COSMIC HERETICS: Part 1 :

by Alfred de Grazia

CHAPTER FOUR

A PROPER RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY

In the summer of 1971, Deg led a party of 300 persons, with many camp followers, up the Swiss Alps to found a college and V. came later to teach. It did not take V. long to perceive that Deg was continually in danger of falling victim to a human landslide that Deg's own explosive force had set into motion. When it came to V.'s turn to speak to the representative assembly, a beautiful contrivance of Deg which, like the French revolutionary assembly of 1789, had gone wild, V. called up Freud's Totem and Taboo and gravely admonished the respectful group of the danger that lay in killing their father. Deg felt embarrassed while dutifully thanking V. for his remarks, for he was a staunch republican who had always disbelieved in patriarchal leadership systems and because many of the college crowd would be all the more delighted if they could rid themselves of their father as well as a leader, killing two birds with one stone.

"I, an octogenarian," said V., "stride with the young of mind. There is no cult of Velikovsky: there is only the cult of scientific and historical truth. The youths sense this, and the rebellion against the pseudoscience taught from the cathedrals of the universities is not for away."

V. to Princeton Graduate Forum (Oct. 18, 1972): "Nineteen years ago I called the young... to look for new vistas, not to be afraid of calumny and name-calling. Today I repeat my call; it's a new generation. I call you to cross the barriers between sciences... My work is not finished ... It is in your hands. It is up to you to decide if you wish to repeat what the authorities told you or to become authorities yourselves --to grow and to be non-conformists and to take abuse and to be exonerated some day. So be courageous and don't be afraid." If V. had been given a son, he would have wanted him to be like the astronomer, Carl Sagan, but of course, in agreement with his ideas. Being what he was and the times being what they were, he was probably lucky to have no son. Rare these days is the child who adopts the father's views or even defends him. When V. and Sagan were appearing on the same platform at a AAAS meeting in San Francisco, V invited Sagan to his room, and there sought, if not to persuade him of his ideas, to influence and neutralize him, perhaps in a way to hypnotize him. Sagan only redoubled his criticisms as a result; the attempt to make a son of him back-fired. Sagan regularly lectured against Velikovsky in his classes and published repeatedly his essay that was said to finish him off.

Still Sagan could invest himself with V.'s claims, and probably (though he would not meet with me to talk about such matters) he was convinced that the father was well dead and gone and was terrified at the feeling that V. now wished to be patriarch to him. Interviewed by Richard Baker on BBC 4 (radio) "Start the Week," 30 March 1983, he was asked, along with other guests, "the moment in your life that you've been most pleased about?" Sagan talked of the, "delightful moments" when his predictions about planets were borne out by space vehicles on the spot. Pressed for a "particular discovery," he replied "Well, the discovery that the surface of Venus is extremely hot, about 380 deg-C, [Actually it is much higher] and produced by a massive atmosphere Greenhouse Effect that keeps the heat in..." The second is a dubious theory, not at all original with him.

That he could claim the first can most charitably be regarded as a slip of the tongue, such as Sigmund Freud describes; inadvertent and often embarrassing utterances, they are usually prompted by a strong suppressed desire of the speaker to make a point otherwise prohibited by rules, morals, or truth. Sagan, one might surmise, let the claim slip out as an expression of general megalomania, but the particular claim, out of all those he might have thought of, strikes at V.'s well-established claim of predicting the high heat of Venus. There is here a hint of psychological pressure working to take for his own specifically the property of the father. V. was fixated on authority, the higher the better: he sought out acquaintances and enemies on high levels. But he did not gather intelligent up-coming young people until late in life; he has written a book on his conversations with Einstein, yet he would never have dreamed of writing a book of his immensely richer conversations with Juergens about electricity and Stecchini on ancient languages and the history of science. Why? Because they were unknown. His idea of arrival was naive. The great ones would recognize him on the basis of his books. The young would come along, following what their teachers say. Until late in life, he had no idea of the striking fact of intellectual history, that most geniuses and heretics start out young.

At any given moment in time, Harvard University is likely to have a couple of pets of the communists. It's a gimcrack impeccability. Harlow Shapely was one of these -- and, of course, a great deal more, too much more, member and officer of dozens of scientific associations, Director of the Lowell observatory, and more still. In poking about, Deg discovered that he had even once invoked exoterrestrial forces to explain terrestrial phenomena.

Well, V. had thought, a man so broad in his interests and tastes would welcome a helping hand to apply legends to astronomy. V. was anticommunist and had been so since the earliest successes of the Russian Bolshevist movement had not gone so far as to efface anti-semitism in Russia. The authoritarian aspects of communism, or statism in general, did not faze him. Principles of government were foreign to him, a sharp contrast to Deg, who was continuously seeking better designs for human institutions. To V., governments and men were bad or good. The Soviet leaders were bad because they acted badly. Nor should persons be forgiven evil because of the pressure of circumstances. How he would love to live quite without compromises!

The only dispute in connection with Deg's article on "The Reception System of Science" of the ABS issue occurred over his mentioning V.'s "respect for authority." Deg told him of the expression, "the Cabots speak only to the Lodges and the Lodges speak only to God." His response was not to reform, but to try more of it: he writes Deg a few months later that he knows that he is speaking like a Cabot but would Deg support him in his efforts to bring the prestigious figure of Lord Bertrand Russell over to his side?

V. was on a collision course with himself. He practiced on Aristotle, Newton and Darwin, numerous 19th century writers and then on current authorities, but impersonally and only with the slightest irony, in a situation calling for broad sarcasm.

He thought of himself as an authority but did not realize that he was undermining present authorities and that they would react as authorities invariably do, by putting him down. But, then, he was a poor sociologist. Like many a psychoanalyst (and most scientists for that matter) he barely realized that the field existed.

He was flabbergasted when his Worlds in Collision was attacked so vigorously and then each succeeding book was treated the same, dismissed, or ignored. It was all the more shocking because Worlds was a best-seller, which brought popular authority into play as well. Here both V. and many of his followers showed themselves unwitting victims of the market place in ideas. They did not suspect success. Deg whose life had begun early to forge a chain of successes, had contempt for success. The concatenation of any man's successes was but a motley cluster of medals on the breast of the generalissimo of a banana republic. V. was unhappy with the support he received. It seemed that he would get agreement and aid from exactly those sources that he did not himself respect while being rebuffed by those who should flock to his banner. One had to be an anti-authoritarian to support him, but such were rarely to be found in physics, biology, astronomy and geology. Passive anti-authoritarians, yes, often erupting in personal eccentricity. Anthropology - but he knew little besides Freud's work on anthropology. Psychology -- again the psychoanalytic approach, not tight empirical psychology.

So he got support from people who usually were just plain folks, intelligent (and therefore I say rare) readers, and a great many confused believers, or at least people who V. at bottom thought had no right to pass judgment on him. Like Moses, V spent a lot of private time disliking his People. Like the barons of the Magna Carta, he wanted judgment by his peers, meaning not the worthy or those not yet ennobled, but "the peers of the realm."

Perhaps Oedipus and Akhnaton should have been entitled "The Oedipus Complex Unmasked," or "The Jews were First with God," V. enjoyed thinking about title and slogans. Deg and he would spent some off-track moments in such half-serious play. V.'s titles were exceptionally effective: Worlds in Collision, Ages in Chaos, Earth in Upheaval, and so were most of the titles of sections of his works: thus in Oedipus and Akhnaton there were "The Sphinx," "The Seven-Gated Thebes and the Hundred-Gated Thebes," "A Stranger on the Throne," "King living in Truth," "The King's Mother and Wife," and so on.

When Deg, six years after they had met, presented him with The Torrid Love Affair of Moon and Mars, he had to have explained to him the Hollywood Americanism of "Torrid Love Affair" and liked the double entendre with the heat of a cosmic encounter, but then eventually preferred The Disastrous Love Affair of Moon and Mars, which denoted, if not heat, a cosmic event and catastrophe.

Later on, still, he could let himself like Chaos and Creation, and even Homo Schizo, but would not let himself contemplate Moses and His Electric God, but this was part of another matter, his taboo of Moses.

"You will damage me with this book." he declared solemnly to Deg, Since Deg made no reference to V.'s idea of Moses in God's Fire, which V. had not seen anyhow, and since V. had damaged the reputation of thousands of scholars "in the line of duty," he must have been gripped by an illusion that referred to an entirely personal problem of his own in regard to Moses. What could it have been?

Martin Sieff, a Belfast Anglo-Irish-Jewish journalist and historian -- one of the cosmic heretics -- spoke out in 1981 about the taboo: "The role of Moses is strangely muted in Worlds in Collision. Moses is mentioned only in connection with the voice of Yahweh at the flaming bush and the trumpet blasts of Sinai." Further, "in Ages in Chaos, one major figure who is obvious in his absence from the same historical canvas, is that same Moses."

Again significantly, the ideas behind -- not up front -- in Oedipus and Akhnaton were instrumental in the creation of works. V. admitted, "This study carried me into the larger field of Egyptian history and to the concept of Ages in Chaos, a reconstruction of 1200 years of ancient history... More than eighteen years passed from the conception of the work and the first draft of its re-writing and preparation for the printer."

Moses was taboo to V., a subject to be turned from and skirted around, except to show that Moses came before Akhnaton and that Freud was fearful yet adulatory of Moses. Even while railing against Freud's problem with his father, V. may have seen himself as Moses and son of Moses, down the line of succession that began with Joshua. "Velikovsky," said Livio to Deg, as they walked down the street after their first meeting with him, "will be the only man who can play Moses when they make a movie of his book." And he guffawed in his basso profondo.

We have, that is, two plots in Oedipus and Akhnaton. One is the classic scientific method and detective work. The other is the intensely private psychic world of a man whose biological father was a strong and beloved figure, Simon, and whose intellectual father, Freud, had weaknesses that must be exposed, offenses against his people for wishing to abandon them for the gentile world and for taking away and making an Egyptian of their common ancestor, Moses.

Before coming to America, V. had, in one of his few published articles, reanalyzed the dreams of Freud that were available and concluded that Freud was torn by a desire to assimilate to the gentile world. V. would have none of this. While Freud would make the Jews into gentiles, V would make the gentiles into Jews.

Here I would quote Martin Sieff who is talking about V.'s article "The Dreams Freud Dreamed" (1941).

At the same time, V. could not go to great lengths in redeeming Moses, the father, without incurring the danger of displaying that he himself felt the strength and mission of Moses, and that he resembled Michelangelo's "Moses" more than the other son Freud did, who went to Rome to worship the statue. Worse yet, he, too, like Freud, would have to dispossess Moses if he wrote about him, for how could a psychoanalyst have perceived Moses except as a hallucinator and manipulator of crowds? And then what of Yahweh? Au revoir, Adonis.

That V. was not Moses, did not pretend to be, and even denied it by refusing the question of "Who was Moses?" are not superfluous remarks. To many of his readers and followers he was a Moses of modern science and history. To himself he was one who had all that Moses possessed except the opportunity. Deg tended to agree and he had studied many men, but he was not the most devout of followers. Aside from possessing his own conceits, he did not like Moses' theocracy, nor his ambitions, nor his ruthlessness, nor his religious deception even if it was founded upon self-deception.

V. differed from his secret idol by more than he himself realized and Deg liked him better for it. If a friend, like Mel Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton University, would say to him, as he did on the train to New York one time, I can't stand him, he's an arrogant, egomaniac bastard, Deg would grin tolerantly and say: "I understand what you mean, but he's not all that bad, and where do you find such minds?"

Come to think of it, this was more or less what Einstein said to an antagonist, Bernard Cohen, when asked about Velikovsky. Referring to Worlds in Collision, he laughed and said, "It's crazy, but it's not bad." V. could be riled up invariably by the mention of this story, and he explains carefully in Stargazers and Gravediggers how it was wrongly told and was used to destroy his precious relationship with Einstein, and what he conceived to be Einstein's true view and mood, and I agree with him, and so does Deg.

In this connection, a private note that Deg made in May of 1972 may be offered for what it is worth:

Because his manner and figure were impressive and imperative, V. seems to have encouraged subconsciously the awesome stupidity of attacks upon himself. Opponents became reckless out of threat, losing their capacity to reason precisely at the moment when they were being called upon to be reasonable. This is a behavioral pattern that I take pride in having newly discovered, because Deg nor anyone else to my knowledge has ever mentioned it. Let me give an example:

In Ages in Chaos, V. took away five centuries that did not belong to Egyptian history, whereas in Peoples of the Sea V. took away three centuries that did belong to Egypt, at least according to Deg, who was siding with the "Glasgow Revisionists." One could not follow this important development from a reading of the great newspapers or the scholarly journals. The New York Times did carry a review of the latter work, antagonistic as expected, but quite irrelevant to the issue. Arthur Isenberg, an Israeli writer, addressed a reproach to the Times editor, containing inter alia a neat statistical reprimand for Thomsen's snide remark about V. 's supposed overdoing of "the first person perpendicular."

17 July 1977

A grand egotist like V. rarely lets his third person slip uncontrolled into the first person, whatever the provocation. In fact, he slips into the third person, as V. sometimes did, talking of himself as "Velikovsky."

Later on, Thomsen, the reviewer, defended himself in a letter to Clark Whelton. He was furious at the impossible task set for him by the Times, and for bizarre editorial cuts.

What I have tried to express here is that somehow the figure of V made people lose their senses and self-control; rages collected and rushed about like the winds when released from the bag of Aeolus.

V. moved to Princeton from Upper Manhattan in 1952; Deg moved there from Stanford, California, in 1957. Five blocks apart, it took five years to meet, a block a year, so to speak. Deg was deeply involved in New York City and travelled sometimes to Washington. V. spent these years in secluded study, with his wife and his daughter's family for company, his wife's musical ensemble to listen to, several meetings with Harry H. Hess, and some conversations with Albert Einstein. He did not attend conventions, or review other people's books; he did not join the network of science, but then how could he? There was no science of neo-catastrophism. He might have joined associations of ancient history, anthropology, philosophy and history of science, though; he did not, wisely, for he was interested in a peculiar combination, unrecognizable, except in its bits and pieces, in conventional programs of the associations. He was a special case; he would have it no other way; he wanted to sit above all of them and receive their respect. But the ideas of an authority and heretic may be contradictory. To be a heretic is to be opposed to established authority. If V. could not be an authority, he would be a heretic. His true heroes were top authorities; his professed heroes were heretics. There were three of these, he would say to Deg.

One was Diego Pirez, also known as Schlmo Molcho. A second was Giordano Bruno. A third was Miguel Serveto (or Michael Servetus). Deg's heroes were many; he was more polytheistic, so to speak, or even antireligious. They ranged from Jesus of Nazareth to Benjamin Franklin. They would include in the Church-dominated Middle Ages William of Occam, for he was an empiricist, nominalist, anti-Aristotelian libertarian who believed that words signified only real things and events, who taught also that reason could only arrive at valid comment when talking of the real world, not the divine, which only faith could attain (thus non-religious matters were freed from church control). Occam's principle, Occam's Razor, prefers to cope with problem using the fewest possible functions and terms, so therefore Deg would feel that his simple quantavolutionary model, Solaria Binaria to begin with, and all that spewed therefrom, was in the great tradition of the Razor.

But William was beset by the authorities, convicted of heresy, and so fled to the safety of the Emperor's jurisdiction. His influence carried down the years, and of course all who were tinged with his notions felt the hostility of authority, such as the Sorbonne Professor Jean Buridan who around 1358 was drowned (not burned) and was celebrated by the allegory of "Buridan's Ass," that starved to death because it could not decide which of two bundles of wheat to eat; the same Buridan, too, revived in the song of the student-brigand-poet FranHois Villon, who in turn should have been "sanctified" as heretical hero by the student radicals of the 1960's, but was somehow overlooked.

But Deg found heroes wherever he had gone throughout life, in India, Turkey, Italy, England, Hawaii and so on -- never mind the war heroes who were glosses on the immense rainbow of heroes -- and heroines, because he found that heroism came more naturally and frequently to women. Whenever one studies leadership -- the movement of events, whether political or intellectual, one must first carefully dissever fame from achievement. He wrote about heroes in one of his poems, contained in Passage of the Year, the poetry which he published in 1967, where he said

One of Deg's unsung heroes would have been the man whose name I forget (naturally), the English amateur of eoliths whose protests, if harkened to rather than ridiculed, would have made the Piltdown hoax impossible. But I would not detract one whit from V.'s heroes.

Schlmo Molcho was a Kabbalist and pseudo-messiah, a Catholic convert who reverted to Judaism. Around 1529 he began to believe he was the Messiah, and Pope Clement VII granted him protection. In 1531 he was denounced, tried and condemned to burn; he was saved by the Pope and another man burned in his place. He began to counsel the Emperor Charles V but was denounced and burned at the stake in 1532 after refusing to recant and reconvert to Christianity.

Miguel Serveto (Michael Servetus) was a true Renaissance figure who discovered the pulmonary circulation system, was the originator of the science of comparative geography, and was a defender of free thought and free speech. He intimated that Christ was only human, and in his writings on Christianity preserved nothing that was merely traditional and dogmatic. Arrested in Vienne, France, and condemned for heresy, he escaped but strangely entered Geneva, heading for Italy, and was caught. All the Swiss protestant cantons were consulted and returned a recommendation that he be punished for blasphemy. Calvin, however, hated him and insisted that he be burned at the stake for heresy, for he refused to retract his dislocation of the elements of the Trinity, his argument against the validity of infant baptism, and his denial of original sin. He died on October 27, 1553.

Giordano Bruno began his career as Dominican philosopher but was accused of heresy. He managed to teach at universities of several nations and wrote copiously in metaphysics, with excursions into satire and poetry. Finally, after fifteen years of work and wandering, he came into Venice, where he was seized, convicted of heresy, sent to Rome, and, after prolonged imprisonment, burned at the stake in 1600. Intensely anti-dogmatic, he propounded the infinity of worlds, the pantheism of matter, and the relativity of man's position in the universe.

V. seems to have put the cart before the horse: one did not need to be burned at the stake to be a heretic or a hero. And a great many heretics of history escaped the fate intended for them. Often there are ages where heretics are ignored and tolerated, as in North America and Western Europe, when practically all forms of dissent, even against the heads of state and the forms of government, except when expressed as deadly terrorism, escape severe physical sanctions. The relativity of values and practices in the "advanced" democracies of today is such that almost no definition of heresy is operative.

Notably, V.'s heretical heroes were long dead. He said once, in criticizing the magazine Pensée and a foundation that were working to help him, and speaking to Milton, Rose, and Wolfe, that he did not "wish, well, to carry the banners for all heretics." Waiting as he was for designation to the top rank of authorities, he meant to be wary of association with any contemporary heretic.

Deg only half listened to V.'s litany of his heroes' lives and virtues. V. would never say what really fascinated him in the human characters of these men. His was hardly the depth analysis that one might expect from a psychoanalyst. Indeed -- and this must seem exceedingly strange to those who did not know him -- he almost never analyzed public figures of even those who were in controversy with him. He accepted them, as if they were rational creatures and their justness or unjustness was simply a matter of fact. So it was almost always Deg who was suggesting and proposing motivations and characteristics while V. seemed to regard his opponents (and friends) as unidimensional, almost as automatons.

In this way, and others, V.'s mind and character were Mosaic and Old Testament. He did not even consider himself a member of the British Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, founded to pursue work very much along his lines. Nor did he regard his tamer organ, Kronos magazine, as part of himself. He consented to lecture at Deg's college in the Valaisan Alps of Switzerland one summer, but he would not go and return with the chartered aircraft carrying students and faculty, so that Deg had to authorize expensive tickets by way of Swissair. (But possibly it was not out of snobbery or comfort, but rather that the airline was Germany's Lufthansa.)

He was absolutely unwilling to give anyone the slightest authority over himself. He never worked for anyone; he could barely tolerate cooperating with anyone. He had a striking inability to identify with people. He did not like to be compared with anyone alive and once exploded publicly in cutting anger when Professor Warwick, in an attempt at a supportive speech, not only seemed to make light of his claims to discovery, but dared to compare his own treatment as a doctoral student by V.'s foes of the Harvard Astronomy faculty with V.'s treatment by the same people.

This continual insistence upon treating any offensive or belittling gesture towards himself as a major event, a casus belli, was the facade of his immense egocentrism, perhaps of the very narcissism which, in psychoanalytic practice, he claimed, must be the first region of the unconscious to be plumbed. Again one thinks of Moses, who looked upon all opposing thoughts and practices as actions against Yahweh. But V. never called in God as lawgiver, witness, judge, or executioner. He was all of these, or all of these except the last, which he left to his supporters, and was so in the name of the rational authority of the system of science, an abstract authority, not people so much as principles, not realistic principles, but ideal principles. He expected nothing less than ideal justice.

The kind of offenses that were committed against him were commonplace in science, as in every other field of human activity. But none dared tell him so for if such were proclaimed, the game would be up and all the cosmic heretics of the Velikovsky camp would have to strike camp and retire. Friends left him from time to time, tiring of the game. Even if one brought up an equally nasty case, he would become suspicious that his own demand-level might be threatened. This is certainly narcissistic behavior.

Often V. would protest that he had never behaved ad hominem towards his critics. How could they be so personal, aggressive and vile? He said that they were incorrect, wrong, and at worst, uniformitarian in their thinking. Hardly the invective of a mighty warrior -- which he was.

But there was many another to do this job for him, and no strong or foolish critic ever escaped the lash of letters and articles from his supporters. This would be done at his urging or with his blessing. They were usually appropriate, to the point, deserved -- but excessive. None could recall an instance when V. pulled back the reins on his steeds. He usually was playing out the reins, and slapping them; many could recall instances when V. felt that a case being made on his behalf was not forceful enough.

But why did V. maintain personally so proper a language and bearing towards scientists and publicists who were terming him a charlatan, a crackpot, a novice, and more? Partly, it was strategy: to be above the battle, to be insulted without descending to their level of retaliation. He was also restrained by his ultimate conservatism with regard to authority. Authorities might, unfairly, unjustly, without provocation, drag him through the mire, but he could not let himself do the same to them. He could unleash his minions to do so, however, and they did.

This is an achievement of a great leader -- to be above the battle and yet direct it, to not lose one's dignity in a thicket of passionate verbiage, to be excommunicated and martyred without descending to the level of his opponents. At Lethbridge University, in the prairie of the oil-rich province of Alberta, Canada, a conference on V.'s ideas was held in 1974 and Deg flew in for the event. There turned up a local professor, a German named Muller, who came down heavily upon V. in the local newspaper, and V. was outraged. He turned to his largest artillery piece to blast Muller. He would not appear at the next meeting. "You can do it," he said to Deg as he lay sulking in his tent like Achilles, "no one else is strong enough." So Deg departed from the hotel room where V. and Elisheva rested, and, when the appropriate moment came, took the floor, Muller at the rostrum, and denounced the newspaper article and impugned Muller's general competence. Deg was not especially happy at becoming a petty hero. Muller was unlikeable, true enough, and had the temerity to imply that V. was converting ethnic pride into an historical reconstruction, the type of remark that Germans had been scrupulously and correctly leaving non-Germans to make since World War II. Yet, when it appeared that Muller was excessively disliked, and on his way to becoming a whipping-boy, Deg felt sorry for the person, a feeling that returned a couple of years later when the same Muller was murdered by a jealous colleague on a matter of adultery.

I doubt that Deg bothered to tell V. half the horror-stories he knew of recent academic and publishing crimes, let alone the sixteenth century heretics. In one case -- it happened to be his own -- Deg went off to World War II as a co-author and came back to find the book, half of it his composition, published under a single name, this not his own. "Well I'll be damned!" he said, when sent a copy of the book, and was soon busy with other matters, nor was his friendship with his co-author more than temporarily bruised.

More annoying, Deg believed, was a case when his Politics for Better or Worse was published in 1973. Three young women instructors from different universities did a study of textbooks on

American politics to prove how demeaning were their authors toward women, how indifferent, how ignorant. Then, at the last minute, Deg's book appeared on the market, was snatched up and thrown into the bonfire in an appendix to the report that they caused to be distributed widely at the national convention of the American Political Science Association. That is, they flagrantly lied about, distorted, ignored or did not read the book which, had they known, he had deliberately planned and executed as a radical exposure of the situation of women and of the need for reforms leading to sexual equality. When he composed an indignant letter to the culprits, weeks after the damage was done, he showed it to his learned daughters, Victoria and Jessica. Their advice: don't get so excited, Daddy! ( How willing are children to sacrifice their parents!) He wrote a note of gentle chiding and that was the last heard of the matter; not one of the three responded. I wonder whether he should have introduced a thunderous denunciatory resolution on the floor of the Convention. After all, his book might have sold tens of thousands more of copies had it been properly contrasted with other textbooks.

V. could never understand that the crime against him was not horrendous nor uncommon. It was remarkable in the evidence being so clear and the subject being in principle so important. It was especially remarkable because he was his own biographer. Every slip of paper -- every insult and complaint -- was treasured. Since he succeeded in finding a great audience, in publishing his other works without difficulty, and in attracting to his areas of interest several dozen excellent scholars (a most rare achievement for even the most famous and successful scientists) he might just as well have been amused, scornful, and satisfied. Albert Einstein actually wrote him just this, after reading an account of the insulting opposition to his work: "I would be happy if you, too, could enjoy the whole episode from its humorous side."

That was asking too much, especially from V. For him only the respectful conversion of heads of science would suffice. He respected authority and power: therefore only authority could legitimately crown him. Crowds were fine, because they were pleasing in themselves but always, too, they were used by him as a measure, such as of the pressure that his views must be exerting on the experts and unbelievers. Crowds were not authoritative in themselves.

Deg often hinted, remonstrated, and harangued: "You must not pin your hopes on conversion of the leaders," and would list the reasons why the leader would not budge, the "sunk costs" of their lives, the unavailability of heavy sanctions against their retaining conventional views, etc. and sometimes Deg would say: "Tell me if there is a single reason why an establishment leader should side with you on any controversial point of yours. What's in it for him?" V. would rather not answer. He realized that he could not say. "Because I am right," although that is what he would have liked to say. This would betray narcissism.

For over thirty years, V. suffered this situation, in which he was inextricably trapped. Not in full awareness, not as a strategy -- because they could not be fully acknowledged as such -- he adapted in several way to the implacability of the scholars.

He claimed the understanding and sympathy of the young; uncorrupted by old ideas, they would see his ideas without prejudice or jealousy. Becoming a champion of youth did not come easily to him, but it was an acceptable line of public argument, a stereotype of the culture. He was never an active advocate of the young, certainly not during the critical years of student rebellions.

He diagnosed the problem of the established authorities as "collective amnesia." Again, this argument came later. Deg does not recall V. having advanced it when in 1963 they had long conversations on the motivations of his opponents, but the argument is prominent in Mankind in Amnesia, posthumously published. As we shall see, the concept itself falls into doubt when it is used without specific valid tests to label or unlabel the behavior of persons or groups.

He watched for, sought to encounter, and carefully tended any maverick from the respectable herd of scientists. When he learned that an Australian astrophysicist, Bailey, had announced calculations showing the sun to carry an immense electrical charge, V. corresponded with him, and hosted him on a visit to Princeton; Bailey received acclaim from the heretic circle that he could not receive from the scientific world. V. corresponded with and visited Claude Schaeffer in Europe when he came to read Schaeffer's Stratigraphie Comparée, but, as in the case of Bailey, there was a warmth of shared sentiments without noticeable movements of these men to the Velikovsky camp. Trainor, Michelson, Santillana, Hadas, Kallen, M. Cook, Sagan, Einstein, Dyson, Bigelow, Hess, Kaufman, and others were approached, responded in greater or lesser extent and sympathy, then withdrew to their proper spheres.

Robert H. Pfeiffer, Harvard Semitic Scholar, appears to have accepted V.'s Ages in Chaos, without carrying out substantial work that his approval might logically have entailed. There was also in the seventies the category of scholars who were outside of academia, or young, or still unfulfilled who had, like Deg, entered the full stream of V.'s work, men like Ransom, Milton, Juergens, Cardona, Sieff, Greenberg, Dave Talbott, Reade, Crew, Rose, James, Lowery, and Gammon. C. J. Ransom was, V. confided to several supporters, "for a while the only physicist who saw something in my work and followed it."

The ideal supporter, to V.'s mind, would have been a fully accepting astronomer of renown, who could announce the success of an indisputable test of a near-encounter of Venus and Earth 3500 years ago. Astrophysicist Robert Bass made an effective sally in the seventies. When two British astronomers, Clube and Napier, entered wholesale upon V.'s terrain with a model of recent cometary encounters, they hardly mentioned him. Yet they possessed foreknowledge of his work and they could have used it legitimately as a foil, contrasting his planetary theory with their own cometary theory, and accepting openly much of his historical and legendary reconstruction in place of their own, which was weak. Once more we have an authority problem: though expecting a spanking, they hoped to avoid a trouncing. They received two spankings, one conventional, the other heretical; are two spanks less than one trounce?

Actually, when one goes to the heart of the matter, Deg was the only scholar of considerable previous reputation who accepted most of Velikovsky's work in the natural and historical sciences, absorbed it, and carried on with it. Most friendly or tolerant scholars of established reputation acted like a trapeze artist who pauses for a moment on his swing to watch an especially neat trick being executed by a tightrope walker in the next ring of the circus.