Word: sagan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Dragons of Eden, Sagan...
...three physical science critiques offered of Velikovsky's cosmic conception that appear in the book, Sagan's is the most accessible to the non-scientist. Sagan uses basic physical and chemical theory to attack the ideas of repeated planetary collisions and of the involvement of a comet in the stopping of the earth's rotation (along with the falling of manna from Heaven). He concludes, "To rescue the hypothesis requires special pleading, the vague invention of new physics, and selective inattention to a plethora of conflicting evidence...
...validity of Sagan's arguments is not immediately self-evident, but the post-symposium rebuttal offered by Velikovskyites to Sagan does not seem sufficient to resurrect Worlds in Collision. For instance, the rebuttal, appearing in Pensee states that Sagan had ignored the possibility that the molten state in which he says a comet would be ejected from Jupiter could later serve as a possible source of Velikovsky's hypothetical, captured-comet-turned-planet Venus's heat. Sagan reasonably argues, however, that rather than staying in a molten mass the ejected material "would have been entirely reduced toa train of self...
...Sagan comes the closest to offering a general analysis of Velikovsky's work, but such an approach is difficult. Velikovsky's writings cover so many disciplines and so loosely employ scientific jargon that most specialists find his work inaccessible or unintelligible. As Isaac Asimov points out in his forward to the book, it is this very writing style which enables Velikovsky to convince laymen that he actually knows enough astronomy to speak with authority...
...Dragons of Eden, Sagan...