The New Case for Cycles

Dr. Richard Smith, FSC Chairman

A Note from the Chairman: The New Case for Cycles

Dear FSC Friends,

I am getting more excited every day about our upcoming conference in NYC. It’s been gratifying to see so many serious cycles researchers heed the call to gather in person for the first time in over 30 years.

I think a lot of cycles researchers feel like they’ve been working in the wilderness and everyone’s been waiting to see if this thing is for real. It's definitely for real, and it’s getting more real by the day. If you’re serious about cycles, you really owe it to yourself to be there.

Reserve you spot today.

Speaking of getting real, I’m grateful to Neil Howe for introducing us to one of those cycles researchers who has been working in the wilderness – Janne Miettinen. If you haven’t seen my recent interview with Janne, go watch it now. Here is what Neil had to say about Janne’s work in his recent book The Fourth Turning is Here:

An estimated two-thirds of all mammalian species exhibit multi-year cycles of population expansion and contraction. These range from roughly four years for lemmings and voles to ten years for snowshoe hares to thirty-eight years for moose. Most of these cycles appear to be unrelated to climate, predators, or anything else in the environment. More intriguingly, many are linked to a matching behavioral pattern – for example, cycles of aggression, herding, migration, mating, and stress.

In effect, these animals act differently depending on when, during this repeating calendar, they are born. While biologists aren’t sure what drives these cycles, some have speculated that they may be triggered by periodic changes in the animals’ production of hormones and neurotransmitters and that these changes may be synchronized by pheromones and behavioral cues. No one has any idea whether this triggering does happen or could happen in humans. Research on this question, even for small mammals, remains in its infancy.

Those of you who have been reading these Chairman’s Letters for a while will recall that I have repeatedly talked about the work of Copley Amory and the Matamek Conference on biological cycles, which took place in 1931. Mr. Amory was the first Chairman of the FSC and in many ways was as big an influence on the FSC as the founder Edward R. Dewey.

Janne’s work on hormonal cycles is of great interest to the FSC because it aligns so well with the work of the Matamek biologists. It’s also of great interest to me personally because I believe that biology is gradually becoming a more important science to the world today than physics.

I was reminded of this while reading Andrew Lo’s Adaptive Markets. Mr. Lo, the head of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, had this to say: I hope to convince you that biologists should be reminding economists, “It’s the environment, stupid!”

Biology has been in the DNA of the FSC from day one and it is finally resurfacing again. Thanks to the support of a generous donor, Janne will be joining us in NYC. I hope you will too. It’s going to be an incredible environment!

Time rhymes,

Dr. Richard Smith
Chairman of the Board and Executive Director