«"The clock, not the steam engine, is central to the Industrial Revolution. The clock is the crowning achievement that all other machines aspire to." » Lewis Mumford
We will see that human activity is regulated by periodic phenomena whose two main origins are elementary particles vibrations and motions in Universe. We will see also the importance of rhythms and the need for respecting phases.
1- The basic frequencies of elementary particles regulate human activity.
In the chapter "revisited Physics", we have shown by numerous evidences that matter is made of waves. At the very origin, there is nothing else that an ideal medium which is travelled through by waves that can be either advanced, they converge towards a centre, or retarded, they move aside from the centre. If we have a daily experience of these last, nobody ever observed the first, although they are mathematically licit.
While being assembled by superposition, these waves form stable and stationary systems. Under certain conditions, in particular during displacements, there is between them a phase difference which can give them certain properties. That enabled us to identify these systems with the elementary particles of the Standard Model, in particular the electron, and to find again the great laws of physics. Each particle has an identifiable proper mass at the frequency of vibration of its system of waves, according to the fundamental formula:
mc2 = hν0
We will call the vibration frequency ν0 of the electron, the base frequency.
We also saw that particles can attract each other or can be pushed back thanks to the interferences which they mutually establish between their systems of waves, and so they can be assembled and maintained together.
 The atoms are the result of a first level assembling.
A second level of assembly reveals the molecules, low-size initially, then increasingly large. Their cohesion is maintained by the displacement of bounding electrons on their orbits, which is made, like any displacement of particles, at the rhythm of the base frequency. This Rhythm is reinforced and maintained by the return in phase of the electron at each turn of orbit (or more precisely of its phase wave).
In the biological environments, the molecules are built or degraded by enzymatic reactions which are complex phenomena utilizing much other molecules and dependent on displacements of charges, i.e. on motion of electrons.
The mechanisms of alive are characterized by regulations, mainly in proteinic synthesis. The first example is the regulation of the synthesis of the degradation enzyme of glucose (the ß-galactosidase) whose production is decided or suspended by the presence or the absence of this sugar. That called upon associations and more or less free displacements of molecules, in various mediums, through various membranes. These associations and displacements obey chemical and physical laws.
In animal organisms, the regulation
of consumption of glucose is not done any more directly by the presence or not of this molecule to the contact of the cell, but by a centralized regulation for the entire organism that maintains constant the glycaemia, the rate of sugar in blood. The pancreas is at the heart of the main system with two types of specialized cells in its islets of Langerhans which secrete two types of hormones :
- a hypoglycaemic hormone, the insulin, which is produced by the cells β when they are stimulated by the presence of glucose. It whips up the penetration of glucose in cells (liver, muscles or adipose) and favours its disrepair and its storage in the form of glycogen.
- And a hyperglycaemic hormone, the glucagon, which is produced by the cells α when they are inhibited by the presence of glucose. It induces the release of glucose from the liver glycogen.
These regulations superimpose each other, imbricate but do not replace each other. The example of insulin shows us that the mechanisms of penetration of glucose in cells or that of its disrepair stay unchanged, that is modified is the origin of the regulation, it is rode up and centralized for the entire organism.
To that, another regulation adds again from a central origin, the hypothalamus; it does not control any more the rate of glucose, but the taking of food, with two main hormones, the leptin which is secreted by adipocytes and is anorexygen, and the ghrelin which is secreted by the digestive tract and which is orexygen. Many other neurotransmitters are implied, which come also from the digestive tract or from other parts of the brain.
At last, the need for taking food, or the hunger when this food is lacking, pushes also animals or men to act, to seek food and to consume it. Hunger is a notable element of activity regulation for animals and primitive men.
Up to this last point, all these successively added rhythms, their origins being atomic, molecular, biochemical, biological or behavioral, rise in fact from basic vibrations of elementary particles, and more particularly from that of the electron. Gradually during the evolution, other regulations, related on social organization or on planetary movements, appear, assert themselves and synchronize these hormonal cycles. From where arise new rhythms, of no biological origin and greater periods, which are added again to the previous and regularize them by the top.
2- The social rhythms.
Certainly since the development of agriculture and sedentariness, but perhaps quite before, the regularity of food provisioning, related to the need for social organization, forced men to adopt schedules of regular meals. Biochemical mechanisms of glycaemia regulation adapted themselves with this consequence of the return of hunger, say appetite, at the hours of meals. We could quote many other social rhythms which were superimposed with biological cycles, but the majority fall under the circadian rhythm.
3- The circadian rhythm.
Circadian rhythm is a good illustration of the way in which biological mechanisms knew to take into account an external regularity of planetary origin, the regular return of days and nights, and to synchronize on it the whole of the functions of organisms.
It regulates indeed the activity of all the living organisms, until bacteria and plants, over one 24 hours period. In animals, primordial biochemical mechanisms are all of the same model which is registered in genes, to the deepest of the organisms; we can speak about a "genetic oscillator". In mammals, this principal clock is placed in the SCN (suprachiasmatic nucleus) of the hypothalamus: a gene per produces a protein per which accumulates and which, associated with others in a complex mechanism, represses after a time by a negative self-regulation the expression of its own gene. The protein per concentration thus decreases allowing production to begin again later on. And so on, according to a cycle of which the duration in a free state is 25 hours. It is a genuine endogenous biological clock which can function in an autonomous way but which, for a person in normal activity, is initialized again every morning, at the 24th hour, under the effect of light. Let us see how:
The main pathway of this regulation begins with the action of light on retina. Signals are transmitted to the SCN via the retino-hypothalamic tract whose neurons react by activating a certain number of genes, of which that of the clock (per1) which is set right. Then signals are sent to the epiphysis for inhibiting melatonin synthesis. It is the beginning of the circadian process of regulation of hormones. Throughout the day, hormonal peaks follow one another in synchronization with the needs for men activities within their traditional frameworks. The first, which prepares the organism to wake up, is the ACTH which presents a blood peak around 6 hours a.m. It stimulates the secretion of other hormones, among them cortisone.
All these regulations are made by biochemical mechanisms with the rhythm given by elementary vibration of particles. Therefore it is significant to notice here the meeting between a whole of biological rhythms resulting from the vibrations of particles - among them electron base frequency -, and another rhythm, that of the rotation of the Earth on itself, which origins in cosmic phenomena. We will see further another meeting of the same kind and will draw conclusions.
4- The circannual rhythm.
We have just seen that human activity, like that of animals, is regulated by influences from interior, - hormonal of a large variety- or exterior - cosmic, social who synchronize ourselves constantly. We have just seen the example of alternation of activity and rest during daytime. But very early, animal, men and certainly their ancestors before them, were obliged to yield at another longer rhythm, that annual of the earthmoving around the sun.
At the beginning they underwent the alternation of winter colds and summer heats, in other areas, dryness and rain; their activity adapted there, for example, by different gatherings or huntings or by following migrations of their preys, like those of the reindeers. Then incipient agriculture forced activity to be synchronized more actively with this return of seasons, not only agricultural activity, but a whole induced social activity.
Since the fifth millennium BC, Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations studied the solar cycle to discover regularities and to try to reveal meetings between this cycle, that of the Moon and that of the Earth. It is only at the Roman epoch, that Julius Caesar established the modern calendar; it still drifted from the sun of 10 days in 15 centuries. It was corrected in 1582 by the Gregorian calendar which, with the help of some periodic adjustments, adapts well to solar periodicity. If the acknowledged preoccupation of its creator, the Pope Gregory XIII, was to be able to fix the Easter date, farmers profited from precise and fixed seasonal reference marks for agricultural works, in the form of easily memorable popular sayings associated with names and dates of saints. This very significant and precise work of synchronization between human activity and solar periodicity lasted six thousand years; they were determining for the development of agriculture and also of commercial and financial activities which have the same needs for fixed reference marks. I want of it for proof that it was when this calendar reached its final precision that our modern civilization took off. And for a contrario proof, that Moslem civilizations, which remained with the lunar calendar with a yearly phase difference of eleven days compared to the solar tempo, did not reach that point.
The industrial economy, which was added again to agriculture, preserved this solar rhythm to allow transfers of hands when necessary and to benefit from possible investments after (good) harvests. When these rhythms of agricultural and economic activities are in phase they lead mutually; into opposition of phase, they destroy :
-when harvests are sold, wealth is concretized and become available for purchases and investments ; if industry does not offer its products at this time, the sales are not done.
- Bad harvests upset economic activities until the nineteenth century.
Of this synchronization, we kept a rhythm of seasonal activities, with alternation of work and summer holidays at the time of agricultural labour.
The world phase wave.
Thus, human activity is fixed on these two solar rhythms, circadian and annual. The setting in phase is not finished; it is done gradually under our eyes. Here how the last stage is carried out :
The rotation of the Earth on itself generates continually, during the whole nycthemer, activity on all its parts as they are facing the sun. In agricultural civilizations, trade is weak at long distances and each zone is successively in activity for its own account. With the phenomenon of universalization we currently know, it is its significant point, these zones trade between them and stimulate the ones the others. Initially in a disordered way; but when they become jointed, activity is unceasing from a zone to another while following the sun. Modern means of communication make it possible to prepare a zone with activity whereas it is still during a sleep time.
We can quote as example stock exchange, banking or commercial activities : continuously one treats on all the open stock exchanges around the sphere, one makes transfers of funds, orders, which will stimulate other zones when they enter in activity. If in each place we can observe a standing wave -activity/rest-, an overall picture shows us that they follow themselves and they form a phase wave which goes round the Earth in 24 hours and which is established in a stationary way, creating a stable and durable system, resisting the disturbances better than every zone individually.
This dynamics superimposed to the world economy set up gradually under our eyes - and those of our ancestors. It started in Sumer, left towards the West, Europe, the United States, Japan, then now Asia, China and India; going more and more quickly, it finishes its loop with the Middle-East from where it left 7000 years ago. It will start again its second turn by the countries of Eastern Europe, vivifying the economies on its passage. Once the phase wave established over 24 hours and reinforced all around the Northern hemisphere, it will be able to widen and extend towards the South.
It should be noted again that that is done by the meeting and the synchronization of rhythms from two different origins : the basic vibrations of the electron which maintain the biological mechanisms on the one hand, and the cosmic movements, of which depend rotation of the Earth on itself and around the sun, on the other hand. Thus living world synchronizes rhythms that come from the two uttermost ends of the hierarchy of the universal components : the elementary particle at an extremity, the Universe at the other.
The contribution brought to progress each time the agreement between these rhythms was reached is such that it is impossible to think that the Evolution can have been, and can be still, indifferent to it.
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