Futures Volume 2 Issue 3 1970 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2870%2990031-5] I.F. Clarke -- The Pattern of Prediction 1763–1973- H.G. Wells- Preacher and Prophet

8/11/2019 Futures Volume 2 Issue 3 1970 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2870%2990031-5] I.F. Clarke -- The Pattern of Predi

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The Pattern of Prediction 269

In all, we plan to have a model with

approximately 32 sectors on the pro-

duction side. Thus we shall have 32 wage

rate equations, 32 production functions,

32 hours worked equations, 32 price

equations and 32 final demand regres-

sions. These changes alone will add

approximately 150 equations to an al-

ready large model. Corresponding to

these changes on the side of production,

we shall make similar decompositions on

the side of final demand. We would want

32 investment functions in order to

build up 32 series on capital stock for the

32 production functions. We would also

need 32 depreciation equations. The

final demand regressions will be im-

proved if we make these and similar

decompositions of other types of final

demand. Foreign trade, consumption

and inventories will probably be further

decomposed . . .

We shall probably end

up with a system of approximately 300 to

400 equations

. . .

Pp. 31-32

3. I have written of the post-industrial

society in a number of essays. The most

comprehensive statement can be found

in my monograph, The Measurement

of Knowledge and Technology, in

Indicators of Social Change, edited by

Eleanor Sheldon and Wilbert Moore

Russel Sage Foundation, 1968)

The Pattern of Prediction 1763-1973

H. G. WELLS: PREACHER

AND PROPHET

I. F. Clarke

Of the many writers talking about the future state of society at the turn of the

century, most are now forgotten. However, H. G. Wells stands out more than

any of his contemporaries in making men aware of the urgent and complex

problems thrown up by continued technological development.

TH

decade between 1895 and 1905

marks the first main phase of crystal-

lisation in the history of social and

technological forecasting. In those years

the earliest exercises in predicting the

future state of society began to appear

in print. And in this development there

were certain discernible factors at work.

First, the general sense of living at the

end of the first great epoch of tech-

nological civilisation precipitated wide-

spread curiosity about the pattern of

Professor I.

F. Clarke is Head of the English

vtuies Department, University of Strathclyde,

life in the coming century. Second, this

interest coincided with the marked

increase in the numbers of science-based

stories and utopian visions of the

future that were published during the

1890s. Third-and most important of

all-the genius of H. G. Wells gave the

age an entirely new literature of

fantasies and factual predictions that

looked into the most varied possibilities

in science and in society.

Wells, however, was not alone. He

was the best of an increasing number of

authors who had taken to writing

about the future state of society. For

FUTURES September 197


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270 The Pattern of Predictions

instance, in Laings

Problems

of

the

Future (1893) there were studies of the

expectation of peace in Europe, the

reorganisation of the tax system, the

problems of population and food sup

ply. Again,

in Edward Carpenters

Forecasts of the Coming Century (1897)

ten writers William Morris, Shaw,

Grant Alien and others) provided a

socialist analysis of the means and

methods of establishing a happier state

of society. Similarly, in Arthur

Brehmers Die We in hmdert Jahren

(1904) a number of scholars, scientists,

and inventors gave their views on

matters as different as the future of

war and the role of women in the

twenty-first century.

They are all forgotten now; but

Wells is remembered for the startling

accuracy of so many of his forecasts.

In the matter of armoured warfare,

for example, Wells was right and the

General Staffs of the European armies

were all hopelessly wrong. In 1915,

when Colonel Swinton and Winston

Churchill pressed for the construction

of armoured trench-crossing machines,

the Engineer-in-Chief of the British

Army brushed off the proposition.

Before considering this proposal, he

said disdainfully,

we should descend

from the realms of imagination to solid

facts.

One year later the first tanks

had gone into action in France, and

they had fought in the way Wells

described in a short story, The Land

Ironclads,

first published in 1903.

In this there seems to be a lesson for

technological forecasters, since the

characteristic Wellsian prediction de-

pended in equal measure on fact and

imagination. The earliest suggestion of

armoured fighting vehicles appeared in

the War of the Worlds (1898) ; and from

this simple exercise of the imagination

Wells went on to make a close study of

future developments in modern warfare.

He argued that, given the great

increase in fire-power, it would be

essential to protect the fighting man:

Experiments will probably be made

in the direction of armoured guns,

armoured search-light carriages and

armoured shelters for men that will

admit of being pushed forward over

rifle-swept ground. With admirable

logic Wells continued-to possibilities

even of a sort of land ironclad my

inductive reason inclines. These were

the solid facts on which he based his

imaginative account of armoured war-

fare in The Land Ironclad?.

The Wellsian forecast was the pro-

duct of reason and imagination-the

scientists capacity for logical analysis

and the artists gift for seeing con-

nections, possibilities, applications.

Wells developed these gifts throughout

his writing, led by a dominant interest

in society, spurred on by his angry

resentment at the dismal negligence of

the social and religious organisations

which had flung him into the world

misinformed, undernourished and

physically under-developed. He ques-

tioned the basic principles, the structure

and the organisation of his society.

His nagging doubts and his shrewd

insights were so native to his thinking

that they provided the framework for

utopian blue-prints and comic stories

alike. In describing the adventures of

his Cockney hero in K;pPs it was natural

for him to observe that man is a social

animal with a mind nowadays that

goes round the globe, and a community

cannot be happy in one part and

unhappy in another. That theme

reappears in The War in the Air, where

Wells points out that scientific develop-

ments

had brought men nearer to-

gether, so much nearer socially and

physically and economically that the

old separation into nations and king-

doms are no longer possible.

Wells scattered these observations

throughout his books; and in this way

he did more than any of his contem-

poraries to make men aware of the

urgent, complex problems thrown up by

continued technological development.

He was the preacher and prophet of his

age, for in questioning the ways of



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The P em of Prediction

271

Figure 1. The first tank in history: the illustration for Wellss forecast of land ironclads in the

short story of that name in the Strand Magazine in 1903.

Figure 2. Infantry surrender to tanks:

consider the comment of Kitchener

on seeing the first real tank la pretty

mechanical toy.


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Sfieculations in Hard and Soft Science

273

society he was always ready with his

own answers. His best answers were

also his first-the collection of essays

published under the title of Anticipations

in 1901. In its way the book is one of

the historical landmarks of the twen-

tieth century: it was the first major

attempt to examine new trends in

society; it provided the model for its

kind; and Wellss world reputation did

much to encourage the practice of

preparing for anticipated changes.

Wells was the preacher and prophet

of his age. In Anticipations he had

studied the factors making for change

in locomotion, the size of cities, warfare,

communications, and social affairs.

He predicted the end of horse-drawn

transport and the coming of the

motor truck for heavy traffic. He

went on to argue that, because means

of transportation would increase and

population would grow, the whole of

Great Britain would become an urban

region held together by a new road

system, a dense network of telephones

and tubes for parcel delivery. He was

even more accurate when he came to

his chapter on warfare. He predicted

that the twentieth century state would

take over the direction of the civil

population in time of war, because

mass conscription required the total

mobilisation of industry. He foresaw

the importance of the air arm: Once

the command of the air is obtained by

one of the contending armies, the

war must become a conflict between a

seeing host and one that is blind.

And so he continued through the

twentieth century-deducing, proph-

esying, arguing. He was the first of the

modern-style forecasters. There has

never been anyone like him.

Speculations in Hard and Soft Science

Irving John ood

In this third instalment of the series the author pursues his theme that ideas

that can not as yet be made practicable should be recognised as such and made

public. He lists some of his own partly baked ideas and invites similar contri-

butions from readers.

TH

previous articles have shown that

an idea can have various degrees of

bakedness and it is not necessarily dis-

paraging to describe an idea as partly

baked: it is merely ambiguous. All

ideas are partly baked but some are less

baked than others. It is not the baked-

ness of an idea that makes it indigestible

but rather the pretence that it is more

baked than it really is. The estimate of

the digestibility depends on who has the

idea; the ideas that you incompletely

I. J. Good is University Professor of Statistics,

Virginia Polytechnic Institute, USA.

cook for yourself seem more digestible

than those of another chef.

Among professional scientists specu-

lations are often put forward apologeti-

cally if at all, and in 1952, F. A. Hayek

said : It seems almost as if specula-

tion which, be it remembered, is

merely another name for thinking) has

become so discredited among psycho-

logists that it has to be done by out-

siders who have no professional reputa-

tion to lose. (The Sensory Order, p.

vi.

I speculate, therefore I am.

During the last year I have collected


Futures Volume 2 Issue 3 1970 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2870%2990031-5] I.F. Clarke -- The Pattern of Prediction 1763–1973- H.G. Wells- Preacher and Prophet

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