Clube & Napier *

Victor Clube (1934- ) & Bill Napier (1940- ) are two British Astronomers, who published The Cosmic Serpent ^[291]. in 1982, which was later revised as The Cosmic Winter ^[290], which was also the title of a lecture given by Clube^(b).

They have promoted what became known as ‘Coherent Catastrophism’, which envisions encounters between our Earth and large comets, events that are recorded in ancient history and mythology. They claim, for example, that the biblical Exodus story contains an early reference to Halley’s Comet! Among other encounters, they date the story of Phaëton, mentioned by Plato, to 1369 BC and also discuss catastrophic close encounters with Encke’s Comet or a proto-Encke.

Although Clube & Napier do not refer to Atlantis, from time to time, some commentators have claimed some connection between the demise of Atlantis and encounters with comets named and unnamed.

Philip R. “Pib” Burns has an extensive overview^(a) of Clube and Napier’s work on his excellent website. He argues that Clube & Napier should have given greater recognition to the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky^(c).

However, The Velikovsky Encyclopedia is happy to quote a number of passages from Clube & Napier’s The Cosmic Serpent including “No authors can justifiably make reference to proposals of this kind without mention also of the investigations by Velikovsky. In a quite remarkable piece of historical analysis some thirty years ago, this author not only drew attention to the parallels between the events described in Exodus and the Ipuwer Chronicle, but also to their implications so far as a catastrophic extra-terrestrial missile and ancient chronology were concerned.” ^(d)

^(a) Clube and Napier: Coherent Catastrophism (archive.org)  *

^(b) https://www.sott.net/article/148708-Cosmic-Winter-A-Lecture-by-Victor-Clube

^(c) https://www.saturniancosmology.org/files/velikovsky/vel-pib.txt

^(d) The Cosmic Serpent | The Velikovsky Encyclopedia