Predicting the Future

Predicting the Future examines humankind's obsessive urge to look beyond the present in the hope of controlling events in the days to come.

Leo Howe (Edited by), Alan Wain (Edited by)

9780521619745, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 February 2005

204 pages
24.5 x 18.7 x 1.5 cm, 0.375 kg

"The contributors are eminent scholars from diverse fields who provide the reader with a personal view of predicting the future that is rooted in their own discipline and perspective. While some contributors stay closer to their task than others, all of them provide useful insights into the role and problems of prediction." British Medical Journal

Auguries, oracles, omens … and software simulation. From antiquity to the electronic age, Predicting the Future examines humankind's obsessive urge to look beyond the present in the hope of controlling events in the days to come. Opening with Stephen Hawking's predictions about the billion year future of the universe, closing with Don Cupitt's insights into the Last Judgement, the book examines both the history of prediction and the ways we set about foretelling the future today. In the past soothsayers, diviners, holy men and astrologers made prophecies on the basis of religious ideology and traditional authority. Today accredited experts predict the future, of the economy, of medicine's place in society, of the entire universe, on the basis of empirical observation and scientific theory. Yet as all the contributors admit, prediction remains an uncertain business even in the computer age, steering a hazardous course between scaremongering and complacency, liable always to be thrown dramatically off course by human unpredictability, catastrophic change, or faulty initial data. The book originates in the sixth annual series of Darwin College Lectures, delivered in Cambridge in 1991 under the title 'Predictions'.

Introduction: predicting the future Leo Howe
1. The future of the universe Stephen Hawking
2. Chaos Ian Stewart
3. Comets and the world's end Simon Schaffer
4. Predicting the economy Frank Hahn
5. The medical frontier Ian Kennedy
6. Divine providence in late antiquity Averil Cameron
7. Buddist prediction: how open is the future? Richard Gombrich
8. The last judgement Don Cupitt
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
Index.

Subject Areas: Popular science [PDZ]