I was looking through the astronomy section of my local college library as was shocked to see "Worlds in Collision" there. Now this is a small college that doesn't have any courses on astronomy so there are not a lot of astronomy books - maybe two dozen. I'm still amazed that the library has it as a science book. What should I do? Complain? Ignore it so that people don't start wondering what the fuss is about and read it? Or am I wrong and it is correctly labelled a "science" book depite being complete trash.

__________________
Now while I might be amused by Cthulhians, I don't necessarily distrust them to carry out the functions of government. -- JayUtah

What's it like being a skeptic in the Middle East? Check out my blog.

I'd complaine--it belongs in the "Boring Humor" section...

__________________
"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." — Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

441!!!! :)

Two dozen astronomy books? Don't most high schools have more than that? Clearly, someone bought a copy and donated it to the library, or someone suggested it to the purchaser. Your campus astronomers need to start beefing up the library. Arguing against shelving a particular book never works--get your own choice up there next to it.

Thanks for the advice, I'm leaning towards "leave it alone" myself.

This is a small community college that doesn't have a lot of science courses so the science section is fairly small, especially given that it does not offer astronomy or advanced physics. With that in mind I don't really blame them for not knowing what "Worlds in Collision" is really all about, but perhaps I'll make some suggestions for better (and more recent)books.

I've read where Carl Sagan's published criticism of Velokovsky has itself been criticized, so you have to be careful in choosing the rebuttal. On the other hand, I fully agree with Carl when he said, in his book Cosmos, The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that his hypotheses were wrong or in contradiction to firmly established facts, but that some who called themselves scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky's work. Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its own merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental new insights.

I don't think the library has a choice as to where the book is placed. Each book is assigned a Dewey Decimal number when published. Apparently, the book was assigned a number that put it in the astronomy section.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

If that's true then ignoring the book is my only option. I would never ask for a book to be removed from a library - I don't believe censoring a book should ever happen at a library - I figured maybe I could get the book moved to the pseudoscience/new age section (I think around the 100's in the Dewey system).

__________________
Now while I might be amused by Cthulhians, I don't necessarily distrust them to carry out the functions of government. -- JayUtah

What's it like being a skeptic in the Middle East? Check out my blog.