IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY'S THEORY AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS

Velikovsky is important to the history of science, but will he be important to science itself through his contribution to objective knowledge?  My paper will address the question by dealing with the following issues put forward by Velikovsky:

(1)  Does electromagnetism affect celestial motion for magnetic stars? Calculations based on prevailing theory say this is not possible, but many observations say otherwise.

(2)  Does electromagnetism affect the rotation curves of spiral galaxies?  One astrophysicist suggests it does.

(3)  Has our solar system been stable since its genesis billions of years ago?   New discoveries of other solar systems suggest profound instabilities, and some of the new theoretical concepts arising from recent discoveries either refer us back to Velikovsky or can be extrapolated from his work.

(4)  Was Mars always in the orbit it now follows, or was it (as Velikovsky suggests) once in an orbit closer to the Sun?  This question is fundamental to our understanding of solar system history.  There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Mars recently had an ocean, rivers and lakes, and their disappearance indicates a radically altered planetary environment.

To test the possibility of magnetism's  influence on celestial motion, I will outline an appropriate experiment. If that experiment will show an affect of magnetism on orbiting bodies, as Velikovsky suggested, then Velikovsky's contribution to science may be inestimable.