Auguries, oracles, omens … and software simulation. From antiquity to the electronic age, Predicting the Future examines humankind's obsessive urge to look beyond the present in the hope of controlling events in the days to come. Opening with Stephen Hawking's predictions about the billion year future of the universe, closing with Don Cupitt's insights into the Last Judgement, the book examines both the history of prediction and the ways we set about foretelling the future today. In the past soothsayers, diviners, holy men and astrologers made prophecies on the basis of religious ideology and traditional authority. Today accredited experts predict the future, of the economy, of medicine's place in society, of the entire universe, on the basis of empirical observation and scientific theory. Yet as all the contributors admit, prediction remains an uncertain business even in the computer age, steering a hazardous course between scaremongering and complacency, liable always to be thrown dramatically off course by human unpredictability, catastrophic change, or faulty initial data. The book originates in the sixth annual series of Darwin College Lectures, delivered in Cambridge in 1991 under the title 'Predictions'.
Contents
Introduction: predicting the future Leo Howe; 1. The future of the universe Stephen Hawking; 2. Chaos Ian Stewart; 3. Comets and the world's end Simon Schaffer; 4. Predicting the economy Frank Hahn; 5. The medical frontier Ian Kennedy; 6. Divine providence in late antiquity Averil Cameron; 7. Buddist prediction: how open is the future? Richard Gombrich; 8. The last judgement Don Cupitt; Notes on contributors; Acknowledgements; Index.
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