Science historians - can you help me understand the events around Velikovsky's claim that Venus is 3500 years old?

by prairie_girl

My husband is reading "God is Red" by Vine Deloria Jr., and approaching me today with the story of Velikovsky, the 1950s psychiatrist who made a variety of claims about the history of our solar system. The most notable is probably that Venus was expelled from Jupiter's red spot 3500 years ago.

I know this might sound like a scientific question, but I'm actually more interested in the events around his claims, such as -

  1. What was the immediate reaction to his publication of "Worlds in Collision?" Did anyone immediately support his claims?

  2. What does the archaeological and historical (especially in religious texts) record indicate about events 3500 years ago? What are the global disasters he is referencing and what do we believe caused them?

  3. What events have led to the modern recurrence of his theories and increasing acceptance of them?

Thanks very much for your help - my husband was super excited reading all of this (for reasons unknown to me) and I'm trying to learn more about the story.

Flubb
  1. It hit the non-fiction best seller lists worldwide in 1950. Lots of public intellectuals, not understanding the science (or history) behind it, then started clamouring for scientists to start taking Velikovsky seriously. This they didn't do until the 1960s when undergraduates and intellectuals started flying V's flag in academic circles, and that merited a response.
  2. I haven't read World's in Collision for about 15 years so I'll have to leave that for somebody else - Wikipedia has a precis of the book, and it also has some context for it. His Ages in Chaos is his rewrite of the history of the ANE and wiki again will provide a breakdown of it.
  3. He's been bubbling under the surface the whole time I think. David Rohl (A Test of Time) iirc was connected to Velikovskovian(?) elements as is Peter James (Centuries of Darkness) - both who have written books in the last 20 years which follow V's alternative chronology. If I'm reading Gordin correctly, the 2012 Mayan prophecies are all linked in some way back to him through Randolph Weldon's Domesday 2012 published in 2003.|

If you want a good book on it, Michael Gordin's The Pseudoscience Wars has a good breakdown and has a host of footnotes to other books and bibliographies on the subject.