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From Prokhecy t o Predi cti on 239
From Prophecy
serialised survey of the movement
to Prediction
of ideas developments in predictive
fiction and first attempts to forecast
the future scientifically.
7. The calculus of probabilities 1870-1914
I. F. Clarke
TH articles in this series have argued
that the advance from prophecy to
prediction began with the European
discovery of the future during the
second half of the 18th century. By the
middle of the 19th century the citizens
of the great industrial nations had
become so accustomed to the continuing
progress of their societies that they
developed a new vocabulary of stock
phrases to describe the march of man:
the inevitability of change das zei t al t er
der M archine l accroi ssement de connais-
sances et de moyens dacti on.
In 185 1 for
instance a French professor of
philosophy brought out the first major
analysis of the factors that made for
social and technological progress in De
l i di e de progr~ ?s;
and Albert Javary
began his first paragraph by summing
up one
hundred years of constant
change in an emphatic declaration:
If there is any single idea which is
peculiar to our country . . , it is the idea
of progress conceived as a general law
both of history and of the future of
humanity. And yet despite the assur-
ance with which he traced the course of
progress Javary had no interest in
following any of the achievements of
his day to their conclusions in some
coming era. That was the preserve of
imaginative writers like Hans Christian
Andersen who in January 1852 enter-
tained the readers of the
Foedre~an~t
with an account of the tourists of the
I. F. Clarke is Chairman of the Department of
English Studies, University of Strathclyde. He
received the Pilgrim Award for 1974 from the
Science Fiction Research Association of America
in recognition of his contributions to their field.
FUTURES June 975
future. These are to be young Americans
who will speed across the Atlantic in
the latest steam-driven flying machines;
and with prophetic foresight Andersen
records that their slogan will be:
See Europe in Eight Days.
The contrast between Javary and
Andersen serves to explain the seeming-
Iy extraordinary delay between the
first formulations of the idea of progress
and the earliest attempts to predict the
probable pattern of future develop-
ments in science and in society. One
reason is that futuristic fiction which
began with
LAn 2440
of Sebastien
Mercier in 177 1 was the natural mode
for describing the shape of things to
come. It had the considerable advant-
age of combining the anticipation of
technological progress with the vali-
dation of a most powerful literary
tradition that had begun with the
utopias of the Renaissance; and since
the first great scientific advances were
of immediate and immense benefit to
mankind it was natural for writers to
project the possibilities of their times
through utopian visions of the better
world of the future. Another and more
important reason is that whereas
futuristic fiction was the product of the
industrial revolution and literary con-
ventions the development of forecasting
was a consequence of the growth of
sociological ideas and of centralised
government that began to take effect
during the last thirty years of the 19th
century. Out of the increasingly com-
plex circumstances of life in the great
industrial societies there came a growing
and more informed awareness of the
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This illustration of
894
as typical of
the imaginative
expectations of the
future in the
magazines of the
period
At the same time
the growth of
science fiction
farniliarised
readers with the
wonderful cities of
the future . . .
GUESSES AT FUTURITY. No. 1
HOME LIFE IN ANNO DOMINI 2000,
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LL niL* JFh-fh, the ~~~~~~-~~~~~~
G 2@, z
Em-t T
. . .
and with the idea of space travel. The above example is from Honeymoon in space, written in 190
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244
From Prophecy to:Prediction
than that of all Europe. Unfortunately
the author did not maintain the same
degree of objectivity when he turned to
the more delicate question of the future
of colonial empires. The prospects for
the French in North Africa were most
encouraging since a great France-Arab
empire was likely to emerge along the
shores of the Mediterranean. For the
British in Egypt however things would
turn out very differently: As for that
most fertile of lands it will probably be
free. The British despotism which
rules there today is not eternal; and
there is sure to be some British govern-
ment in the next hundred years liberal
enough to abandon a system that is as
harmful to the British as it is to the
Egyptians. Egypt for the Egyptians
voilh la solution de la question egyfitienne
When Richet turned to the energy
situation of the 20th century he was
convinced that oil would replace the
decreasing supplies of coal and that in
addition to oil it might be possible to
exploit solar energy and the internal
heat of the earth. But he was not hope-
ful: solar energy would call for methods
still to be invented and as for the heat
of the earth : so far it is only a potential
resource since it appears almost im-
possible to dig mine-shafts of more than
2 or 3 kilometers in depth and it would
be necessary to go much deeper in order
to tap a source of heat that would boil
water. As the forecasts roll on there
is a melancholy fascination in reading
what Richet thought would be the most
likely state of warfare in the future:
Quick-firing rifles monstrous artillery
improved shells
smokeless and
noiseless
gunpowder-these are so destructive that a
great battle such as there never will be, we
hope) could cause the deaths of 300 000
men in a few hours. It is evident that the
nations, no matter how unconcerned they
may be at times when driven by a false
pride,
will draw back from before this
fearful vision.
Five
years before Richet predicted the
coming and to war on earth one of the
great Victorian poets had turned
against the optimistic assumptions of
his younger days; and in Locksley
Hall Sixty Years After the Poet
Laureate Alfred Tennyson denied his
earlier hopes of universal peace and
progress in the disconsolate and dis-
illusioned poetry of an old man who
had come to question the achievements
of the age. Once Tennyson had gloried
in all the wonder that would be and
in stanzas that still vibrate with the
hopefulness
of the first industrial
revolution he related how he had
looked into the future far as human
eye could see. It was a very different
future he saw through the eyes of old
age :
Earth at last a warless world,
a single race, a single tongue-
I have seen her far away-
for is not Earth as yet so young?
Warless? when her tens are thousands
and her thousands millions then-
All her harvests all too narrow-
who can fancy warless men?
Warless? war will die out late then.
Will it ever? late or soon ?
Clan it till this outworn earth be dead
as yon dead world the moon?
Sixteen years later another young man
H. G. Wells told the Royal Institution
that the time is drawing near when it
will be possible to suggest a systematic
exploration of the future; for Wells
was certain that the world was entering
upon a progress that will go on with an
ever widening and ever more confident
stride for ever. And then the young
man lived on through two world wars
and in his old age he wrote his despair
into his last book Mind at the End of its
Tether.
His message to the world of 1945
was that this world is at the end of its
tether. The end of everything we call
life is close at hand and cannot be
evaded. There must be a moral in all
these changes of idea. Could it be that
the discovery of the future
is
the golden
illusion of the young?
FUTURES June 875