* Max Dresow writes…
Last May we posted a selection of old science documentaries that I had stumbled across in my YouTube wanderings. This ended up being quite a popular post by Extinct standards. (Who can resist grainy old videos about Alpine geology?) Well, getcha popcorn ready, because I’ve lined up a whole new set of videos to help you ward off the winter blues.
This time, I’m organizing the videos under three headings. The first I’ll call “Old Videos of Famous Geologists”; the second, “All About Immanuel Velikovsky”; and the third, “Paleobiology, Etc.” So, ya know, something for everybody.* Here we go…
[* Edit: I added one more video in its own section: “Ernest Nagel Talks about the Big Issues in Philosophy of Science (1962).” A bit outside of Extinct’s lane, you might think: but I recently wrote an essay on philosophy of science in the mid-twentieth century, in which Nagel makes a little appearance. Hear Nagel dish on Kuhn the very year Structure dropped.]
Old Videos of Famous Geologists
#1. Alfred Wegener
All of these are pretty self-explanatory. But this first one is my favorite. It shows Alfred Wegener— early champion of continental drift— in the field and, ominously, in the harsh Arctic environments that would ultimately kill him. Pretty cool.
#2. J. Tuzo Wilson
In this one, J. Tuzo Wilson— maybe the greatest earth scientist of the twentieth century— discusses transform faults: a concept he introduced. The most famous transform fault is also the most famous fault in the world: the San Andreas Fault.
This video is from an old television series produced by Laurentian University in Ontario. (So is the previous one, as you will have guessed this from the shared footage at the end!) It’s called “Understanding the Earth” and it originally aired on TVO Ontario in 1975. You can find the entire series, along with lots of short clips, on this YouTube channel. Many feature Tuzo Wilson. Video #6, below, is a complete episode from the series.
#3. Tuzo Wilson (again)
Here is Wilson again, giving the 1975 Massey Lectures on the “Limits to Science.” The Massey lectures are “an annual five-part series of lectures given in Canada by distinguished writers, thinkers, and scholars who explore important ideas and issues of contemporary interest.” The rest of the lectures can also be found on this YouTube channel. (And here is a complete audio archive of the series. Since the videos are just audio recordings over Wilson’s picture, there’s no particular reason to prefer the YouTube versions.)
In this lecture, Wilson relates some of his personal history with the plate tectonic revolution.
#4. Frederick Vine
In this one, Frederick Vine discusses his epoch-making work on the magnetic reversals recorded in oceanic basalts. Pretty coooool.
#5. Bruce Heezen
And here is one more clip from the “Understanding the Earth” series, which features Bruce Heezen talking about turbidity currents. Heezen is best known for his work with Marie Tharp mapping the ocean basins. (You know the map.) Anyway, here he’s discussing how sediments accumulate on the continental rise.
#6. THE BIRTH OF MOUNTAINS
As promised, here is one of the complete episode from the “Understanding the Earth” series, on mountain building. Actually, it seems like it’s two episodes, the first of which takes place mostly outdoors (with a cameo from our guy Tuzo Wilson), the second indoors. The second is the highlight— the presenter uses lots of analog models to explain major concepts related to mountain building. Just really cool and effective TV.
So much for these reputable scientists talking about their reputable science on reputable television programs. Ready to get f**king crazy?
All ABOUT IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY
#7. BONDS OF THE PAST
Remember Immanuel Velikovsky? If you’re over sixty-five, and if you were sorta countercultural in the sixties and/or seventies, there’s a good chance that you do. Velikovsky was a psychoanalyst by training who went on to elaborate some very strange theories in astronomy and archeology. Strange— and also strangely influential, at least in a pop culture sense. Evidently he was buddies with Albert Einstein. And he sold a lot of books. (If podcasts had existed back then, this guy would have been unstoppable. Imagine if you combined Yuval Noah Harari and Robert Schoch…) Here’s a little Velikovsky primer from Steven Shapin:
Fifteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, a chunk of stuff blew off the planet Jupiter. That chunk soon became an enormous comet, approaching Earth several times around the period of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt and Joshua’s siege of Jericho. The ensuing havoc included the momentary stopping and restarting of the Earth’s rotation; the introduction into its crust of organic chemicals (including a portion of the world’s petroleum reserves); the parting of the Red Sea, induced by a massive electrical discharge from the comet to Earth; showers of iron dust and edible carbohydrates falling from the comet’s tail, the first turning the waters red and the second nourishing the Israelites in the desert; and plagues of vermin, either infecting Earth from organisms carried in the comet’s tail or caused by the rapid multiplication of earthly toads and bugs induced by the scorching heat of cometary gases. Eventually, the comet settled down to a quieter life as the planet Venus, which, unlike the other planets, is an ingénue at just 3500 years old. Disturbed by the new girl in the neighbourhood, Mars too began behaving badly, closely encountering Earth several times between the eighth and seventh centuries BCE; triggering massive earthquakes, lava flows, tsunamis and atmospheric fire storms; causing the sudden extinction of many species (including the mammoth); shifting Earth’s spin axis and relocating the North Pole from Baffin Island to its present position; and abruptly changing the length of the terrestrial year from 360 to its present 365¼ days. There were also further shenanigans involving Saturn and Mercury.
So, yeah. It was a thing. So much so that the CBC produced a documentary on Velikovsky’s ideas in 1972. This is that documentary. And yes, the presenter at the beginning messes up the part about Venus. Venus didn’t hop it’s orbit (per Velikovsky): it began its life as a “comet” and only later settled down to the more sedate life of a planet.
#8. More Velikovsky
Want more Velikovsky? Well, here’s an interview from 1964.
#9. Sagan on Velikovsky
And here is Carl Sagan, dunking on Velikovsky in Cosmos (I think).
Paleobiology, Etc.
#10. Stephen Jay Gould on “Evolutionary Hopes and Realities”
This title really says it all. The lecture is from 1982, and Gould is thin from his cancer treatments. He’s also wearing a very fly hat. Two thumbs up. (Here is my little series of posts on Gould: Parts 1, 2, and 3. And here is the first painting Gould discusses, which you can’t see on the video.)
#11. James Valentine on the Origin of Phyla
James Valentine is one of the most interesting paleontologists from the late twentieth century. He passed away in 2023 at 96 years old. He was also quite an interesting man:
Born in South Los Angeles, Jim was raised during the Great Depression by his mother, who taught piano and managed apartments in exchange for rent-free accommodations. He appeared destined for gang life (J. Valentine personal communication), but avoided that fate when he joined the U.S. Navy in 1944. (Marshall 2023)
The videos comprise a series of interviews on body plan evolution. They contain lots of ideas from Valentine’s big book, On the Origin of Phyla, from 2004.
#12. Adolf Seilacher on Macroevolution in the Ocean
Lastly, here is Adolf Seilacher, lecturing in 2009 on macroevolution in the oceans. Seilacher was 84 years old when this was filmed; he died in 2014, aged 89. The video quality is not great, but I think it’s wonderful that this exists at all. A fittingly idiosyncratic lecture from a wonderfully idiosyncratic man. (I wrote about Seilacher in this old post. Also this one.)
Ernest Nagel talks about the Big Issues in Philosophy of Science (1962)
Here’s that extra video I mentioned at the top. WOW. Just awesome stuff. Nagel is an interesting philosopher: a student of John Dewey and, at the same time, a major logical empiricist and proponent of the syntactic view of scientific theories. But this video is most noteworthy because Nagel spends a good chunk of his time discussing Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which was then less than a year old! As ever, Nagel is a very good reader (an underrated skill) and an astute critic. This is definitely one to check out.
Okay, that’s all. Hope you had fun. Maybe we’ll do this again sometime.