In this connection it is useful to recall that it was not until a hundred years after
Copernicus’s death that there was a sizable number of supporters of the heliocentric theo-
ry. One might expect that so long a delay in the acceptance of a better scientific paradigm
belongs to the past, when religious dogma ruled more powerfully than today. However, there
is an analogous example from our own century which also makes the point.
In 1912, a meteorologist named Alfred Wegener suggested that the continents had
moved. To quote John McPhee: “He was making an assertion for which his name would live
in mockery for about fifty years.”^33 Not until the 1960s did Wegener’s original theory of
“continental drift,” now in the more sophisticated form of “plate tectonics,” win the para-
digmatic debate in geology. The earth’s “plates” had more than moved, they were still mov-
ing, albeit only a few inches a year.
These two long-resisted new paradigms concern the movement of what established
thought claimed to be immobile. All of Reich’s basic findings or his various new paradigms
concerned spontaneous movement where it was not supposed to occur, for example, in the
total bodily convulsions of the orgasm, the expansion and contraction of the bions, and the
pulsation and movement of atmospheric orgone energy.
That Reich could find an explanation for the world’s hostility to his findings in its
fear ofspontaneous movement; that there are many examples, long past and recent, of
eventually triumphant paradigms which have been ridiculed for generations—these argu-
ments in themselves do not make his work convincing. Ultimately, the test of his work lies
in replicating his experiments and developing new ones. Ultimately, a broad-based research
program must determine whether his paradigms fit the findings better than competing par-
adigms.
This kind of research is precisely what most orgonomic adherents have failed to do
over the last forty years. Too often such adherents have been content to rail against the
establishment for not taking orgonomy seriously. Many enthusiasts have claimed lack of sci-
entific training as their excuse for not repeating and developing orgonomic findings. Others
with more solid scientific backgrounds (who have repeated some experiments) take refuge
from further inquiry in their lack of financial support, insufficient time, and the cloud of
scandal that has hung over orgonomy, especially since the FDA’s injunction in 1954.
Granted that the social and scientific atmosphere has not been conducive to seri-
ous orgonomic investigation, none of these arguments is sufficient to explain the neglect of
a potential scientific gold mine by persons who have good reason to believe a successful
strike was possible. Reich explained this neglect as due to the deep fear of spontaneous
movement in orgonomic friend as well as foe. Again, such an explanation does not make
orgonomy any more “right.” However, it does help to make more comprehensible why few
have tried to pursue the paradigm, so that we can see how fruitful or sterile it may be.
I have underscored the vast silence surrounding the orgonomic findings outlined in
this chapter. There is another side. The steady trickle of experimental reports continues, just
as there continues to be a steady sale ofReich’s books. Not surprisingly, many of these
reports come from people outside the scientific establishment. Kuhn has made an analogous
21 : The Discovery of Orgone Energy: 1940 273