Cyclists
Scientists abhor anything that smacks of soothsaying, rarely let themselves get caught in a flat prediction. But into the serious studies of many eminently respectable scientists can be read some of the most fascinating long-range forecasting since Noah built the Ark. Such studies are the special province of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles,* which last week celebrated its third anniversary.
The Foundation has collected the findings of some 1,000 scientists on a great variety of cycles -- animal, vegetable, min eral, human. Some of these findings, as reported by the Foundation's Director Edward R. Dewey, onetime chief economic analyst for the Department of Commerce, are amazing.
A surprising number of things, from man's moods to the size of the elephant population, show up-& -down patterns that are almost as regular as the rise & fall of the tide. Some are verified by observations covering many centuries (e.g., by means of tree rings and silt deposits in lakes, rainfall cycles have been traced back thousands of years). Other cycle records as yet are little more than preliminary observations. But despite distortions by war and catastrophe, they run remarkably true to form. Samples:
> Human beings have their rhythms of elation and depression (according to a 15-year study by a University of Pennsylvania psychologist). These average either two or nine weeks from peak to peak.
> Women's fashions have shown a recurrent cycle with three 35-year phases: tubular, bell and bustle styles. A period of bell-shaped dresses is just beginning.
> Animals and fish periodically thrive and decline. Many, notably lynx and salmon in Canada, have a cycle that averages nine and two-thirds years. A peak in elephants comes about every 62 years. Mice in the U.S. fluctuate in a four-year cycle; a plague sets them back every presidential-election year.
> Weather in many parts of the U.S. fluctuates in a 23-year pattern; periods of maximum rainfall and drought occur at about that interval. By studying cycles, a scientist was able to forecast accurately in 1939 some of 1942's big floods.
> Healthiest months for people to be born in are February and March. Great U.S. intellectual leaders tend to be born between February and April; artists and musicians in October or November; business executives, October to January.
> People usually weigh most in September, least in February.
> Cycles in human diseases: pneumonia and influenza, three years; diphtheria, six or seven years. In Bombay the plague strikes at exact intervals of a year and four days.
> University of Kansas Professor Raymond Wheeler has in progress a vast project for measuring the rise & fall of civilization, has caught history repeating itself in cycles of 45, 90 and 510 years. He calculates that, if the pattern continues, civilization will slide into an abyss about 1960, begin a new Golden Age about 2000.
> Perhaps the most important cyclical facts are those on business. Of many discernible economic rhythms, the "Hoskins" rhythm of about 41 months is present in more than half the kinds of business studied. (Oddly, this is precisely the length of the high-low cycle of heat received by the earth from the sun: 40.8 months.) The major long-run business cycle is one of 54 years; a 54-year rhythm in British wheat prices has been traced back 800 years. On the back of this basic cycle rides a lesser one of nine years. Foundation Director Dewey has arranged his own business affairs in the expectation that there will be a boom until 1947, then a slump hitting bottom about 1951--but he emphasizes that each business must discover the rhythm in its own affairs.
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