Foresights, Scenarios, and Sustainable Development: A Pluriformity Perspective
‘If … then …’ is a conditional proposition that describes precisely a logical causal statement about possible future events. Obtaining due insight into an uncertain future has been a permanent source of rational speculation in the history of mankind. In t
- PDF / 439,919 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 439.37 x 666.14 pts Page_size
- 87 Downloads / 220 Views
Foresights, Scenarios, and Sustainable Development: A Pluriformity Perspective Eveline van Leeuwen, Peter Nijkamp, Aliye Ahu Akgün, and Masood Gheasi
15.1
Introduction
If everybody in this world of ours were six feet tall and a foot and half wide and a foot thick (and that is making people a little bigger than they usually are), then the whole of the human race … could be packed into a box measuring half a mile in each direction…. H. W. van Loon (1932), p. 3
‘If … then …’ is a conditional proposition that describes precisely a logical causal statement about possible future events. Obtaining due insight into an uncertain future has been a permanent source of rational speculation in the history of mankind. In the Hellenistic period, the foundation for systematic foresight analysis was already laid by the Oracle of Delphi which – in contrast to popular wisdom – was not based on the incoherent utterances of an ancient intoxicated goddess but on evidence-based information collected by her through listening to the subordinates of any political figure who wanted to pick up a useful hint on how to face the future. The medieval and premodern literature was also full of seemingly rational attempts to predict uncertain future events, such as catastrophes or wars. The aim to acquire political power was often an inspiration for obtaining strategic future information on unknown territories, as is clearly reflected in the support of leading dynasties in European countries for the great voyages of discovery from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.
E. van Leeuwen (*) • P. Nijkamp • M. Gheasi Department of Spatial Economics, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam, 1081HV, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] A.A. Akgün Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Istanbul Technical University, Taskisla, Taksim, Istanbul, 34437, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] M. Giaoutzi and B. Sapio (eds.), Recent Developments in Foresight Methodologies, Complex Networks and Dynamic Systems 1, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5215-7_15, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
237
238
E. van Leeuwen et al.
Over the past few decades, the control of future circumstances that might adversely affect current or future economic or political developments has led to many scientific efforts to uncover the driving forces of potential drastic changes in the near or distant future. One of the first well-documented studies on future developments can be found in Kahn and Wiener (1967), who made a scientific analysis of the bandwidth within which the year 2000 could be rationally explored (‘a framework for speculation’). Their investigation was inspired by control principles derived, inter alia, from cybernetics. The application of advanced modelling experiments was in particular advocated by Tinbergen (1956), who was able to construct system-wide models for economic policy and forecasting. Early attempts to provide national forecasts on the success conditions of economic systems were also
Data Loading...
