In response to a 15-point criticism of an essay by John Godowski
on the plausibility of _Worlds in Collision_, Ev Cochrane requests
clarification on four points (May 9), as follows:

1. Cochrane disputes my claim that Velikovsky was not original on
any major claim in _WiC_ and it goes without saying that what
constitutes "major" can be debatable.  When I first met V's
assistant Jan Sammer (now an editor for AEON) in 1978, we agreed
that V had precursors for all his major claims except for Venus
as an agent for catastrophe.  However, as Clube & Napier relate 
in _The Cosmic Winter_, pp. 123-5, J. G. Radlof posited such a role
for Venus in _Hesperus and Phaethon_ (1823) .

  Regarding Venus giving a cometary appearance, Cochrane is grasping
at straws as well as exhibiting a lack of discernment, for how can V
make a "most seminal claim" in this regard when he cites many
commentators to this effect in the sections "One of the Planets is
a Comet" and "The Comet Venus"?  Charles Raspil, in a source I 
cannot now locate, recently (mid-80's) noted that in the early
17th century certain Europeans mistook Venus for a comet due to an
atmospheric effect.  What's the big deal here?  Given the ease
with which our ancestors made connections between similar aspects
of phenomena, any comet, such as proto-Encke in Clube and Napier's
model, that presented a morning and evening apparition would 
unfailingly be associated with Venus which, like many ancient
deities, comprised a complex of images/roles.  Cochrane in his
rush to literalness betrays no empathy for either our ancestors'
relationship with the cosmos or their pagan religions [1,3,3a,4a,
5,6,7,12a,13].

2. Claiming familiarity with V. S. Tuman's work, Cochrane disputes
my saying that Tuman shows that Mesopotamian astronomical observations
date from late 3rd millennium.  Anyone familiar with Tuman's
revolutionary work knows he dated Mul-Apin Tablet I to 2048 BC [10].
My claim is not so much "remarkable" as "informed"; clueless versus
clued as it were.  Also, Peter Huber dated Year 1 of Amarsin astronomically
to 2094 BC [2].

  Regarding the alleged relevance of Ammisaduqa's Venus Tablets, anyone
who understands what Huber demonstrated in _Scientists Confront
V_ (1977) -- or who read my section "Ignotum per Ignotius" in 
AEON III:1, pp. 98-103, for meaning -- knows that no significance
can be given the supposed deviations in the observations, because
they are qualitatively identical to Babylonian observations of 
Venus in the late 1st millennium when, in V's scenario, Venus's orbit
had settled down.  Thus, Owen Gingerich was justified in 1974 when
he remarked at the AAAS session that Huber "demolished Velikovsky.
There was really no point in continuing after that" (Pensee VII, p. 33),
contrary to the wishful thinking of V partisans who, under the
tutelage of that "distinguished philosophy professor at SUNY -- Buffalo,"
never _got_ Huber's point.  Funny thing, Cochrane out-and-out
ignores the contents of a paper that appeared in his own serial
AEON, thus violating the canons of V'ian scholarship set forth in
Pensee and KRONOS and impressed upon me by my mentor Lew Greenberg,
now an AEON editor.

3. Cochrane disputes my description of Sumerian astronomical observing
practices.  All he would need to do before posting his ignorance on 
the Internet is read B. L. van der Waarden [12] or any of a number of
Tuman's papers [8,9,10,11] with which he claims to be familiar.
Cochrane's vain, egregious posturing on this point exposes the
vacuousness that permeates the Saturnists' mind-set in which
untutored dogma substitutes for wisdom and knowledge of what happens
in the sky and what the ancients knew about it is practically
non-existant, e.g., remarks by their members (esp. Cardona) to me
and in print indicate they do not know the Moon's crescent can
appear concave up as a boat, or that un-lunar crescent shapes found
on artifacts can be produced by annular solar eclipses, or that,
as Gerald Hawkins revealed in _Mindsteps to the Cosmos_ (1983)
with "The Legend of the Waning Princess" (pp. 133-147) from the
time of Ramses II, the ancient Egyptians tracked the lunar motion
assiduously (this last tidbit was also deleted from "Ignotum per
Ignotius" by Cochrane).

4. Cochrane indulges in self-serving rhetoric in defending Inanna/Venus
icons as comet symbols instead of reed bundles.  The _fact_ that
these symbols in context are usually shown in pairs is no
"conventional opinion," it is an observational fact (see KRONOS
III:2, p. 111, top).  As all Saturnists, Cochrane places undue
weight on his interpretation of ambiguous icons ignoring the
caveat in a footnote he deleted from "Ignotum per Ignotius,"
that "a picture is the artist's interpretation of the _symbolic
significance_ of the subject, not necessarily a 'realistic'
interpretation" and wastes no time being concerned with independent
corroboration of his invariably extravagant interpretation, as
J. Y. Lettvin counsels [4].  Anyone who, like the Saturnists, can
interpret Nabu-apla-iddina's "Sun-god tablet" that records his
restoration of the temple of Shamash at Sippar ca. 850 BC in terms
supporting the "polar configuration" can see anything they want to
see in an image (see, e.g., D. N. Talbott, _The Saturn Myth_, p. 102;
S. Langdon, _Semitic Mythology_, p. 151; or _Archaeoastronomy_ VII,
1984, p. 136, for a picture of this tablet).

  And, of course, the Saturnists absolutely refuse to constrain
their speculations with the laws of physics which, in any event,
they so far show no signs of understanding; witness the recent
postings by Cochrane, Talbott and Grubaugh defending the latter's
polar configuration model against Ben Dehner's numerical integration
that confirms the results of Dr. Victor Slabinski's invited critique
submitted to AEON in mid-February for AEON III:5, but now postponed
to AEON III:6 (due out in August).  Cochrane and crew are quite
disingenuous to engage Dehner as though Dr. Slabinski's refutation
did not exist, especially since some elements of his critique have
been circulated to AEON editors and others, including Grubaugh,
since July 1993.  In a Forum discussion in the British Velikovsky
organ in 1992, Cochrane maintained that myth is "our best guide
to the appearance and arrangement of the earliest remembered Solar
System, not some fancy computer's retrocalculations based upon
current understandings of astronomical principles" while three
pages later I offered in contrast "A lesson from the V controversy
is that while myth may _inform_ natural history, ... its capacity
to _reform_ physics is vanishingly small..."

  According to A. J. Foyt, "When the green flag drops, the bullshit
stops."  Despite Slabinski's dropping green flags last July, August,
November and February, Cochrane and his Saturnists persist in 
bullshitting us, whether through guile or denial.  After 14 years
immersion in the delusion (i.e., a false, persistent belief
maintained in spite of evidence to the contrary) of the Saturn myth,
Cochrane & crew stand "clueless in the mythosphere" either
unwilling or unable to acknowledge Slabinski's devastating analysis
and deal with it objectively.  They also obdurately resist crediting
Greenland (and Tibetan) ice cores whose multiple, correlated
seasonal signals all through the Holocene and before REFUTE the polar
configuration that purportedly provided a seasonless regime --
the Golden Age ruled by Kronos/Saturn.  The first section in Part 2
of my memoir cancelled by Cochrane (he told me he over-ruled the
staff vote), curiously enough, is "Litmus Tests in the Ice."
In the best of all possible worlds the foregoing would suffice
as a discreditation of a patently erroneous position.  However,
since such is not the case, odds are Cochrane shall be hoist by
his own petard once more unless he encounters an epiphany!

  In any legitimate scientific dispute, the data swamp prior
belief; but this is not the case in V'ian and neo-V'ian (i.e.,
"Saturnian") forums where hypothesis takes precedence over
evidence and so dogmatic acolytes like Cochrane (and almost
unbelievably he is not alone) "defend" V's youthful Venus (molten
only 3500 years ago) against the _overwhelming_ contrary evidence
provided by the Magellan images showing impact craters and surface
relief _totally_ incompatible with V's scenario.  Yes, as Cochrane
recently noted, I was once V's most active defender (1977-83);
but my intent was always to follow the science as I understood it --
and eventually my understanding (with the assistance of such 
people as Van Flandern, Slabinski, J. A. O'Keefe, Rawlins and
Warwick) outgrew the simplistic, hand-waving counterarguments
involved in V's defense.  As Ernest McClain recently pointed out
to me, there is no disgrace admitting error; it is the price one
pays for learning something new.  Even Lenny Bruce would have known
that any other posture would be "the antithesis of everything that
is right and proper intellectually."

  David Hume urged that one should always hold it more likely that
one had been deceived than that the laws of nature should stand
suspended -- especially, as with V and the Saturnists under Cochrane,
when competent alternatives to their interpretation exist, when
discordant evidence is either ignored or distorted, and when the
defenders in general are not competent in the relevant disciplines,
with the instant example being Mr. Grubaugh and his gravitational
polar configuration model in which he blithely assumed tangential
accelerations cancelled when any competent dynamicist such as 
Dr. Victor Slabinski and Dr. Ton Van Flandern can tell and did tell
that they do not cancel.  In this light the Saturnists look all
the world like Kingsley Amis' "Lucky Jim," conducting pseudo-
research shedding new light on a non-subject.  Would that Mr. 
Cochrane, for once, read a posting for meaning and respond in a
proper scholarly manner.

REFERENCES

1. E.A.S. Butterworth, _The Tree at the Navel of the Earth_
   (Berlin, 1970), in English.
2. P.J. Huber et al., "Astronomical dating of Babylon I and
   Ur III," _Occasional papers on the Near East_ I:4 (Malibu, 1982).
3. T. Jacobsen, _The Treasures of Darkness_ (New Haven, 1976).
3a. E.O. James, _The Worship of the Sky-God_ (London, 1963).
4. J. Y. Lettvin, "The Use of Myth: the tales of the Makers are the
   first language of science," _Technology Review_ (June 1976),
   52-57.
4a. E. Lyle, _Archaic Cosmos: Polarity, space & time_ (Edinburgh,
   1990).
5. E.G. McClain, _The Myth of Invariance_ (York Beach, 1976/1984).
6. E.G. McClain, "Musical Theory and Ancient Cosmology," _The World
   and I_ (Feb. 1994), 370-391.
7. S. Parpola, "The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of
   Jewish Monotheism & Greek Philosophy," _JNES_ 52:3, 1993, 161-208.
8. V.S. Tuman, "Astronomical Dating of the Nebuchadnezzar Kudurru
   Found in Nippur in February, 1986," in M.D. Ellis (ed.), _Nippur
   at the Centennial_ (Phila., 1992), 281-290.  For a copy of this
   paper, send a SASE to Leroy Ellenberger, 3929A Utah Street,
   St. Louis, MO 63116 or $1.00 in lieu of SASE for foreign mail.
9. V. S. Tuman, "An Attempt to Date Text 3 of Enuma Anu Enlil,
   Tablets 50-51 'Tentative date December 2, -1878,'" _Archiv for
   History of Exact Science_ 45:2, 1992, 95-103.
10. V.S. Tuman, "Dating Mul-Apin Tablet I 2048 BC and Mul-Apin Tablet
   II 1296 BC," in _Proceedings of Rancont Assyriologique Inter-
   nacionale, 1989_ (Paris, 1992).
11. V.S. Tuman and R. Hoffman, "Rediscovering the Past: Application
   of Computers to the Astronomical Dating of Kudurru SB22 of the
   Louvre Museum," Archaeoastronomy_ X (College Park, 1987-1988),
   125-138.
12. B. L. van der Waerden, _Science Awakening 2_ (New York, 1974),
   69-80.
12a. G.A. Wainwright, _The Sky-Religion in Egypt_ (Cambridge, 1938/
   Westport, 1971).
13. T.D. Worthen, _The Myth of Replacement: Stars, Gods and Order in 
   the Universe_ (Tucson, 1991).  This is an elaboration and
   extension of themes suggested in G. de Santillana & H. von
   Dechend, _Hamlet's Mill_ (Boston, 1969) for which see H.A.T.
   Reiche's essay-review in _Classical Journal_ O/N 1973, 81-3.