal, Princeton, October 9, 1966 It is as difficult to make a little change as a big change in politics. Or is it? I sometimes think the former and usually act upon it. But I am a radical by temper and I resent being involved in little changes when bigger ones are needed.

I wonder: can it be that in the measurement NOT of the difficulty of change, but whether the changes brought are big or little, that the conservatism of a society should be determined?

Deg's Journal, Princeton, October 9, 1966, 11 P. M. At 9 am Edward de G. calls and we discuss his problems in finishing "Congressional Liaison." At 10 V. calls and tells me we should publish his Brown University speech and the accompanying talks of his critics, together with the Neugebauer reviews and correspondence, as a book. I agree, but he takes a half-hour to unload his early morning thoughts upon me. I should charge the old psychoanalyst a psychiatrist's fee (professional discount, of course). At the end he says "I feel better now. We have this straightened out. Now I will go back to the miserable German translation of my book." I feel compassionate. At every turn of the road, a further obstacle to communicating one's ideas arises -- when nothing else, there will always be the damnable errors of a typist, a translator, or an editor. Deg's Journal, Princeton, 1967 The afternoon of Sunday, December 17, Jill and I bicycled down the hill to the Velikovsky house for a tea party, with Francesca, our German Shepherd dog, loping along nicely beside us. When we arrived she insisted upon coming in, or rather, behaved in such a confused fashion that we finally brought her in with us, and she finally discovered her place under the grand piano, where she had lain on prior occasions. Present were the Ralph Juergens, Dr. Kogan, Vielikovsky's son-in-law and a Professor and Research Scientist from Israel, with whom I had met on his previous trips to the United States. So were the Bigelows, he from the Institute for Advanced Study and she a psychologist. I had not met them before although Velikovsky spoke of Bigelow from time to time. He is one of the few natural scientists who has lent sympathy to Velikovsky in recent years. A newly met acquaintance of Velikovsky, Spelman Waxman, was in the company with his wife. He is retired now from the Center for Antibiotics Research, that he had established at Rutgers University on the basis of the returns from his discovery of certain antibiotics, especially streptomyocin, for which he had received the Nobel Prize some years ago. The Waxmans had scarcely heard of Velikovsky. I had only vaguely recollected them as well. The Juergens didn't know the others. The Bigelows did not either, so all in all, except for Velikovsky, who has a great memory for everybody and everything, it was a typical gathering of specialized intellectuals who had heard little or nothing of one another despite the feeling that some of those present had that they might have met or that they were worthy of being known to others. Jill later told me that Mrs. Waxman seemed offended when Jill did not recognize her name, and of course Mrs. Waxman and Dr. Waxman were probably surprised when I asked him how he spelled it later on when he was asking me to send him a copy of "The Velikovsky Affair" which I of course felt that he should have known about, and I am far too aware of the networks of acquaintanceship in The Great Society to expect anybody to know me before meeting, unless they come from certain circles the existence of which I am well aware of. Under the circumstances, it is easy to see why there is so much trouble in gathering together a public opinion among scientists except at the most superficial level of the top associations and those who agitate among them and in the mass media, denoted by prizes and the like.

I learned about Kogan's work in desalinization of sea water. He is now constructing a model in Israel that is supposed to be a great improvement over existing distillation types that require much expensive copper alloy tubing. His method is a kind of open channel way that cuts down a considerable proportion of cost of the installation that comes from tubing. He has also worked in physics and astronomy. He is a large man, wall-eyed, pleasant and highly intelligent, persuaded, I believe, of the validity of Velikovsky's general theory. We discussed the force fields that could have been operative during the encounter of Venus and Earth about 1500 B. C. He explained in answer to my questioning that it might be possible to set up a model to duplicate the forces involved, but it would be a very costly affair. Natural forces are not easy to set up in a natural state. He felt that the force of electromagnetism exerted presently among the planetary bodies and the sun might be enormously modified because its cube principle follows gravitational force very quickly and provides a very different relationship between the two bodies. Hence, one cannot say that the force between Earth and Venus would be negligible at all. Furthermore, we could venture a number of different positions, charges, currents, axial coordinates and the like that would determine a very wide range of possible forces between Earth and Venus during the period in question. And of course the present slow retrograde motion of Venus does not at all indicate what might have been the position and rotation of Venus at the time of the encounter. Unless someone comes up with a brilliant scheme, it will be difficult to reconstruct the historical incident with details more specific than those rather general ones provided already by Velikovsky. (However, I feel that there is some possibility that we might be able to use a more intensive and exhaustive scrutiny of ancient documents to discover somewhat more details about the motions of the heavenly bodies during the encounter period.)

Dr. Waxman is an old Russian Jew of about the same age as Velikovsky, and they were able to recall passing by one another at different points in their early wandering lives. Dr. Waxman began to recollect his experiences in the years following his discovery of antibiotics and his naming of the field. I asked especially, "How long would you say it was from the time you made your discovery until the time you finally had a full research institute set up and operative with the people you wanted?" He replied, after much clarification of the question, partly because he, like other natural scientists, do not think in sociological process terms, that ten years was the period from the time that he made his discovery until the pharmaceutical industry purchased rights to use them, to the payment of royalties back to the University, to the voting by the Trustees of a new Center for Antibiotic Research at Rutgers to be set up by Dr. Waxman, to the construction of the building and then the hiring of a first group of deliberately temporary people who were space occupiers to prevent other ill-housed faculty of the University from taking over Waxman's facilities before he had a chance to bring in the permanent first-rate men that he was seeking. Finally, at the end of ten years the cycle concluded. I commented that this was a very short cycle of this type. It had to do with the nature of the discovery, of the fact that a market was present, and a few unique factors, including, of course, the shrewdness of Dr. Waxman himself throughout the total operation. A much more thorough study of this experience would be very worthwhile from the standpoint of the history of science and the sociology of science, as well as comparable studies of other experiences.

The tea itself was only a small part of a rather elaborate Russian type of menu that Elisheva Velikovsky provided -- sweet pickled herring, cheeses, hams, several kinds of cake, and the company enjoyed itself at table, Franny having lodged herself below the table and under the feet of everyone, somewhat to the embarrassment of Jill who was never really embarrassed about this sort of thing but thought that poor Elisheva had enough to do without concerning herself with the physical presence of a large bitch. Numerous stories were recounted.. Velikovsky told of the legend of Solomon in which was apparently involved a bit of radium that had been picked up somewhere and was carried in a lead box and was used from time to time for performing miracles, and finally after generations was exhausted. I thought the story showed very well the terrific power of Velikovsky's mind in looking at stories and seeing beyond the simple words facts at an entirely different level. He is unquestionably a great detective.

Juergens caught me aside as we were leaving the table and the dining room to show me a long letter he had just received from John Lear, the Science Editor of the Saturday Review. In this letter, Lear was defending himself against Juergens' assertion in his essay on the history of the Velikovsky controversy that Lear and Stuart McClintock of Collier's Magazine had attempted to go beyond Velikovsky's wishes in jazzing up and popularizing Worlds in Collision, something that we have felt contributed to the original hostility to the Velikovsky book on the part of the scientists. Nothing in my experience would make me surprised at a popular magazine's handling of a scientific issue. It is almost impossible, given the rules of journalism, to do justice by science. Among many other reasons, the journals themselves are unequipped to handle distinctions between fact statements and scandalous exaggerations. However, in this letter, Lear again said that he had a most difficult time in working with Velikovsky; he disputes that there was ever any intention of serializing the book itself instead of condensing it (something that Velikovsky himself later confirmed and said that he had misremembered this fact when he looked up his agreement), and went on at great length quoting copiously from a letter written by McClintock to him a few months before McClintock's death last year, in which McClintock gave the most harrowing account of an evening spent at Velikovsky's home when he and Lear and later he alone, after Lear went out to wait for him, had tried to escape the wrath of Velikovsky and to appease him and at the same time to try to present an article that they thought would be printed by the magazine. In fact, McClintock accused Velikovsky at one point in his ranting and raving of bringing out a gun from the cabinet, putting it on the table and saying "Let this settle the matter right now." McClintock wrote, if Lear is correct in having such a letter, that he McClintock left the place shaking and with an eruption of the ulcers that he had thought once cured and after a year felt poorly as a result of the meeting. I laughed rather grimly when I heard the story. Of course one would have to check the reliability of both Lear and McClintock in respect to the incident at which Mrs. Velikovsky was supposed to be present. But again I would not put it past Velikovsky. I could see that a man coming out of a dozen years of every day in the stacks all day long and with his whole life work and magnificent set of theories at stake, and with all the driving power and determination that was required for that effort, being confronted by what had to be a shallow, glancing misrepresentation of what he was trying to say, and considering also the enormous domineering quality of Velikovsky and of how he wants to control every single thing that has to do with himself, he would be most intemperate, disagreeable and could even have pulled out the pistol. Juergens wondered whether he should show the letter to Velikovsky or Mrs. Velikovsky. I said hold it another day or two until I could look at it more thoroughly, and then we went into further conversation with the group, the Waxmans having departed and Jill having gone onto the subject of forming a foundation for the study of some of the theories in which Velikovsky was interested. He would like me to organize it. I am thinking strongly of it but I would like a much more clear definition of our respective roles.

I arranged to see Juergens several days later and did on Thursday afternoon. Then I read through the letter again, we joked about it some more, and I said to Juergens that I saw no reason why it should not be shown to Velikovsky. I believed it worked out all right because the next day Velikovsky called me on another pretext and raised the subject again just to hear my response. He didn't mind my treating it in a jocular way. And he certainly did not express the right amount of indignation, I thought, at the fact that I appeared to believe the story. But he denied it and said that he had never owned a pistol since he had one many years ago in Russia or was it Israel. He weakened my belief in the letter a little, but it would seem hard for McClintock to make up the story completely, so specific was it. He also claimed that Lear was not there at all during the meeting.

Juergens and I then discussed the foundation, and he agreed completely with me that prior to the establishment of the foundation it should be determined that it would carry a full range of objective studies of the many types of problems in numerous disciplines that we had come upon in the course of the Velikovsky experience. Furthermore, he agreed that we should ask for the rights to almost all of the Velikovsky archive because it is from his voluminous notes and the total collection of commentary that we could fashion many a first-rate hypothesis for our colleagues to research, both in the history of science and the substantive areas of concern. I am now drafting such a letter to Velikovsky explaining the conditions under which we would have to work. It is impossible to be in any dependent position with respect to Velikovsky and get out any kind of regular journal, or series of publications, or systematic argument in opposition to his theories. I could not work otherwise; I would find, as would everyone else concerned with the foundation and its publications, that he would gobble up all of our time whether it was necessary or not in the affairs of the foundation and we would be able to do nothing with our lives otherwise. The pretext I referred to above that Velikovsky called me about had to do with Professor Neugebauer. Neugebauer had apparently accused me of "dishonesty" in some letter to Delaplaine, a science writer, because I did not print or acknowledge a letter that he had written me (the ABS) in 1963. But I don't recall having received such a letter until 1965, at which time, O. N., probably feeling threatened by an imminent visit of Velikovsky to Brown University, N's own school, sent me an explanation of why he had distributed "only one hundred" copies of his review of Velikovsky's book containing a serious error that would make Velikovsky appear foolish or treacherous with facts.

Every month of the decades of 60's and 70's there would be an alarm raised to rally to V.'s cause, and the volunteer firemen would rush to the scene. For persistent devotion to duty over the whole period Warner Sizemore gets the prize. He was out of Georgia originally, became a Presbyterian minister, studied for his doctorate at Temple University. He never completed his dissertation, which he might have written ten times over if he had not given so much time to Velikovsky. Sizemore was an artist as well, a modest painter who would not stretch himself to create. He devised, too, a method of reproducing in wood a painting, whether classical or banal, and sold his productions at fairs in shopping centers and fairgrounds.

I must not give the impression that V. would not help his supporters. When it was sage to do so, and would not compromise himself, he would write letters; since almost always the cosmic heretics needed letters that would recommend them to academic foes of V. and cover up their friendliness to V., there were not many of such letters. In Sizemore's case, V. guaranteed a mortgage on a house in Trenton, so that Sizemore and his family might settle down. They did and found their life-paths successfully.

The interventions of Sizemore on V.'s behalf were to be numbered in the hundreds. A minister of the many, he became a minister of the one. Hardly a week would go by without some assistance. He gave counsel, wrote letters to the media, made phone calls, solicited support, attended every related public assembly, taped miles of discussions and lectures, gave his own funds to publish the magazine Kronos, kept hostilities to a minimum, and maintained a good-natured concern through thick and thin and down the years. He became Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Glassboro State College and persuaded the authorities to authorize a Velikovsky Center, which began to collect items of interest and which served as a background screen for Kronos magazine. There was little gain here except the prestige of an academic address. V. never did consign a copy of his archive to the "Center."

Friends like Sizemore come mostly in fairy tales and epic poetry. V. took him for granted, as indeed he took everyone for granted who did not hold some prestigious place or manage a power center. He bequeathed Sizemore nothing -- nor anything to anyone else except his wife, and then by descent through her to his family. It is continuously remarkable how gratitude in life, where it exists, is typically decapitated in the performance of a last testament. It was disgraceful, after having taken up so much time over decades talking about making his archives available and helping others carry on his work, that V. did nothing to that effect nor did his wife and daughters, and in fact his books and materials and funds were held more tightly than ever after his death. I have already said that V. undervalued what he received from others and overvalued what he gave them. Lewis Greenberg, to take another case, had for a decade edited Kronos without compensation (unless his profligate telephoning were to be counted as such) and could only wrench a few articles out of V. and his heiresses. Very late, Jan Sammer, the family's assistant, helped to pry loose some pieces. As we shall see, Mankind in Amnesia is not much as a book, but would have appeared gracefully and appropriately as articles in Kronos.

Meanwhile Kronos was weakened by its top-heavy reliance upon Velikovsky's case. When the magazine was very young, Deg had proposed, in a fateful meeting of several cosmic heretics in a Chinese restaurant of Philadelphia, that the magazine "go public." It should define its mission in general terms and seek a wider audience. Greenberg, whose paranoiac outlook he was the first to confess, felt threatened and drew back. Deg, who should have pursued his aim more gently and privately, let it drop, and hardly had personal contact with Greenberg in the years that followed.

But this is true, that V. would have been outraged if any of his circle, and certainly Kronos, would have essayed to count him as only a leading figure among cosmic heretics, other than as their raison d'etre. Those who thought such "evils" were evicted, like the Talbotts, or dropped out, like Stecchini and Bill Mullen. Only Deg, I must say, pushed over the years for an opening up to the world, and only once did what seemed like an awful break occur, which lasted for a couple of days. Then the British began to skirmish, and opened up frontally with the Glasgow revisionism; Deg began circulating his own manuscripts and coining doubly heretical terms like "revolutionary primevalogy;" and ultimately Kronos began to carry non-Velikovskian material and theory.

Withal Deg could note with interest how in published articles of Kronos and the British Review and wherever else a piece might appear, the writer would be sure to interject a mention or quotation from V. in the first paragraphs, as over the years, in American political science journals, one felt he must refer to the latest book of the "hit parade," one year being the year to cite V. O. Key on political parties, next year David Truman on political processes, then Robert Dahl on democratic theory, and so on, or, in a more stable setting, the communist scientific writers who seem hardly able to put a pen to paper without promptly keying in a reference to Marx or Engels, no matter what the subject and "the state of the art;" and the Chinese for a while with Mao, and so on. The issue was not "giving credit where credit is due" but of political-social game-playing. When a man writes much, he must ultimately mention everything from sex to the weather, and every phrase can become Biblical in its marvelous "perceptiveness" and "prophecy."

Deg was not of course alone in detecting this in-gathering effect of fame, as I discerned in reading the Journal of André Gide for 4 February, 1922:

Freud. Freudianism... For the last ten years, or fifteen, I have been indulging in it without knowing it. Many an idea of mine, taken singly and set forth or developed at length in a thick book, would have made a great hit -- if only it were the only child of my brain. I cannot supply the initial outlay and the upkeep for each one of them nor even for any one in particular.

"Here is something that, I fear, will bring grist to your mill," Riviere said to me the other day, speaking of Freud's little book on sexual development. I should say!

It would be impossible to carry in any interesting manner an account of Deg's interventions on V.'s behalf, just as it would be to list Sizemore's multitude of favors. Instances would include: setting up with John Bell a meeting for V. to address at New York University (Mar. 1, 1968); offering to the President of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia (Feb. 20, 1967) to take the platform with V., if it was the presentation of "another side" that was truly wanted; dealing with publishers (Dell, Feb 27, 1968, Simon and Schuster, et al..) to publish more of V.'s rebuttals of the "establishment;" writing letters to the Editor of Newsweek (May 29, 1968) and to other media directors; appearing on radio discussions; helping to arrange television programs; addressing a "Social Order in Science Study Group" at the George Washington University (Jan. 18, 1965), meanwhile conducting general research in the field and carrying on another complicated life.

On occasion (rare because his obduracy was known) intimates remonstrated with Deg for spending too much energy upon V. 's problems. His attitude was typical: give me a better cause in the intellectual world, a more worthwhile victim; a better archive; most victims are dull, or psychotic, or trivial... "Think of your own interests," they would say. But that only confused Deg. He didn't feel actually that he was giving V. so much. His "own interests" were for affection, good food, good company, sex, beauty, travel, and there seemed a good supply of all these to be had. As for "other people's interests," he would gladly save the world and did make a couple of literary stabs in that direction, nor was there any world movement worthwhile; he tried to save higher education by starting a school. He jumped into the Vietnam vortex but could do little. He took initiatives to advance his field of learning by inventing a computerized information retrieval system. Other things as well, such as a stint to help erase anti-semitic elements in the Catholic rite, offers to reorganize his New York University department, etc. It was not so easy, I conclude, for him to have found a better cause. Recall it was the "richness" of V.'s materials that attracted Deg, and allowed the science of sociology and the history of science to progress.

Let me dip into his journal to see what was up otherwise. On March 8, 1968 is an entry that combines food, presidential politics, Vietnam, economic development, the arts, and religion:

Lunched 1-3 pm with Rod Rockefeller at "Pireaus, My Love," rolled lamb and stuffed flounder in a second floor saloon lined with portholes. Decided:

1) We might set up a company to study possibilities of large-scale condominium conversions of slum properties. I'll form a committee.

2) It would be well to set up a committee of ten for Nelson R. for President among scholars and from that I might send a larger mailing to the 15,000 political scientists of the country, and then all the other fields.

3) IBEC would be interested in VN if United Fruit could come along and develop the economic output of a new city. [Deg was pushing to create a new city in Vietnam.] We'll see what Julian Turner [U. S. Army Colonel, formerly logistics chief in Vietnam] has to say next week when he comes from Fort Lewis.

4) The fine arts corporation and antique properties holding corporation can be gotten to whenever the means and times are right.

5) We'll try to get the National Council of Churches to do a practical and strong job of handling its 3-year program on the social responsibilities of corporations.

I scarcely need say that none of this succeeded, but perhaps it goes to show how Greek cuisine can help to vent hopeful dreams. Every now and then the two men would lunch together and concoct schemes that didn't seem to go far beyond the lunch table. Deg stopped seeing Rod without saying anything because when the big crunch descended with the school in Switzerland, Rod gave a mere $100 to the cause. They were used to dividing their lunch bills; this Swiss fare was too exotic for Rod to share.

How many Fridays we thanked for not being Mondays, wish we life away so. Draw back all those weeks, dear breath, into the fresh lungs of youth and fill them with the best of life, skimmed of complications, Humpty Dumpty splatted where he fell and tra la la la for him.

Just a dog lying in the sun Waters creeping up a beach A long walk to nowhere An enthusiastic argument A book on the wide harmless world. No riotous shocks and jolts but sweet time, soft time fall stilly, pass gently around our retracements drink long and cool wet and stretch these cords from Monday to Friday. Will the little god to rest and give the big one a chance to work.

Some of the life he was leading in these years is reflected in the following letter from Naxos to Dr. Zvi Rix of Jerusalem, dated July 19, 1976:

Dear Dr. Rix: Greetings! I hope my letter finds you well -- and not too impatient with your friends and colleagues of the field of revolutionary primevalogy. I have settled down in Naxos for a few weeks (until August 15), after visits in London, Amsterdam, Delft, Dusseldorf, Dornach (the Rudolf Steiner Center), Athens, and Thera Santorini. On the 15th of August, I go to Athens, the Dordogne (to spend two weeks around the caves and digs), Nice for the IX International Congress of the Union of Pre-and Proto-Historical Sciences, and then probably straight back to NYC and Princeton. I have been carrying your letter of April 2 (terrible!) with me for months. Let me "respond" to it.

1) As I have said, you only need a) to be able to come and b) to find out whether I am here, to come to Naxos as my guest any time.

2) If you ask him, Sizemore will probably duplicate for you a set of the Glassboro papers, which I see are beginning to appear in Kronos.

3) Did I send you the "Jupiter and Saturn" piece? No! I have searched my folders here and, alas, I must have given the copy I had carried with me for you to somebody in the English group (I become generous and present-oriented under the influence of good company and whiskey). I will send it to you when I return; it is only a brief piece with a well-phrased hypothetical formula.

4) Did your piece not appear or is it not promised for publication in Kronos? (I have no copy of the Birthday Symposium myself.)

5) Your "psycho-politics" was gratefully received and read by my seminar at NYU.

6) I wish it were as easy (cf. your compliment re my article on Michelson's Moonshine) to set up our own elaborated time frame and scheme for myth analysis as it is to knock down those set up by others.

7) The model for the new Holocene that I set up views it as an age of the "Unsettling of Heaven and Birth of Man," the age of catastrophes, using Greco-Roman terminology: Urania, 14,000- 11,500 (BP 2000 AD); Lunia, 11,500-8000; Saturnia, 8000-5700; Jovea, 5700-4400; Mercuria 4400-3450; Venusia, 3450-2750; Martia, 2750-1600; Solaria, 1600-0. The greatest catastrophes occurred with the birth of the Moon from the Pacific Ocean ca 11500 for much crust was lost as the larger element of outer planets (Uranus-Neptune, etc. possibly) passed closely and the water canopies fell cataclysmically. The scheme appears too radical at first sight, but in hundreds of pages of working back and forth logically and with the scraps of available evidence, it seems to hold together. I propose it in order that we may begin to fit in all of the scattered pieces of myth, evolution, paleontology, behavior. Whenever the exposition is ready I shall send it to you.

7a) as for the dynamics of the birth of Homo Sapiens Schizotypicalis, I have at least a pamphlet nearing reproduction on the subject and will send you that too. I shall try to find H. Gunkel's book; thank you. 8) I do have access to the sourcebooks that Corliss is publishing on ancient riddles and reports. I agree with you that St. Brendan-Quetzalcoatl follows a universal pattern; the ultimate problem is to fix the first age (Urania?) of the practice of these rites and to show how they emerged from the brain (double-brain?) of the new homo sapiens schizotypicalis cum geo-celestial terrors.

In the sourcebooks that you mention (Corliss') did you remark upon the vitrified Scottish forts? I am going into this matter now. This seems to be lightning, and on a grand scale, i. e. the protracted withdrawal or rush of charge from the Earth via the most convenient modes of exit towards an accumulated and approaching extraterrestrial charge (opposite). Hypothesis: at a certain point in time (Mercuria?), thousands of points of Earth were mobilized to discharge electricity (cf. my article on Troy IIg, which might be synchronized with the vitrification found in many places). Query: does the Tower of Babel case belong here? Did the languages of man disperse in shocked amnesiac behavior? Do the ziggurats and pyramids evidence Vitrification or an intent to facilitate (ex post facto) future current-flows? (Troy IIg is in pyramid-building times.) Note Mercurial qualities? When did Hermes flourish as a god? (under overall aegis of Zeus, perhaps). If people on an eminence feel current starting to flow, they get out before the heavy scorching from the heavier flow occurs. Are there vitrified eminences and walls, mid-3rd millennium, in the ruins of your area ? Perhaps, and even probably, this phenomenon, like quakes, flood fire, whirlwinds, occurs whenever a major extra-terrestrial approach or major planet disruption occurs.

A young Dutch geologist, Poul Andriessen, is here in Naxos drawing samples for 40K-40A tests, that he performs himself. We've spent many hours discussing the validity of the technique. There are serious questions that he admits, although he defends the results of his other radiochronometries. It is all so difficult, a seemingly endless set of important problems concerning which one must make up his mind.

But enough for now. The sea is too rough for swimming -- or at least it is not inviting, so I shall drive my motorcycle into town and see what the tavernas are offering by way of food and company.

With best wishes, I remain, sincerely, Alfred de Grazia

Foot swollen and aching this morning. Big discussion with A. M. as to cause of this "relapse." she saying my walking upon it caused it, I saying that it may be the normal effects of stressing the foot in order to get the cartilage, foot bones, muscles, tendons articulating properly. I confess, though, to a certain worry from the beginning of the case: that everything inside was thoroughly disarranged, apart from the broken bones, and may be difficult to reorder functionally. But, too, I took a long swim and that, plus walking, has markedly tightened the muscles of the calf. Wouldn't the stretch pain the tendons?

Reading in Velikovsky's Peoples of the Sea to recheck whether he had separated sufficiently the Egyptians' "Peoples of the Sea" from those "Peoples" alleged to be destructive elsewhere at the same time, I find that he has not and I should one day pursue the idea that "Peoples" fiction served to cover up the Martian catastrophes of the 8th and 7th century, 3-400 years before the time of which Velikovsky writes.

But the force of his arguments makes me yearn to circularize a brief questionnaire among all Egyptologists asking whether they have read the book and whether the hypothesis of Ramses III being of the 4th century is at all useful or defensible. I believe that the results would be scandalous.

Stylida evening 17 June 1978 A Swede dropped in unexpectedly. His friend is interested in buying into my land. He stayed a few minutes and left. Ami rode into town with him and brought back food and mail and news. Then we swam. I continued to hack my way with a hand ax down the bluff and back up again, as I had begun the other day. It was easier, the footholes more prominent. I slung a rope around the bush and dangled it down to steady me on the crawl up.

There were 30 pieces of mail of which 2 were for Ami, one rejecting "nicely" her second novel (really the fourth she has written) and the other from a journalist who compares her in a review with Anais Nin. I received a rejection of my elaborate request for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities; for various reasons, I don't mind this. It's already an article or two on the "Ballroom of the Unconscious." [It is carried in The Burning of Troy.] I wanted the money to live on and to employ Ami who knows the literature so well, supposing that other means of subsistence don't come in.

Of the force that moves this varied activity through the years, there is more than a hint in a note of Deg's Journal, undated but apparently of 1973, the more interesting in view of the massive narcissism that has been ascribed to V.