msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (04/30/86)
Expires: [I'm following-up to several messages here, so this article contains a fair bit of included text to keep things straight.] Dave Kirby (dave@cylixd.UUCP) started the topic by asking: ] Is there anything to Biorhythms, or is it just neo-astrology? Doug Gwyn (gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA) replied: | The earliest ancestor of today's biorhythms seems to be invented | by a contemporary of Freud (sorry, I forgot his name), who had | only two cycles (28 days feminine, 23 days (I think) masculine) | that he claimed were active in everybody. Freud championed his | cause. I don't know when or why the third cycle was introduced. Which prompted Stavros Macrakis (macrakis@harvard.UUCP) to add: * I believe it was Wilhelm Fliess, Freud's friend with the nasal theory * of disease, who introduced the 23 and 28 day cycles. Martin Gardner * had a `Mathematical Games' column about this about ten years ago. Actually it was about 20 years ago, but the column can also be found in Gardner's 7th collection, "Mathematical Carnival", which was published in 1975. (It doesn't give the exact date of original publication.) The article's title in the book is "The Numerology of Dr. Fliess", which is an in-joke for us Gardner fans. Gardner writes: # Fliess wrote many books and articles about his cycle theory, # but his magnum opus was a 584-page volume, "Der Ablauf des Lebens: # Grundlegung zur Exakten Biologie" ("The Rhythms of Life: Foundations # of an Exact Biology"), published in Leipzig in 1906 (2nd edition, # Vienna, 1923). The book is a masterpiece of Teutonic crackpottery. # Fliess's basic formula can be written 23x + 28y, where x and y are # positive or negative integers. On almost every page Fliess fits # this formula to natural phenomena, ranging from the cell to the # solar system. ... # Freud admitted on many occasions that he was hopelessly deficient # in all mathematical abilities. Fliess understood elementary # arithmetic, but little more. He did not realized that [even] if # any two positive integers that have no common divisor are substituted # for 23 and 28 in his basic formula, it is [still] possible to express # ANY POSITIVE INTEGER WHATEVER. Little wonder that the formula could # be so easily fitted to natural phenomena. ... # Freud eventually realized that Fliess's superficially surprising # results were no more than numerological juggling. After Fliess's # death in 1928 (note the obliging 28), a German physician, J. Aelby, # published a book that constituted a thorough refutation of Fliess's # absurdities. By then, however, the 23-28 cult was firmly established # in Germany. ... # To the male and female cycles modern Fliessians have added a third # cycle called the intellectual cycle, which has a length of 33 days. Fliess's nasal theory was also rather, um, off the wall. Gardner doesn't speculate on where the 33 days came from. The book form of the article includes an addendum to bring it up to date. This gives a citation for the case that Ed Falk (falk@sun.UUCP) is referring to when he writes: > For instance, there was a city that experimented with > reducing their accident rates by taking bus drivers off duty when their > biorhythms were at a low. Gardner's version: # Biorhythm seems to have been more favorably received in Japan than # in the United States. According to TIME, January 10, 1972, page 48, # the Ohmi Railway Co., in Japan, computed the biorhythms of each of # its 500 bus drivers. Whenever a driver was scheduled for a "bad" # day, he was given a notice to be extra careful. The Ohmi company # reported a fifty percent drop in accidents. It seems to me that this is hardly conclusive evidence. Handing people a notice to be extra careful on a couple of days each month chosen at random might be just as effective. In fact, this sounds to me like a case of the Hawthorne Effect. I quote the textbook Psychology and Life, 8th edition, by Ruch & Zimbardo, pages 370-371: $ How best to motivate workers in order to increase their productivity $ was the problem studied by researchers at the Hawthorne Works of the $ Western Electric Company in Chicago. A group of women workers were $ exposed to a variety of special conditions including variations in $ working hours, rest periods, illumination, and pay incentives, among $ others. No matter what the researchers did, productivity went up. $ Even when work conditions were made worse than they were originally, $ the women worked harder and more efficiently. The secret ingredient? $ The ATTENTION shown to them by all those concerned with the study $ was the variable which influenced their behavior. Although this $ was not the experimenters' independent variable, it was what the $ subjects were responding to. I think the connection with the Ohmi experience is obvious. (Ruch & Zimbardo don't mention it, but the creation of an "esprit de corps" was also considered a significant cause of the Hawthorne workers' increased productivity. Ruch & Zimbardo cite a 1939 book "Management and the Worker", by Roethlisberger & Dickson. The experiments were in 1927-32.) Returning to biorhythms, Ed Falk also wrote: > I believe that Biorhythms are for real. Basically, we're all subject to > cycles in our metabolism (three distinct cycles, with different periods > to be exact). By plotting these, and looking for places where they > reinforce each other (positively or negatively), you can take advantage > of the situation. Well, I'll keep an open mind on this, but I must point out that humans just love to find patterns in things. A random variation can look awfully like a cycle until you analyze it mathematically. I find the notion that there are three different unrecognized "circamensal" cycles (or two plus the menstrual cycle -- in both sexes) to be a rather unlikely one. > HOWEVER, any biorhythm charting method that works with your date of > birth is just pure hooey. Everybody's cycle is slightly different. And > to expect someone's cycles to stay precise and in phase from the moment > of birth, for the rest of their lives is ridiculous. Proper biorhythm > charting must be done just that way -- by charting. If these hypothesized rhythms do exist, this paragraph must surely be truth. As he says, the contrary situation is ridiculous. Mark Brader