I’ll take your exclamations with a grain of salt 
. I’m also not going to bother following your links. You can make your points right here. I’ve got what 25 opponents now to one? I certainly don’t need to add links to the pile .
As soon as I hit opponent 30, I will start to ignore all posters who are disrespectful. Then I’ll only have to deal with 5 to one
Thank you
Well first of all that does not constitute a theory. That is merely an observation. Second it does not seem to be an accurate observation. In searching the web and finding many, what appear to be authoritative (observatories, universities, etc.), sources for information about historical calendars I find no reference that gives these same figures for the calendars you list. The sources all indicate that these calendars all included from their inception some allowance for leap days since the calendars were not accurate. I the brief search I found years ranging anywhere from 355 to 378 days in length for the calendars you mention.
You also did not mention what year it was when all of these calendars were supposedly in use with a 360 day year. They would all have to have been developed at about the same time for the premise to have any validity at all.
So unless you can give some third party verification of these calendars you reference I think this one is pretty much dead in the water. No source I can find agrees that the calendars you list all ever had 360 days or even the same number of days at any point in history.
tracer:
It was a pretty vivd analogy. I did not say “Theory” – I think that theory works better here than hypothesis – since science can be pretty personal. People have a lot invested in their theories, and when you attack the theory you are attacking the person advancing it in some way.
I know somebody who is developing his own GUT based on some metaphysical symmetry arguments. He has talked to Kip Thorne and presented a paper at the APS with underwhelming response. As I point out to him, unless he comes up with a prediction where his theory models reality better than quantum mechanics, no one cares. QD works just fine, thank you.
Velikovsky does not explain anything physics-wise. He might have made predictions that turned out to be true, but it is difficult to see how they are consequences of his ideas. (Could someone else, given the basic assumptions and data come up with the same predictions?) His basic claim to fame is to make physics and astronomy reconcile to his intrepetation of old myths. Something modern physics and astronomy really aren’t trying to do.
The classic example of semi-fringe science was when cold fusion was announced as discovered. The mainstream derided the researchers before any confirmations were even attempted. Why? Because they were nuclear chemists, not chemical physicists. That shows how tight the leash on science can be. Of course confirmation attempts failed, but was that so certain, just based on credentials alone, with no inspection of the experiment?
Kimstu wrote:
Um, I didn’t write this, tomndebb did.
Not that I mind the comparison. tomndebb is a pretty smart cookie.
um Sam, that was the main problem.
Pons and Fleischmann announced their “cold fusion” at a press conference. If they had submitted their work to a peer-reviewed journal, the problems would have been found before publication or publicity. They were ignorant of the possible chemical causes for the energy release they measured; a peer review would have saved them the public embarrassment.
The responses from “mainstream science” as I recall it were mostly to point out that the claims were unproven. Later, after the Government started pinning hopes on the “process” it became more difficult for mainstreamers to be heard without being called obstructionist. This made the folks still trying to be heard get more strident. Unfortunate that people feel that Pons and Fleischmann were railroaded…
’nother, here’s a very important point.
You said, in passing:
This is simply not the case. Science does not truck with TRUTH. Science deals with observation and evidence, not truth. Truth is for philosophers and theologians.
See, the problem arises when people come up with ideas that they wish to be TRUE, and then try to justify those ideas. I probably shouldn’t bring it up, but a great example is Christian creationism. The Book says God did everything–that’s the TRUTH people believe in. They can then proceed to find justifications and resolutions for their truth, however tortured, unscientific, or illogical they may get. If I read a book on Creationism I found in a Stonehenge giftshop (just as an example out of the blue),it may resonate with me, and I may very much want it to be TRUE. But if it is not supported by the evidence–if it is in fact contradicted by the evidence–I must either abandon the ideas therein, or accept that those ideas are unsupported by the evidence and that my faith in them is exactly that–faith.
Velikovsky came up with some ideas that he wanted to be the TRUTH. Some of his ideas have been borne out by the evidence, most have not. I suggest that to hold the latter as TRUTH in the face of contradictory evidence is to operate on faith.
So then, either you can accept that many of V’s ideas must be accepted on faith alone, without supporting evidence, or you continue to believe that there is no contradictory evidence, despite the many people offering it. What’s your flavor?
(And would you mind easing off on the smilies a touch? Thanks.)
Dr. F:
I’m not entirely certain of this. I think this is another example of wanting things to be true. Based on the research that was done immediately after their announcement (I’ll dig up the Nature article), there is some evidence that suggests F and P knew they had a pig in a poke, but that they so wanted their findings to be TRUE that they were willing to deliberately deceive the teams investigating their work.
Not my field of expertise. Read Kimstu’s posts at Why do circles have 360 degrees?. He certainly convinced me.
Jumping on what I said above and what andros said:
Velikovskiism is Last Tuesdayism. If there are no discernable lingering effects of planetary billiards and the current science explains things the way they are now. than Velikovsky is simply irrelevant.
Until that time when we find that electrical forces affect planetary bodies – which is highly unlikely – than we do not need Velikovsky to explain the way the world works.
To science, what happened in the past is relevant only as far as it reveals to us what is occuring now.
You may feel better because you believe that Velikvsky or the Last Tuesdayists are correct, but it does not matter to science since it has no effect on the way things work now
Most recently, that was me, but I’m hardly alone.
Hancock’s a loon. Why on earth would I or anyone else care about gaining credibility among his believers? Besides, if that were to happen, I’d have serious doubts about the legitimacy of my statements.
That’s staggeringly smug, coming from someone who’s so staggeringly wrong.
When can we start using the T word?
I’m sure she would be.
I disagree. Just because they all ingested a sugar pill, does not mean that is what caused the third ear to grow. That is faulty logic.
My own people? Why do you insist on that? It is terribly annoying. We might all be arguing against you. But we are certainly not a group collective. Try again.
Perhaps not difficult to argue with. But you would not be able to win. (only in a rare case) Sorry, I have never seen ANYONE ever WIN against a creationist. You might think you have scored. But you only win if they see the truth and realize that they were wrong. Sorry.
[quote]
No offense but you wouldn’t be enough of a challenge for me to bother with. Again, no offense. But if you find creationists a challenge, there’s no point getting into a disagreement with me.
[quote]
Yes, there does seem to be a resemblence.
What I wonder is; If reading as much of the debunking of V’s work does not have you convinced. What makes you think a few scientists on this board are going to convice you otherwise? Any time they mention some specific information on the mechanics of something, you just wave your hand (so to speak) and say something along the lines of “I don’t understand the mechanics part of it” (me inserting a few words) and start on another topic of the argument with lots of smiley faces.
And just to note something, The topic of the argument is technically “is mainstream science out to get fringe science”, NOT “Is V. right and science wrong”. Granted, the debate has leaned towards that, but that does not mean that I have to add info on that specifically. I have added one link already, One you (apparently) didn’t even read. I have added my thought, my time and my insight to this debate, as have other people, and I have just as much a right as you to be in this debate. I am done other than defending myself now. It (to me) is aparent that you will not be convinced by anything said on this topic.
Threatened? More like amused. Velkovsky was a crackpot. Crackpots can be amusing when they’re not discrediting legitimate science and making it more difficult for true scientists to make their discoveries known.
Where did I say they were all identical? Prove THAT.
Anyway, I want you to read this link to a 1999 report on the Hale-Bopp comet. (Remember that one?) Down near the bottom of the page, we find this:
The equatorial diameter of Venus is 12,104 km.
I submit that that is WAY too big to be a comet.
Y’all should read his other paper if you want to giggle uncontrollably: “360 Day Years - Fact or Fiction” His contention is that at one time, the Earth orbited the Sun at a greater velocity than it does now, which is why the ancients all had 360-day calendars. He tries to demonstrate this mathematically, but he forgot one thing: If you decrease the velocity of an orbiting object, you also decrease the diameter of its orbit. IOW, the Earth would now be closer to the Sun than it used to be.
Why did the Earth’s obital velocity decrease, you ask? It was a miracle from God! heavenly choir
What a coincidence, indeed. You twist the data to mean what you want it to, then suggest that I retract my accurate statements in the face of your errors. I already noted that the 360 day tun was a period-reckoning that was not considered a “year.” The Mayan year (and, as you have noted, they were very picky about their calendar) had 52 years of 365 days in a cycle. They also had a whole raft of other “reckoning periods” including a named day cycle that lasted only 260 days. Do you suggest that they (and they alone among the ancients) had an even shorter solar orbit at one time?
Note that we (who clearly have a 365 1/4 day calendar) can still use the Mayan calendar to establish the dates of many events. How have we been able to reconcile those dates so cleanly when they are using a different period than we are?
Sorry.
The Mayan year was one of 365 days (as you note in your reference to the five days of evil omen). When do you think they scheduled those days to occur if they wanted to reconcile the calendar with the solar orbit? If the year only contained 360 days and they added days into their reckoning, the year would quickly be misaligned with the sun.
The Hebrew calendar noted by Newton seems to miss the point that it has months of 29 days as well as days of 30 days. (It also reinforces my point that the people who were creating those calendars were not looking for perfect astonomical reckoning, but were using easily manipulated numbers that had “power” in numerological systems and had to be “adjusted” to match the actual calendar year.)
This last point is particularly relevant to the Babylonians. They recorded voluminous amounts of celestial data in order to manually count up repeating events. They never developed a mathematics (beyond arithmetic) to calculate events in advance. While they were (once they had collected their data) quite good at predicting recurring events, they did not use their calendars in those predictions, therefore, an error in any given year’s calendar was not significant as long as they held the appropriate religious ceremonies when it seemed fitting.
Plutarch makes a comment regarding the (potentially) legendary period of Romulus, therefore we should ignore the actual archaeology that has found references to 354 day years and to the practice of the priesthood to reconcile which months needed intercalary periods to stay in sequence with the sun?
O-Kay.
Your statement regarding the Egyptians is simply a restatement of what I had posted, so what is your point? The only difference is that I noted their shorter year was lunar based (the same point that you make regarding the Hebrew 30-day month calendar). To line up with the star Sirius on an annual basis, they have to have been calculating (knowingly or not) the solar orbit. (Unless you wish to suggest that Sirius moved in the sky independently of the rest of the stars while the Earth had a 360 day year, then settled itself into a fixed position when the Earth increased its orbit to 365 1/4 days?)
I went to your linked site and noted one bad argument and something else that I was about to bring up. Fortunately, your source has noted it, as well, without paying any attention to what it means.
The bad argument:
This straw man ignores the point that without chronometers of a certain accuracy, the ancients simply had no way to measure the fractional days of the solar and lunar periods until they had accumulated sufficient records to examine those fractions. In this scenario, 30-day lunar months are simply the best guess they can achieve when they begin their reckoning. Certainly, they can see that the 30-day period is not totally accurate, but they needed an extended period of examination to determine what fraction of a day their calculation is off–exactly what the Babylonians did.
The ignored fact (quotes are taken from http://www.greenheart.com/billh/360.html ):
Plutarch’s purported 360 day Roman calendar: 753 B.C.E.
Regarding Egypt:
Regarding China:
The Mayan calendar: probably around 250 C.E., but even if the earliest dates are used, no earlier than the third century B.C.E.
So, the Egyptian portion of Earth circled the sun in 365 1/4 days during the 8th century B.C.E. while Rome continued to circle the sun in only 360 at the same time. China was able to slow its orbit from 360 days to 365 1/4 in the 4th century, whereas the Mayans (if we wrongly accept the tun as a “year”) were still spinning around in only 360 days as late as 250 C.E.
I’m afraid that faced with your restating of my points as if they were new and the rather bizarre chronology required to link calendar changes to a change in solar orbit, I will refrain from retracting anything at this time.
tomndebb wrote:
Then, later, in the same message, tomndebb wrote:
Aha! That’s it! The year switched from 360 to 365.25 days in the 8th Century B.C.E… The Egyptians, being the most sophisticated civilization (as evidenced by the aliens that helped them build the pyramids), picked up on that 5.25-day change immediately. But China had to wait 4 centuries before they were able to accumulate enough data to see the 5.25-day difference, and the poor old Mayans were so in love with their old calendar that it took them until the 3rd century C.E. to finally abandon the old, formerly-correct 360 day year.
It all makes sense now. Velikovsky is a genius, and every archaeologist, geologist, astronomer, and physicist on the planet is out to get him because they’re jealous. :rolleyes:
tracer, your restatement would actually be plausible…
IF the Romans were not adopting their calendar just as the Egyptians were fixing theirs
and
IF the Mayans had not created their calendar almost 1,000 years after the Egyptians had already fixed theirs.
For the Mayans to have created a 360 day calendar based on the solar period, they would have had to have been using information that was almost a millennium old.
Okey-dokey.
I’m trying to recreate this post which got crashed by straight dopes 4:30 shutdown yesterday.
According to Velikovsky, the universe is electric. Planets can be charged. The Thunderbolts of Jupiter V. believed to be eyewitness accounts therefore, among other reasons found in his books, he thought the planet was charged. He predicted the noises in 1953 before the Graduate College Forum of Princeton University.
In 1950 “accepted theory” had it that the radio noises coming from the Sun were explained as the effect of heat. Being that Jupiter is a cold planet, no one at the time expected Radio noises from Jupiter whereas to V it was the center of an electromagnetic ssystem. To Astronomers of the day, Jupiter was inert.
Do you deny that their existence is SUPPORTIVE of his theory? Do you deny that this was directly against the theories of the day?
Not all of science is about discovering a new scientific law. Despite the flip flopping of some participants to this discussion, prediction was mentioned in “the scientific method” as "
He brought together eyewitness accounts from world history.
Near collisions of solar system bodies in an electric universe.
Prediction of Radio noises from Jupiter.
You can say parlour game all you want, but the prediction IS supportive of his theory and matches all 3 above despite any excuses you want to make. I know that annoys you and the 30 others against me, but that is the case and it’s also the case with hot Venus.
If the goal was to get rid of him, ignoring him would definitely have achieved far more. But mainstream science has learned it’s lesson and is now silencing Halton Arp by ignoring him. He can’t get published in the scientific press unless it’s stuff that agrees with establishment thinking, and if he goes to the outside press like Pons and Fleischmann did, he will be castigated as going outside peer review. This is a monopoly of a different kind.
It wasn’t the SPEED they reacted with that was the problem. It was the pseudoscientific INEPTNESS with which they did it that caused their problems.
Certainly in Velikovsky’s case.
What makes you say that?
Are you reading Sagan’s essay and quoting it? I’ve heard these words before
You are making a HUGE assumption but that’s ok.
Interesting. Perhaps. Perhaps not. But mainstream scientists would gain a lot of credibility if they would ADMIT their errors. I’m still waiting for someone to admit that Sagan’s “arguments” were pseudoscientific. The fact that no one will strains the credibility…
You’ve got to be kidding. They are not in the same league. It’s a lot easier to debunk them than Velikovsky. They haven’t made any predictions. They are selling like hot cakes based on alien-mania. Some of it is interesting reading, but nowhere near the same substance as V.
I met him. He’s a nice guy, very tall, and you’re right. But right there you can do a pretty good job debunking them. They didn’t even quote Schoch properly…
We agree for once. But to me they are not comparable to V.
I do believe these days you don’t even need that. Observations from opposite sides of the earth can probably establish the same thing using modern telescopes.
But I believe that within 100 light years away you have red shifted and blue shifted objects. Pretty much all extra galactic objects have redshifts and this is very much the basis for the Big Bang. The effect of gravity on the redshift, along with plenty of other ideas like tired light and others, can explain redshifts for extra galactic objects as an alternative to current theory. Just as a way to check itself, ideas that go AGAINST accepted theory like Arp’s should be published by peer review especially to guard against “falling in love” with a theory or potential bias and close-mindedness.
Arp proposes galaxy-quasar pairs that are supposedly far apart redshiftwise, yet show a particular pattern. He says these patterns are there wherever a quasar is. Very easy to test but NASA always crops out the ejection phenomena from their pictures and he isn’t allowed to present his case. If he’s wrong, then the galaxies won’t show up where he claims they should. This should be a pretty open and shut case.