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Many Internet forums have carried discussion of the Electric Universe hypothesis. Much of that discussion has added more confusion than clarity, due to common misunderstandings of the electrical principles. Here we invite participants to discuss their experiences and to summarise questions that have yet to be answered.
Demosophist
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New Member

Unread post by Demosophist » Tue Jul 12, 2022 11:40 pm

Hi:
I've been watching the Thunderbolts videos for some time, and have seen about all of them. I recently read Worlds in Collision and think that the broad strokes of Velikovsky's analysis is quite sound. I earned my doctorate under the advisorship of political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, and was also RA to Thelma Z. Lavine on Method in the Social Sciences (also on my committee), so am quite familiar with the comparative method, re. Mattei Dogan, et al.. It's a very powerful and useful analytical tool in the social sciences, and Velikovsky marshals it quite well. I'm currently almost finished with Mankind in Amnesia.

One of the things that has surprised me is the degree to which many of my over-educated friends regard Velikovsky as a "nut" and caution against any involvement with him or his ideas. Some of these people have never read him, but at least one long-time friend has, and still holds that opinion. He's normally very open to new approaches, so I suspect he may be lying to me about how carefully or completely he has read Velikovsky, which is a disappointment. However, I can't think of a coherent reason to reject Velikovsky's thesis, at least as a broad brush. Granted he wasn't a physicist and didn't offer any real physical analysis, in WIC, of how his scenario could have come about. But he did prove rather conclusively that something happened that doesn't comport with any standard model of physics based on gravity or mass attraction as a constant, so I'm at a loss as to why someone would reject him en masse, as a kook. (He also writes extremely well, especially for someone for whom English is a second language.)

I should also say that since receiving my PhD in 1998 I have worked very little in academia, although I was briefly Research Director for the National Association of Scholars until the founder of that organization, Steve Balch, retired. I have also done a lot of research on K-12 education with my research partner (also on my dissertation committee) David J. Armor, so am quite familiar with the miserable state of education across the board. Clearly something has to change, so I'm laying down a marker for anyone with any ideas about alternative approaches to the process.

Finally, I should also say that I've been a student of Herbert Marshall McLuhan for some time, and think that at least part of the reason for the enormous resistance to Velikovsky's ideas, to say nothing of EU Theory, is traceable to the side effects of media on mentality and perception. McLuhan's approach, which he outlines in many books (especially the book he wrote with Barrington Nevitt, titled Take Today), is that percepts always trump concepts. According to this insight, then, the problem isn't with the deficiencies of EU as a concept, but with a perceptual lag that has origins in what McLuhan called "the balance of the senses" or the ratio of the senses within the human sensorium. This would include both interior and exterior senses, and in this case the trouble seems to lie mostly with the ratio of imagination to memory, which are two of the four primary interior senses according to medieval pre-Gutenberg philosophy. (These also include aestimative or cogitative reason and something called "sensus communis," which is also key. Electrical mass media tends to enhance imagination at the expense of memory, so everything has an immediacy value that always manages to occult memory, or that can at least be used to occult memory if the controllers of media so desire. As a result there is no "sync up" between concepts like those of Velikovsky or EU, and memory. Memory and imagination are closely related in that they both involve something called "phantasm," but the difference is that true memory has a ground, while false memory as derived from imagination does not. So the perception of a valid concept relies on true memory being at least minimally available if not in the forefront of the sensorium. (The role of sensus communis is also critical, but beyond the scope of a forum post.)

But here's the saving grace. This mass media effect (electrical since the mid-19th century) based on what McLuhan calls the "resonant interval," is now in the throes of a transition to a *distributive electrical medium* which re-establishes memory within the sensorium. Thus, the current socio-cultural upheavals we are experiencing have their roots in this transition such that the one-way influencing through the resonant interval of the imagination of a subject, used to suppress memory since at least the mid 19th century and probably since the Gutenberg revolution in the 15th, is giving way to a many-to-many paradigmatic shift in perception (called distributive or distributative) that rehabilitates memory as part of the human sense-MAKING arsenal. (Sense-making as apposed to sense-matching, in the words of Barry Nevitt.)

So, is this sort of approach interesting to anyone and are there research opportunities outside of conventional academia for such a heretic as myself?

jacmac
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Unread post by jacmac » Wed Jul 13, 2022 8:29 pm

Welcome Demosophist.
I have two basic comments.
1. I am in general agreement with your comments about Velikovsky.
2. Regarding your statements about Marshall McLuhan:
Using this as an example:
This mass media effect (electrical since the mid-19th century) based on what McLuhan calls the "resonant interval," is now in the throes of a transition to a *distributive electrical medium* which re-establishes memory within the sensorium. Thus, the current socio-cultural upheavals we are experiencing have their roots in this transition such that the one-way influencing through the resonant interval of the imagination of a subject, used to suppress memory since at least the mid 19th century and probably since the Gutenberg revolution in the 15th, is giving way to a many-to-many paradigmatic shift in perception (called distributive or distributative) that rehabilitates memory as part of the human sense-MAKING arsenal. (Sense-making as apposed to sense-matching, in the words of Barry Nevitt.)
I may be in complete agreement with you, or not. I don't know.
Because, I can not follow the language, therefore the concepts, therefore ...I DON'T UNDERSTAND what you are saying.
I have a small memory of McLuhan, and "The medium is the message"; but that's about it.
Others here have their own opinions, but I need more basic language and a lot less academic terms to even get close
to understanding what you (and McLuhan) are talking about.

Also, #2 above seems to be an example of what I run into trying to explain the EU and plasma to my adult friends.
Most have never heard of plasma or the EU electricity in space ideas, which immediately puts me into the
fringe category, and limits their ability to follow along.
It seems the more one thinks for her/himself the more one becomes a singularity (Ha....a little joke there).
Jack

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nick c
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Re: New Member

Unread post by nick c » Thu Jul 14, 2022 2:30 am

Demosophist, Welcome to the Thunderbolts Forum,
I recently read Worlds in Collision and think that the broad strokes of Velikovsky's analysis is quite sound.
I would recommend following up Worlds In Collision (1950) with Earth In Upheaval (1955). If WiC is the heads, then EIU is the tails. It is still a very impressive book that is meant to complement WIC by presenting the evidence of geology, archaeology, paleontology, etc. It is the story of WIC told through an analysis of bones and stones...no mythology. The two books tell the same story from differing perspectives.
One of the things that has surprised me is the degree to which many of my over-educated friends regard Velikovsky as a "nut" and caution against any involvement with him or his ideas.
I have never encountered a supposed refutation of Velikovsky that has not been answered. That includes the 1974 AAAS, Carl Sagan led farce. Ad hominem attacks make it easy to avoid dealing with the issues raised.
Why would academia want to avoid dealing with these issues?

Humans recently experienced near extinction caused by celestial events over which they had no control. Humankind is presently in a state of a collective amnesia, and much of human endeavor today is geared to recreating those traumatic events in attempts to remember the catastrophic past. The difference is that we are no longer subject to the destruction caused by the planetary gods, but are now doing it to ourselves. Now the destruction from the sky comes in the form of a wide assortment of weapons, many of which have a star painted on them.

Velikovsky by his own admission, could not treat his amnesia patient in the proper way. Which is to bring the patient along slowly, subtly directing them to the realization and acceptance of the traumatic evemts that caused the amnesia. Instead he told the patient directly what was that original trauma. He expected a hostile reaction, and he got it, but of course, there was no other way.

Demosophist
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Re: New Member

Unread post by Demosophist » Sat Jul 16, 2022 12:14 am

jacmac wrote: Wed Jul 13, 2022 8:29 pm Using this as an example:
This mass media effect (electrical since the mid-19th century) based on what McLuhan calls the "resonant interval," is now in the throes of a transition to a *distributive electrical medium* which re-establishes memory within the sensorium. Thus, the current socio-cultural upheavals we are experiencing have their roots in this transition such that the one-way influencing through the resonant interval of the imagination of a subject, used to suppress memory since at least the mid 19th century and probably since the Gutenberg revolution in the 15th, is giving way to a many-to-many paradigmatic shift in perception (called distributive or distributative) that rehabilitates memory as part of the human sense-MAKING arsenal. (Sense-making as apposed to sense-matching, in the words of Barry Nevitt.)
I may be in complete agreement with you, or not. I don't know.
Because, I can not follow the language, therefore the concepts, therefore ...I DON'T UNDERSTAND what you are saying.
I have a small memory of McLuhan, and "The medium is the message"; but that's about it.
Others here have their own opinions, but I need more basic language and a lot less academic terms to even get close
to understanding what you (and McLuhan) are talking about.
Jack
Thanks for the response. I'm currently learning the nomenclature of EU. I have a General HAM license, so had to learn something of electricity, but if I don't use it I tend to forget it quickly. In one ear and out the other.

McLuhan's basic idea is that human technologies are extensions of the human body and its senses, and he means this quite literally. By body, he means limbs, feet, hands, fingers, toes, skin, teeth, hair, organs, brain, and skeletal, central nervous, and circulatory systems.

The exterior senses are Visual, Auditory, Gustatory (taste), and Osmic (smell). Some might include proprioception which is physical orientation. He doesn't include tactility but associates tactility with all of the senses through something called the "resonant interval" which is mediated by the "golden ratio" represented by the Greek letter phi (Φ): "The lesser is to the greater as the greater is to the whole." This manifests as what's called a Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.. This is also involved in what he calls the "interplay of all of the senses" which is another name for tactility.

The terms for the four interior senses come from medieval philosophy which were derived from the Greek philosophers: Memory, Imagination, Cogitative Reason, and Sensus Communis. Memory and Imagination speak for themselves, but both are associated with "phantasm." There's a whole science of memory and imagination that evolved from ancient times. The other two primary interior senses are Cogitative Reason and Sensus Communis. Cogitative Reason is a human refinement of Estimative Reason in animals, so you can watch a cat stalking a mouse and it's using estimative reason. Sensus Communis is the sense that's most obscure, but he equates it with tactility and the resonant interval, so it's the sense that binds all of the others as both source and destination. All the senses emerge from it, and return to it.

His theory holds that the electrical era began in the 19th century and had its public effect in mid-century with the advent of the telegraph. This was the first time in history that humans had instantaneous communication over long distances, and this changed the nature of human perception and thus human mentality radically, mainly through its influence on the interior senses. In general he holds that electrical one-way mass communication enhances imagination. The first mass communication technology was the printing press, which was mechanical and begins in the mid-15th century. With mass electrical communication imagination was further enhanced.

Each of the electrical mass media had different effects by creating different mixes or ratios of the senses, and the main three periods were telegraph, radio, and TV. The telegraph introduced "universal dread." He also felt that our senses are "out of balance" and that's because mass communication created a preference for one of the legs of the Classical Trivium over the others: Dialectic (left brain) over Rhetoric (right brain) and Grammar (corpus callosum). Essentially it became unbalanced because the mediator, Grammar, was excluded and diminished to "sentence structure". Grammar is actually more like the overarching law of relations that governs everything. It's best to read about his insights into the effects of mass communication by reading his most famous book:
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
.

But it's important to note that humanity took a giant leap with the advent of electrical communication, and with wireless we leapt the equivalent of several thousand years in about a decade. Things have been speeding up ever since.

jacmac
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Re: New Member

Unread post by jacmac » Sat Jul 16, 2022 5:42 pm

nick
I would recommend following up Worlds In Collision (1950) with Earth In Upheaval (1955). If WiC is the heads, then EIU is the tails. It is still a very impressive book that is meant to complement WIC by presenting the evidence of geology, archaeology, paleontology, etc. It is the story of WIC told through an analysis of bones and stones...no mythology. The two books tell the same story from differing perspectives.
After reading Worlds in Collision many years ago I recently got around to reading Earth in Upheaval.
I thought it was (is) stunning. Perhaps E. Velikovsky's ideas might have had a better reception
if he had published Earth in Upheaval first.

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nick c
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Re: New Member

Unread post by nick c » Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:41 am

jacmac wrote:After reading Worlds in Collision many years ago I recently got around to reading Earth in Upheaval.
I thought it was (is) stunning. Perhaps E. Velikovsky's ideas might have had a better reception
if he had published Earth in Upheaval first.
There is some truth in that. Earth In Upheaval is, for many people, the more impressive work,
To me, Worlds In Collision and Earth In Upheaval tell the same story from two entirely different perspectives. There is no overlap of evidence in the two books, however they come to similar conclusions. They verify each other.
But we must remember Velikovsky wrote WiC first and only started writing EiU after the hostile reception to WiC.

Open Mind
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Re: New Member

Unread post by Open Mind » Thu Feb 16, 2023 3:34 pm

nick c wrote: "I would recommend following up Worlds In Collision (1950) with Earth In Upheaval (1955). If WiC is the heads, then EIU is the tails. It is still a very impressive book that is meant to complement WIC by presenting the evidence of geology, archaeology, paleontology, etc. It is the story of WIC told through an analysis of bones and stones...no mythology. The two books tell the same story from differing perspectives."

I read WIC and have Earth in Upheaval as a priority read next, but I imagine its the superficial evaluation of all those subjects, as over the past 70 years and largely 20 years, there's been huge advances, extremely popularized by the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. While the many proxies substantiating an impact do provide a convincing argument, the alternatives to that cause are invisible to the majority, who are limited to concepts outside the EU and Velikovsky perspective.

So I wanted to add this point made by a leading researcher for the Comet Research Group, Malcolm Lecompte, made on a popular pod cast debate between Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson, Michael Shermer, Mark Defant, and Malcolm LeCompte, (Joe Rogan #961).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFlAFo78xoQ&t=10349s

Malcolm comes on at the end at 2:51:51, (which the above youtube is cued up to), and discusses his updated findings subsequent to the Clube, Napier study and adds some clarification and resolution to the specifics of the discussions with regard to what IS and ISn't absolutely confirmed or debunked on the comet impact theory. He's comfortable stipulating that what is found ...

“Appears to be extra-terrestrial in nature”

but later on, (at 3:05:12 – 3:05:50), he clarifies that comets are in question, and might actually be asteroids, or some form of rubble pile. He further goes on to clarify in regards to the high temperature proxies the following:

“An impact would do it, (produce Trinitite), or a fulgurite could do it. A fulgurite is what’s produced by a lightning strike and could produce spherules, it could produce all the high temperature products that you’d see in an impact, but in a very limited way. You wouldn’t expect to see it in a layer unless there was some sort of global lightning storm.”

Its right there from the lips of a current researcher into the matter, but by virtue of the absence of any recognizable event in human history, its dismissed as the least likely possibility, and succumbs to O'ccam's Razor with out challenge. This is where Velikovsky's perspective should be introduced into the range of possibilities, (with an allowance for the possibility of a misinterpretation of dating) , because our leading researchers into the corroborating evidence of 'something' that has clearly happened at the transition between Pleistocene and Holocene can only really be substantiated as some kind of 'high heat event'. The rest is limited speculation without the full range of possibilities on the table.

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nick c
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Re: New Member

Unread post by nick c » Thu Feb 16, 2023 4:36 pm

Hi Open Mind,

Earth In Upheaval (1955) is must reading for anyone interested in catastrophism.

The only major topic that is not covered in the book is Plate Tectonics, but that really has no effect upon the validity of the book. Charles Ginenthal has written on that subject, showing that Plate Tectonics is better explained as a remnant of the recently tortured Earth, rather than in uniformitarian terms.

There is a very interesting Supplement at the end of the book, which is Velikovsky's 1953 address to the Graduate College of Princeton, University.
Also, in the book is Velikovsky's alternative theory (to Darwinism) of Cataclysmic Evolution. I suspect that Stephen J Gould had read that section of Earth In Upheaval before he penned his evolutionary theory of "Punctuated Equilibrium."

There is really nothing in Earth In Upheaval that is out of date, especially when one considers that intreptations of data in studies, whether recent or older, are done within a uniformitarian context. So to me, as a catastrophist, it is the interpretations of the new studies and theories that are out of date. The data stands as it is, and the interpretation of the data are done within the context of the researcher's paradigm.
As Velikovsky states in the introduction, that Earth In Upheaval is the story of recent cosmic catastrophes told by bones and stones. There is no myth or ancient textual interpretations, but is the hard physical evidence for the story told in Worlds In Collision.

The book has stood the test of time.

Open Mind
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Re: New Member

Unread post by Open Mind » Thu Feb 16, 2023 9:03 pm

nick c: "There is really nothing in Earth In Upheaval that is out of date, especially when one considers that intreptations of data in studies, whether recent or older, are done within a uniformitarian context. So to me, as a catastrophist, it is the interpretations of the new studies and theories that are out of date. The data stands as it is, and the interpretation of the data are done within the context of the researcher's paradigm."

I"m on board with the catastrophist perspective so I wouldn't doubt his conclusions, if he's pulling from the same work that has become popularized with Randall Carlson and the YDIH. I'm just making the presumption that we have narrowed down the dating and likely removed some questions with the corroborating additional proxie studies that have been uncovered over the ensuing 70 years since publication of EIU.

Carbon dating was only invented a decade before his work, and I've read that it was fraught with inconsistency in its infancy, so I've wondered how such amazing catastrophes could have happened during his 1450 bc dating, when the largest anomalous findings are in the black mat layers of the YD, found around the world? I believe he goes into detail about the megafauna die offs, and we are fairly certain there's no findings of those animal remains above the black mat layer, so I'm making an assumption we might need to consider simply shifting his theory back to that dated time, (that is unless we're prepared to dramatically underestimate the validity of our present carbon dating process - I have tried to find information here on the possibility of 'plasma events' dramatically changing the state of carbon 14 decay rates, but that's quite a discrepancy).

What I'm saying is drawing a conclusion about how all his mythological comparative analysis must be incorrect for the dating specifically, which I"m not comfortable with, but how else do we sort out the issues with the intersection between the modern YDIH data and proxie info, and his mythological dating? Somethings gotta give I'm assuming. I suppose if what I"m saying is based on totaly wrong assumptions of the info in EIU, then I guess I should just read the book to sort this out, but are my assumptions wrong?

jacmac
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Re: New Member

Unread post by jacmac » Fri Feb 17, 2023 3:15 pm

As Velikovsky states in the introduction, that Earth In Upheaval is the story of recent cosmic catastrophes told by bones and stones. There is no myth or ancient textual interpretations, but is the hard physical evidence for the story told in Worlds In Collision.
This comment from Nick is quite literal.
Velikovsky has written a completely different book about findings in the ground.

Copernicus is held in high standing in astronomy because he said the Earth goes around the sun.
ALL his other beliefs in astronomy were wrong. Yet he is the "Father" of modern astronomy.

Velikovsky, in my mind, stands as a giant in the new understanding of the history of the earth.
Whether or not every detail he describes turns out to be true, he has given us a completely new, non Uniformitarian,
view of the relatively recent history of the earth and it's people.

Don't put off reading Earth in Upheaval, like I did, for years.
The evidence in the ground is very compelling.

Jack

Ps. IN the Catalina mountains where I live in Tucson, AZ, there are sea shells found at 8,000 feet.

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