Mankind in Amnesia

Rating:
Summary: Well Worth Reading
Review: I went to a lot of trouble to locate this book in another town's library. It was well worth the effort.

Velikovsky endured scathing abuse by the scientific community for his unconventional theories merging cosmology, geology, archeology and mythology. Despite his serious research to support his theories, he was proclaimed unqualified to discuss subjects outside his field of medicine.

Well, the ideas set forth in this book cannot be dismissed by similar claims. Velikovsky was, by training, a psychoanalyst trained by a student of Freud, eminently qualifying him to discuss the possibility that our species has repressed the memories of earth-shaking events too terrible and frightening to acknowledge.

It gives one a new perspective on the vicious denunciations of Velikovsky's unorthodox theories by mainstream scientists. Just why did the scientific community find Velikovsky and his ideas so threatening? Read this book and you may wonder if Velikovsky was really onto something.

Rating:
Summary: The Perils of Pauline
Review: Mankind in Amnesia, (Doubleday, New York, 1982) by Immanuel Velikovsky

Dr. Velikovsky gave us the controversial best seller "Worlds in Collision" (1950), and sequels on the same theme including "Ages in Chaos" (1952) and "Earth in upheaval" (1955). "Mankind in Amnesia" is the first of several to be published posthumously and it develops the thesis addressed in his other books, namely the catastrophic history of our planet-so traumatic that the human race has rejected it from memory and refuses to face evidence of it. He postulates near collisions between Earth and Venus and other bodies.

Velikovsky, a Russian-born Jewish psychiatrist, uses his theory to justify a literal reading of the Exodus. The miraculous events (the parting of the Red Sea, manna from Heaven, etc.) he ascribes to natural causes.

He was quite a salesman. Although his formal education, gained throughout Europe, was in medicine, obviously his great interest was astronomy, cosmology, geology and the architectonics of the universe. And his writing has had an impact on those who pursue knowledge in those areas. The late Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, said of the book, "...an extraordinarily important book, beautifully researched and devastatingly true." Or, so he is quoted on the dust jacket. The late Carl Sagan, on the other hand, calls his approach "shoddy, ignorant and doctrinaire," and strongly implies that his scientific understanding is sadly lacking (Broca's Brain, Random House, N.Y., 1974.)

So, Velikovsky's theories, to put it mildly, are not universally embraced by his peers. Nevertheless, this is a good book. He has a good vocabulary and he uses it enchantingly and persuasively to sell his great idea. It is a book for the literate person who relishes new ideas and fresh approaches to old ones.

Joseph Pierre,
Author of THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: Our Journey Through Eternity

Rating:
Summary: The Perils of Pauline
Review: Mankind in Amnesia, (Doubleday, New York, 1982) by Immanuel Velikovsky

Dr. Velikovsky gave us the controversial best seller "Worlds in Collision" (1950), and sequels on the same theme including "Ages in Chaos" (1952) and "Earth in upheaval" (1955). "Mankind in Amnesia" is the first of several to be published posthumously and it develops the thesis addressed in his other books, namely the catastrophic history of our planet-so traumatic that the human race has rejected it from memory and refuses to face evidence of it. He postulates near collisions between Earth and Venus and other bodies.

Velikovsky, a Russian-born Jewish psychiatrist, uses his theory to justify a literal reading of the Exodus. The miraculous events (the parting of the Red Sea, manna from Heaven, etc.) he ascribes to natural causes.

He was quite a salesman. Although his formal education, gained throughout Europe, was in medicine, obviously his great interest was astronomy, cosmology, geology and the architectonics of the universe. And his writing has had an impact on those who pursue knowledge in those areas. The late Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, said of the book, "...an extraordinarily important book, beautifully researched and devastatingly true." Or, so he is quoted on the dust jacket. The late Carl Sagan, on the other hand, calls his approach "shoddy, ignorant and doctrinaire," and strongly implies that his scientific understanding is sadly lacking (Broca's Brain, Random House, N.Y., 1974.)

So, Velikovsky's theories, to put it mildly, are not universally embraced by his peers. Nevertheless, this is a good book. He has a good vocabulary and he uses it enchantingly and persuasively to sell his great idea. It is a book for the literate person who relishes new ideas and fresh approaches to old ones.

Joseph Pierre,
Author of THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: Our Journey Through Eternity