It was 1950. The Cold War was freezing over, and Macmillan—a powerhouse in textbook publishing—was about to do something that almost ruined its reputation. They published a book that claimed the planet Venus was actually a comet spat out by Jupiter just a few thousand years ago.
This wasn't science fiction. It was Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky, and it started a literal riot in the academic world.
Velikovsky wasn't an astronomer. He was a psychoanalyst who looked at ancient myths and saw something nobody else did. He didn't see metaphors or "angry gods." He saw a chaotic solar system. He believed that when the Bible describes the sun standing still or plagues of fire, it wasn't just poetic license. He thought those events actually happened because planets were playing bumper cars in the sky.
People hated it. Actually, "hated" is too soft a word. Scientists organized a boycott of Macmillan. They were so furious that they forced the publisher to hand the book over to a competitor, Doubleday, just to get it off their "respectable" roster. Even today, if you bring up Velikovsky in an astrophysics department, you’re gonna get some very aggressive eye-rolls. But why?
The Core Madness of Worlds in Collision Velikovsky
Basically, Velikovsky's big swing was that the Earth's history hasn't been a long, slow crawl of uniform change. He was a "catastrophist."
He spent years digging through the records of the Egyptians, the Aztecs, the Chinese, and the Hebrews. He noticed a weird pattern. Every single one of these cultures, around the same time in history, had stories about the sky falling, the Earth's axis shifting, and massive celestial bodies nearly crashing into us.
He focused heavily on the Exodus story. You know the one—the plagues, the Red Sea parting, the pillar of fire. Velikovsky argued that this wasn't a miracle from a deity. Instead, he claimed a "proto-Venus" (a giant comet-like object) flew past Earth. The "blood" in the Nile? Red dust from the comet's tail. The parting of the sea? Gravitational pull. The manna from heaven? Hydrocarbons in the atmosphere falling to Earth as edible carbohydrates.
It sounds wild. It is wild.
He didn't stop at Venus. He claimed Mars got in on the action later, around 700 BCE, knocking Earth into a different orbit and changing our year from 360 days to the current 365.25. He cited ancient calendars from multiple continents that all seemed to switch their day-counts at the same time.
Why the Science World Went Nuclear
The backlash against Worlds in Collision Velikovsky is almost as famous as the book itself.
Harlow Shapley, a massive name in astronomy at the time, was the ringleader of the "anti-Velikovsky" movement. He hadn't even read the book before he started attacking it. To the scientific establishment, Velikovsky was a virus. If he was right, then the laws of physics—specifically gravity and inertia—were either wrong or missing a huge piece of the puzzle.
Carl Sagan eventually became the chief debunker. He spent a huge chunk of his career, including a famous 1974 AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) meeting, tearing Velikovsky’s math apart. Sagan’s point was simple: if Venus had actually wandered through the solar system like a pinball, the heat generated by the "near misses" would have melted the Earth's crust. We wouldn't be here to write books about it.
But here is the thing that really bugs the skeptics. Velikovsky actually got a few things right.
- Venus is hot. Back in 1950, everyone thought Venus was a lush, tropical world. Velikovsky said it would be "candescent" or boiling hot because it was a "new" planet. When Mariner 2 flew by in 1962, it confirmed Venus was a hellscape of 900 degrees.
- Radio noises from Jupiter. Velikovsky predicted Jupiter would emit radio waves. Scientists laughed. Then, in 1955, they discovered he was right.
- Magnetospheres. He argued that electromagnetism played a bigger role in the solar system than just gravity. At the time, this was heresy. Now, we know planetary magnetospheres are everywhere.
Does this mean his whole theory is true? Honestly, no. Most of his physics don't hold up under modern scrutiny. But he was asking questions about a "violent" universe at a time when everyone else thought the solar system had been a clockwork, peaceful mechanism for billions of years.
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The Problem With Mythology as Data
Velikovsky’s biggest flaw—and his biggest strength—was his reliance on the "collective memory" of humanity.
He treated the Iliad, the Old Testament, and the Popol Vuh like forensic reports. Scientists argue that you can't do that. Myths are slippery. One culture's "serpent in the sky" might be a meteor shower, while another's might be a totally different atmospheric phenomenon like an aurora or a mirage.
Yet, there is something deeply human about his work. He believed that the reason we are so self-destructive as a species is that we are suffering from "collective amnesia." He thought the trauma of seeing the world almost end was so great that we buried it in our subconscious, and we keep acting out that trauma through war. It’s a very Freud-meets-NASA vibe.
Where Does This Leave Us Today?
If you pick up a copy of Worlds in Collision Velikovsky today, you aren't reading a science textbook. You're reading a piece of intellectual history. It's a bridge between the old world of "comparative mythology" and the new world of space exploration.
The book is a reminder that the scientific community can be just as dogmatic as any religion. The way they treated Velikovsky—trying to suppress his work and threatening his publisher—is a dark stain on 20th-century academia. Even if he was 99% wrong, the 1% he got right pushed people to look at Venus and Jupiter with new eyes.
We now know the solar system was a violent place. We see the craters on the moon. We know about the Chicxulub asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. We know that "catastrophism" is a real part of Earth's history. Velikovsky was just wrong about the timeline. He thought these things happened 3,000 years ago; science says they happened millions of years ago.
Digging Deeper: How to Evaluate the Claims
If you're curious about diving into this rabbit hole, don't just take the "official" debunking at face value, but don't buy into the cult of Velikovsky either.
Examine the Ancient Calendars
Look into the transition from 360-day calendars to 365-day ones. It’s a weirdly consistent shift across the Egyptians, Persians, and Mayans. Velikovsky uses this as a "smoking gun." Standard archaeology usually attributes this to better math and observation over time, rather than a literal shift in the Earth's orbit. Which makes more sense to you?
Check the Venus Data
Venus is an anomaly. It rotates backward (retrograde) and incredibly slowly. Velikovsky fans say this is proof it’s a captured object or a "new" arrival. Modern astronomers say it's likely due to a massive collision billions of years ago or atmospheric tides.
Read the Critics Too
If you read Velikovsky, you have to read Carl Sagan’s "Analysis of Worlds in Collision." It’s a masterclass in how to dismantle a theory using thermodynamics and orbital mechanics. It’s important to see where the math actually breaks down.
The real value in studying Velikovsky isn't in finding "hidden truth" about Venus. It's about seeing how a single, radical idea can shake up the entire world. It’s about the tension between the stories we tell and the hard data we measure.
To understand the full scope of this controversy, you should look for original 1950s reviews in journals like Science or Harper's Magazine to see the raw emotion of the debate. Also, compare Velikovsky's "comet" descriptions with modern high-resolution photos of comets like 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. You'll find that while the scale is different, the "violent" nature of these objects is exactly what Velikovsky tried to warn everyone about seventy years ago.