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Witch Hunts Putting to death the bearer of bad things is an activity usually associated with the more uninhibited Roman emperors or Eastern despots. Yet messenger-shooting can be just as common in scientific circles when the bad news concerns one of science’s sacred cows. (p. 87) What must be called the scientific establishment rose in arms, not only against the new Velikovsky the- ories but against the man himself. Efforts were made to block the dissemination of Dr. Velikovsky’s ideas and even to punish supporters of his investigations. Universities, scientific societies, publishing houses, and the popular press were approached and threatened; social pressures and professional sanc- tions were invoked to control public opinion. There can be little doubt that in a totalitarian society, not only would Dr. Velikovsky’s reputation have been at stake, but also his right to pursue his enquiry, and perhaps his personal safety. (p. 88) The Siwalik Hills north of Delhi...contain extraordinarily rich beds crammed with fossils...packed with the jumbled bones of scores of extinct species. Many of these creatures were remarkable, including a tortoise 20 ft. long and a species of elephant with tusks 14 ft. long and 3 ft. in circumference...Most of the species whose fossils are found today are extinct, including some thirty species of elephant of which only one has survived in India....These animals must have been killed by some singular event which took place on land. And whatever the nature of the event, it resulted not only in catastrophic extinction of many species but also the formation of beds of sediment thousands of feet thick. (p. 93) The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly existed on Earth must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be argued against my theory. (p. 109) Carl Linne The system of taxonomy or zoological classification which provides us with the concepts of “species,” “genus,” and “family,” and the classification of animals into “orders,” such as mammals and reptiles, is something that we take very much for granted today, to the extent that it has become absorbed in our everyday language. The system was devised some 200 years ago by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linne and has subsequently been adopted by the international scientific community. (p. 115) 39 66 And once the taxonomic categories of “species,” “genus,” “family,” and the like are admitted to be no more than convenient metaphors or contrivances, then we are left simply with a biological realm that consists of individuals —all of which are different. (p. 117) Nature is so complex...and so inconsistent that “no system of nomenclature and no hierarchy of system- atic categories is able to represent adequately the complicated set of interrelationships and divergences found in nature. (p. 116, quoting Ernst Mayer) 178 Appendix B: Book Abstracts Immanuel Velikovsky Carnage in India Charles Darwin Scientific Lingo Atlantis, Alien Visitation, and Genetic Manipulation