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Thanks Jeff, for bringing this brief video to a wider audience. Back in the
mists when my work just beginning to have a global following, I happened
on the work of Velikovsky and I was both humbled and amazed.
I wrote to a prominent, and popular, magazine of the time who specialized in the promotion of science and things scientific; asking them to commission illustrations, that would both amplify and expand on what Velikovsky’s books contained.
The response I got was brief and nasty
– it seemed that to them Velikovsky’s work was not only heresy but totally and completely wrong. By implication the publisher noted that none of what Velikovsky had written could ever be proven, hence ‘their reputation in the field would never permit them to even consider underwriting such a wildly fantastic series of ideas – or paying to print illustrations of such scientific heresy.’
I was stunned because I thought science was about investigations that did not begin with a bias, but with a strong desire to seek-to-know-more about whatever the answers to any given study might uncover.
But I was also half the age I am now, and far more naïve about real power struggles inside the various professional circles, especially when they might fund could affect the financing of the “culture.”
 Upon further reflection, on a later project, I realized just how much art and science share in the cultural growth and expansion of the human race. Both disciplines are about knowledge and pushing the bounds of
human understanding: They often approach their topics
differently—but their goals remain the same. Science builds on a series of proofs that need
to be established as the scientist moves toward his or her discovery. Artists on the other hand
often are capable of great leaps that have little
basis in pre-existing facts—as their work tends
to involve more of an instinctual intuition surrounding their ‘knowledge’ than is
comfortable for many scientists. Yet both
disciplines have far more in common that
they do in opposition. And when Art &
Science work together as they often did
during the Italian- Renaissance, the results
for the culture can bring tremendous benefits that exceed the local political and social norms,
of any society in which they are able to work together.
Had I been able to pursue the idea of illustrating Velikovsky then, my world would have
been much different than it is – but what science might have began to look more closely
for, much earlier, might have made a real difference for us all. The lasting values
Velikovsky outlined for us might yet bring us all a deeper and richer appreciation
for what life on this planet was: and by extension – what it still could be: IF and only
if we can ever get past all the superstitious beliefs that tend to surround anything that
cannot be immediately seen or touched with an open hand—then real breakthroughs are
possible.
Knowledge – Real Knowledge – Is the key
to the kind of freedom that the human race
has always searched for. Primitive nomads
began by using the heavens to understand
the movement of the stars, in such a way, as to be able to navigate the deserts and the
oceans: These barriers had formed the boundaries
that restrained the earliest peoples on the planet. But as that knowledge was expanded, into
Astrolabes (2) and Compasses the entire world
opened to those with the courage to explore it.
In a similar fashion if mankind today understood
the forces that changed our early world so
dramatically (as Velikovsky describes it in:
“Worlds in Collision”) – then the leaders of many
countries might now wish to rethink a great many
of these folly’s being offered to us by the New
World Order!
The number of times that the poles have shifted,
or the fact that underneath the arctic tundra lies
the fossilized remains of tropical rainforests – not to mention the caves around the
planet
that are filled with the mixed and shattered remains of ancient animals and human remains,
along with flora and fauna from widely disparate places - that were all destroyed at the
same time and carried to their final resting places by either tidal waves or horrific winds.
Most of these natural burial grounds have never been seriously examined. If we knew
more about the events that caused those things, then obviously we might be better
prepared to deal with events that have directly impacted the planet before. Instead of
looking for these answers, too often, science has retreated to the safety of a maxim that
claims that the universe is unchanging and is timeless in the stability of its laws.
Velikovsky has stood for decades as a crier in the wilderness-of-ignorance: maybe now
his time has come!
This world needs far more answers than we have at the moment, and we need to
rediscover that spirit that is not afraid to ask the tough physical questions and to
“go where no man has gone before” – if we are to ever have a real sense of this
world that we continue to destroy.
Jim Kirwan
NOTES:
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