From: edward@amber.uchicago.edu (Edward Lewis)
Newsgroups: sci.econ
Subject: Periodic Dev. of Science and Economies
Date: 12 Sep 92 16:53:52 GMT
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Organization: University of Chicago


	I am publishing the abstract of my paper on this newsgroup. I
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      Copyright (c) 1992 by Edward Howard Lewis  All Rights Reserved
        				                 Sept 8, 1992
Abstract of The Periodic Production of Rationalized Phenomena and the
Past Periodic Depressions

	This paper is about a three generation, approximately eighty
year periodicity of the development of science and an approximately
forty year periodicity of major worldwide economic depressions since
1800.  It is written in four parts.
	
	Since the 1970s, people who apprehended the quantum mechanics
and relativity theories have experienced many phenomena which
contradict these theories.  Especially since 1985, many people have
experienced many kinds of anomalous phenomena.  According to my
theory, this occurred because after quantum mechanics was developed by
a generation of theoretical developers during the 1930s, 1940s, and
1950s, many of the next generation who apprehended a theory of this
kind experienced phenomena which contradicted their own theories as
they were experiencing phenomena according to their theories.  I
suspect that periods such as this one during which people have
experienced anomalous phenomena have occurred approximately every
eighty years and that individuals have formulated new kinds of
theories which resolved this phenomena approximately every eighty
years.  Six kinds or genres of theories have been developed since
Copernicus first formulated his theory.

	Thomas Kuhn, who wrote the book The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, called the periods during which people experience
anomalous phenomena which contradict what he called "paradigms,"
"crisis periods," and he wrote that these periods are ten or twenty
years long, but he never wrote that these periods occurred at eighty
year intervals.  Instead of using the word paradigm, I use the term
genre or kind of theory.  My idea of genre of theory may be
superficially similar to his idea of paradigm, but it is probably
quite a different idea, though we seem to class people's theories
according to the same groupings.  I too suspect that most anomalous
phenomena may be experienced during ten or twenty year periods which
end when a person or persons formulate a new kind of theory.

	There are three generational stages in the development of each
theory.  First one or more people independently formulate a theory
which resolves the phenomena which those who apprehended a theory of
the prior genre produced which are either anomalous phenomena or
phenomena which are thought to be in accord with the prior genre of
theory.  I call the people who do this, theoretical formulators.  The
anomalous phenomena constitute the first of what I call a set of
phenomena.  Then he teaches what he knows to others, but almost the
only people who apprehend his new theory are those who are born about
the time he first formulates his theory.  It has always been only the
small minority of this generation who apprehend a new theory.  I call
those who contribute to the development of theories of the genre,
theoretical developers.  Theoretical developers usually finish most of
their work of development of their theories when they are in their
late thirties or early forties.  They develop their theories by making
their theories precise and describing their theories mathematically
and resolving all the phenomena which they are able to resolve.  Then
they teach those of their children's generation the new theory.  Some
of those of this third generation experience according to the theories
which they were taught and verify the predictions of the theories, or
experience previously unknown phenomena which do not seem to them to
contradict their theories substantially which people explain by
formulating secondary postulates; and some of them experience
phenomena which contradict the basic postulates of their theories.  It
is when these people reach their late thirties and early forties, that
their production of phenomena becomes most effective.  This is why
there are what Kuhn called "crisis periods," which are ten or twenty
year periods which begin about seventy years after the formulation of
the first theory of the genre and end when someone formulates a new
kind of theory.

	Not all the people who contribute to the work of each of these
stages are actually members of each particular generation.  Two of the
theoretical formulators, Franklin and Gilbert, were members of the
preceding generation.  But the process of development by generations
has induced an eighty year, three generation periodicity.

	The first part of this paper explains why science has
developed periodically since at least 1500.  To do this I attempt to
outline what a theory about rationalized phenomena is, and what
rationalized phenomena is.  Then I try to show that the probable way
that the human mind cogitates would cause people to not be able to
implicitly comprehend theories which resolve sets of rationalized
phenomena other than the one which they have apprehended.  Whether or
not my description of cognition is accurate, this theory takes as a
postulate that people's apprehension of a genre of theory is inhibited
by prior apprehension of a theory of another genre.  Based on this
postulate and two others, that people's reason for pursuing the study
of rationalized phenomena is an acceleration to the process, and that
those who develop theories do not independently experience phenomena
is another constraint to the process, I attempt to show why an
approximately eighty year, three generation periodicity of
rationalized phenomena occurs.

	In the first part, I ascribe the hypothesis of formulation of
inhibiting apprehension to what is called "hard wiring" of brain
structure by cognitive scientists.  People have suspected and taught
for at least centuries that once one accepts a theory about
rationalized phenomena, that the person cannot implicitly understand
another kind of theory about phenomena or develop it themselves, and
for centuries more, people have believed that it is difficult for
someone to change his ideas to accept a new idea; however, their
reasoning and my own about this phenomena itself is probably only
superficially similar.  I hypothesize that this is the reason that
only those who had not yet apprehended a theory of a prior genre are
the formulators of a new theory.  Such people may not be children of
the third generation, the generation of the effective experimenters.
Members of the third generation have been theoretical formulators in
the past, because they were unfamiliar with the prior theory, before
they experienced a new set, according to this theory.  Knowledge of a
set of phenomena and comprehending a kind of theory is the same thing.

	I do not present a firm hypothetical basis to support my
second hypothesis that those who develop genres of theories do not, or
usually do not, independently produce anomalies to the theories of the
genre.  But this idea is superficially similar to the difference
between theoreticians and experimentalists, and philosophers and
craftsmen which people have defined for ages.  However, some of the
possible explanations which I present are that their society did not
have the basis of experiential (technological) skill to enable one to
test the theories until the following generation has begun their
careers, or that those who develop theories themselves lack the
ability to experience phenomena, either because of lack of
experiential training or their disinterest to contradict their own
ideas.  I do not understand this well and may not have delineated my
ideas about this well.  There may be other explanations.

	The basis for the third hypothesis is my experience, which is
general, that people seem to try to develop each of the stages of the
development of physics theory during their careers.  There is a
rushing, and perhaps a competition, whatever the reason that people
try to understand and produce phenomena.

	The second part is a description of the periodic history of
science since 1500.  I focus on the difference between people's
premises.  Copernicus formulated a general theory which comprehended
not only astronomical phenomena but terrestrial phenomena as well
about 1506.  Gilbert, Galileo, and Kepler formulated the first
theories of another genre about 1582, 1593, and 1595 respectively.
They shared remarkably similar theories because they resolved the same
set of phenomena.  Newton formulated a general theory about 1664.  It
was accepted by many people, especially the English, in the first half
of the 1700s.  Benjamin Franklin formulated a theory which idealized
fluids sometime about 1742 or 1747.  No one had formulated a theory
like his before him.  Theories which were similar to his were widely
accepted in the second half of the 1700s and the first half of the
1800s.  Faraday formulated another kind of theory about 1820, and then
Maxwell developed a theory which was similar to his.  Maxwell's
equations and theories about fields and lines of force were the most
widely accepted ideas of the last part of the 1800s.  Einstein
formulated a new kind of theory about 1905.  People formulated
theories which were called quantum mechanics which were similar to
his.  Quantum mechanics and relativity theories were the genre of
theory which superseded the earlier theory.
	
	The third part is a description of how the periodicity of
knowledge induced depressionary periods at approximately each forty
year interval since 1800, in the economies of the people who have led
in the knowledge of phenomena.  I try to explain the reasons I think
that these depressions occurred.  I distinguish two types of
depressions.  One type of depressionary period occurred during the
1830s and early 1840s, and in the 1930s in the most productive
economies when labor increased their production comparably rapidly by
automating the production of phenomena.  The other type occurred in
the 1880s and 1890s, and in the 1970s and early 1980s when labor was
increasing their production the least, when the older people innovated
little phenomena and relatively few people who apprehended theory of a
new genre had begun their careers.  If the trend of economic
development continues as it has for the past 200 years, the peoples
who lead in the production of phenomena will experience the first kind
of depressionary period about the year 2010 or 2020.

	The particular late stage of development of the peoples'
theory, so that they innovated fewer new categories of phenomena
during the 1820s to the 1850s, and the 1920s to the 1950s than they
did previously, was the cause for the depressions in the 1830s and the
1840s, and the 1930s in the countries that led in the production of
phenomena.  People began to produce phenomena in an unchanging
repetitive manner over longer periods of time so that the products
were standardized, so that people could replace human labor by
automation more readily than before when people changed their
productive behavior more often.  As a result of this decrease of
innovation was the relatively extremely high debt of the people, who
borrowed to automate and produce an environment for producing and who
borrowed in order to obtain the products of the types that were being
produced; and the people's increasing satiation for the types of
products they were producing as they obtained the products they
wanted, because of their limited resources; and the decreasing
productivity of the large part of the population in the leading
industrial countries at these times who were displaced from the tasks
which they knew how to do by automation.  The high debt, the
satiation, and the decreasing productivity was why a large part of the
population in the U.S. and Britain decreased their consumption of
phenomena during the 1830s and the 1840s, and the 1930s.

	The conjuncture of the peoples' ending of the development
of a genre of theory and the rudimentary stage of the development of
the new genre was the cause of the depressions of the 1880s and the
1890s and the 1970s in the world's leading industrial countries of
those times.  This conjuncture resulted in these peoples' relatively
low productivity increase for those times and the people's decrease of
production as they retrained and transferred to produce using new
technology and to work in other countries which were either catching
up to or surpassing the leaders in the level of technology.  Also,
these peoples could not compete with those in other countries who were
either catching up to or surpassing the former leaders, so they
produced less than they did before.

	The forth section is a description of the development of the
three economies which have led in the knowledge of and production of
the prior three sets of phenomena, first Great Britain, then the U.
S., and then the U. S. and Japan.  It is not well developed, but it
shows three recurring eighty year periods of development of technology
marked by the two kinds of major economic depressions alternately
occurring in the lead economy every forty years.
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