Preface

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SCIENCE, PROPHECY AND PREDICTION
Books by Richard Lewinsohn
Science, Prophecy and Prediction
A History of Sexual Customs
Animals, Men and Myths
SCIENCE, PROPHECY AND PREDICTION
Man's efforts to foretell the future — FROM Babylon to Wall Street
by Richard Lewinsohn
TRANSLATED BY ArNOLD J. POMERANS
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
New York
SCIENCE, PROPHECY AND PREDICTION
Copyright © ig6i by Harper & Brothers and Seeker & Warburg Printed in the United States of America All rights in this book are reserved. No part oj the book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written per- mission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Brothers 4g East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.
This book is published in Germany under the title of Die Enthiillung der Zukunft and in England under the title of Prophets and Prediction.
Library of Congress catalog card number: 61-6435
Contents
Introduction 15
Everyday Predictions 17 — Experience makes us prophetic 19 — Uncertainty Factors 20 — Of dice and atoms 22 — Boiled Ice 25 — ^The law of chance 27 — ^The long and the short of it 29 — Basic forms of prediction 30 — Line and circle S3 — ^The balance 35 — Ignorance by choice 37 — Intuition, Induction, and Deduction 38 — What is ex- perience? 40 — Creative Foresight 41 — Utopias 42 — Poets and Dreamers 46 — ^Take your choice 47
1. Short History of the Art of Prophecy 51
Mesopotamian beginnings 52 — Hepatoscopy 53 — Chal- dean astrology 57 — ^The Lo-King 60 — Old Testament Prophets 63 — Egyptian mystifiers 65 — ^The Greeks 68 — The Delphic Oracle 70 — Prophetesses 72 — ^The Romans 74 — ^The end of the world 76 — Nostradamus 82 — Pascal's Wager 87 — Hypnosis 89 — The decline of divination 91
2. The Language of the Stars 93
Symbolism triumphant 94 — ^Lion into Crab 96 — Good con- stellations and bad 99 — Birth or Conception? 102 — Political astrology 104 — Collective Horoscopes 107 — ^The Planets of Chance 108 — ^The balance sheet 1 10 — Is astrology scien- tific? 114 — Astrological Morals 116
3. The fVorld of Dreams 1 19
Popular Dream Books 119 — Freud and prophetic dreams 122 — ^The dream censor 124 — Prophetic and creative dreams 126 — ^Telepathy and Clairvoyance 128 — The English dreamer 131 — How to prophesy in your sleep 133 — E.S.P. 136 — Is time reversible? 139 — Further dimen- sions 141
5
CONTENTS
4. The Wheel of History 143
History repeats itself 146 — Cabbalistic numbers 148 — Three stages of history 150 — Marx and Darwin 153 — The Decline of the West 155 — Father and Son 157 — War and Peace 159 — ^Large states and small 162
5. Wishing and Choosing 164
Freedom of choice 164 — Client motivation 165 — Straw votes 167 — ^The Gallup Poll 169 — Red beans and white 171 — Predicting elections today 173 — ^The art of prediction 174 — Is democracy endangered? 175
6. Weather Prophets 111
Astro-meteorology 117 — Florentine illumination 180 — The three great Us 1 82 — ^The debacle of Balaclava 1 84 — War in the air 186 — Freddy, the frog 188 — ^Doubling the scope 189 — Weather-lore 192 — Sunspots 193 — ^The long . summer 196
7. Matters of Life and Death 198
Hippocrates' teaching 199 — 1001 diseases 201 — Infections 202— Modern diflficulties 204 — Surgery = Foresight 206 — Pregnancy test 209 — Boy or Girl? 210 — Cellular sex- difFerentiation 212 — Infection or heredity? 213 — ^The secret of family resemblance 214
8. Quantity and Quality 217
Pastor Siissmilch's "divine" order 217 — Malthus' fore- bodings 219 — Depopulation by prosperity 220 — Europe, 1970 223 — Europe, 2000 226 — ^The weaker sex 228 — A surfeit of women 229 — Comparing I.Q's 231
9. Gambling and Safe Play 234
The gambler's mentality 235 — Gamblers par excellence 236 — Gaming systems 238 — ^Time and probability 239 — State lotteries 241 — Shipwreck and conflagration 242 — Wagers with death 244 — From the cradle to the grave 246 — Subjective and objective chances 247 — Predicting the improbable 249
CONTENTS
10. The Mystery of the Business Cycle 251
The law of income distribution 251 — ^The discovery of business cycles 253 — Cycle research 254 — Crises 255 — The Juglar-Cycle 257 — Kitchins and KondratiefFs 259 — Of pigs and rubber plants 261 — ^Trading hopes 263 — Wall Street Prophets 265 — ^The Postman always knocks twice 267 — ^The cycle-barometer 270 — Harvard knows no crisis 272 — ^The German barometer 273 — ^The post-war crisis fails to materialise 275 — Models to order 276
11. Forging the Future 280
Re-armament plans 280 — Planning the nation's economy 282 — ^Budgeting 283 — Planning by persuasion 284 — Water and land 286 — Recalcitrant coffee 289 — "Projec- tions" 290 — Planless planning 292 — Critics of the Five- year Plan 294 — ^The correct proportions 295 — Planning ahead — ^for how long? 296 — ^The revolt of the body 298 — Dictating and planning 300 — Self-regulation 302
ENVOI The Future of Prediction 394
Specialisation without specialists 305 — Collective predic- tions 306 — Restricting chance 306
Index 309
List of Plates
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