Prophets, predictors, and public policies : 1870–1970

From Pro&hey to Prediction

71

From Prophecy to Prediction

A serialised survey of the movement of ideas, development in predictive fiction, and first attempts to forecast the future scientifically.

Prophets, predictors,

and public policies : 1870- 1970

I. F. Clarke Since the present series of From Prop&g to Pyedictiun began in 1974, the unusually varied contributions of the authors have brought together for the first time in publishing history a continuing commentary on the origins and development of futuristic literature. In their different ways all the contributors have started from the common proposition that the scientific knowledge and the technological capacity of the industrialised nations have been, and continue to be, the point of origin for an extraordinarily diversified body of writing about the future. There can be no doubt that the idea of change-progress, significant patterns, evident possibilities-is the core of this literature. As one of the contributors has pointed out,l it is central to the innumerable transformations of fiction, to the utopias, dystopias, imaginary wars, space travel stories, and science fiction romances that provide both entertainment and exemplary fantasies for the literate citizens of the technological nations. And this idea of change, when understood as the motive force eternally at work in the universe of man and nature, is of the essence in the transmutations of theorists as different as Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx, Sore1 and Marcuse, Oswald Spengler and Teilhard de Chardin. I. F. Clarke is Professor of English Studies in the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. He has two books in press: The Tale of the Future, 3rd edition (Library Association) and ‘The Z’offern of E~pectntion (Cape).

FUTURES

February 1978

The prodigious efforts of so many writers during the last 100 years to describe and define the shape of coming things has established an international bank of verbal and visual images. In consequence, the world is familiar with the significance of Dr Strangeloue, On the Beach, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars; and everyone is free to believe that the dictatorship of the proletariat will come, or that the decline of the West is inevitable, or that all things are moving towards the Omega Point of a final union between the divine and the human. Science and literature The evolution of futuristic literature is, therefore, the history of Homo technolo$cus toiling away in the perpetual motion machine of trade cycles, urban growth and urban decline, explosions and implosions of population, and the rhythms of challenge-and-response in the application of technological invention to human society. The development of this literature is, of course, progressive, and keeps pace with the constant dividing and sub-dividing of intellectual labour that has been going on since the days of James Watt, Dr Jenner and Parson Malthus. Initially, during the second half of the 18th century, the description of coming things was for the most part left to writers of fiction. Later on, about 1870, the beginnings of a movement from prophetic fiction to social and technological forecasting began to reveal themselves. At that time the established

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From Prophecy to Prediction

model was the fictional narrative, in which the time traveller described the world of the future; this was the formula used by the Dutch author of Anno 2065. This popular book first appeared in 1865, went into a German translation as Ann0 2066 in 1866, into a French translation as Anno 2070 in 1870, and into English as Anno Domini 2071 in 1871. The immediate European response to the book was an indication of the common ideology of progress that had shaped prophecies of this kind. The author, Pieter Harting, took the Victorian reader on a guided tour of the world in the 21st century: page by page he real&cd the dearest wishes of the age, dirigible balloons, a Berlin-Peking railway, new sources of power, universal literacy, a bridge across the English Channel. The entire narrative is a rational projection of contemporary possibilities and (let the forecasters take note) of dominant assumptions about the direction in which the major industrial nations seemed to be moving. Harting expected the future to be an improved version of the 19th century: the Europeans would still rule the world, Japan and China would continue to live in an unbroken Eastern calm, and all things would work towards a universal harmony which would remove the necessity for war. But that which

has mainly contributed to render war gradually a matter of rare occurrence, and which, we trust, will ultimately lead to its complete abolition is the vastly increased intercourse between the peoples of various nationalities, by which all those silly inherited national antipathies have slowly become absorbed; then again, we have the application of the principles of free trade, the removal of all those barriers that separated nations from nations, a universal system of coinage and weights and measures, an increase in the means of locomotion and communication, and the fusion of the individual interests of particular nations into one great universal “public weal”.”

Theadventofexpertise As the comforting forecasts of Anno 2065 circulated throughout Europe, the swift and unexpected defeat of the French in the war of 1870 caused many to suspect that the world was moving towards a very different kind of future. So, from 1870 onwards predictive literature became increasingly influential and popular. There was the worldwide diffusion of the Jules Verne stories, and there was the rapid growth of forecasts by the new race of expertsthe sociologists, statisticians, anthropologists, urban engineers, and naval and military correspondents. These specialists made it their business to inform and advise the middleclass readers of the monthly journals and periodicals about the most likely developments, as they foresaw them, in their own fields of professional experience. From about 1870 onwards it became common practice for editors to introduce occasional articles about coming things; and soon they became a regular feature. For example, the important Victorian periodical, The Contemporary Review, began a series of regular yearly articles, which opened in December 1888 with a study on “The Future of Food” and which ended the century with a timely survey on “The Social Future of England”. During the last three decades of the 19th century the proliferation of the professions coincided with the acceleration in technological invention to raise a multitude of questions about the future of the new urban societies. The answers from the first generation of forecasters show that the new connection between the predictors and the public was a specialist-client relationship. The experts, who had the knowledge, generally sought to persuade the who had the money, that public, changes in policy would be necessary in the best interests of the nation. The most telling indication of this new-found role for the professional specialists was in the incessant dis-

FUTURES

February IS78

From Prophecy to Prediction

cussion of the next war in Europe. British, French, and German military and naval writers came before their countrymen with detailed statements about the national defences; and these invariably predicted the consequences, for good or ill, of contemporary defence arrangements. These practices and policies appear at their most candid and revealing in National Defences, a book published in 1897 by one of the most distinguished soldiers of his time, Major-General Maurice. He opened with a characteristic statement of intent: The audience to which I am anxious to appeal are the lawyers, the business men, the doctors, the numbers of intelligent working men whom I know to be interested in the concerns of their country. . . . It is impossible to ensure the efficiency of our small army and the necessary supremacy of our navy without your support, sir, or madam, who chance to be reading this.s The

general’s

common outpouring with

style of approach

practice of

the

in

predictions

popular

to the most

recent

National

Science

immense that

began

of

Wells’s

success

Anticipations in 1901,

became

the

and

has continued

publication

from

the

Foundation

of

America,

The Study of the Future: An Agenda for Research. In the foreword to that study the ideas of the British general in 1897 are transposed from a national and military setting to the universal context of all mankind and the survival of all human beings. As we study our current situation and explore ways to improve it, we find that if we are to enhance human survival and well-being, we must be concerned about the future. For human survival and well-being depend upon our ability to anticipate and cope with future problems and threats, to perceive, evaluate and control the effects of our actions, and to imagine and create more desirable futures.4 The

editor

first

paragraph

where

up these of

he comments

FUTURES 6

takes

the

points first

on the efforts

February 1878

in the

chapter, that

73

have been made to develop a science of futurology. Indeed, these efforts-directed in part towards making forecasting less of an art and more of a science-have not only begun but have in fact become more and more widespread, organised, and sophisticated, particularly since the end of World War 2, when, in Jacob Bronowski’s words, the atomic bomb brought civilisation “face to face with its own implications”.6

Forecasting for warfare That observation by the former Vice President of the Futures Group, and the words quoted above from a British general in 1897, present the evolutionary perspective of the forecasting movement during the last 80 years. The soldier and the civilian bear witness to the major effect that technological warfare has had in the development of modern predictive techniques. Ever since the end of World War 1 the urgent need to comprehend and prepare for anticipated changes in methods of warfare has been the principal means of concentrating attention on the importance of forecasting. Between the two world wars, as a later article will show, the reasoned arguof military writers-Giulio ments Douhet, Colonel Fuller, Liddell Hart, General Ludendorff-instructed the general staffs and the public in the nature of the war that was to come.6 And the accuracy of some of their forecasts became apparent when the German panzer divisions demonstrated the validity of Liddell Hart’s theory in successful turning their movement against the Maginot Line in 1940. War, thinking about war, and planning for war, have had a decisive effect on the development of forecasting in modern times. They have done more than any other factor to encourage the idea of the future as an examinable field of investigation; and military forecasting has been the principal means of introducing professional experience into the business of govern-

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From Prophecy to Prediction

ment. Before World War 1, for instance, the admirals and generals of the European forces composed the first professional group to find ways of communicating their ideas about the future to their nations. By the 1920s the world had learnt the lesson that the devising of new weapons is the most conclusive and alarming demonstration of the impact of scientific knowledge on human society. By the 1930s the general staffs and the cabinets of the principal industrial powers had expanded their teams of expert advisers to include civil engineers, mathematichemists, cians, metallurgists, and physicists. The of these professionals led, advice amongst many other things, to the Manhattan Project, and to the rapid growth of specialist research sections. Learning

from

war

Some of the most fateful decisions to be taken in the battle against the U-boats in World War 2 began with the work of 16 scientists in the Coastal Command of the Royal Air Force. One of them was C. H. Waddington, later Professor of Animal Genetics in the University of Edinburgh, and a life-long promoter of future studies. His experience with the analysis and prediction systems of the Operational Research Sections convinced him that futures research would become a major instrument in the organisation of the modern world: There is very little doubt that this type of science will be widely used in the future in many different fields. Men with experience in fact are of wartime developments already at work in various mm&tries-such as Housing, the Board of Trade, etc-in jobs which, whatever they may be called, are in fact operational research assignments. There are many more places in which a similar approach would be valuable.’ logic of this thinking, the reactions to the invention of the atomic bomb, the experience of world reorganisation after 1945-these are the major factors The

that have led to the institutes of the future, to the journals and associations dedicated to futures research, and in recent years to the first hesitant beginnings of future studies in some universities. It was indeed a sign of the times when the Ciba Foundation Symposium for 1975 took as the theme for discussion the question of The Future a~ an Academic Discipline. The chairman was C. H. Waddington, and he began his opening address with words that sum up the role and the rationale of modern futures research : We are here to discuss whether universities

in general and British universities in particular should take account of the problems that mankind is obviously going to face in the next few decades, and, if the universities are to do this, how should they do it? It is only because the situation in the next few decades is clearly going to be unlike what it was in our grandfathers’ days that I think the question arises so seriously now. We all recognise that we are facing a series of crises which can’t be compfetely separated from one another. Each one of them-atomic warfare or the population problem or the environment problem or the energy problem or what have you-is a considerable threat. The whole set together form what the Club of Rome has called the ~~o~~~Qt~q~.a

This represents the most recent stage in the evolution of futurological thinking; and the Ciba Symposium was true to the origins of forecasting in the last century when the participants argued for the final professionalisation of the new methods and the new knowledge by making them into a university discipline. The most recent “last word on the subject”, however, came from the Professor of Theoretical Physics in the University of Bristol. He opened the final discussion in the Ciba Symposium with words that deserve to be inscribed above the entrances to the institutes of the future: “Views of the future are too important to be left to the futurists”‘.s

FUTURES

February

1871

From

Pro&hey

References 1. T. A. Shippey, “The traps of time and space”, Futures, June 1977, 9 (3), pages 234-290. 2. Dr Dioscorides (Pieter Harting), Anno Domini 2071 (1871), page 96. 3. Major-General Sir J. F. Maurice, National Definces ( 18971, page 4. 4. Wayne I. Boucher, ed, The Study of bhe Future (Washington, US Government Printing Office, 1977), page i. 5. Ibid, page 3.

SCIENCE FICTION

to Prediction/Science

Fiction

Survey

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6. Some of the more important works were: Giulio Dot&et, Ihe Command of the Air (1921) ; Colonel J. F. C. Fuller, Tanks in Future Warfare (1921) ; Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, Paris, or the Future of War (1925) ; General Erich Ludendorff, Der Kommende Xrieg ( 193 1). 7. C. H. Waddington, O$erational Research in World War III, (1973) page ix. 8. Ciba Foundation Symposium 36 (new series), The Future as an Academic Discipline (Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1975), page 1. 9. Ibid, page 207.

SURVEY

Dennis Livingston Bernard Gendron, Technology and the Human Condition (New York, St Martin’s Press, 1977), 263 pages, $4.95 Joseph Weizenbaum, C5rn~~~erPower and Human Reason : From Judgment to Calculation (San Francisco, W. H. Freeman, 1976), 300 pages, $5.95 The impact of technology on society and human values is the subject of the two books under review, one by a philosopher at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, the other by a member of the computer science faculty at MIT. Gendron is concerned with the broad ideological contexts in which the social role of modern technology is perceived; Weizenbaum examines the role of one technology on humanity’s selfimaging capacity. Both texts are humanistic in approach, tightly reasoned, and intellectual adventures of the highest order. Dr Livingston is a member of the Department of History and Political Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12181, USA.

FUTURES

February 1978

Technology

and society

Gendron explores three perspectives on the interaction of technology and society. The utopians are the technological optimists who see a postindustrial future in which technology will solve all social problems by eliminating scarcity, as long as technocrats applying the tenets of scientific rationaIism are left in charge of the dominant institutions. The dystopians are divided into a classical wing, who fear that this scenario implies the end of political freedom and choice, and the countercultura1 critics, who point to the problems that aEh.tence may raise: environmental destruction, alienation, and sensual repression. Both views regard technology as essentially autonomous, whether beneficial or regressive. The socialist analysis, however, which Gendron adopts as the most telling, sees technology as a tool whose value varies according to the economic class in control. He stresses that a workerdominated industrial system, which would tend to use technology pro-