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Pensée (Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered)

Pensée: Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered
Lewis and Clark College
Owner(s) Student Academic Freedom Forum
Editor Stephen L. Talbott
Founded 1972
Circulation 10,000-20,000

Pensée: Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered ("IVR") was a special series of ten issues of the magazine Pensée advancing the pseudoscientific theories of Immanuel Velikovsky. It was produced to "encourage continuing critical analysis of all questions raised by Velikovsky's work", published between May 1972 and Winter 1974-75 by the Student Academic Freedom Forum, whose president was David N. Talbott, with the assistance and cooperation of Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon. Velikovsky -- "the man whose work was being examined 'objectively'" insinuated himself into the editing of the May 1972 issue, just as he had done earlier for the April 1967 "Velikovsky" issue of Yale Scientific Magazine.

It achieved a circulation of between 10,000 - 20,000, with the first issue reprinted twice totalling 75,000 copies, and resulted in a book, Velikovsky Reconsidered containing selected articles, many of them partisan.

In the final issue of Pensée IVR, the publisher recalled that the original magazine was:

Founded in 1966 and soon thereafter allowed to lapse for several years, it was revived in 1970 as an unofficial student magazine distributed on Oregon campuses [..] Late in 1971 the editor and publisher, personally familiar with the work of Immanuel Velikovsky, conceived the idea of finding someone qualified to write a major article describing Velikovsky's theories, their implications, and their reception. Subsequent contact, first, with Velikovsky himself, and then with several persons knowledgeable about his work, led to the May, 1972 issue of Pensée.

Science magazine attributed the then increased support for Velikovsky's ideas, to Pensée.

The staff consisted of publisher David N. Talbott and his brother Stephen L. Talbott as editor, and built up to five associate editors: Lewis M. Greenberg, Ralph Juergens, William Mullen, C.J. Ransom, and Lynn E. Rose. Professor of Social Theory, Alfred de Grazia noted that:

... there came Pensée, a production of the young Talbott brothers, Stephen and David, whose enthusiasm for his [Velikovsky's] work crystallized into a conversion of their small magazine on human rights into a forum on the Velikovsky Affair, at least for ten issues. Stephen Talbott was a brilliant editor and organizer, bent upon opening the world to quantavolutionary ideas, but also to criticism of them. After spectacular successes, Pensée collapsed under a load of debt and overwork. As it was ending, it promised to broaden its interests beyond Velikovsky and to discuss ideas irreconcilable with his. Velikovsky would have no part of this, and several of his Eastern supporters -- with Lewis Greenberg and Warner Sizemore leading -- issued the first number of Kronos.


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