Also: Introduction to The Periodic Production of Rationalized Phenomena and the Past Periodic Depressions
email: elewis1@hotmail.com
NOTE (note posted May 28, 1998)
Introductory abstract for my book about the theory of scientific and technological revolutions and periodic economic development. It is explained that the new set of phenomena described in this book is the product of a regular generational process that has continued for at least half the millennium that involves the contradiction of fundamental physics hypotheses at 80 year intervals.
I think that a scientific revolution is currently going on, and that these have occurred at about every 80 year interval since 1506. This theory has been accurately predictive since it was first formulated about a decade ago. In particular, the recent rapid economic boom in the US due to the development of a new genre of industries was predicted by this theory. Both the new industrial development and reasons for why this would occur were described about 1990 in an early version of this book. According to the theory, barring unforeseen disasters, even more rapid industrial development and higher growth rates are predicted for the future. Specifically, during the next 10 years the most advanced economies will experience economic development in many ways similar to the period from 1917-1929 in the U.S., a time when the U.S. economy boomed and entire industries were developed. That was a time of great social change. And predictions are described about the development of technology of the new plasmoid genre. Since I have worked to help develop new theory and assisted some in experimental research of this new phenomena, I may have a unique historical view. The theory is a causal explanation for Kondratiev economic depressions, and during the past few years other authors such as Harry Dent and Rick Szostak have published similar aspects of economic theory. Harry Dent, in particular, presented long-term economic and demographic predictions that are very similar to mine.
This book is quite long already, equivalent to about 200 pages. It is sent in manuscript form in 10 point font, single spaced, and about 70 pages. I'd like help trying to get it published. Interested publishers or printers, please contact me. I am also now thinking about developing a 5th chapter that describes the new set of phenomena of plasmoids that includes both published articles and unpublished manuscripts. Once the book is published, it may also include as an appendix a long 26 page bibliography of articles about cold fusion. During the past two years I've worked on extending chapters two and three. The 3rd chapter on economic theory has a new section, and compares my theory to the newly published theories of others. Rick Szostak's work is very important evidence for this theory, and he presents some similar new ideas about the Great Depression period.
If people would like a manuscript copy of the book, please send a gift of a check or money order of 20 dollars plus postage to me at the above address. If you wish the manuscript copy sent by certified mail, please include the extra cost. I may send along copies of my recently published physics articles in Frontier Perspectives, Infinite Energy, and other periodicals if requested.
July 12, 1996
[Received via email to the INE, October 1996.]
[Posted Nov. 15, 1996. Extended Nov. 21, 1996]
The Periodic Production of Rationalized Phenomena and the Past Periodic Depressions
Copyright (c) 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996 by Edward Lewis All Rights Reserved
Short Abstract
An approximately 80 year periodicity of the introduction of new kinds of science theories since 1506 is explained, and is described as the cause of an approximately 40 year periodicity of economic depressionary periods since 1790. A theory of the development of science is presented, as is a short chronological description of the development of science since the 1400s. A theory of the periodic development of the technologically advanced economies is also presented, as is a sketchy chronological narrative of the economic periodicity. Also, an article describing my own theory of phenomena is appended.
Why I wrote the book, and why I feel there is a need for it:
I wrote the book because I wanted to describe my theory of a periodicity of scientific and economic development in a logical and interesting way. I think that there has been such a periodicity, so if people understand why it occurs not only will their understanding of the development of science and industry, society, and economies increase, but also they will be better able to plan the development of their lives. People will be able to manage the development of science better, by knowing the timing and structure and causes of development; people will be able to manage their economic and productive affairs to avoid the harm of future periodic development.
I wrote the physics papers in the book because I wanted to explain to people my understanding of the new set of phenomena. I wrote the list of "cold fusion" articles so that people could research the development of the new science, and contact researchers. That there is a development of new fundamental physics ideas at this time is proof that the 80 year periodicity is continuing.
This economics and history of science theory represents a merging of economics to the history of science, and is a theory of economic depressionary periods. I am proposing a theory of scientific change, something that the study of science has not had. The physics theory is a fundamental theory of physical phenomena, and it has received some acceptance.
Since I am active in the development of new theory, I am gaining first hand information about the development of new theory and the history of the development of the new science, as well as having personal interactions with the researchers so that I am gaining a personal appreciation of the sociology of this type of revolutionary research. Now that cold fusion phenomena and other anomalous phenomena are being popularly reported, my first-hand account of the development of this field and my personal knowledge of the researchers may be very useful.
INTRODUCTION
When I first learned about the phenomena called 'cold fusion' in March or April of 1989, I was looking for evidence of the recent production of significant anomalies of the quantum mechanics and relativity theories, contradictions of the basic ideas of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity theory which Einstein had formulated about 1905. This is because I was then developing a theory about the 80 year periodicity of revolutions in the development of science which would explain the "Kondratiev cycle," an approximately 40 to 60 year periodicity of economic depressionary periods in the economies of the capitalist countries that Kondratiev, a Russian economist who lived decades ago, thought had occurred. I suspected that changes of science theory happened at 80 year intervals, 1905 Einstein, 1820 Faraday; and I was looking for the recent production of anomalies that occurs before such changes of theory during the times that Kuhn called "crisis periods." At that time, I figured that superconductivity which was reported 3 years earlier was such an anomaly, but I was looking for others, and I thought that cold fusion was also such an anomaly. I've written several papers about my theory of scientific and economic periodicity since 1989. Since then, I've also learned about other kinds of anomalies, and learned more about anomalies that I already knew about. I now suspect that both cold fusion and superconductivity are plasmoid phenomena.
Most of the people who have been producing anomalous phenomena were born about 1935 or 1945, give or take some years, and learned and apprehended quantum mechanics and relativity theories as they were growing up. They were born about the time that those in their parents' generation, such as Schwinger, Tomonaga, and de Broglie, were substantially developing quantum mechanics theory. Their parents' generation was in turn born about 1905, give or take some years, which was when Einstein was formulating the fundamental ideas of quantum mechanics and relativity theories. There were three generations involved in the development and contradiction of the quantum mechanics and relativity theories. This 3 stage, generational development -- formulation of fundamental ideas of a new physics theory, development of theory, and experiencing of fundamental anomalies has recurred 6 times since 1506, when Copernicus formulated a fundamental physics theory. The three stages have taken about 80 years on average, between about 72 to 89 years in each case. If one averages the dates of formulation of theory of Gilbert, Galileo, and Kepler, or if one only uses the date of Galileo as the mode, then the time between the events of initial formulation varies much less. The approximate timing of the pattern of the initial formulation of theory was, in my opinion, 1506 - Copernicus, 1582 - Gilbert, 1593 - Galileo, and 1595 - Kepler, 1664 - Newton, sometime about the years 1740 or 1747 - Franklin, 1820 - Faraday, and 1905 - Einstein. Gilbert, Galileo, and Kepler more or less independently formulated similar theories because they resolved the same set of phenomena, the phenomena that contradicted or accorded with Copernican theory.
By the summer of 1995, some people who apprehended Quantum Mechanics and Relativity theory accept that cold fusion phenomena is a real phenomena. In April of 1995, there was a meeting of cold fusion researchers in Monaco. Two hundred people from around the world attended, and hundreds of articles were presented. Research in this and related phenomena is gaining funding and support, especially in Japan. Maybe sometime in the near future, a majority of people will accept that - that which has been called cold fusion is a real phenomena with great technological implications. Cold fusion is one of a group of newly produced anomalies that are a set of phenomena. Theorists about the superconductivity phenomena know that no theory accounts for all aspects of this phenomena. Superconductivity and cold fusion, together with ball lightning and other anomalies, are the phenomena of a new kind of science.
Important proof that the hypothesis of an 80 year periodicity is valid is that before Fleischmann and Pons reported the anomalous results that they called "cold fusion" about March of 1989, I was suspecting that a scientific revolution must be occurring if my periodicity ideas were correct and if science was continuing to develop according to the pattern of the past. I was searching for the announcement of anomalies. Later, I learned that the work of Fleischmann and Pons had begun in the mid-1980s, and that others had performed similar experiments since at least the 1960s. Learning about anomalies, scientific theories, and crisis periods, and about how people think and formulate theories has enabled me to understand my own development of my own theory of the new phenomena. I've published eight articles about "plasmoids" and cold fusion in four cold fusion and 'new energy' newsletters from January of 1994 to July of 1996. In these articles, I describe my theory of the new phenomena, and other researchers are accepting these ideas and producing experimental evidence confirming my hypotheses.
Also, when I started to develop this theory in the late 1980s, few economists or business writers were predicting that the decade of the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century would be economic boom times in the most advanced economies, as I predicted according to my economic periodicity ideas. Now however, this idea is commonly described in popular business periodicals. It is easy to see now that a number of important industries are growing very rapidly, and that the productivity due to technological change of those in the most advanced economies will be rapidly increasing. Also, I've found parallels with the now widely accepted generational sociological ideas of Howe and Strauss, and Dent's analysis of the economic effect of these generational life cycles. I did not know about Howe and Strauss's work in the late 1980s, and Dent published his book in 1993.
Synopses of Each Chapter
Synopsis of Chapter 1
Theory of the Periodic Production of Rationalized Phenomena
This chapter is written in three sections. The first section presents a description of the theory of the periodic production of rationalized phenomena. The second section presents collateral evidence for the formation of inhibition of apprehension by adducing the existence of primary language. The third section is a more finely detailed recapitulation of the recurring generational pattern.
The first chapter of this book explains why science has developed periodically since at least 1500. By the first section, I describe three well known historical patterns that are three hypotheses of my theory and pronounce some ideas which are attempts to causally account for the historical patterns. I'd like to emphasize that the historical patterns are the important basis of this theory. Though I propose some possible causes of these historical patterns, other ideas may also account for the historical patterns. The three historical patterns that are assumed are that those who apprehend a theory of a genre don't then formulate or develop a theory of another genre; that those who develop theories of a genre don't or usually don't produce the contradictions of the theories (the anomalies); and that people rush to develop their science as fast as they can.
I attempt to loosely 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 (1) people's apprehension of a set of phenomena is inhibited by prior apprehension of a prior set of phenomena so that those who already apprehend a set of phenomena can not formulate or develop a theory of another genre. Based on this postulate and two others, that (2) those who develop theories do not, or usually do not, independently experience contradictory or anomalous phenomena, and that (3) people's pursuit of rationalized phenomena is an acceleration to the process, I attempt to show why an approximately eighty year, three generation periodicity of rationalized phenomena occurs. However, whether or not my causal theoretical explanation of these three hypotheses are accurate according to present knowledge, the three hypotheses are features of the development of science which most people would agree are so.
In the second section of the first chapter of this book, in order to account for the historical feature of inhibition of apprehension, I ascribe the hypothesis of formation 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 can not 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 occurrence is probably only superficially similar. I suspect that this idea of hard wiring is equivalent to the idea that people do not apprehend anomalous phenomena of a new set because they interpret the phenomena according to their premise; I would say that this hard wiring idea may be the reason for this interpretation which inhibits apprehension.
I hypothesize that this is the reason that only those who had not yet apprehended a theory of a prior genre are formulators of new theory. These people are usually the children of the third generation and are members of the fourth generation of society after the initial formulation of a theory, though they are not always. Franklin and Gilbert were two exceptions. They were members of the third generation, and they were in their later thirties or forties when they first formulated their theories. I think that they were able to do this even though they were older because they remained relatively unfamiliar of the prior sets of phenomena until the fundamental contradictions of the prior sets were produced, so that they could apprehend the new set of phenomena implicitly. Kuhn's explanation for Franklin's ability to formulate a new theory though he was older is his relative experience when he was younger. So Kuhn's explanation and understanding of that which I call inhibition of apprehension is somewhat like my own. There may be a lack of evidence available to know how much about prior theory that Franklin and Gilbert knew or accepted when they were younger The fundamental phenomena of a set of phenomena are the postulates of a genre of theory.
I do not present a firm hypothetical basis to support my second hypothesis that those who develop theories of a genre 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 societies did not have the basis of experiential (technological) skill to enable them to test the theories until the following generation began their careers, or that those who develop theories themselves lack the ability to independently 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. It is therefore usually the members of the third generation in a society after the formulation of fundamental theory who are the effective experimenters who produce fundamental anomalies or verify details of the theory and who initiate new industries or develop major new kinds of products.
The basis for the third hypothesis is that people seem to try to develop as much physics theory or produce as much phenomena and anomalies as they are able to during their careers. There is a rushing, and perhaps a competition, whatever the reason that people try to understand and produce phenomena.
While those who did not apprehend a prior theory formulated and developed new kinds of theories, those who did apprehend a prior theory and who learned about anomalous phenomena and accepted that the phenomena existed developed their theories to try to comprehend the new phenomena by modifying their theories. Perhaps they did this by formulating additional hypotheses or by modifying their original premise. It seems to me that the people who apprehended earlier premises and experienced a new set of phenomena have never modified their premises very much. In fact, they seem never to have accepted the hypotheses of those who formulated new theories. For example, Planck never accepted the hypothesis of quanta pronounced by Einstein and even strongly argued against Einstein's idea during the decade of the 1910s.
Synopsis of Chapter 2
Description of the Development of Science According to This Theory
This Chapter is divided into an Introduction and a Body.
The second chapter of the book is a description of the periodic history of science since 1506. I focus on the difference between people's premises. Copernicus formulated a general theory which comprehended not only astronomical phenomena but also 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 or "matter," such as the "matter of heat" that Lavoisier and others called "caloric" and the "matter of electricity," sometime before or about 1745. No one had formulated a theory like his before he did. And Benjamin Cohen recognized Franklin's contribution to the development of electrical and heat theory as original and fundamentally important. 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.
Since 1905, and before, people have been producing phenomena which contradict Q.M. and relativity theories such as ball lighting-like phenomena. Tesla and others such as Plante produced ball lightning-like phenomena which are contradictory to Q.M. and relativity theories. Einstein, however, did not seem to mention such phenomena. Though anomalous phenomena were being produced and described in the early 1900s, those who developed the theories of the genre could not resolve them and seem almost never to have mentioned them. Those who did produce and study ball lightning-like phenomena during the late 19th and early 20th centuries thought about them according to Franklin-type or Faraday-type theories. However, since 1970, more and more of those who apprehended Q.M. and Relativity theories as they were growing up have been producing the contradictions of the basic postulates of their theories. And especially since the mid-1980s those such as K. Shoulders and Matsumoto and many hundreds of other researchers of anomalous astrophysical phenomena, plasmoids, ball lightning, "cold fusion," sonoluminescence and cavitation, superconductivity, and other anomalous phenomena have been producing and reporting about anomalies. It seems that the contradictions of the fundamental hypotheses of Q.M. and Relativity theories have been produced. The few basic postulates of the prior theories are contradicted in characteristic ways. These fundamental anomalies are postulates for a new theory.
Synopsis of Chapter 3
Theory of The Past Periodic Depressions
The third chapter of this book is an explanation of why the periodicity of people's knowledge resulted in 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. I mostly incorporate prior economic theories to show that two kinds of economic depressionary periods that alternate at approximately 40 year periods could be caused by an 80 year periodicity of technological innovation. If the trend of economic development continues as it has for the past 200 years, the peoples who lead in the production of Q.M.-type phenomena will undergo the first kind of depressionary period about the year 2010 or 2020 unless there will be some type of financial collapse. It is interesting to me that economists such as Dent are also predicting a depressionary period about the years 2010 or 2020 based on generational life-cycle theory.
One aspect of history that people may find confusing is that there is about an 80 year lag after the initial formulation of theory before the economically substantial development of new industries. For example the electrical industries that were mainly developed according to developed Faraday-type theories began to be a significant part of the advanced economies only after Einstein formulated a new kind of theory, or about 80 years after Faraday first formulated his premise. Likewise, quantum mechanics based industries became a large part of advanced economies in the 1980s, while fundamental anomalies of quantum mechanics theory were also being produced. The third generation in a society includes both the effective experimenters who produce phenomena that accord with prior theory and who begin economically significant industry and those who produce anomalies.
Depressions that occur in the middle of technological stages, 1830s and 1930s
There were similar economic features just before and during both mid-phase depressions that have occurred within the last 170 years such as comparatively high debt and unemployment due to automation, but I think that these features can be regarded as effects of the same kind of change of technological development that happened during the early 1800s and the early 1900s. In this paper, I describe the similar economic features as the result of the same stage of development of technology; in particular, I describe that the people in both eras started to produce more automatically than they did before, and I ascribe this change of way of production as the result of their stage of development of the theory of the phenomena of the set that they apprehended. For example, major kinds of products are innovated by people just before or during the beginning of a technological phase. Edison, Bell and Watson, Tesla, the Wright brothers, and internal combustion engine inventors all innovated major new kinds of phenomena during the last quarter of the 19th century and the first decade of the 1900s; but later in the technological phase, the potential of the "Faraday Genre set" for such major basic innovation was exhausted, and people innovated the phenomena of the developed set more incrementally, as people started to do in the 1920s. It is logical that people do this. Later in a technological phase, people only innovate slightly improved products, and they try to produce products more efficiently by automating and by other ways. The more efficient production of products has been called by some people, "process innovation." Once products change only little, people concentrate their effort to build infrastructure and equipment to automate and to produce products by using less human labor.
I suggest that it was this change of manner of production of phenomena that caused the depressionary periods in the middle of both technological phases: both the decreasing labor, and the relatively high debt. It seems to me that the high consumer and producer debt in both economies was due to the people borrowing to buy the newly standardized products that people thought were important to buy in order to automate their production. In general, it seems that the people needed to buy the new machines and the new products in order to produce more efficiently and competitively. Both the people who would usually be called consumers, such as the house wives, and those who would usually be called producers, such as the managers of companies, needed to use the new machinery that was available in order to automate their production, whether it was the production of food and clothing for the family or the production of cars, electric kitchen appliances, or washing machines, and the people were willing to borrow in order to automate production because otherwise they could not compete, and they expected that the machines would help them to produce more in order that they pay the debt, or that somehow the products would be worth the debt.
People innovated fewer new categories of economically substantial phenomena just before the depressionary periods of the 1830s and the 1930s. This is because the sets of phenomena were being exhausted so that the rate of increase of productivity decreased and the cost of manufacturing increased so that people did not get the returns of investment that they expected, while machinery was replacing labor. 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.
This analysis of these two mid-phase depressionary periods I learned partly from Joseph Paul Waters' book, Technological Acceleration and the Great Depression. My theory of mid-phase depressionary periods was originally based partly on his ideas, along with the ideas of Kondratiev, Kuznets and Schumpeter, and Christopher Freeman and Robert Ayres and other more recent writers, such as those who contributed articles to the Christopher Freeman. It seems odd to me that Waters' work has not been cited by the later writers. After I formulated my theory, I found Ester Fano's papers which well substantiated Waters' ideas and my ideas. Ester Fano's papers, some of which I cite in the book, describe and document the increasing unemployment in the U.S. during the 1920s and 1930s due to increasing automation. It seems odd to me that Fano does not cite Waters, since the ideas of the two are so similar.
Depressionary periods that occur between technological stages, 1890s and 1970s
The conjuncture of the ending of the development of a genre of theory and the rudimentary stage of the technological development of the newer genre was the cause of the depressionary periods 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 newer equipment and work with other people and work in other places such as 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.
As Jos Delbeke pointed out in his article, "Recent Long-Wave Theories. A Critical Survey," in Long Waves in the World Economy, theories of long term economic fluctuations, "long-wave" theories, can be classified into several groups. Schumpeter and Mensch and others considered the bunching of innovation as crucial, but the great weakness of their theoretical explanations was that they could not describe a cause for the bunching. I think that the periodic development of science is the cause of the periodic production of phenomena. However, Schumpeter thought that there were clusters of innovations every 45 to 60 years. However, I explain that innovation of phenomena has an 80 year periodicity and that it is this that leads to the two kinds of depressions that have alternated at about 40 year intervals.
I don't think that there is evidence of very basic and economically substantial innovation to the almost exhausted sets during mid-phase depressionary periods such as the ones that occurred in the 1930s and the 1830s and 1840s. The mid-phase and between phase depressionary periods were fundamentally different, as I explain. However, economically substantial innovation of entire new industries is clearly evident during the between phase depressions about the years 1790, 1890, and 1975. These are more or less the dates that most people use when they are thinking about "industrial revolutions."
Synopsis of Chapter 4
A Description of the Development of the Advanced Economies Since 1800 According to this Theory
This description of the past periodic depressions since 1800 is divided into two sections. In the first section, I briefly describe the production of the three prior sets of phenomena. In the second section, I describe the economic consequences of the production of the phenomena.
See Also:
Introductory chapter of my book about the theory of scientific and technological revolutions and periodic economic development. It is a causal explanation for Kondratiev economic depressions, and during the past few years others have published similar aspects of theory. It is explained that the new set of phenomena described in these articles is the product of a regular generational process that has continued for at least half the millennium that involves the contradiction of fundamental hypotheses at 80 year intervals.
"Tornadoes and Ball Lightning," a paper by Edward Lewis, June 1996, Revised. Oct. 1996.
"Plasmoid Phenomena," a paper by Edward Lewis, June 1996
Return to the Plasmoids and Cold Fusion INFO. Page
From: "e lewis"To: pgb@padrak.com Subject: Patrick, please replace ELEWIS6 again, thanks Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 13:38:14 PDT
www.padrak.com/ine/ELEWIS6.html
Dec. 3, 1996. Replaced, June 25, 1998.