Pergamon Futures, Vol. 29, No. I, pp. 1-3, 1997

Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain 0016-3287/97 $17.00 + 0.00

IGNORANCE AND THE FUTURE

Editorial

Trevor Williams and Eleonora Barbieri Masini

Towards the end of his book of essays entitled Pluto’s Republic the late Sir Peter Medawar

included a piece on ‘Expectation and prediction’.’ Referring to it in his Introduction Sir

Peter spoke of his desire ‘deeply to undermine the pretensions of [futurologists’l weird farrago of scholarly pretensions and barefaced guesswork’. Leaving aside the stylistic

lapse, the words constitute a perhaps rare example of this eminent scientist failing to be informed and fair-minded. Less eminent people have followed.

The Economist’s review of Hamish McRae’s The World in 20202 asserted that there is a ‘consistently pointless literature’ which goes under the heading of ‘futurology’ and

which is characterised by either optimistic or pessimistic views of an unknowable future. This literature, the assertion continued, is neither thoughtful nor sensible and is not well written.

Unfortunately, that reviewer would not have been competently instructed by McRae. In his Preface, McRae states that most ‘futurology’ is either exaggerated optimism, or

pessimism, or takes the form of scenario-building. Such scenarios are unsatisfactory, because while some will be more or less right, others will be spectacularly wrong. Thus,

while praising Shell for its use of scenarios, McRae demonstrates that he does not under- stand the raison d’@tre of scenario-building.

More recently, a commentator on Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock3 began by stating in The (London) Times,4 ‘Most ‘futurologists’ live to see their nerdish visions completely fail

to come to pass’ and went on to speak of ‘this dubious craft’. Shortly before The Times piece, in a public lecture at Cambridge University, Pro-

fessor Paul Kennedy5 of Yale University had begun with a series of caustic remarks about other students of the future, and then listed some (unexceptionable) requirements for futures studies. There was little to suggest an awareness of the field of study known to readers of Futures.

In the face of such prejudice, does one merely grit one’s teeth? For people knowl- edgeable in the field there are at least three points to bear in mind.

The authors are both members of the Editorial Board. Trevor Williams may be contacted at Bodenham House, Dinedor, Hereford HR2 6LQ, UK (Tel/fax: +44 1432 870839). Eleonora Masini may be contacted at Via Berto- loni 23, 00197 Roma, Italy.

Editorial: J Williams and E B Masini

First, it is unfortunate that so much is written under the labels of futures, scenarios and futurology which has nothing to do with rigorously stated assumptions and clearly

developed methods, nor with the fundamental principle of futures studies. This principle modestly involves striving to offer indications of the alternative consequences:

l of various decisions taken in the present, or

l of the continuation of well studied trends.

When we deride the ignorance of some commentators, we should be aware that much of what is written about the future deserves sharp criticism.

Second, we should emphasise and advertise the substantial history of futures studies. All of us would think of the formal exploration of the future as going back at least thirty

years”-and some of us have been influenced by much earlier studies.’ Third, one groans most audibly when faced by the claim that futurists try to predict

the future (or that, if they are not trying to say what the future will be, their work is

pointless). Toffler is known as a populariser and simplifier. Yet Toffler says in the Introduc- tion to The Futurists I... today’s futurists, for the most part, lay no claim to the ability to

predict. Wary of dogmatic statements about what ‘will’ happen, they focus, rather, on the array of alternatives open to decision-makers ...‘.8

As long ago as the 195Os, Bertrand de Jouvene19 rediscovered the term ‘futuribles’,

thus indicating that there are many possible futures. Amara’s’” simple and memorable alternative to prediction refers to exploring the possible, probable and/or preferable

future.” Early in the 1970s (a rich time for futures studies) appeared . . and now the future.12

Its second chapter ended:

What, then, can we learn from the study of the future? It appears that the main justification of futures studies, whether they are exploratory or normative, whatever their mix of reason and imagination, is that they make us think more rigorously about the present and the whole span of its implications, its threats and its promises for particular things or for mankind as a whole. We try to get to the roots of the consequences of the now and of our actions and inactivity in the now. We decide to stop muddling through, though it by no means follows that we can, or should, eschew experiment or deny the unknowable. We should be concerned, as it were, not so much with pie in the sky as with the ingredients of that pie which we are now mixing and which we and our descendants will have to eat. We should not delude ourselves into thinking that we are synthesising ambrosia; but we should at least try not to make our kitchen a witches’ kitchen.

It is not inappropriate to end on a sombre note. Man is a resilient and resourceful creature. Reflective observers of the human scene have always been tempted to see their own time as a cross-roads, a point at which life or death decisions have to be made. Maybe they have been right: it is possible that every instant in history is, in fact, what we glibly call a crisis. However that may be, it is irrefutable that we have now reached a stage when both hopes and fears have become truly awe-inspiring. There are now greater chances for human betterment than ever before; there is also, for the first time, a real possibility that we may ourselves annihilate all life on earth. Between these two extremes, there is a danger that the style and quality of human existence may change so profoundly and so swiftly that the health of a large proportion of mankind, physically and psychologically, could be placed in grave jeopardy.

U Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations, addressing the General Assembly of the organisation at its 25th anniversary celebrations on 29 October 1970, spoke some moving words. They were clearly the result of his own thoughts as he [sat] at the top of his skyscraper above the solid yet so symbolic hive that is New York. This is what he said:

As we watch the sun go down evening after evening through the smog across the poisoned waters of our polluted earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether we really wish some future universal

Editorial: T Williams and E 6 Mash;

historian on another planet to say: ‘With all their genius and skill, they ran out of fore-sight and air and food and water and ideas’.

It is the chief aim of futures studies to try to prevent some future historian ever uttering such words,

Medawar ended his piece on ‘Expectation and prediction’ with advice to anybody tempted to pronounce on, for example, ‘air travel/psychiatry/podiatry in the third millen- ium AD’. The advice was: Don’t.

Generously forgiving Medawar for the essay’s evidence of a gap in his wide-ranging

knowledge, we can amend the advice to: Don’t say anything about the future until you

have become at least tolerably aware of futures studies’ substantial history, methods and principles.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the following for their comments on an early draft of this Editorial: Edward Cunningham CBE, The Honourable Gilpatrick Devlin, Dr David Hicks, Ronald

Higgins, Dr Keekok Lee, Denis Loveridge, Graham May, Ian Pearson, Dr Wendy Schultz, Boy Tyrrell, Professor Rias van Wyk, Chris von Ulmenstein.

Peter Medawar, Pluto’s Republic. Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 298-310. 2. The Economist, 18 June 1994, p. 137. The review was of: Hamish McRae, The World in 2020. Harper

Collins, London, 1994. 3. Alvin Toffler, Fufure Shock. Random House, New York, 1970. 4. The Times, 1 June 1996, Magazine p. 53. 5. The first Ramsay-Murray lecture, Selwyn College, Cambridge, 17 May 1996 at 5.15 p.m., entitled ‘On

thinking and writing about the future’. 6. Futures was published first in 1968. 7. Including many French writers at the beginning of the 20th century. Even the denigrated and badly used

term ‘futurology’ has a respectable birth, in the 19505, with the philosopher Ossip Flechteim. 8. Alvin Toffler, The Fufurists. Random House, New York, 1972. Quoted in the Introduction to: What I have

learned: thinking about the future then and now, Eds Michael Marien and Lane Jennings. Greenwood Press, New York, 1987.

9. As discussed in his later book: Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, Basic Books, New York, 1967. 10. Roy Amara, ‘The futures field: functions, forms and critical issues’, Futures, 1974, 6(4). 11. One might comment that, unfortunately, it is very rare that the desirable future is also a probable one! 12. Charles de Hoghton, William Page and Guy Streatfeild, and now the future: a PEP survey of futures

studies. PEP, London, Volume XXXVII, Broadsheet 529, August 1971, pp. 22, 23. Guy Streatfield was at the time Editor of Futures. William Page is, also, a former Editor. (Quotation reproduced by kind permission of Pamela Meadows, Director, Policy Studies Institute).

Notes and references