futurology

futurology, in the social sciences, the study of current trends in order to forecast future developments. While the speculative and descriptive aspects of futurology are traceable to the traditions of utopian literature and science fiction, the methodology of the field originated in the “technological forecasting” developed near the end of World War II, of which Toward New Horizons (1947) by Theodore von Kármán is an important example.

At the RAND Corporation in California during the 1950s, Herman Kahn and others pioneered the so-called scenario technique for analyzing the relationship between weapons development and military strategy. Later Kahn applied this technique in On Thermonuclear War (1960), a book that examines the potential consequences of a nuclear conflict. During the time of Kahn’s first studies, the mathematician Olaf Helmer, also at RAND, proposed a theoretical basis for the use of expert opinion in forecasting.

In 1964 the French social scientist Bertrand de Jouvenel published L’Art de la conjecture (The Art of Conjecture), in which he offered a systematic philosophical rationale for the field. The following year the American Academy of Arts and Sciences formed its Commission on the Year 2000 “to anticipate social patterns, to design new institutions, and to propose alternative programs”; the commission’s 1967 report constituted the first wide-ranging futurological study in the United States.

The field was brought to wide popular attention in 1972 when Dennis Meadows and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published The Limits to Growth, based on a study commissioned by the Club of Rome, an international assembly of business leaders. This report focused on hypotheses derived from a computer model of the interaction of various global socioeconomic trends; it projected a Malthusian vision in which the collapse of world order would result if population growth, industrial expansion, and increased pollution, combined with insufficient food production and the depletion of natural resources, were to continue at current rates. To offset these trends, the report called for “a Copernican revolution of the mind,” to reevaluate the belief in endless growth and the tacit acceptance of wastefulness. Besides zero population growth and a leveling-off of industrial production, the report also recommended increased pollution control, the recycling of materials, the manufacture of more durable and repairable goods, and a shift from consumer goods to a more service-oriented economy. The U.S. government-commissioned Global 2000 Report to the President (1981) reiterated many of these concerns.

Criticism of these and other studies has centred mainly on the limitations of models and the subjective, interpretive nature of projections based on them. Futurologists generally acknowledge these difficulties but emphasize the increasing sophistication of their analytic techniques, which draw from such fields as mathematics, economics, environmental research, and computer science.

Other notable basic works in futurology include Future Shock (1970) by Alvin Toffler, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) by Daniel Bell, The Fate of the Earth (1982) by Jonathan Schell, and The Green Machines (1986) by Nigel Calder.