A Note From FSC Chairman on Raymond Wheeler

Dr. Richard Smith, FSC Chairman

A note from the FSC Chairman on Raymond Wheeler

Over the past month I’ve become more familiar with the remarkable work of Raymond Wheeler, who studied the effects of climate on human psychology, culture, and behavior. It has reminded me of one of the great mysteries of cycles.

Wheeler was a psychology professor at the University of Kansas back in the first half of the twentieth century and spent decades of painstaking research assembling a monumental study of climate cycles and their effect on human behavior and culture back to 600 B.C. His analysis spanned over 3,000 sources and involved hundreds of researchers over decades of work.

His findings are summarized by Michael Zahorchak in the only book available on Wheeler’s work, Climate: The Key to Understanding Business Cycles:

[O]ver long periods of time, climatic changes evolve in an orderly progression of temperature – rainfall relationships similar to those prevailing in the annual progression of seasons, and further, that important changes in cultural, political and economic patterns accompany, and can be anticipated by, these long-term climatic changes.

I knew of Wheeler already. But the more I learn about the full breadth and scope of his work, the more I am amazed at Wheeler’s contributions to science and mankind, and the more I am dismayed that his work remains virtually unknown today. He doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page!

Which brings me to one of the great mysteries of cycles.

What is it that is so distasteful about cycles to our modern world? We find the answer from the preface to Zahorchak’s book:

[M]ost people refuse to accept the fact that humans are subject to the forces of nature, because they believe that this admission subjects them to slavery or makes them victims of these forces. Wheeler shows that freedom comes from learning what these forces are and turning them to one’s own account.

What sailor would wish to remain ignorant of the tides because the admission of tides would be tantamount to slavery? Are we really to imagine that in a world where cycles and tides are literally everywhere, there are no “tides in the affairs of men,” to quote Edgar Lawrence Smith?

The FSC was a great supporter of Wheeler’s efforts from day one. In fact, as I learn more about the history of Wheeler’s work and its relationship to the history of the FSC, it becomes clearer what the FSC was trying to kickstart in its early days, and why its work was embraced by such accomplished individuals.

What’s still a mystery is why the efforts of people like Dewey, Wheeler, Huntington, Kondratieff, Smith, Abbot, and Amory get so little recognition today.

With your help, we at the FSC would like to change that.

Time rhymes,
Dr. Richard Smith
FSC Chairman of the Board and Executive Director