Alexandre Deulofeu
Encyclopedia
L'Armentera
L'Armentera is a municipality in the comarca of Alt Empordà, Girona, Catalonia, Spain....
on 20 September 1903, died in Figueres
Figueres
Figueres is the capital of the comarca of Alt Empordà, in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain.The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí, a large museum designed by Dalí himself which attracts many visitors...
on 27 December 1978) was a Catalan (Spanish) politician and philosopher of history. He wrote about what he called the Mathematics of History, a cyclical theory
Cyclical theory
The cyclical theory refers to a model used by historian Arthur Schlesinger to attempt to explicate the fluctuations in politics throughout American History. Liberalism and conservatism are rooted in the “national mood” that shows a continuing shift in national involvement between public purpose and...
on the evolution of civilizations.
Biography
Deulofeu was born at L'Armentera in the province of GironaGirona
Girona is a city in the northeast of Catalonia, Spain at the confluence of the rivers Ter, Onyar, Galligants and Güell, with an official population of 96,236 in January 2009. It is the capital of the province of the same name and of the comarca of the Gironès...
, Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
(Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
), where his father was a pharmacist. When he was three years old, his family moved to Sant Pere Pescador
Sant Pere Pescador
Sant Pere Pescador is a municipality in the comarca of Alt Empordà, Girona, Catalonia, Spain, is a small town in the Bay of Roses on the river Fluvià....
and nine years later to Figueres
Figueres
Figueres is the capital of the comarca of Alt Empordà, in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain.The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí, a large museum designed by Dalí himself which attracts many visitors...
.
He attended high school in the Institut Ramon Muntaner of Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
. Later he studied pharmacy and chemistry in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, finishing the latter in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
. Once back in Figueres
Figueres
Figueres is the capital of the comarca of Alt Empordà, in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain.The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí, a large museum designed by Dalí himself which attracts many visitors...
, he won a chair in a competitive examination and started teaching in the Institute of Figueres. At the same time, he also got strongly involved in politics. First he was a leader of the Republican Nationalist Youth in Empordà
Empordà
Empordà is a historical region of Catalonia divided since 1936 into two comarques, Alt Empordà and Baix Empordà....
and afterwards he became a town councilor of the independentist party ERC
Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya
The Republican Left of Catalonia is a left wing Catalan independentist political party in Spain. It is also the main sponsor of the independence movement from France and Spain in the territories known among Catalan nationalists as Països Catalans...
(Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya). During the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, he was a chance mayor at Figueres
Figueres
Figueres is the capital of the comarca of Alt Empordà, in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain.The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí, a large museum designed by Dalí himself which attracts many visitors...
, where he avoided fights, looting and pursuits. He was mobilized to the war as a military health officer.
On 5 February 1939, Deulofeu went into exile when the republicans withdrew. During exile, he carried out several trades, was a teacher of different matters and played the violin and the saxophone in various music groups both for fun and classical. In addition, he was an experimental farmer creating plantations without soil with liquid solutions he invented, a worker in a factory, bricklayer, writer and poet. It was during this time, when he became friends with Francesc Pujols
Francesc Pujols
Francesc Pujols i Morgades was a Catalan writer and philosopher.Morgades began to write poetry during his studies on secondary school, influenced by the work of Jacint Verdaguer and Joan Maragall. He took part in the literary competition Jocs Florals of Barcelona in 1902, and won the Natural...
and Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
.
He came back from exile on 22 January 1947, dedicated himself to pharmacy, carried out his researches and went on writing. He died without finishing the extended version of his main work, Mathematics of History.
Thought
Deulofeu declared that civilizations and empires go through cycles which correspond to the natural cycles of living beings. Each civilization may fulfill a minimum of three 1700 years cycles each. Included within civilizations, empires have a medium length of 550 years. He also declared that, by knowing the nature of cycles, wars may be avoided, being unnecessary, causing the processes to be violent instead of peaceful. He also affirmed that mankind will be able to modify the cycles and that it must strive towards an organization as a universal confederation of free peoples.The wording of the mathematic law which, in his opinion, determines the evolution of the peoples, can be epitomized under the following items (Chapter III of Mathematics of History in Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, 1967 edition):
- All peoples go through periods of great demographic division, alternating with periods of great unification or imperialistic periods.
- The periods of great division last six centuries and a half. The periods of great unification last ten centuries and a half. Therefore, the evolutionary cycle comprises seventeen centuries.
- During this evolutionary process, the peoples go through perfectly defined phases. At the end of the cycle, they are in the same position as at the beginning.
- The evolutionary cycle comprises all the types of human activity, so, besides considering a political cycle, we must also consider a social, arts, philosophical and scientific cycle.
- All peoples follow the same evolution, but this gets ahead or lags behind depending on the geographic situation of each country.
- Not all the peoples show the same creative force. In each cycle there is an area of maximum creative intensity and this area moves from one cycle to the next following the steps of the overall process. In EuropeEuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, this goes in the Mediterranean from the East to West and then from the Iberian PeninsulaIberian PeninsulaThe Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
to GaulGaulGaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...
, it follows to the British Isles, then through the Germanic peoples and finally arrives to the Northern and Slavonic peoples. - The imperialist nuclei which give rise to periods of great political unification follow perfect biological processes, identical to each other, which last for five to six centuries.
- The transformation of the socio-political regimes does not take place following a constant upward or downward trend, but by means of forward and backward steps, each being alternatively more intense than the others. This results in a broken line, which is an advancement in a given direction. It is what is called Law of two steps forward and one backwards.
His thought is related to the ideas of Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...
and Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...
, who also stated theories on the cyclical character of civilizations, but without reaching the more exact, mathematical measure expounded by Deulofeu.
During his exile and also later, Deulofeu visited several museums, temples and monuments in different countries. There he thought he had found the origin of Romanesque art
Romanesque art
Romanesque art refers to the art of Western Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th century, or later, depending on region. The preceding period is increasingly known as the Pre-Romanesque...
during the 9th century, in an area between Empordà
Empordà
Empordà is a historical region of Catalonia divided since 1936 into two comarques, Alt Empordà and Baix Empordà....
and Roussillon
Roussillon
Roussillon is one of the historical counties of the former Principality of Catalonia, corresponding roughly to the present-day southern French département of Pyrénées-Orientales...
, which was what he called the second cycle of western European civilization.
Sources
- Alexandre Deulofeu. FigueresFigueresFigueres is the capital of the comarca of Alt Empordà, in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain.The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí, a large museum designed by Dalí himself which attracts many visitors...
, town council of Figueres, Institut d'Estudis Empordanesos, Patronat Francesc Eiximenis, 2003. - Juli Gutiérrez Deulofeu. Alexandre Deulofeu, la Matemàtica de la Història (Alexandre Deulofeu, the Mathematics of History). Barcelona, Llibres de l’Índex / Neopàtria, 2004.
- Enric Pujol, Jordi Casassas, Francesc Roca, Juli Gutiérrez Deulofeu. La Matemàtica de la Història. La teoria cíclica d’Alexandre Deulofeu (Mathematics of History. The cyclic theory of Alexandre Deulofeu), Figueres, Brau Edicions, 2005.