User:RayTomes/Foundation for the Study of Cycles

The Foundation for the Study of Cycles is a non-profit organisation created to foster, promote, and conduct scientific research in respect to rhythmic and periodic fluctuations in any branch of science. It was incorporated in the state of Connecticut by Edward R. Dewey in 1941. It joined with European Cycles Researchers to publish "Journal of Interdisciplinary Cycle Research" as a peer reviewed journal but this is no longer published. It publishes "Cycles" magazine which recorded the work of cycles researchers, including Dewey, through the years. The FSC also holds conferences and publishes its proceedings.

History
Edward R. Dewey and others developed cycle studies methods suitable in the age before computing, investigating cycles in many different disciplines. The FSC published a regular Cycles magazine with the best articles from these later being published as a four volume Cycles Classic Library Collection, still available (as of 2006) directly from the Foundation.

Following Edward R. Dewey's death, Gertrude Shirk, Jeffrey Horovitz and Richard Mogey continued to lead the FSC in turn. The present organization is governed by a board of advisers.

The Foundation is now located in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is in the process of creating and distributing modern cycles software programs suitable for continuing cycles research. The Foundations's current areas of interest include potential cycles in terrorism, disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, global warming, and ongoing research in determining and predicting the geographic locations of observed cyclic events.

Past Board Members or Advisory Committee
Have included: Edward R. Dewey, Maurice Allais (Nobel Laureate), Sir Julian Huxley, Ellsworth Huntington, Charles Gates Dawes (30th Vice-President USA), Sir Patrick Ashley Cooper (Hudson Bay Co.), John T. Burns (Chronobiology, Bethany College), Rhodes Fairbridge (Climatology, Columbia University), and other distinguished people.

Publications
Several magazines are published by the foundation
 * Business and Investment Cycles - aimed at investors
 * Cycles Projections - aimed at investors
 * Cycle Magazine

Cycles Classic Library Collection
In 1987 the Foundation collected together the best articles from Cycles magazine and other material and published them as a four volume set. A brief summary of their contents:

Volume I : "Cycles: Selected Writings". Describes what cycles are; the case for cycles; cycle synchronies; cycles from physical science; biological cycles; economic cycles, both production and prices; other financial cycles; sociological cycles; and miscellaneous. Included is a list of sources of the 104 articles included, mostly being from Cycles magazine with some from Journal of Cycle Research. There is a Bibliography of 607 articles written by Edward R. Dewey by year from 1941 to 1968. There is a substantial cycles glossary and cycle period length index in addition to the normal subject index. Volume I is much larger than the other volumes.

Volume II : This is a reprint of the book "Cycles : The Science of Prediction" by Edward R. Dewey and Edwin F. Dakin. It deals with the subject of how to perform cycles analysis in a scientific manner with many detailed examples, 1947.

Volume III : This is a reprint of the book "Cycles: The Mysterious Forces that Trigger Events" by Edward R. Dewey and Og Mandino, 1971. It deals with cycles in nature and human affairs and looks at the inter-relationship between all the cycle discoveries, exploring mass human behaviour and cycles beyond the Earth.

Volume IV : "Catalogue of Cycles, Part I, Economics". Contains 1380 cycles reports from the Foundation and elsewhere, many with graphs. A bibliography lists reports from almost 500 different authors. A precis index links the authors and reports. A wave length index has all the reports in cycle period order. A subject index has lists reports by commodity or subject.

Cycles: The Science of Prediction
In 1947 Edward R.Dewey and Edwin F. Dakin published their book Cycles: The Science of Prediction which argued the United States economy was driven by four cycles of different length. Milton Friedman dismissed their theory as pseudoscience: [Cycles: The Science of Prediction] is not a scientific book: the evidence underlying the stated conclusions is not presented in full; data graphed are not identified so that someone else could reproduce them; the techniques employed are nowhere described in detail. [...] Its closests analogue is the modern high-power advertisement&mdash;here of book length and designed to sell an esoteric and supposedly scientific product. Like most modern advertising, the book seeks to sell its product by making exaggerated claims for it [...], showing it in association with other valued objects which really don't have anything to do with it [...], keeping discreetly silent about its defeats or mentioning them in only the vagues form [...], and citing authorities who think highly of the product.

Cycles Studies
Almost every area of science has been studied for the presence of cycles. Volume IV of Cycles Classic Library Collection published in 1987 lists references to 1380 cycles reports by some 500 authors. Many reports involve accurate measurements of cycle period while some are only indicative. Whenever there is sufficient data, significant cycles have been found.

The full list is too large to include here but the major categories include: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Bacteriology, Botany, Entomology, Herpetology, Ichthyology and Limnology, Invertebrate Zoology, Mammalogy, Ornithology, Climatology, Geology, Geophysics, Hydrology, Hydrography, Medicine, Physics, Economics and Sociology. A similar list of topics appears in the reports up to 1994 in the John T. Burns bibliography referenced below.

Research Conclusions
Some findings of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles are:


 * Certain common cycle periods appear in many seemingly unrelated disciplines:- e.g. a 9.6 year cycle of lynx abundance is found in many animal populations, some weather variables and other things; the 11.1 and 22.2 year sunspot cycles are found in the recurrence of wars; a 53 year cycle in prices known as the Kondratiev wave is also found in tree rings, wages, wars and other variables; a 5.92 year cycle is found in the price of cotton, pig iron, copper and industrial stocks.


 * Cycle synchrony is the observation that cycles of the same period found in different time series often have the same phase, that is they reach maxima and minima at very close to the same time.


 * Cycle harmonic ratios means that the common cycle periods are often related by ratios of 2, 3 and their products. The most common periods are 142, 71, 35.5, 17.75, 8.88, 4.44 and 2.22 years, also 53.3 (3x17.75) and 5.92, 2.96, 1.48, 0.74 years which are the preceding figures divided by 3. This reporting of harmonically related periods continues in peer review journals today in solar phenomena, with 1.3 year, 155, 78 and 52 day periods reported along with the observation that these periods are subharmonics of the solar 26 day rotation period.


 * Latitudinal passage as observed in sunspots moving in latitude as the cycle progresses has also been reported in some terrestrial phenomena. This does not entirely agree with the cycle synchrony observation.

The Importance of Cycles Research
According to Edward R. Dewey the study of cycles is important because:


 * " ... law, regularity, order, and pattern exist in vast areas hitherto thought to be patternless."


 * "... insofar as cycles are meaningful, all science that has been developed in the absence of cycle knowledge is inadequate and partial. Thus, if cyclic forces are real, any theory of economics, or sociology, or history, or medicine, or climatology that ignores nonchance rhythms is manifestly incomplete, as medicine was before the discovery of germs."


 * "... if these cyclic forces are real, there is a much greater degree of interrelationship within nature than was previously realized, since the same cycles appear in many different natural and social sciences. The implications are one of wholeness instead of the emphasis we so often see upon smaller and smaller sections of knowledge."