Cycles play a vitally important role in your life. Those studying this fascinating but little known phenomenon have glimpsed a hint of incredible forces in the universe: rhythmic cycles surrounding and influencing us. By understanding these forces, man will be able to control wars, depressions, epidemics — and, on a more personal basis, his sex life, emotional problems and illnesses.
Introduction:
The science of cycles deals with events that recur with reasonable regularity. Such events may be in nature, business, or anything else. The important thing about regularity is that it implies predictability. And if you know an event is coming, you can often prevent it or avoid it if you wish. Or if you cannot prevent or avoid it, you can at least prepare for it so that its effect on your life is lessened.
Most people do not realize the extent to which cycles and regularities exist in the world. Here are only a few examples:
Atlantic salmon vary in abundance in a cycle that averages 9.6 years from peak to peak. Starting with the year with the heaviest salmon population, the fishing gradually gets worse and worse for four or five years. Then the fish start to increase in numbers. Fishing improves each year for four to five years, so that eight to ten years from your starting point the fishing is excellent again. These years of good fishing have come at intervals averaging 9.6 years apart for as far back as there are records.
In Illinois chinch bugs vary in population in a cycle that averages 9.6 years. The abundance of snowshoe rabbits in Canada varies in a cycle of the same 9.6 years. So does the population of lynx, marten, fishers, owls, and hawks. Heart disease in the northeastern United States has been found to fluctuate in a cycle of the same duration. The acreage of wheat harvested in the United States varies according to the same cycle.
After this, it would probably not surprise you to learn that grasshopper outbreaks and mouse plagues come in cycles that have a duration of 9.6 years. But they don’t. Grasshopper plagues come 9.2 years apart. Mouse plagues come four years apart-in Presidential election years. Why? Pine cones are more plentiful in cycles. People join churches in cycles. Prices of every commodity so far studied rise and fall in cycles. Women are more amorous in cycles. Sunspots erupt in greater numbers in cycles. Poets are more creative in cycles. The weather fluctuates in cycles, and so do the fashions in clothes. Why?
The consumption of cheese fluctuates in cycles. The number of international battles fluctuates in cycles. The number of earthquakes fluctuates in cycles. Real-estate activities fluctuate in cycles, as do the prices of common stocks. Why? Male emotions fluctuate in cycles, as do industrial accidents. The sales of every company so far studied fluctuate in cycles, as does the incidence of many diseases. Why?
Cancer recurs in cycles, glaciers melt in cycles, and the levels of lakes and rivers rise and fall in cycles. Advertising effectiveness fluctuates in cycles, as do human intellectual activity and the cattle population. Even political landslides and the number of infants born per day fluctuate in cycles. Why? In many instances the regular rhythm is undoubtedly the result of chance. But are all these cycles, some of them recurring time after time for hundreds of years, merely chance phenomena? Can we arbitrarily blame them all on chance when we discover that many of them, in phenomena completely unrelated to each other, have their highs and lows at the same time-as if their rhythms were all being controlled by a single gigantic metronome?
Contents:
- The Mystery and The Stage
- The Search Begins
- Nature’s Mysterious Rhythms
- Cycles in You
- The Invisible Messenger
- The Mob Cycles
- The Rhythm of Production
- The Cycle of Prices
- The Cycles of Wall Street
- Why Does It Rain on January
- The Patterns of War
- Cycles in The Universe
- The Ultimate Clue
- The Imperative Question
