Minds In Denial

By Charles Ginenthal

This volume deals with a number of the arguments which have arisen in the ongoing academic and intellectual wars involving the theories of the late Dr. Immanuel Valikovsky. Topics dealt with include Milankovitch cycles, dendrochronology, and several similar lines of argument which skeptics have tried to use.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329742185

Book preview

Minds In Denial

MINDS IN DENIAL

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2015 Charles Ginenthal.

ISBN 978-1-329-74218-5

All rights reserved.  Other than as permitted under the Fair Use section of the United States copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication shall be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.  

Quoting of this work must be attributed to this book, and not in a manner which would indicate any sort of endorsement.  No derivative works are permitted without express permission of the author.  Reproduction of artwork contained in this book must be properly attributed to this book.

PREFACE

Some time ago, Sean Mewhinney presented a critique of both Velikovsky's and my work entitled Minds in Ablation henceforth Minds, which has been posted on the Internet. It is a paper in five parts made up of many other lesser parts, and single spaced runs to 47 pages with many additional pages of diagrams and tables, etc. In all it would be about the length of one issue of this Journal. Since this work is well written and footnoted, I felt it was of great enough importance, touching on certain fundamental questions related to Velikovskian research in a provocative way, that it should be put complete and uncensored on the record. I therefore offered Mewhinney the opportunity to publish it in full in The Velikovskian. This offer he refused.

Rereading his work, I noted that Mewhinney himself stated of his earlier work:

"I hoped it [my work would]... reach at least some of the people who read Velikovskian journal with reason...(1)

In essence Mewhinney claimed that he wanted to reach people in the Velikovsky movement with his various researches but, given the chance to do so, refused. This seemed strange enough, but then I learned that he had offered the entire work to AEON, a Velikovskian journal. Duardu Cardona, its editor, after reading it, also felt Minds should be published in The Velikovskian. I once again offered Mewhinney the chance to publish all that he had sent to AEON, but he then offered another reason for refusing publication; he claimed he had more to write. If that was indeed his reason in the case of The Velikovskian, then why had he sent this same material to AEON in the first place? The work he was willing to expose in AEON somehow was not the work he was willing to expose in this journal.

I do still have his papers in full and have made photocopies which I will sell (for the same price which I paid to get them, ten dollars. Send a check or money order made out to Charles Ginenthal and send it to this journal requesting Minds). In this way Mewhinney's papers will reach as many Velikovskians as possible who desire an original copy of his work.

PART I : SEAN MEWHINNEY'S CRITIQUE BASED ON BOMBASTIC  SUBTERFUGE, EVASION AND DENIAL

By Charles Ginenthal

A group ... only becomes a true conspiracy in the legal sense when it creates 'lies that look like the truth.' 

Robert Anton Wilson

Cosmic Trigger II (1995), p.150

He's a wonderful talker, who has the art of telling you nothing in a great harangue.

Jean Batiste Moliere

Le Misanthrope (1666)

Act II, Scene 5, HYPOCRISY

ICE CORES OR CRYSTALLINE SPHERES

Several former critics of Velikovsky have raised the spectra of ancient eclipses, especially solar eclipses, as a clear indication that the earth's orbit and axial tilt have never changed. If as they claimed, the orbit or axial tilt were different prior to about 776 B.C., then it would be impossible to find eclipses earlier than that time that follow the present orbital motions and axial position of the Earth. And so they pointed to eclipses prior to that time that they claimed, were a disproof of Velikovsky's theory. Some of these individuals held prestigious positions in various well known universities, but as Velikovsky pointed out to them, neither the precise times, nor the precise areas of the Earth for these eclipses were known. Before any of their assertions regarding these eclipses could be employed as a disproof, these critical points of time and location had to be fully verified, but they simply were not.

Similarly, other records of the past have been called upon to perform the very same type of unsupported debunking of Velikovsky. In particular ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica and tree rings could do the same job only if they were corroborated by solid supporting evidence. That is, all dating systems require , or better yet demand independent corroboration by other processes or phenomena. That, in fact, is the heart of good science. If a dating system is contradicted by other dating systems, then it cannot be employed as unqualified disproof of Velikovsky nor a proof of uniformitarian gradual climate change during these same ancient times.

Sean Mewhinney, to his credit, has diligently researched and presented ice core evidence as a fundamental objection and contradiction to Velikovsky's thesis.(2) This kind of ice core evidence was also presented in KRONOS.(3) What Mewhinney produced in his long analysis appeared, on the surface at least, to show that the ice core evidence was a definitive indication that Velikovsky's thesis was finally and fully destroyed.

Thereafter, I responded in this journal(4) to Mewhinney's opus by outlining a number of fundamental contradictions to his evidence and showed that what at first looked like an excellent case against Velikovsky was no different than the case made by eclipse data.

Mewhinney responded in part 1 of his newest criticism entitled Ice Cores and Ideology.  Here, I anticipated that he would take up the various challenges and disprove or try to disprove each phenomenon I had presented with evidence and citations from the scientific literature, nonetheless, this is not what transpired. Mewhinney in fact ignored each and every one of the specific points I had raised, choosing instead to attack the messenger. For example, Mewhinney in his original Internet paper wrote about my statement regarding vegetation growing on Greenland during the hipsithermal.

Well yes, in fact, that is precisely what his own sources tell me. I have referred several times to a passage Ginenthal quoted from Charlesworth, mentioning, among other things, 'peats and relics in Greenland.' At the point where Ginenthal's quotation stops, in the very next sentence, Charlesworth makes this statement; 'this optimum in Greenland was only slightly warmer and had no plant formation or species that does not now live there'... This blows his whole case out of the water from the start, so Ginenthal suppresses it. The whole thing is an exercise in perversity.(5)

What Mewhinney in his desire to discredit me as well as my work called an exercise in perversity, was namely the suppression of this one sentence by Charlesworth, this optimum in Greenland was only slightly warmer and had no plant formation or species that does not now live there. This only shows he read my paper in extreme haste and angrily, because he failed to notice the very sentence with which I opened the entire discussion in ICE, page 78 wherein I wrote:

But it is assumed Greenland was glaciated all this time and had no plants that do not grow there now ever lived there during the hipsithermal.

This is almost exactly what Charlesworth had written on this matter. So, in fact, I left out nothing and pointed out Mewhinney's misrepresentation of my work to him on the E-Mail Internet discussion group and, for my efforts, was told You [Ginenthal] can't get away with that. But even in this characterization Mewhinney understood he was simply wrong and dropped that material from the paper he thereafter circulated.

Nevertheless, he never demurred nor disavowed the position he has taken, that to fail to deal with or to suppress a sentence made by one's critic is an act of perversity. This gives us an insight into

the working of Mewhinney's thought processes and the standards of evidence by which we shall evaluate Mewhinney criticisms.

The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) I wish to explain the concepts involved vis-à- vis, uniformitarianism verses Velikovskian catastrophism to see if the evidence truly suggests that Velikovsky's hypothesis is wrong as Mewhinney wishes to present. (2) I want to see how well much of Mewhinney's evidence stands up to an analysis of it strictly in terms of the evidence.

Hence, the question for this first unit is: has Mewhinney really presented a case in defense of his ice core data or are the ice cores, in reality, crystalline spheres performing the same function that Aristotle employed when over 2000 years ago, they were invented to create a world in which cataclysms could never occur? The title of this paper contains the provocative subtitle Sean Mewhinney's Critique Based on Bombastic Subterfuge, Evasion and Denial. This is a very strong accusation and that is what I will now prove, namely that Mewhinney does not face contrary evidence to his ice cores but rather, that he employs various subterfuges, evasions and denials as escape mechanisms.

The first form of proof of subterfuge and evasion can be found in the very title of Part 1 of Minds, as is presented by Mewhinney namely Ice Cores and Ideology. Thus, he informs us in the title he will be dealing with my ICE article by disposing of the evidence I raised regarding his ice core papers. Interestingly, the way he disposes of it is by never discussing the germane points I did in fact raise and acting as though they do not exist. This approach exhibits and requires a great deal of denial by Mewhinney not only to his readers but also to himself. Moliere cited at the beginning of this paper He is a wonderful talker, who has the art of telling you nothing in a great harangue. Let us therefore, examine the mechanisms of Mewhinney's art, his great harangue. If anyone thinks I am well satisfied over what I am about to present they are quite right. I feel even as a ethnic Jew like the statement attributed to Mark Twain, the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

OXYGEN ISOTOPE LAYERS SNOW LAYERING OR DIFFUSION LAYERING

The basis assumption underlying the ice cores as indicators of climate on Earth is based on the process of oxygen isotopes in snow layers. However, there are other processes well outlined in the scientific literature that are a direct contradiction to the process accepted by glaciologists as the cause for such layers. Mewhinney explained this snow layering process in his first paper in Catastrophism And Ancient History:

"Except for losses from ablation [melting], snow falling on most land in the polar regions of this planet is locked into ice caps for many thousands of years. There is sinks beneath the weight of succeeding snows is compacted into ice, and slowly flows downhill. Preserved in the ice is a wealth of information about past climatic conditions...

In 1954 Willi Dansgaard proposed using oxygen isotope ratios to study the climatic history of the Greenland ice cap. This is the basis tool of ice core research today.

"Condensation [by cooling] preferentially removes the heavier isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen from water vapor. As more and more moisture condenses out of a mass of water vapor, it becomes progressively further depleted in these heavier isotopes. Usually it is the ratio of 180 to 160 that is measured. Since 180 comprises only about 0.2 percent of oxygen occurring in nature, instead of giving the actual ratio scientists express their results in terms of the depletion of 180 relative to standard means ocean water in parts per thousand (0/00. It is denoted [delta] 180. The 180 value of precipitation is always a negative number (If we were measuring enrichment it would be positive).

Since cooling promotes condensation, the cooler the rain or snow the more negative its 180 value. The relation is not so simple that ancient temperatures can be read off from an ice sample, but a change in temperatures will be reflected in a change in oxygen isotope ratios. (6)

In essence, Mewhinney accepted as fully established the process that Oxygen 18 to Oxygen 16 isotope ratios are caused by snow derived from ocean water leaving layers in the ice caps of polar regions. Velikovsky's theory suggests that the ice sheets were not built up over millions of years but only over a year or so during a stupendous catastrophe which caused areas of the ocean to boil(7) while at the same period a shower of meteorites flew toward the earth(8) both processes would have evaporated and hurled enormous amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere. Immense hurricanes(9) would have carried this water vapor to various regions of the Earth, and in the polar regions this would have fallen as snow(10) to form the great ice sheet of today.

This totally different interpretation of the build-up of the ice sheets would not create a series of annual 180 layers in terms of the gradualistic method outlined by Mewhinney. The layering of 180 had to be created, in terms of Velikovsky's hypothesis, by a very different process. Therefore, to show how this other process worked, I discussed (in my ICE paper) the findings presented by Fred Hall who cited a paper in Science that showed the variations of the oxygen isotope ratios in the ice layers are not related to climate at all, wherein he wrote in AEON that a,Vastly different picture is presented by specialists who actually have to deal with the subtleties of the ice cores. To begin with, there is far too much mixing of gases over time to allow for Ellenberger's [and Mewhinney's] simplistic assumption. I refer the reader, for example, to the December 23, 1988 issue of Science and the article Gravitational Separation of Gases and Isotopes in