Immanuel Velikovsky - Earth in Upheaval

New, unchanged edition (2009).
The supplement to the original edition, an address by Immanuel Velikovsky delivered before the Graduate College Forum of Princeton University, titled Worlds in Collision in the Light of Recent Finds in Archaeology, Geology, and Astronomy, is omitted here. It will be published elsewhere within the new edition of Immanuel Velikovskys works.
Notes by the publisher are marked by { }.

Original edition (1955) by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York

Copyright by Shulamit V. Kogan and

Ruth V. Sharon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner, except by reviewers who may quote brief passages to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.

ISBN: 978-1-906833-12-1 (printed edition)
978-1-906833-72-5 (ebook edition)

Working on Earth in Upheaval I have incurred a debt of gratitude to several scientists.

Professor Walter S. Adams, for many years director of Mount Wilson Observatory, gave me all the information and instruction for which I asked concerning the atmospheres of the planets, a field in which he is the outstanding authority. On my visit to the solar observatory in Pasadena, California, and in our correspondence he has shown a fine spirit of scientific cooperation.

The late Dr. Albert Einstein, during the last eighteen months of his life (November 1953 April 1955), gave me much of his time and thought. He read several of my manuscripts and supplied them with marginal notes. Of Earth in Upheaval he read chapters VIII through XII; he made handwritten comments on this and other manuscripts and spent not a few long afternoons and evenings, often till midnight, discussing and debating with me the implications of my theories. In the last weeks of his life he reread Worlds in Collision and read also three files of memoirs on that book and its reception, and expressed his thoughts in writing. We started at opposite points; the area of disagreement, as reflected in our correspondence, grew ever smaller, and though at his death (our last meeting was nine days before his passing) there remained clearly defined points of disagreement, his stand then demonstrated the evolution of his opinion in the space of eighteen months.

Professor Waldo S. Glock, Chairman of the Department of Geology at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, a recognized authority in dendrochronology (dating of tree rings), with the help of his graduate students searched the literature pertaining to the tree rings of early ages, and also gave me answers to questions in his field.

Dr. H. Manley of the Imperial College, London, Professor P. L. Mercanton of the University of Lausanne, and Professor E. Thellier of the Observatoire Gophysique of the University of Paris, gave me freely of their knowledge in the field of geomagnetism and sent me reprints of their works.

Professor Lloyd Motz of the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University, New York, never tired of testing mathematically and of commenting on various problems in electromagnetism and in celestial mechanics which I offered for discussion.

Dr. T. E. Nikulins, geologist in Caracas, Venezuela, repeatedly drew my attention to various publications in the scientific press that might be of help to me; he supplied me with the source dealing with the discovery of the stone and bronze ages in northeastern Siberia.

Professor George McCready Price, geologist in California, read an early draft of various chapters of this work. Between this octogenarian, author of several books on geology written from the fundamentalist point of view, and myself, there are some points of agreement and as many of disagreement. The main one among the latter is that while Price is opposed to the very theory of evolution and is supported in his disbelief by the fact that since the scientific age no new animal species have been observed to emerge, I offer in the concluding chapters of this book (Extinction and Cataclysmic Evolution) a radical solution of the problem.

With Professor Richardson of the Illinois Institute of Technology I spent several days discussing a few problems in physics and geophysics.

With no one do I share the responsibility for my work; to everyone who gave me a helpful hand while the atmosphere in academic circles was generally charged with animosity, I express here my gratitude.

To my daughters,
Shulamit and Ruth

When a book is republished after half a century at first you certainly think of antiquarian, maybe literary, or perhaps historical interest. With the books of Immanuel Velikovsky it is a different case. Their topicality and explosiveness has rather increased since their first publication in disciplines diverse as geology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology, astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, classical studies, Egyptology, theology, psychology and also in theory of science. Because in all these disciplines the first publication of his books provoked controversies unprecedented in the history of science since Galileo. At the same time recent findings mainly in earth and planetary sciences have confirmed his results and conclusions in a really impressive manner.

There are only a few books which like the present one preserve their topicality even after half a century without any changes in its text. We consider it all the more important to let the works of Immanuel Velikovsky speak for themselves and to republish them without any omissions or additions. In this way the original work with its revolutionizing contents and its unique style will be made available to the interested readers scientists and laymen alike and so hopefully the unbiased interdisciplinary scientific discussion about Velikovskys theories will be supported after being long overdue.

Science should increase our knowledge. In the first place this includes the open and serious discussion of facts and theories, their study, research and if necessary the adjustment of the methods and paradigms to the facts, not vice versa. In this respect the study of Velikovskys works, and above all the history of their acceptance in academic circles, can teach us a lot about our understanding of science and from a psychological point of view about our understanding of ourselves.

Summing up, we are convinced that the republication of the complete works of Immanuel Velikovsky can give fundamental impulses for numerous, very diverse fields of knowledge, for science in general as well as for the view of the world of our society and at the same time lead to a proper appreciation of the lifes work of a man who, searching for knowledge and enlightenment, was personally as well as professionally confronted with the most devastating reactions.

Paradigma Ltd.

Over twenty years have passed since this work first saw the ink of print and the light of a bookstore display. In these intervening years the clock of unraveling science ticked ever more swiftly, and mans penetration into the mysteries of space had the aura of revelation.