Raymond H. Wheeler
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| Raymond H. Wheeler | |
|---|---|
| Born | Raymond Holder Wheeler January 1, 1892 Berlin, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| January 1, 1961 (aged 69)January 1, 1961 (aged 69) | |
| 🏫 Education | Clark University (A.B. 1912, A.M. 1913, Ph.D. 1915) |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Known for | Index of international and civil war intensity, 599 B.C.–1943 A.D.; the 510-year and 100-year climate cycles; work in Gestalt psychology |
Raymond Holder Wheeler (1892–1961) was an American psychologist and climate researcher. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas from 1925 to 1947.
Wheeler is known both for his work in Gestalt psychology and, in later life, for an extensive research programme connecting long-term climate cycles to the rise and fall of civilizations, the intensity of war, and other patterns in human history.
His best-known contribution to cycles research is a statistical index of international and civil war intensity spanning 599 B.C. to the mid-20th century, and his proposal of a roughly 510-year climatic cycle. Wheeler was a close collaborator of Edward R. Dewey and the Foundation for the Study of Cycles.
Early life and education
Wheeler was born in Berlin, Massachusetts, in 1892.[1] He received his A.B. in 1912, his A.M. in 1913, and his Ph.D. in 1915, all from Clark University.[1][2]
Academic career
Wheeler joined the University of Oregon in 1915. He served in the United States Army during the First World War from 1917 to 1919, then returned to Oregon, where he was made full professor in 1920 and served as chairman of the Department of Psychology.[1] In 1925 he moved to the University of Kansas, where he was a professor in the Department of Psychology until 1947.[1][2] During this period he published on Gestalt psychology, including The Science of Psychology (1931) and, with F. T. Perkins, Principles of Mental Development.[1][3]
After leaving Kansas, Wheeler became Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at the Babson Institute of Business Administration in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, and served as Chief of Staff of the Climate Research Division of the Weather Science Foundation in Crystal Lake, Illinois.[1][4]
Climate and cycles research
Origins
By his own account, Wheeler's interest in historical cycles began not as climatology but as an observation, made over roughly a decade, that the dominant points of view in the histories of psychology, biology, and philosophy seemed to swing between opposing positions in a roughly synchronized way.[lower-alpha 1] A colleague suggested he compare this pattern to the tree-ring chronologies published by A. E. Douglass and Ellsworth Huntington; Wheeler reported that the resemblance between the curves was immediate, and this comparison redirected his research toward climate history.[5]
War index, 599 B.C.–1943 A.D.
Wheeler's most extensive data compilation was a pair of statistical indexes measuring the intensity of international and civil warfare from 599 B.C. to 1943 A.D. (later extended to 1950 A.D.), published by the Foundation for the Study of Cycles as Basic Data Bulletin No. 1.[4][2] Wheeler graded each recorded battle in severity from one (a mild engagement) to three (an exceptionally heavy engagement) and summed the values by year, drawing on roughly 20,000 individual historical source items.[4][6] Dewey's Foundation subsequently used this dataset to identify several candidate periodicities in war intensity, including cycles of roughly 11.2, 17.7, 22–23, 57, and 142 years.[6]
The 100-year and 510-year climate cycles
Wheeler's central historical thesis, set out in his 1943 Presidential Address to the Kansas Academy of Science, "The Effect of Climate on Human Behavior in History", held that world climate shifts between warm and cold phases in recurring rhythms, and that these shifts correlate with the rise and decline of civilizations and with the character of political upheaval.[4] Wheeler summarized the pattern as a "Clock of Cold Droughts and Civil Wars": nations, in his account, tend to be built on the shift from cold to warm climate phases and to decline on the shift from warm to cold; international wars cluster in warm phases and civil wars in cold ones.[4] He further argued that centralized, authoritarian government was more typical of the later part of warm phases, while more democratic and individualist trends were associated with cold phases — a claim that has drawn scrutiny as an example of unsupported environmental/climatic determinism.[4][lower-alpha 2]
In 1943, Wheeler proposed a climatic cycle of approximately 510 years, later reported in the foundation's January 1951 report.[6] He held that this rhythm, along with shorter roughly 100-year and 170-year rhythms nested within it, could be traced through roughly 2,500 years of combined historical, tree-ring, and other proxy data.[7]
The Foundation for the Study of Cycles and "the Big Book"
Wheeler was a close correspondent and collaborator of Edward R. Dewey, founder of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles (FSC), and his war and climate indexes were published and distributed by the foundation.[4][8] Over his career Wheeler and a rotating team of graduate-student assistants compiled a very large hand-ruled ledger — informally known among later cycles researchers as "the Big Book" — cross-indexing roughly six centuries of recorded events (wars, arts, science, economics, and climate) by year.[7] This volume was housed at the Foundation for the Study of Cycles until the late 1990s.
Image of big book to be inserted here
Much of the surviving secondary literature on Wheeler's climate work derives from a posthumous compilation, Climate: The Key to Understanding Business Cycles, drawn from his papers and revised and edited by Michael Zahorchak.[7]
Publications
- Wheeler, Raymond H. The Science of Psychology. London: Jarrolds, 1931.
- Wheeler, Raymond H., and F. T. Perkins. Principles of Mental Development.
- Wheeler, Raymond H. "The Effect of Climate on Human Behavior in History." Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, Vol. 46 (1943). Reprinted as Foundation for the Study of Cycles Reprint No. 35, and in Cycles, Vol. 2, No. 1 (January 1951), pp. 21–40.
- Wheeler, Raymond H. An Index of International War, An Index of Civil War, 599 B.C.–1943 A.D. Foundation for the Study of Cycles, Basic Data Bulletin No. 1, 1951.
- Wheeler, Raymond H. "Today an Old World is Dying and A New One is Taking its Place." Journal of Human Ecology, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1951).
- Wheeler, Raymond H. "The Seven-Year Rainfall Cycle in the U.S. in Relation to Business Trends." Journal of Human Ecology, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1951).
- Wheeler, Raymond H. "The 9-Year Cycle in Common Stock Prices in Relation to the Weather Trends." Journal of Human Ecology, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1951).
- Wheeler, Raymond H. "The 18.3-Year Cycle in Real Estate in Relation to Rainfall." Journal of Human Ecology, Vol. 1, No. 5 (1951).
- Wheeler, Raymond H. "Weather and Business Trends in the United States, 1794–1950 and Throughout History." Journal of Human Ecology, Vol. 1, No. 6 (1951).
- Wheeler, Raymond H. Climate: The Key to Understanding Business Cycles. Revised and edited by Michael Zahorchak.
Legacy
Wheeler's papers are held by the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas (Call Number PP 217), which describes him as "a well-known authority on climatology, especially for his research on weather cycles and their influence on human behavior and civilizations."[1] His work continues to be cited within the cycles research community, notably by the Foundation for the Study of Cycles and the Cycles Research Institute.[8][7] His climate-determinism thesis, and particularly his correlation of political forms with climate phase, has not been taken up within mainstream historiography or climatology.
See also
- Edward R. Dewey
- Foundation for the Study of Cycles
- A. E. Douglass
- Environmental determinism
- Gestalt psychology
Notes
- ↑ Wheeler recounts this origin in his 1943 Presidential Address to the Kansas Academy of Science, reprinted by the Foundation for the Study of Cycles as Reprint No. 35 and in Cycles, Vol. 2, No. 1 (January 1951), pp. 21–40.
- ↑ This aspect of Wheeler's thesis is a claim of environmental determinism and is not accepted within mainstream historiography or climatology; it is presented here as part of the historical record of his views, not as an endorsed finding.
- ↑ The subsequent location of the volume and the account of its having survived the September 11, 2001, destruction of the Market Technicians Association's library because it was on loan elsewhere at the time is reported by researchers associated with the Cycles Research Institute and in secondary accounts by cycles researchers; it has not been independently verified against a citable primary source at the time of writing and should be confirmed with the Market Technicians Association / CMT Association directly before being added to the article. Independent confirmation exists that the Market Technicians Association's library and records were destroyed in the September 11 attacks.[9]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 "Personal Papers of Raymond H. Wheeler". Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. Retrieved 2026-08-30.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Devonis, David C. (2012). "Wheeler, Raymond H.". In Rieber, Robert W. Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories. New York, NY: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_130.
- ↑ "The Science of Psychology. By Raymond H. Wheeler". Journal of Mental Science. Cambridge University Press (for the Royal College of Psychiatrists). 1932.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Foreword to "An Index of International War, An Index of Civil War, 599 B.C.–1943 A.D.", Cycles — A Monthly Report, Foundation for the Study of Cycles, Vol. 2, No. 5 (May 1951).
- ↑ "Cycles in Wheat Prices and in Weather", Cycles — A Monthly Report, Foundation for the Study of Cycles, Vol. 4 (December 1953), pp. 321–322, quoting Wheeler's Presidential Address.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Late Pleistocene and Recent Glacial Chronology", Cycles — A Monthly Report, Foundation for the Study of Cycles, Vol. 8 (1957), citing Wheeler's methodology.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 "Wheeler". Cycles Research Institute. Retrieved 2026-08-30.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "About Us". Foundation for the Study of Cycles. Retrieved 2026-08-30.
- ↑ "Technically Speaking, April 2023". CMT Association. Retrieved 2026-08-30.
External links
- Foundation for the Study of Cycles — official website
- Cycles Research Institute: Wheeler — biographical and research summary
- Personal Papers of Raymond H. Wheeler — Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas
- Wheeler, Raymond H. — entry in the Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories (Springer)
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