XVIII. Wheel of fortune symbolising man's rise and fall ( 1541

miniature). 208
10
Figures in Text
page
1. Mercenaries throwing dice. Woodcut by Anton von Woensam. 24
2. The zigzag line. Action and Reaction (I). Assumption: Every action is followed by a reaction in the opposite sense, which need not be equal in intensity or duration. 32
S. The circle. Recurrence of equal phenomena (II). Assump- tion: Historical, economic, and many other events are periodic repetitions of similar phenomena. Once the phase of a given cycle is known, the subsequent phases can be predicted. 32
4. The straight line. Rise or fall (III). Assumption: All main trends have a basic direction, though the direction may be subject to minor fluctuations. Optimists assume continuous progress, while pessimists assume a continuous decline. 32
5. The balance. Tendency toward equilibrium (IV). Assump- tion: All fluctuations are so many deviations from a state of perfect equilibrium, which is always restored in the end. The principle (and symbol) of justice. 33
6. Jules Verne's conception of flying. He died in 1905, shortly before the aeroplane came into its own. 45
7. Leonardo da Vinci's idea of a field gun. The cart holds S3 barrels, 1 1 of which are fired simultaneously. 47
8. The Babylonian god Adad was the "Lord of the Oracle",
but also the god of storms, thunder, and lightning. 5 1
9. Head of the giant Humbaba, formed of intestines (British Museum). Humbaba played a great role in Assjrrian divination. 52
11
FIGURES IN TEXT
page
10. Diagrams of coiled sheep intestines on a Babylonian clay tablet. Every turn had a special prophetic significance. 54
1 1 . Clay model of a liver used by Babylonian diviners ( British Museum). 55
12. Ancient Chinese Zodiac-plate 61
13. Bronze Liver from Piacenza. Etruscan model for hepato- scopic predictions (300-200 B.C.). 15
14. Ancient Arab Zodiac. 77
15. The end of the world as seen by Scheuchzer in his Physica Sacra (1734). 79
16. The 17th century combined great technical process with crude superstition. Erfurt prophecy about a bad harvest ( 1627) based on "celestial signs". 80
17. "Phlebotomic" figure. Every part of the body is related to a sign of the Zodiac. The stars show when a patient must be operated on or have his blood let. 81
18. In the 16th century, chemistry was an important means of prophecy. Chemical still from Destillierkunst (The art of dis- tillation) by Brunswig (1547). 82
19. Geronimo Cardano, the great 16th-century physician and mathematician, was a poor astrologer. 84
20. Horoscope cast by Cardano for Edward VI of England. The horoscope proved to be completely wrong. 85
21. Nostradamus, the most famous of all 16th-century prophets.
His political predictions are still in great vogue. 86
22. Zodiac from the Lucidarius (Augsburg, 1479). The universe was still geo-centric: sun, moon, and planets revolve about the earth. 97
23. Mercury and his children. From an English astrological calendar of 1503. 99
12
FIGURES IN TEXT
page
24. Saturn, the evil star, bringing mankind troubles, imprison- ment, illness, and death (From Meister des Hausbuches) . 101
25. Kepler's horoscope of Wallenstein (1608). Kepler failed
to predict Wallenstein's assassination. 104
26. Zener-cards used in parapsychological research. 137
27. Ancient Mexican calendar stone showing the four suns of past ages, all of which ended in disaster, and the face of the present, the fifth, sun god. 144
28. Title page of one of many pamphlets proclaiming a flood in 1524. 179
29. Evangelista Torricelli, the inventor of the barometer (1643). 181
30. Wall Street quotations of industrial shares. A long upward trend ends with a "double top". 269
3 1 . De Foville's General Barometer, one of the first attempts
to present a pictorial analysis of economic phenomena. 27 1
13
Introduction
/ILL OF US ARE PROPHETS, NOT SO MUCH FROM CHOICE AS
■jOL from sheer necessity. Whenever we cross a road and fail to take into account traffic conditions, or misjudge distances and speeds, we may have to pay dearly for our lack of foresight. The foresight needed in this case is not on a very high level — it resembles the instinctive reaction of animals sensing danger. However, man is not bom with it. Very small children are incapable of dealing with even such simple situations, and can do little more than scream at the approach of danger. Their physical co-ordination is not yet sufficiently developed to make good their lack of judgment. Unfortunately many adults fare little better — their inability to estimate the immediate future correctly is borne out by the mounting toll which traffic accidents take of drivers and pedestrians alike. And this despite the fact that the Highway Code prescribes a set of elementary rules, observance of which would lead to a drastic reduction of road accidents.
The type of foresight we are discussing consists of immediate responses to external signals. Someone approaches me reck- lessly, and I must take the necessary evasive action. My response — i.e. fear, thought, escape — is both one of the most primitive and also one of the most persistent human reactions. Civilisation has done little to reduce our general anxieties — it has merely shifted their causes. The builders of the Pyramids simply had a different set of anxieties from those of the modem motorist and had to take different precautions. No doubt they took too few — men have since grown a little more careful. In other words, they have become more prophetic, or, which amounts to the same thing, more civilised.
The foresight needed to avoid accidents is occasionally called "presence of mind", though "mind" plays little part in it. In essence, it involves making good use of the fraction of time
15
16 INTRODUCTION
between the discovery of the source of danger and the evasive action, and acting appropriately within very circumscribed con- ditions. The pedestrian who wants to dodge an approaching car may have to take into account the fact that another pedestrian is approaching from the opposite direction, and the driver who wants to avoid the accident must be able to gauge at a glance the total traffic situation at that point. Even so, what he does is to judge a relatively simple situation with no extraneous uncer- tainty factors. True, he has to have his wits about him, and for this, intellectual brilliance is no substitute. The absent-minded professor will not shine in this kind of situation.
Pedestrians, no matter how confident, can rarely tell you how they estimate whether it is safe to cross a busy road against fast traffic or not. If you ask them, they will usually reply that they know from experience — ^no doubt from that elementary kind of experience which is almost subconscious. At best, they may mention an accident in which they have been involved or which they have witnessed, but they neither know how many yards in front of an approaching car they can cross safely, how to judge the distance of the car from its apparent size, nor under what conditions they would consider it more advisable to wait for the car to pass. Even experienced drivers cannot give you exact quantitative estimates of this kind. The licensing authorities do not demand this kind of knowledge — ^possibly with every justification, since too much knowledge and reflec- tion in the face of immediate danger may well paralyse our responses.
Despite the increasing accident rate, the ratio of false to correct estimates of traffic situations is very small. In Paris, for instance, statistics show that there is one fatal road accident per day, i.e. the chance of a Parisian losing his life on a given day is one in five million. If we include non-fatal accidents, the ratio becomes 1:100,000 Ignoring collisions between cars, we find that the risk run by a Parisian pedestrian is roughly one in three hundred thousand. Now, assuming that every Parisian crosses no more than three streets every day, we find that he makes one wrong estimate in every million correct ones. Appearances notwithstanding, the average Parisian therefore behaves with a high degree of foresight, at least on the road.
INTRODUCTION 17
Everyday Predictions
However, everyday prophecies are by no means restricted to the kind of short range predictions we have been discussing. Most people manage to organise their free time for days and even for weeks ahead, i.e. they can predict where they and other people will be at a given future date, and for what purpose. The fact that they can organise their leisure does not mean that they know nothing about the rest of their time — quite the contrary is the case. Their work, their family and other obligations, their habits and physiological needs — ^for instance sleep — enable them to predict that they will carry out certain activities at certain times in certain places, precisely because these obligations are taken for granted. Most people are not even aware that, in this way, they are in fact predicting the future as it affects an integral part of their lives. Commitments of this kind may be said to form the framework into which decisions about the use of free time have to be fitted. But, even the organisation of free time is usually connected with social commitments and must therefore be organised and predicted fairly accurately. Thus all sorts of every- day prediction have a high degree of probability and are subject to roughly the same number of uncertainty factors.
The fact that two people feel entitled to make an appointment to meet in the future does not gainsay the presence of many uncertainty factors, even if some of them are not usually taken into account. Needless to say, the appointment can only be kept if both are alive and fit at the time, if the meeting place still exists, and if transport is not paralysed. These factors — con- tinued life and the absence of major catastrophes — are basic assumptions of all prediction about human behaviour. It is, of course, quite possible, that people may have a stroke or be run over on their way to an appointment. However, the shorter the interval between the original arrangement and the actual meeting, the smaller are the hazards involved, so much so that for all practical purposes, they can be neglected. This is no longer true of long range predictions.
Failure to keep an appointment, i.e. to predict correctly, is very often explained by the fact that something "happened" to one of the people concerned, a polite way of saying that he found some- thing better to do with his time. Such questions of preference,
18 INTRODUCTION
which are often purely subjective, play a considerable role in everyday predictions and even more so in political and economic life.
All the same, it is common practice for busy people to plan their day, their hours, and even parts of their hours for w^eeks ahead. Politicians and directors of big companies have private secretaries for the express purpose of arranging their appoint- ment books, while the directors themselves play the passive role of keeping the arranged meetings to the best of their ability. In this way, they turn themselves into the objects of organised prediction, and the organisers, the secretaries, pride themselves on their ability to say that their employer is booked up for lunch every day for the next six weeks.
But less important people, too, can usually predict their future for weeks and even for months ahead. Thus, they may begin to make preparations for their summer holidays in early winter. The more limited their financial means, the more they must plan, i.e. predict. Travelling has ceased to be an interruption of regular routine, and is nowadays planned down to the last detail, not least because the general holiday rush, and the con- sequent shortage of suitable accommodation, make it essential to book hotel rooms well in advance, and to plan an exact itinerary. In the case of holidays, individual foresight is usually aided by such organisations as travel bureaus which do most of their customers' planning for them; the customer need only state the date of his departure and return, and the bureau does the rest.
The uncertainty factors involved are considered so negligible that people who tell you that they will be in Madeira, in Iceland, or in Hawaii in six months' time, are not credited with possessing special prophetic gifts. Not so long ago anyone claiming that he would reach some distant place on a given day, would have been taken for a ridiculous braggart or, if successful, for a divine seer. From this alone, it must be obvious that the art of predicting the future, at least in certain fields and particularly those related to technology, has made tremendous advances. What was previously a matter for prophets has become a commonplace activity. Our certainty has become much greater, and the greater our certainty, the less our need for oracles.
INTRODUCTION 19
Experience makes us prophetic
So far we have been discussing "activist" predictions, i.e. predictions of future activities. To provide for the future, people must act in the present. In some cases — e.g. when we arrange an appointment — ^prediction and planning are practically identical: the date is foresight and intention all at once. In other cases — e.g. on crossing a road — the prediction is a means towards an end. In either case, the prediction is purposive.
However, purposive predictions are not the only ones. If, on the night of 20th March, I remember that the sun will rise at six o'clock tomorrow — a prediction which every schoolboy can make nowadays though it took astronomers a very long time to establish this simple fact — my prediction cannot be called pur- posive by any stretch of the imagination. I do not intend getting up with the sun, neither my work nor my leisure is in any way affected by the equinox, and even if I realise with pleasure that the days will henceforth be longer than the nights, my wishes are in no way engaged. If I did not like the equinox, there would be nothing I could do about it. All I have really done is to relate two events: a future date and an astronomical phenomenon.
Scientists — ^no matter in which of the scientific disciplines they are trained — make this type of prediction all the time. Thus, when a scientist tells us what will happen under given condi- tions (i.e. when we drop a body in a vacuum, or if we heat iron beyond 780°C. ) he is merely making generalisations from past observations. Formerly, scientific laws were alwa3''s so phrased as to stress their causal character, and the discovery of cause and effect was considered to be the ultima ratio of all scientific work. Nowadays scientists have grown a little more reserved in that respect. For practical purposes, however, this change of heart need not concern us, and we may take it that, under given con- ditions, predictable changes will occur with maximum prob- ability, if not with absolute certainty.
The most important of these predictable events have become common knowledge. Others are known to the specialists alone, and if need be we must consult them. The engineer will tell us under what conditions a given machine will work with optimum efficiency, and the doctor will tell us what diet to adopt if we are
20 INTRODUCTION
to recover quickly. In either case, theoretical perfection does not concern us so much as practical advice.
Scientific predictions, even if they are not part and parcel of every man's intellectual stock in trade, nevertheless play an important part in his life. They form a reservoir on which he can freely draw the moment his own elementary knowledge becomes inadequate. Without them, a great many of our activist and purposive predictions would be impossible or at least impracticable.
Man therefore lives in a world of predictions and the question whether human beings are capable of foretelling the future is purely rhetorical. All we can ask is what events human beings cannot predict at all or only with a small degree of probability, and what are the limits of man's foresight. This leads us to a second question: Is there any means of extending these limits.''
Uncertainty Factors
To answer this question, we must first look at the negative aspect of the problem: completely unpredictable phenomena. They can all be classified as accidental, complex, or aleatory, uncertainty factors.
In the first group, i.e. the accidental uncertainty factors, we include all those events of which we commonly say that "they just happened". They are generally untoward events, and even if they may come as pleasant changes to some, they will never- theless often cause inconvenience to others. In any case, they cause predictions to go wrong.
Many such unforseen factors do not, in fact, have to be absolutely unpredictable. Thus, in our previous discussion of activist every-day predictions, we have mentioned some im- plicit or explicit uncertainty factors (viz. premature death, natural catastrophies, etc.) which, even in what are apparently the most certain plans for the future, could well be taken into account, if only as a precautionary measure. Particularly natural catastrophies, though no less frequent than in the past, have become more predictable and hence less of a risk. True, scientific meteorology is still in its infancy but its progress is such, that
INTRODUCTION 21
some of the worst weather-phenomena can be anticipated to a far greater degree than was formerly possible.
In addition to accidents beyond human control, there are the accidents due to human carelessness. In this field, too, preventive techniques have been successfully applied, and no longer can entire cities be laid waste by a carelessly started fire. While increasing motor-traffic has driven up the accident rate, and while our own chances of being run over are unpredictable, at least the individual risk of material suffering from such accidents has been appreciably reduced by third-party-risk insurance. Statistical or collective predictions, i.e. the assessment of the total number and extent of future accidents, have therefore more than purely academic interest ; they are a very important means of anticipating and mastering the future.
The second category of uncertainty factors is of quite a dif- ferent type, even if it, too, may sometimes look like pure accident, and play havoc with an individual's plans. It consists of factors too complex to be predicted with ease or certainty, simplification, condensation, and rigid exclusion of extraneous considerations being essential conditions for making any kind of correct prediction. If someone were to try to obtain an overall view of all terrestrial phenomena, and delve into all their implications his predictive faculty would be effectively paralysed. Active every-day predictions on which we base our activities are generally over-simplified predictions which rigidly exclude all extraneous or unimportant factors, and which concentrate on the essential problem alone. It is for this very reason that they go wrong so often — the price we have to pay if we wish to predict anything at all.
There are, however, processes and events in which this simple method of thought must fail, not only because of the possibility of unexpected accidents or the neglect of extraneous considera- tions, but because of their very nature. Thus, political, economic and cultural trends quite obviously depend on so many different factors, that no completely satisfactory predictions can possibly be made on the basis of any given set of factors. Even if it were possible to consider all the factors, the result would be altogether nebulous and vague. No wonder, then, that man's world view has undergone such unpredictable changes. To take just one example: at the beginning of the 20th century, for instance,
22 INTRODUCTION
naturalists were sharing the literary field with symbolists and no one could have told you which school would eventually win the day.
Political predictions are even more difficult to make, because the factors involved are more complex still. In particular, inter- national politics continue to be a cloak and dagger game, with secret services whose main task it is to confuse the opponent while trying to gauge his own intentions. Predictions about war and peace are therefore among the trickiest of all.
In business, too, which has apparently shed its love of secrecy, and where large companies have begun to publish their plans, future investment policy, budgets, and statistics about the most complicated operations, for years in advance, the uncertainty factors are still so great that few experts can claim to have given correct estimates of the course of a single business, let alone of price fluctuations, for a number of successive half-year periods.
Despite all these enormous difficulties, the art of prediction has made advances even in these complex fields. Instead of direct predictions, experts nowadays prefer to analyse the past and to isolate clear cyclical movements — ^war and peace, booms and slumps — and to use these cycles as the basis for taking precautions against future contingencies. Cycle theories were in vogue for a great many years, and though they seem less fashionable nowadays, they may well become a la mode once again, particularly since scientists, too, are constantly coming up against periodic phenomena.
The most important method of predicting the economic, and to a lesser extent the political, future, is, however, an activistic one. Men have begun to plan and to fashion the future accord- ingly. Whenever they succeed in doing so, they may be said to have prophesied correctly.
Of dice and atoms
The third category of uncertainty factors is called aleatory. Alea is the throw of a die, and dice did, in fact, play a paramount role in elucidating the problems we are about to discuss. It was with dice that Galileo, Pascal, and Fermat laid the foundation of the
INTRODUCTION 23
theory of probability 300 years ago. The die is the symbol of chance, since, theoretically, it favours no one and enables every player to stake an equal claim to fortune — zero, if the game is continued long enough. In practice, however, the dice fall without any recognisable pattern, so that one player can win while another loses, and the run of luck may continue until the loser stops playing for lack of patience or funds (see Plate I, p. 47).
Similar considerations intervene in a thousand everyday chance coincidences. Perhaps it is mere chance that one of two shopkeepers who start up business in the same street flourishes, while the other goes bankrupt, for the one who scores an initial (accidental) success can expand his business, increase his turn- over, and therefore sell his goods more cheaply and attract an ever wider circle of customers, while the other's business stagnates. The longer he has to wait for a similar bit of good fortune, the more unequal his chance.
Probability theory is very reassuring since it tells us that inequality is a mere illusion. If only we wait long enough, we, too, shall have a run of luck. But even probability theory must admit that the longer the game continues, the smaller our chances of recouping our previous losses. Even if we were to play the same game of chance for a million successive times, staking the same amount on every throw, we should have to devote a whole year to this activity and risk three thousand times our original stake. Only few players are prepared for such losses. But though probability theory has been unable to teach lis the art of winning, it has nevertheless taught us much that is useful. Above all, it has shown that those who play longest are the most successful. In this way, the arithmetical foundations of insurance were laid, and the risks not only of aleatory but also of accidental losses were considerably reduced. (We must clearly distinguish between accident and pure chance. Accidents have assignable causes, and only seem to be pure chance because we did not expect them. Pure chance, on the other hand, has no causes, and all we can say of it is that it exists. )
The question whether pure chance exists in nature as well, has been the subject of keen discussion between physicists and mathematicians during recent decades. While few of them would be prepared to state that chance is the kind of natural phenomenon which must be taken into account in the formulation
1. Mercenaries throwing dice. Woodcut by Anton von Woensam.
INTRODUCTION 25
of all "natural laws"^, most scientists would nevertheless make allowances for certain chance factors since, in view of recent scientific developments, it seems doubtful whether all natural processes are rigidly determined, i.e. follow strict and universally valid laws. These doubts are not due to the recognition of our ignorance, and do not entitle us to hope that greater knowledge will one day reveal the missing causal nexus, but are doubts of principle based on the mathematical recognition of the limits of human knowledge.
The main evidence for this approach is Heisenberg's Uncer- tainty Principle formulated in 1927, when Werner Heisenberg then 25 years old, was struck by the impossibility of measuring the position and the velocity of an atomic particle simultaneously. This is how he put it^:
"It was discovered that it was impossible to describe simul- taneously both the position and the velocity of an atomic particle with any prescribed degree of accuracy. We can either measure the position very accurately — when the action of the instrument used for the observation obscures our knowledge of the velocity — or we can make accurate measurements of the velocity and forego knowledge of the position."
Heisenberg's uncertainty relations have been generally recognised, and have caused a veritable revolution in science and philosophy. While Heisenberg himself has always been very reserved about the general validity of his findings, many scientists believe that he has sounded the knell to determinism in science, and that probability has taken the place of all cer- tainty.
Boiled Ice
We cannot possibly ignore this basic question if we are to make any serious attempts to predict the future. If we assume that the Heisenberg uncertainty relations are not restricted to atomic physics, but are rather an expression of a generally valid, and perhaps the only assured, natural law, then uncertainty rules
^ Pierre Vendrey^s: Determinisme et autonomic (Paris 1956) p. 165 fF. ^ W. Heisenberg: The Physicist's Conception of Nature (translated by A. J. Pomerans) London 1958. pp. S9 f.
26 INTRODUCTION
supreme in all spheres of life. In that case, despite all the findings of modern physics, despite Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and despite nuclear research, we are back at the ignoramus-ignorahimus with which Du Bois-Reymond (1872) characterised our inability to grasp the nature of atoms. ^ If the Uncertainty Principle were, in fact, universally valid, we could make no predictions whatsoever, and our future would be as closed to us as the outcome of a game of chance. We could not use the same medical prescription twice running, for what was harmless yesterday may well be poisonous tomorrow. It would even be inadvisable to knock a nail into a wall, since there is no reason to suppose that it will not fly back at us like a rubber ball and gouge out our eyes.
Famous scientists have spent their valuable time calculating the probablity with which such absurdities may occur. The second law of thermodynamics states that heat can only travel from a body with a greater to one with lower heat energy. Now this law — which was known long before Heisenberg — is only valid within certain limits — ^heat can travel in the opposite sense as well. Thus J. H. Jeans calculated the probability of water, placed on a hot stove, freezing instead of boiling by trans- iferring its heat to the stove.
The American physicist J. W. Gibbs ( 1839-1903) had shown a few decades earlier how to combine the theoretically possible with the practically impossible. According to kinetic theory, one cc. of air at normal temperature and pr ssure contains 27 million billions of molecules, all of which move in all directions with great velocity. Now it is impossible to predict the trajectory of any given particle, since collisions with the walls of the con- taining vessel and with other particles will alter its path in un- predictable ways. Nevertheless, we can state that the mean square velocity of all the particles taken together is proportional to the temperature.
This law, too, is only approximately correct. Ludwig Boltzmann has called the behaviour of the molecules chaotic: they move as if they were governed by pure chance. For this reason, Boltzmann is today considered one of the founders of indeterminism, i.e. of the rejection of strict causality in all
^ F. A. Lange: Geschichte des Materialismus (Leipzig undated) Vol. II, p. 196 If.
INTRODUCTION 27
natural processes. In Boltzmann's day (1844-1906), such atti- tudes were frowned upon by all reputable scientists, who believed that in nature everything was orderly, and that all talk of chaos simply reflected an inability to assess the real facts. Chaos was nothing but a veil covering the face of order.
Josiah Willard Gibbs, a great innovator and discoverer, but at heart a conservative with a firm belief in the Newton's classical mechanics, found a way out of Boltzmann's dilemma by comparing kinetic theory with statistics. In neither case can we make any precise statements about the individual components, but in both cases we can say something about total processes with a fair degree of accuracy. By analogy with established statistical methods, Gibbs became the founder of statistical mechanics, the fore-runner of modern theoretical physics which is based exclu- sively on statistical laws, i.e. on probability statements.
The law of chance
From recent developments in physics it does not, however, follow that all predictions of the future will henceforth be of no value. Not even professional prophets need hang their heads in shame, for by studying the past they can still look confidently into the future. Statistical, like the old determinist, predictions make use of just that principle. No laws have ever been abso- lutely certain but, by and large, laws have always enabled us to look at tomorrow, particularly when we can see where and how they went wrong yesterday.
The layman who usually looks on modern physics with its atom bombs as most "realistic", often forgets that theoretical physics has become more abstract than ever it has been, and that it has withdrawn to the ivory tower of pure mathematics. Quite possibly physicists may one fine day revolt against the dictator- ship of the mathematicians, and look for concepts which can more readily be brought into harmony with conceptual models.
Above all, determinism — if the term is understood to connote not only determinability but also pre-determinability — is an unavoidable working hypothesis. Indeterminists are only in- determinists when they calculate; the moment they carry out
28 INTRODUCTION
a laboratory experiment they have no real doubts that identical experiments will produce identical results under identical condi- tions. Even Heisenberg's uncertainty relations are determin- istic, at least to the extent that they assume that the experiments by which they were established can be repeated.
Indeterminism must always be based on exceptions to a given rule, not on a rule that changes with time and that is founded on inadequate observations and false calculations. If 2 x 2 were found to make 5 tomorrow, we should still have a determinable system of numbers. Only if we can show that, for no apparent reason — or cause, though the causal nexus can never be rigidly established — 2 x 2 may make either 4 or 5, could we speak of an indeterminist process. Fortunately, such processes are very rare indeed in everyday phenomena.
The problem of determinism vs. indeterminism in nature — as opposed to morals — is therefore, by and large, a linguistic problem. When the French mathematician Emile Borel, one of the foremost probability theorists, after paying tribute to the indeterminist fashion for many years, came to the end of his life — he died in 1956 at the age of 85 — he realised that we can safely dismiss such theoretical possibilities as Jeans's water- freezing hypothesis as completely out of the question.^ According to Borel, there is only a single law of chance, which, in simplified form, states that improbable phenomena do not occur. True, this, too, is no more than a hypothesis, but it is a wise hypo- thesis which helps to link thought with action, and calculation with observation.
Those who are sceptics on principle or by inclination — and modem indeterminism is nothing if it is not sceptical — are at liberty to express Borel's argument negatively: certainty is only the least degree of uncertainty, and the so-called natural laws are only valid for phenomena in which chance plays no preceptible role. For all practical (and logical) purposes, however, we might as well state positively that what is highly probable is as good as certain. Naturally this does not mean that we must choose between absolute certainty and uncertainty — between deter- minism and indeterminism — we must rather assess degrees of probability, even in strictly scientific predictions. This is
1 Emile Borel: Probability et certitude (Paris 1956) pp. 5-6, and 118- 125.
INTRODUCTION 29
precisely the approach which we shall use to examine former and present methods of predictions in the following chapters.
The long and the short of it.
It would seem reasonable to suppose that one of the most decisive factors in assessing the degree of probability of a future event is the interval between the moment when we make a given prediction and the time at which it is supposed to come true. The greater the interval, the greater apparently the number of accidental, complex, and aleatory factors involved, i.e. the greater the chances of mishaps, complications and accidents. While this argument seems quite logical at first glance, it is, in fact, fallacious.
Time does not necessarily work against the prophet and, precisely in the case of very daring predictions, it may become his close ally. According to probability theory, the chance of losing (or winning) in a continuous game with equal stakes, decreases rather than increases with time. Similarly, it may be far less risky to make long rather than short-range predictions about a unique future event. In ancient times, when the court astrologer told the king that his impending marriage would result in male issue ere Jupiter had circled the sun ( which takes twelve years ) he was on much safer ground than had he promised a son and heir for the next year. Again, if we predict that it will be terribly cold next winter, we are on safer ground than if we predict cold weather for a particular day at the beginning of winter. The trick is to give time a chance of working in our favour.
Moreover, long-range predictions have the additional advan- tage that they may be forgotten, though most prophets will make sure that only their errors fall into oblivion. Here time may cover error with a benevolent cloak, and this alone is one of the reasons why professional prophets generally prefer to prophesy well into the future. Though modern man is curiously impatient, and often prefers inaccurate short-range predictions to even the most accurate long-range prophecies, there are cer- tain fields in which the opposite is the case. The farmer requires
30 INTRODUCTION
long-range weather predictions, and we know the tremendous difficulties which meteorologists have to satisfy him even vaguely. In the economic field, the chances of correct prediction depend on special factors. While the chances of success of a given business can generally be predicted for a month ahead with as much probability as for next week, long-tange general economic predictions are less certain than short-range predic- tions.
As a rule of thumb, we can say that long term predictions are easier to make whenever we deal with aggregates which may balance out, e.g. days of good and poor business. When we predict unique phenomena, on the other hand, the uncertainty in- creases with time. This rule too requires a restriction, for it is largely a question of what we mean by "unique". If a firm of builders contracts to finish a new building on a certain day, this apparently simple prediction referring to a unique event, is, in fact, a highly complex prediction, since the building operation involves innumerable separate factors: labour, deliveries, trans- port, etc., every one of which affects the others. A delay in any one set of factors, may throw the whole plan out of gear. It is for this reason that so many professional plans go wrong.
Basic forms of prediction
Even if the interval does not affect the probability of the pre- dicted event crucially, it nevertheless has a considerable bearing on its character. In very short-range everyday predictions, we generally manage without a general picture, and consider facts in isolation. I wish for something, I realise what I must do to implement my wish, and I act accordingly. I expect no compli- cations and no set-backs, and take it for granted that my action will proceed without any hitches.
This is not even changed in principle if my action involves someone else on whom I have no direct influence, as for instance in our example of crossing a road. If a car is approaching, I simply judge the distance and act accordingly. I never expect the driver to run me down deliberately, or to force me to change my mind.
INTRODUCTION 31
In long-range predictions, however, other factors must be taken into account, and this can be done in four basic ways which we may represent visually by a zigzag line, a sloping straight line, a circle, and a balance.
Average-term predictions are generally based on the belief that every persistent action is followed by an opposite reaction after a crucial point has been reached, i.e. the total process can be represented by a zigzag line. This belief clearly has a physio- logical basis and is founded on self-observation. All of us know that our strength is not inexhaustible, and that all our exertions are followed by fatigue. Similarly, oppression of one person or group by another may sooner or later result in the kind of reaction we call rebellion or revolution.
The word "revolution" is also applied to cultural and techno- logical trends, when a radical innovation or invention replaces more orthodox ideas or methods. However, only the rarest of cultural or technical revolutions can be shown to be direct reactions to the past. Thus Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics, made a point of stating that no deliberate wish to discard the classical picture of Newtonian physics entered into his new formulation. On the contrary, his new approach was the direct result of his attempt to adhere to classical determinism.^ Similarly, we should be wrong to look upon modem atomic theory as a reaction against older concepts, or on the atom bomb as a reaction to previous explosives. Very few correct predic- tions can be made about revolutions in the technical field, because the only great changes that can be foreseen with any degree of certainty are those which are in the nature of a definite reaction.
But even in the case of pure reactions, it is still very difficult to predict where and when a revolution will occur, and how intense it will be. Action and reaction are not necessarily equal and opposite, particularly in the political field where a long period of oppression is often followed by a fairly bloodless revolution, or where a violent revolt is often followed by a weak government. If this were not the case, we should never see the end of revolutions. However, the opposite course of events is just as common: great revolutions may start from small causes. The
^ Max Planck: fFege zur physikalischen Erkenntnis (2nd ed., Leipzig 1934) p. 244.
32
introduction Four Forms of Prediction
( progress to date prediction)
Prediction
2. The zigzag line. Action and Reaction (I). Assump- tion: Every action is followed by a reaction in the opposite sense, which need not be equal in intensity or duration.
Prediction
Prediction
3. The circle. Recurrence of equal phenomena (II). Assumption:
Historical, economic, and many other events are periodic repetitions of
similar phenomena. Once the phase of a given cycle is known, the
subsequent phases can be predicted.
>^
4. The straight line. Rise or fall (III). Assumption: All main trends
have a basic direction, though the direction may be subject to minor
fluctuations. Optimists assume continuous progress, while pessimists
assume a continuous decline.
INTRODUCTION
33
^--Tfi
Prediction
•"•'^^
"TTU
A
5. The balance. Tendency toward equilibrium (IV). Assumption: All fluctuations are so many deviations from a state of perfect equilibrium, which is always restored in the end. The principle (and symbol)
of justice.
classical example is the French revolution of 1789, which, though its mental climate had been prepared well in advance, occurred at an unsuspected moment. One might almost be led into believing that political, like organic, life is full of enzymes, i.e. small doses of catalysts which can produce large effects. While some of these catalysts are well known to every government and to every revolutionary, others, and often those which cause the actual upheaval, have remained quite mysterious.
Line and circle
In long-range predictions about the life of future generations, the reactive method proves unprofitable to even those with the greatest prophetic gifts. The man in the street, when faced with predictions whose truth he will be unable to test in his lifetime, prefers to be told that life will continue along an even path, so that he can face the future optimistically. When all is said and done, action and reaction are no more than counterparts, and even if we take them for granted, we prefer to look on life as a straight rather than a zigzag line. The line may be interrupted here and there, but the main slope must not be allowed to be reversed. Thus even prophets who have never heard of Darwin will usually assure us that, in the long run, things will become better and better.
34 INTRODUCTION
But while long-range optimism is very soothing, people generally prefer more tangible predictions. What they really like to hear is that, statistically and logically, by virtue of the progress of modem technology, the achievements of science, growing organisational and intellectual capacities, the living standard will rise annually by a fixed amount, and that what lean years there may be will be more than offset by the fat years.
Admittedly, pessimists have appeared from time to time who, using the same approach, have procalimed that the long-range line of development has a downward slope which may be inter- rupted temporarily by favourable trends. In the last century, the foremost of these pessimistic prophets was Thomas Robert Malthus, a Surrey curate. Malthus asserted that men would multiply so rapidly that they would outstrip their resources, with the result that human misery would become ever greater. The only solution was for the poorer classes to practise volun- tary sexual abstinence. Another of the blackest long-range prophecies was the concept of entropy, derived from thermo- dynamics: inevitable heat losses will eventually force the universe to freeze up, causing all life on earth to become extinct. Still, even according to the most pessimistic estimates, this freeze-up would not occur for thousands of millions of years, so that there was no cause for immediate alarm.
Linear theories of developments, which lead either to maxi- mum happiness or to maximum unhappiness, undoubtedly reflect the hopes and fears of many people, but are far too frequently disproved by the subsequent course of events, for anyone to worry overmuch about them. Straight lines exist only in geometry, and have no reality in nature herself. The world itself is round rather than straight, and looking at the horizon, the sun, or the motion of the planets, we begin to feel intuitively that the circle is more representative of life than the straight line.
It must have been thoughts like these which first persuaded ancient philosophers to consider all natural processes as circular, without beginning or end. Time moves uniformly. Having come full circle, the world is back at the same spot, and everything starts all over again. In science and economics, cycle theories are in particularly great vogue, even if they are being questioned by many experts. Thus doctors and biologists have discovered short
INTRODUCTION 35
cycles connected with the development of certain bacteria, and long cycles connected with the return of certain epidemics. All this is grist to the prophetic mill, for there are no more simple and credible predictions than those which are based on well- tested periodic phenomena. Thus the much-derided cycle theories derived from Asia and Ancient Greece have given rise to the theory of business cycles — a young but serious branch of economics.
The balance
The fourth type of prediction, which we have likened to a balance, springs from the belief that nature is always in equili- brium, or that equilibrium is invariably restored, at least in the long run. If only we know which way the balance is weighted, we can state with certainty that there will be a swing in the opposite direction.
The balance resembles the zigzag line, in that here, too, action is always followed by reaction, but where, in the former the movement is equal, in the latter it is not. This can be shown graphically: a normal line drawn through the fulcrum of the balance will produce two congruent triangles.
The American statistician R. W. Babson — one of the few men to foresee the 1929 crisis — used this principle to make correct Stock Exchange predictions. Babson, who was a pious and just man, did not so much object to speculation as to excess. He was firmly convinced that the inflated prices due to over- speculation were bound one day to drop as much below the — admittedly imaginary — normal line as they had previously risen above it. This is, in fact, what happened. The collapse of Wall Street in October 1929 which brought in its train the great slump, was therefore simply explained as the re-establishment of divinely pre-ordained equilibrium, transgressions against which are invariably punished.
In fact, this type of equilibrium is rarely represented as a horizontal line, since predictions based upon it are generally optimistic, and make allowance for natural growth. We are assumed to be living on a gentle slope, a fact which we must not neglect when estimating the economic development of a given
36 INTRODUCTION
country. In other words we must tip one side of the scales in advance to compensate for the natural rate of growth. In so doing, we must be very careful not to be deceived by sporadic accelerations of the rate, since excessive increases are un- natural, and will inevitably have to be paid for later on.
This idea of natural equilibrium plays a very large place in applied biology, in agronomics, and particularly in medicine. Most therapeutic steps have a compensatory aim: they are meant to offset excesses or shortages of a given substance, or to increase or decrease the rate of output of an organ. In this respect, medicine is in a particularly favourable position, since it knows what it means by "normal", i.e. not a statistical average but a general state of health. In economics, on the other hand, there is little agreement on what degree of unemployment, for instance, must be looked upon as normal, and within what limits it can safely be permitted to exist.
The main fields in which predictions of the balance type are usually made, are those involving man's sense of justice or his belief in a higher power which leaves no good deed unrewarded and no evil deed unpunished. While human justice may fail here and there, divine justice is infallible. It is on this belief that all religious prophecies are based, and particularly those of the Old Testament. Most biblical prophecies are conditional predic- tions, and in that respect resemble scientific prognoses. Future events are not immutably fixed in advance, as they are in ancient Greek myths, but are largely dependent on human behaviour. If only men remain steadfast, if only they observe the laws of God, they will be rewarded. But if they deviate from Jehovah's law, they and theirs will be stricken down as inevitably as night follows day. Men can do what they will, but they must pay for the consequences of their actions.
Only in particularly blatant cases does Jehovah punish a sinner or a people on the spot, for He generally prefers to allow them enough rope to hang themselves. Nor does He usually give immediate rewards, but prefers to wait for decades or even generations. But one day justice will be done, and men forget it at their peril. To remind them of it, is the prime task of the prophet.
The New Testament^ adds the magnificent vision of the Day 1 Revelation, 20,
INTRODUCTION 37
of Judgement, a general day of reckoning for the dead and the living alike. St. John probably preached the resurrection not so much as an event in the far distant future, as a final warning before an impending world catastrophe. The fact that 2000 years have elapsed since his prophecy, has not done much to reduce general faith in its validity, for the idea of just retribution obviously appeals to man's belief in fair play (see Plate II).
Ignorance by choice
Although the modern scientist indulges in much more prophecy than even the most prolific old-time prophet, he is somewhat chary of admitting it. This is borne out by the fact that, although we speak of predicting and prediction, we have no suitable word for a "predicter". It almost seems as if we were ashamed of this occupation ; the prophet no longer wants to be known in the land.
The reason seems obscure, for it is far less reprehensible to be thinking honestly about the future and to state one's conclusions, however vague, than to bury one's head in the sand and allow oneself to be taken unawares. The refusal to make predictions on principle, just because so many past predictions were false, is nothing but fatalism or deliberate escapism. In any case, it is dishonest, for all of us must constantly predict if we are not to go under. People who claim that they never predict are therefore very unobservant of their own behaviour. No builder, doctor, or merchant could go about his daily business without making predictions to outsiders. Poking fun at those who try to look ahead is, therefore, merely foolish.
However, we must be able to recognise the limits within which prognostication is possible. This applies, a fortiori, to profes- sional prophets, whose clients are often unable to test their oracles' grounds of belief. Many expert predictions are taken on trust — all the more reason for conscientious prophets to be doubly circumspect, and to be fully conscious of what they are about. Unfortunately, they far too often are not. Even in science — ^for instance in the case of medical prognoses — ^personal experi- ence and opinion still takes the place of objective standards and systematically verified methods far too frequently.
38 INTRODUCTION
Intuition, Induction and Deduction
Since antiquity, it has been common practice to distinguish intuitive from empirical prophecies. These two categories have been given all sorts of names, i.e. intuitive vs. inductive; divina- tory vs. empirical; subjective vs. objective; endogenous vs. exogenous, etc., but, basically, all the terms amount to one single distinction. In predictions of the first type, we assume that the prophet has received his knowledge by way of divine inspiration or by inner illumination of another kind — in any case he himself can rarely offer an alternative explanation. Predictions of the second type are thought to be more subject to rational examina- tion, since the empirical facts or arguments on which they are based can, in turn, be verified by anyone who cares to do so.
However, they may also be based on empirical arguments that are not generally accepted, i.e. on astrological observations. And astrological prophecies must be considered prophecies based on objective facts (i.e. the motion of the planets) while, for instance, predictions based on dreams are, in principle, intuitive and subjective. The distinction between subjective and objective prophecies is therefore no criterion for judging the validity of their fundamental soundness.
The distinction is not a very revealing one from another point of view, as well. The greatest scientific discoveries and inven- tions have often been the result of intuitive flashes of genius. True, no complete outsider has ever discovered any important natural laws, and only a trained scientist like Newton could have seized upon such accident as the drop of an apple to formu- late a general law of gravitation, but his interpretation was nevertheless a brilliant stroke of intuition. Great scientists will follow their intuitions by submitting them to the necessary tests, thereafter to construct a set of inductive propositions. Intuition and induction are therefore not necessarily contra- dictory, and both may be necessary to arrive at the correct prediction.
Many scientific discoveries have a purely deductive character, i.e. they are deductions from general laws. Here, general con- clusions are applied to particular facts, and the verification of these facts simultaneously reinforces the validity of the general law.
INTRODUCTION 39
One of the most sensational astronomical feats was the dis- covery of the planet Neptune by Challis and Galle in 1 846, 23 years after Bessell had postulated the existence of a new planet from observations that the motion of Uranus was perturbed by an unknown factor, and shortly after Leverrier had calculated its probable path. Similar discoveries based on purely theoretical considerations and calculations, and subsequently verified by observation, have also been made in modern physics, where a number of elementary atomic particles, e.g. antiprotons, neutrons, and mesons were postulated first, and discovered afterwards.
The most astonishing discoveries of this kind, however, were made in chemistry. The classical example is Mendeleev's classific- ation of the chemical elements based on their arrangement into vertical and horizontal rows according to their atomic weight. According to Mendeleev's own account this idea came to him in 1868 while he was writing a textbook of chemistry. He was looking for an easy classification for teaching, rather than for serious scientific, purposes. However, he was convinced from the start that any such classification must be based on atomic weights. Having entered the atomic weight and other charac- teristics of every element on separate cards, he was struck by the fact that the properties of the elements were related to their atomic weights. From certain gaps in his Periodic Table, chemists were quick to conclude that the empty spaces repre- sented undiscovered elements, an assumption that was amply rewarded by their experimental discovery of the new elements Gallium, Germanium, and Scandium, which were found to fit neatly into the gaps. Here we had a combination of both types of scientific prediction: an intuitive idea, an inductive collection of available experimental data, and finally a deductive discovery.
In the biological sciences, too, there have been many deduc- tive discoveries. A typical instance was Darwin's assertion that particularly large insects ought to exist in Madagascar, since the fertilisation of the giant flowers on that island could not be explained in any other way. Soon afterwards, giant butterflies were, in fact, discovered there. Things proved more difficult, with attempts to find incontrovertible proof for Darwin's general theory of evolution. For decades, the search went on for ape-men who could be considered our direct ancestors, but time
40 INTRODUCTION
after time zoologists and anthropologists insisted that the prehistoric creatures reconstructed out of fossil bones, let alone the existing anthropoid apes, could not possibly be looked upon as the authentic link between ape and man. All they would allow is that some of these creatures and man had a common ancestor that had so far eluded all searchers.
Thus Darwin's theory is difficult enough to apply to the past, let alone to the future. Even the geneticists' trick of working with rapidly propagating insects (e.g. the fruit fly) the better to observe genetic changes in a large number of successive genera- tions, has proved rather unavailing. Many bold predictions were made, but only a few have stood the test. In the absence of deduc- tive or inductive proofs, even the most plausible "natural law" becomes a matter of faith — which does not preclude it from persisting for a very long time and from exerting a considerable influence on lay opinion.
JVhat is experience ?
The main field for inductive predictions is the world of affairs where businessmen rely on their "experience". Now, "experi- ence" in this sense simply means a faith in one's own judgment. "Once bitten, twice shy," sums it up.
If we look at "experience" from close quarters, we find that deduction plays a much larger part in it than experienced men normally believe. Not only is their own experience very limited, but most of what they consider their own experience is actually based on the experience of others. In fact, even the most down- to-earth businessman is guided by the work of academic econ- omists, though not necessarily by their most up-to-date work. This guidance, however, is unacknowledged and even uncon- sciously used: the academic theories have become a matter of blind faith.
Perhaps this is precisely the reason why "experienced" men are far less experienced than they think they are. We generally look upon experience as a sieve that allows true and relevant facts to filter in, and which keeps false, confused and impracti- cable ideas out. In fact, all new experiences must first jump the
INTRODUCTION 41
formidable hurdle of our prejudices. For this very reason, we experience so little that is truly individual, and most of our inductions are no more than vague generalisations.
Nevertheless, individual "experience" continues to play an immense role in everyday predictions. The main advantage of experience is quick reaction to stimuli. True, it is often con- tended that the experienced man reflects on matters before he judges them, while the inexperienced man is far too ready to give an ill-considered answer and to act arbitrarily, injudiciously, and recklessly. The experienced craftsman generally makes much quicker and more decisive predictions than his inexperienced apprentice, and he can do so precisely because his experience enables him to exclude a host of possibilities which the con- scientious beginner dare not ignore. Experience leads to con- fident decisions — the experienced man is not continually faced with a choice. In relation to a large number of problems he has already made it, once and for all.
The self-confidence of experienced men is expressed in their mistrust of, and contempt for, all systematic attempts to gain an intuitive over-all picture. They are therefore opponents of all statistics, and, at best, admit those facts and figures which agree with their own experience. Conversely, all statistics which gain- say their narrow viewpoints are dismissed as erroneous, mis- leading or unreliable.
Creative Foresight
The "man of experience" has another enemy whom he hates even more than the statistician, viz. the planner. Of course, there can be no serious planning that is not based on experience, but real planning worthy of its name must go beyond experience. It not only copies the past, it combines and constructs, and intro- duces a host of new factors. Planning, like other predictions is based on intuition, deduction, and induction, but what is so characteristic of planning alone is its forward look. Planning is more than mere prediction — it means shaping the future as one wants it to be.
On the small scale, this may be true of all activist predictions, but there is a difference of principle between my plan to hang up
42 INTRODUCTION
a picture on the wall and a large scale economic plan for the erection of a new industrial plant or an electric grid supplying an entire country. Large-scale planning does not merely work on given conditions, but tries to modify them. It makes radical changes in productive processes, throws labour forces and material into the most unlikely places, re-distributes, increases or diminshes the consumption of certain goods — in short, it creates a new world within its own chosen limits. The fact that large-scale planning, too, is subject to a hundred accidental and aleatory uncertainty factors does not alter this general principle. Wherever possible, the planners will make allowances for accident and chance, and set aside enough reserves to provide against unforeseen contingencies.
Thus, planning means meeting the future halfway, by reducing unpredictable factors to the unavoidable minimum. For this reason, the more powerful the organisation that initiates and implements the plan, the greater its chances of success. It used to be thought that small and isolated plans could be carried out more readily than large and comprehensive ones, but in reality the opposite has proved true. This is only to be expected, since the more limited the plan and the smaller the power of those behind it, the more it is at the mercy of opposition from outside and difficulties from within. Minor planning errors and unfore- seen events are less easy to absorb in the general operation. Man can very well achieve things without planning, but as a rule he can achieve little or nothing under a partly planned and partly improvised system — a poor compromise between two opposing trends which generally makes the worst of both worlds. Planning and improvisation make poor bed-fellows.
Utopias
Visions of the future do not only come in the form of predictions of future reality. Many prophets have preferred to describe mythical situations in mythical lands ; they did this not because their feet were not firmly planted on the ground, nor even because they delighted in fanciful literary creation. Frequently, the absence of freedom of thought, and fear of political conse-
INTRODUCTION 43
quences — in other words, pressure and anxiety^ — caused these prophets to avoid the slippery slope of reality and to hide their predictions under the cloak of literary or poetic allusion. They would, as it were, assure their readers that "all the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental," and make a point of prefacing remarks with sham homage to the Establishment — the better to elude the Censor.
This type of writing is called Utopian, after Thomas More's Utopia (l518). Utopia was, however, by no means the first Utopian book, for the ancient Greeks held this kind of writing in high esteem. Plato's Republic was not strictly one of these, for though his model state might have been Utopian, he did at least try to implement his ideas when he went to Syracuse, as the guest of its tyrant, Dionysius, with disastrous consequences to himself. Thomas More, on the other hand, even when he became Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, made not the slightest attempt to bestow the blessings of Utopia on his compatriots: a six hour working day, houses with gardens for all, the abolition of excessive luxury, of fashion, of taverns, etc. When Henry VIII had him beheaded, it was not so much for his Utopian ideas as for his reluctance to recognise the king as head of the Church of England, and his equal unwillingness to give way on the question of the royal divorce and re- marriage.
More's Utopia, taken literally, contains no prophecies apart from the one that no socialist model state can be set up on earth. Many of his literary successors took socialism far more seriously and wrote Utopian novels about the happy life that would result when economic inequality was abolished. Although Karl Marx himself was violently opposed to this type of socialist day-dreaming, and contrasted Utopian socialism with his own scientific socialism, i.e. his prediction that the capitalist system was bound to collapse and to lead to the removal of private property by virtue of its own inner contradictions, socialist Utopias remained a recurring literary fashion. One of the most successful was the American writer Edward Bellamy's hooking Backwards (Looking back at the year 2000) which appeared in 1888 and which sold more than a million copies in the United States alone. Bellamy's view of the future was a moderate kind of
44 INTRODUCTION
patriotic socialism based largely on state enterprise. His European counterpart, the Austrian writer Theodor Hertzka, scored a similar hit with his socialist Utopia Freiland (Freeland) which appeared in 1890.
When socialism had become reality in the Soviet Union, it became fashionable to direct Utopian novels against the Soviet regime. The most important work of this kind is George Orwell's novel 1984f which appeared in 1949, just at the beginning of the Cold War. In it, Orwell describes a tyrannical state in Oceania which had gained control of America and most of the British Empire.
Other Utopias were concerned with imaginary scientific developments. The two outstanding representatives of this type of writing were a Frenchman and an Englishman, Jules Verne (1828-1905) and H. G. Wells (1866-1946), both of whom used the literary device of placing their imaginary inventions and technical innovations in a contemporary setting with fantastic consequences, Jules Verne's prophecies — trips to the bottom of the sea and to the moon and record voyages round the earth — have partly been fulfilled or even outstripped by current technical adiievements. H. G. Well's less fantastic and more thoughtful novels have the added flavour of describing the present just as it is, and adding just one unusual fact which suffices to produce the strangest effects.
A hybrid bom of the marriage between political and scientific Utopias is the kind of writing found in the very many books about future wars and the havoc they will cause. Their authors, aware of the devastating possibilities of whatever happen to be the most recent weapons, are generally pacifists, though it is an open question whether they manage to convey their pacifist ideas to their readers. Unfortunately fear of destruction has never yet dissuaded men from waging war; on the contrary it has usually incited them to anticipate their opponents by starting preventive campaigns.
What ought to be the most fertile field of Utopian speculation, viz. the biology of the future, has been rather neglected, at least in literature. The most convincing writing on this theme is probably George Bernard Shaw's play Back to Methusaleh (l92l) in which he describes the prolongation of human life.
6. Jules Verne's conception of flying. He died in 1905, shortly before the aeroplane came into its own.
46 INTRODUCTION
Poets and Dreamers
This short selection is no more than a bird's eye view of writings about the future. In English-speaking countries, science-fiction, i.e. the discussion of fictional scientific facts, discoveries, and inventions, has become a special branch of literature. The devotees in this field have tried to make good their own lack of creative genius by joining science-fiction organisations, at whose meetings they can discuss their professional problems to their heart's content. Thus hundreds of authors, publishers, broadcasters, film directors, and lovers of this kind of prophecy assembled at an International Science Fiction Congress held in London in 1957.
Nor does this exhaust the list, for there is hardly an important novel which does not contain some general reference to the future. If we add the painters who depict their view of the future, we shall see that there are such vast numbers of prophecies that their mere enumeration would fill an entire book. We shall thus ignore illustrations of biblical texts, variations on themes drawn from Greek mythology, Dante and the classics in order to reduce the field to manageable proportions. Moreover, we shall exclude pseudo-prophecies, i.e. those which are based on considerations of the kind discussed above: suggestions for reform and political attacks disguised as prophecies. Most Utopian writing is thus eliminated from consideration.
The quality of the remaining prophecies is greatly inferior to the quantity. The belief that great writers are better judges of the future than all professional, amateur, and practical prophets taken together is altogether fallacious. What literary pundits have said about the future has generally been brilliantly put, but has rarely shed any new light on the future. By and large, literature and particularly the fine arts are more like the moon than the sun in this respect: they reflect, but are not themselves the original source of light. The truly inspiring and illuminating residue of literary and artistic prophecies was absorbed by religion. In this very way, it lost its purely imaginary character.
Religious prophecy claims to be absolutely true and un- assailable— much more so than even the best-founded natural law. Thomas Hobbes pointed out that miracles and pills must be swallowed whole rather than chewed, and this applies, a fortiori.
nn\«n""5 -Si±r«j™f ^^'
7. Leonardo da Vinci's idea of a field gun. The cart holds 33 barrels, 1 1 of which are fired simultaneously.
48 INTRODUCTION
to revealed religion. You can take it or leave it, but you must never analyse it. True imaginary prophecy, on the other hand, does not claim to be anything but fiction, and even if an author hints between the lines that he really means what he is saying, as often as not he may change his mind the moment reality gains the upper hand of the situation and retreat into the realms of pure fantasy. While the writer need not accept responsibility for any of his prophecies, the humblest fairground prophet must.
This irresponsibility — here we mean moral rather than legal irresponsibility — ^has clearly damaged the cause of fantasy. Though great poets are often looked upon as great seers, the moment this belief is put to the test the result is most painful to all lovers of poetry. Even so eminent a poet as Heinrich Heine, whose predictive faculties must have been sharpened by his journalistic activities, produced a host of false predictions. Luckily for their prophetic reputations, only the correct predic- tions of poets are usually remembered; the false ones are allowed to fall into oblivion out of kindness or indifference.
In the field of prediction, literary prophets therefore occupy a peripheral if not a secondary place. Literature has not per- ceptibly contributed to our knowledge of the future — and the place of the fine arts is more modest still, as their role is mainly restricted to giving concrete and humanised representations of religious notions such as the Last Judgement, and to futuristic interpretations of technical developments. Leonardo da Vinci, who was an inventor of genius far in advance of his time, was the only painter to have made valid predictions.
In many cases, the vision of poets and painters resembles the vision of dreams. While such visions are of great interest to psychologists, they do little to widen the rest of mankind's view of the future.
Take your choice
If we wish to form a total picture of all the methods used in prediction and prophecy, our classification of predictions into intuitive and inductive ones will be found to be inadequate. Even the classification used by modern lexicographers, viz. inspired, speculative, and logical is far from adequate. Thus the calculations
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