FUTURE STUDIES.


1. Sociology and thinking about the future.

- Auguste Comte: savoir pour prévoir et prévoir pour pouvoir

- Anthony Giddens : the consequences of Modernity.


2. How to approach the future?


3. Unconditional forecasting (post war period)

rise of thinktanks.

Herman Kahn; the Year 2000. 1967.

The notion of : thinking about the unthinkable.

Example: the Societal Consequences of the bio-medical revolution. (cloning, eugenics)

The fall of unconditional forecasting.



4. The historical models for the Future (sixties).

Relationship time and progress.


4.1. the evolutionary model.

Variation: the three stages model:

Example: Pre-industrial, industrial, post-industrial.

( Daniel Bell: the Coming of Post-industrial Society 1965).


4.2. the Dialectical Model ( Hegel and Marx).

Progress as result of conflict and struggle.

Variation: the ‘Law”of the stimulating backwardness or the inhibiting progress (Jan Romein)


4.3. The cyclical model:

Oswald von Spengler: the Decline of the West (1923). Der Untergang des Abendlandes.


Topicality of the cyclical model:

Samuel Huntington: The Clash of Civilizations (1993).


4.4. Criticism of the idea of historical stages.

Karl Popper: The Open society and its ennemies ( 1945)

Geroge Soros: the Open Society Foundation.

Influence of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

(the Origin of Species).


Ekskurs: the Idea of Progress:


-         Post Modernism and the Idea of Progress:

( Bauman: Modernity and the Holocaust)


-         Progress as error ( environmentalism/Ecologism: the Blueprint of Survival 1973.

-         Declining of belief in progress as tragedy.

The Projekt der Moderne ( Habermas) Giddens.


5. Conditional forecasting : Global Models (Seventies).

The Ecological Problematique.

Quantitative Computer Models for the future

 Example: Meadows c.s. : The Limits to Growth (1973)  Report to the Club of Rome (Aurelio Peccei)

The early warning function.


6. Scenario’s


7. The comparative Prognosis.

Difference with the Historical Analogy.


Example: The future of Central/Eastern Europe.

After 1989: the possibility of a fall back.


- The Post-Authoritarian societies in Southern Europe,

- the societies of Latin Amercia.

The Latin American cycle.


Crucial factor: the relationship with the northern neighbour ( EU and USA)

The Debate on Deepening or Widening.


8. the Weak signals: ( 21^st Century).

Compare: the seeds of time: (Shakespeare: Macbeth): the antenna function.


Predictable surprises. ( Role of 9/11)

Watkins and Bazerman: Predictable surprises: The surprises you should have seen coming

( Harvard Business Review 2003)


Central Question: Future Studies: Art or Science ( De Jouvenel).