Our actions as human beings depends very much upon expectations, belief and "knowledge" about the future, and forecating, predictions and views of what the future will bring probably fascinates nearly everybody. Some has even tried to make a science, sometimes called "futureology". Fascinating, but I have a suspicion it can never be a real science, at least not a "science of predicting the future". One is realising that the future is "open". Another important reason: Making predictions is not just "observing", but an act in itself, and has a very real potential of changing the future, at least if it is known by "the public". Perhaps this lead to a paradox: Some predictions may lead to actions that make the prediction itself true(self-fulfilling prophecies), or contrary lead to actions that make the prediction false. The later will often be the case when there is conflicting interests involved. If all parties have some strong belief about how everybody else act, they will probably all try to act smarter than the others. Perrhaps somebody has studied this question in more detail?
The Oxford English Dictionary traces earliest English usage of the term futurist to 1842, referring to Christian scriptural futurists. The next usage occurs with the Italian and Russian Futurists of the early 20th century (1900s-1930s), an artistic, literary, and political movement that sought to reject the past and rather uncritically embraced speed, technology, and violent change. Curiously, early modern visionary authors like Jules Verne, Edward Bellamy, and even H.G. Wells were not characterized as futurists in their day, but rather as philosophers of foresight, a closely related term. The use of futurist and its synonym futurologist in the modern context of thinking about and analyzing the future began in the mid-1940s, when German professor Ossip K. Flechtheim coined the term futurology and proposed it as a new science of probability. Flechtheim argued that even if systematic forecasting did no more than unveil the subset of statistically highly probable processes of change and charted their advance, it would still be of crucial social value.[1] Also in the mid-1940s the first professional "futurist" consulting institutions like RAND and SRI began to engage in long-range planning, systematic trend watching, scenario development, and visioning, at first under WWII military and government contract and, beginning in the 1950s, for private institutions and corporations. The period from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s laid the conceptual and methodological foundations of the modern futures studies field. Bertrand de Jouvenel's The Art of Conjecture in 1963 and Dennis Gabor's Inventing the Future in 1964 are considered key early works, and the first U.S. university course devoted entirely to the future was taught by futurist Alvin Toffler at the The New School in 1966.[2] http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&star...turist&usg=AFQjCNHgNJOZotG5w-tskRE0WsfEvVTYBw
Thanks for all Your information C.T.! I find the topic fascinating, but still have this idea there is a problem, and a special problem too, with the work of all those good people. Probably in all sciences there is problems with the precision of instruments and problems of how the experimental or observational situation affects the phenomena that are observed (examplePlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!hysics). On the other hand normally the work after that, writing, publishing, getting theories and results known and accepted, should not affect the studied phenomena. Of course, our premise should be the same regarding any future research (at least any attempt at "scientific future research"): One principal goal is getting methods and results known by a public, and even to convince this public these methods and results are "right". Of course, like in many other sciences, the "public" (perhaps you and me) can benefit from these results. Precisely at this point there is a very serious potential problem! Of course we have to act, if these studies have any use (except satisfying ouir curiosity, or inform us about the inevitable).These actions may very well in turn make the predicted future never happen(example:A detailed, public prediction about two parties in a war will act. I bet both parties very soon will find alternative strategies to fool the opponent. the same could be true in competing bussinesses).
