futures volume 6 issue 2 1974 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2874%2990022-6] i.f. clarke -- 2. the cicero...

8/11/2019 Futures Volume 6 issue 2 1974 [doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2874%2990022-6] I.F. Clarke -- 2. The Cicero syndrome

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160

hfethodology From Prophecy to Prediction

very general assumptions on features of

scientific work. It is expected that the

variation of I with time yields again an

S-shaped curve.

There is a substantial difference

between forecasting of trends in tech-

nologies and in basic sciences. It is

always possible to forecast the future

evolution in technologies but it is in

principle impossible to forecast the

evolution in a scientific sub-field in

which future progress depends on the

formulation and comprehension of new

paradigms. This often misunderstood

fact severely limits feasible approaches

to science policy.

Acknowledgement

The authors thanks are due to P. A. Redhead

for many critical comments which have im-

proved the text.

References

1.

2

E. Jantsch, Technological Forecasti ng in Perspec-

t ive (Paris, OECD, 1967)

R. u. Ay s, Tech og l Forecasti ng and Lang-

Ranec Planni ne (N ew

York. McGraw-Hill.

1965) -

T. S. Kuhn,

The Structure

of

Scienti f ic Revolu-

tions (Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970)

C. E. Shannon, and W. Weaver, The M athe-

mati cal Theory of Communicati on (Urbana,

Univ. of Illinois Press. 1949)

S. Watanabe, Knowing onh Guessing (New

York, Wiley, 1969)

A. L. Floyd, A Methodology for Trend

Forecasting of Figures of Merit, in Techno-

logi cal Forecasti ng for Industry and Government,

ed. J. R. Bright (New Jersey, Prentice-Hall

Inc, 1968)

Technology in Retr ospect and Cri ti cal Events i n

Science, Vols. 1 and 2 (IIT Research Institute,

1969)

I. C. R. Byatt, and A. V. Cohen, An Attern@

to Quant if u t he Economic Ben s of Scienti Jic

Research (London, Science Policy Studies No.

4, 1969)

3

4

5

6

7

8

From Prophecy

A serialised survey of the movement

to Prediction

of ideas developments in predictive

fiction and first attempts to forecast

the future scientifically.

2. The Cicero syndrome

I. F. Clarke

IN the business of prediction there are

several basic dilemmas: one is that in

social affairs the effects of passion and

prejudice make it difficult-some would

say impossible-to forecast regular

patterns of behaviour; and another is

that the human race has consistently

sought to discern the shape of things to

come but the failure rate does not

hold out much hope for our own

expectations.

Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of the

first to note that there is no nation

Professor I. F. Clarke is Head of the English

Studies Department, University of Strathclyde,

Glasgow, UK.

whether the most learned and en-

lightened or the most grossly barbarous

that does not believe that the future

can be revealed and does not recognise

in certain people the power of fore-

telling it. That observation made in

a time of trouble during the last years

of the Roman Republic came from a

man who was at the centre of his

society-the opponent of Julius Caesar

the Proconsul of Cilicia defender of the

constitution and author of political

studies that were required reading until

recent times. And yet that bright

intelligence failed to detect the forces

in his society that would transform

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From Pro@cy to Prediction 161

Octavianus into Augustus Caesar and

make him the first Roman Emperor.

Of the search for omens the making

of prophecies and the consulting of

oracles there is no end and there can be

no end since the human race has always

been unable to leave the future to take

care of itself. Our problem is that we

pass our

lives briefly and fitfully

between the extremes of hope and fear

seeking to know the best or the worst

that can happen to the nation the

continent or the world. During the

last two centuries the industrialised

societies have devised methods for

describing and analysing the most

probable patterns of future develop-

ments; and these methods have grown

in subtlety from the first vague but

hopeful forecasts of intercontinental air

travel in the 1780s to the most recent

calculations of population growth

energy requirements and consumer

demands in the next 25 years. These are

the sensible estimates of prudent shop-

keepers; they carry the assurance that

other things being equal the predic-

tions will coincide with the dots on the

graph at the end of the century. But it

is the awkward hiatus of the ceti

paribus factor that provokes serious

doubts about our ability to pick out the

social and ideological causes that will

decide the shape and condition of

society in the next century.

The record so far does not give any

good reason for expecting that com-

puters and think-tanks will produce

any more accurate predictions of

future social behaviour than the lamen-

table miscalculations of Louis XVI and

his ministers in 1789. Can we be

confident that we will do better than

the soldiers and politicians who so

signally failed to foresee the fatal

conjunction of technology and warfare

before 1914 when the economic minis-

tries of so many countries do not appear

to have thought ahead to the day

when the Arabs would turn off the oil

taps? In fact to read some of the recent

predictions about the kind of society we

can expect in the third millennium is to

experience the shock of realising that it

has all happened before-that the

difference between the temple priest-

hoods of the archaic world and the

modern forecasters amounts to little

more than a collection of graphs

computer tapes and elaborate scenarios

of the future. To every age the appro-

priate scenario of things to come. As it

was in the beginning so it is today

because the idea of the future is as

normative and as absolute for us as it

was for the ancient Babylonians but

the techniques are different. Thus

greater prosperity or major changes in

society can arrive at any time in our

book of the future with all the anti-

cipated suddenness of the theophanies

described in the archaic religions. The

efforts of contemporary social fore-

casters for instance at times give the

impression that our society has not

advanced very far from the days when

the soothsayers of Babylonia examined

the laws of their universe in order to

divine the events that would renew

their world. Indeed there seems to be

a curious correspondence between the

priests of Babylon and many of our

predictors. The priests examined the

omens for indications of the future so

that they could bring about a satis-

factory relationship between the work-

ings of nature and the needs of society;

and in like manner our latter-day

diviners select those trends in social

behaviour they consider are most

likely to ensure a greater harmony

between society and those forces or

factors that compose the essential laws

of social activity.

Like the Babylonians we inhabit a

universe of recognisable forces. Theirs

was a divine cosmos in which the fate-

determining gods could reveal the

destiny of their subjects. Our world is

the Baconian cosmos in which the fact-

yielding sciences show men the ways of

enlarging the bounds of human em-

pire to the effecting of all things

possible. And it is this long-confirmed

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162 From Prophecy to Prediction

confidence in the eternal and universal

workings of the laws of nature as we

call them that has encouraged so

many modern prophets to extend the

relatively accurate methods of tech-

nological forecasting to the daunting

complexities of social prediction. Now

there is no great difficulty in deciding

on the immediate consequences of

some major advance in technology.

Everyone knows what John Ericson

told Lincoln-that a new fighting

machine will alter the balance of

warfare. The time has come Mr

President

said Ericson when our

cause will have to be sustained not by

numbers but by superior weapons.

And when Ericsons Merrimac changed

the conduct of naval warfare in one

brief engagement the editor of the

London Illustrated News made the correct

deduction: We may depend upon it

that we are now entering upon a race

in which success will no longer be

achieved by wealth or material re-

sources under merely ordinary con-

ditions of skilful development but that

skill science and individual energy will

need only moderate means to obtain

the greatest triumphs. The editor was

wrong about the cheapness of the new

ironclads but he was only too accurate

on the effectiveness of calling in science

to adjust the balance in war.

The origins of the present practices

in prediction lie in the historicism and

positivism of the 19th century; for we

have inherited an attitude of mind a

way of regarding ourselves and our

societies that does not always fit the

changed circumstances of the 20th

century. In the first phase of the

industrialisation of the world the sus-

tained triumph of the new technologies

gave good reasons for believing that it

would be possible to use the experience

of society in order to establish a com-

posite mosaic of future developments.

In one way and another a succession of

original thinkers and propagandists-

Fourier Hegel Comte Marx-put the

gloss of theory on the universal fact of

technological progress; they traced the

natural laws of social development with

all the confidence of men who under-

stood the workings of the social

machine. Their ideas were of course

circumscribed and limited by the

assumptions of their time. They im-

agined for instance that in the words

of Comte history has been for the

first time systematically considered as a

whole and has been found like other

phenomena subject to invariable laws.

The English historian Henry Thomas

Buckle put that point even more

emphatically in his History of Civilization

in England in 186 1 when he complained

in a footnote that neither Montesquieu

nor Turgot appear to have believed in

the possibility of generalising the past.

That for Buckle was the primary

concern of the historian-to use the

evidence of history to light mankind on

its way because history had for its

purpose

what is the final object of

every scientific enquiry the power of

foretelling the future.

Buckle was one of the many Vic-

torians who were guilty of the first

fallacy of the forecaster-the belief

that it is possible to have the experience

before the event. All the evidence

suggests that when a prophet talks of

foretelling the future everything de-

pends on what kind of future he has in

mind-things and machines or social

movements and the life of nations. The

constant and universal advance of the

new technologies in the last century

which deceived Buckle show that

there are no great problems about

technological forecasting in the strict

sense of predicting the immediate

results of industrial or scientific innova-

tion. Brunei did the calculations for the

construction of the Great Britain-coal

consumption average

speeds pas-

senger loading and the rest-in the

space of two months; and everything

Right: The errimac in action. The //lostrafed London Mews asked: Is it indeed true that the naval

supremacy of England has passed away like a mere unsubstantial exhalation under the light of

that memorable Saturday March 8 1862?

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SATURDAY APRIL 5 1862.


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The fact was always behind the wish. Compare the Goubet submarine above), the most advanced

underwater craft in 1886, with the saloon and the engine room of the marvellous submarine in

Vernes Twenty thousand leagues under the se of 1870 below).


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From Prophey to Prediction 165

worked out as he had predicted even

to the unanticipated confirmation of his

theories of iron ships when the vessel

survived the stranding in Dundrum

Bay. Again Ferdinand de Lesseps

directed the digging of the Suez

Canal according to a plan which he

completed in 1869 behind schedule

because of financial difficulties but

right on target as set down in the

original memorandum of construction.

This close relationship between pre-

diction and results was a constant in the

technological developments of the last

century but whenever the advances of

the epoch began to take effect within

society itself then it became increas-

ingly difficult to foresee the conse-

quences. For instance at the beginning

of the 19th century the educated

minority knew that Jenners vaccine

had started a demographic revolution.

There was a general expectation that

population would increase as Malthus

had warned and yet it was most

unusual for anyone to make the logical

deduction that growing numbers would

mean larger cities. In 1810 the Due de

Levis looked at the probability of an

increasing population in his vision of

the future Les Voyages de Kang-Hi in

which his time traveller reported from

the world of 1910 that for a century

the extermination of smallpox and the

growth of agriculture have increased the

population by one third. But those

millions of future Frenchman did not

exist in the mind of the writer. His

account of the 20th century ignored

entirely all the social and economic

consequences of a large increase in

population.

It was the same with the railways.

By the middle of the century the

industrial nations had developed such

an enthusiasm for the new means of

transportation that they delighted in

the kind of prediction to be found in a

publication of 1852 The Silent Revolu-

tion; or the Future Effects of Steam and

Electricity upon the Condition of Mankind.

The author foresaw the day when the

fruitful continent of Australia sufficient

in itself to sustain the whole population

of Europe will in time be traversed

with railroads. The broad Savannahs

and measureless Steppes of America

will be brought within the scope of

human industry. That was of course

an accurate forecast of what happened

later on; but when the author turned

to the matter of railways and warfare

his hopes betrayed him. The railway

signal is the knell of war he wrote in a

fine triumphant phrase the anti-

cipative requiem of that military thing

so monstrously miscalled glory. That

hopeful prediction was common form

in the last century and it persisted in

full vigour down to the days before the

First World War. In 1911 the able

historian G. P. Gooch repeated the

forecast of peace in our time in his

History of Our Time: We can now look

forward with something like confidence

to the time when war between civilised

nations will be considered as antiquated

as the duel.

Was Buckle right in his belief that the

historical experience of a society pro-

vides sufficient evidence for detecting

the most likely course of future develop-

ments ?

Are we in a better position today

than Montezuma was when he made

the customary offerings to the supreme

god Tonacatecuhtli in the Spring of

15 19 confident that the self-contained

Aztec world would always maintain

a perfect balance between man and

nature ? And yet Cortez had already

disembarked his conquistadores at

Tabasco confident that European

fighting-men with European fire-arms

would conquer all before them. When

the end came as Bernal Diaz recorded

later on when the news spread

through all those distant provinces

that Mexico was destroyed their

Caciques and lords could not believe

it.

Perhaps Oscar Wilde was right

when he said that experience is

the name every one gives to their

mistakes.

FUTURES April 974

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