History of Science and Engineering Annotation << Back Historical Cycles in the Electrotechnical Knowledge Development as an Element of the General Cognitive Theory Valivach P.E. The aim of scientific cognition is foreknowledge (in its two forms, forecast and prediction). Dialectic appears as logics and theory of cognition. One of the basic laws of dialectic states the development occurs through contradictions (negation of the negation). In other words, it is spiral development or cyclical nature of development processes that are in question. By the law of negation of the negation, science shall always return to the origin of knowledge (which, in case of regularities within a burst of scientific discoveries in the field of Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering (FEE), is a year of 1620). Universal 11-year solar activity cycles (Schwabe cycles) are repeated 9 times each century. According to B. Rubashev, there are reasons to assume solar cycle structure is not limited to the period of 80-90 years. The astronomer has also suggested the following names for the cycle: 80-year period, 7-8 or 8-9-cycle period, long cycle, long-term cycle and, finally, age-long cycle. From analyzing diagrams by H. Schwabe, R. Wolf and E. Maunder as well as factors from the history of studies of solar activity, earlier marked by A. Chizhevskiy, a conclusion can be made that bursts of discoveries in the field of FEE in 1720, 1820, 1920 coincide with periods of the solar activity decrease which is clear from Fig. 1—5. A decreasing trend of the solar activity peaks by 2020, which most probably will be another year of a burst of discoveries in the field of Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering (in the branch of micro-electrodynamics), is noticeable in these diagrams as well. A development curve for a theoretical component of the electrotechnical knowledge within a period of 1600—1970’s is represented in Fig. 6. Keywords: historical; cycle; electrotechnical knowledge; theory; cognition; century; solar activity; burst of discoveries; period. Contacts: E-mail: petrvalevach@mail.ru Pp. 23-35.