Each historical period has its own future in the form of the prevailing idea about what follows after it. This idea is, figuratively speaking, the present, reflected by a mirror. The anticipatory thinking uses different mirrors, though. As long as the historical changes happened gradually and over periods which exceeded the lifespan of a generation, the mirror was flat: the future had to be an extension of the present, its true image. Sometimes convex mirrors were used which reduced the importance of the current problems, sometimes concave mirrors enlarged everything. It was no different in our century - the choice of the mirrors, however, underwent an institutionalization since it became a fashion to institutionalize everything - according to the prevailing view that collective work gives the most perfect results. That is why futurology came into being.
The first futurologists who worked in the big land of big things, the United States, held up to the world a huge mirror that magnified the present. Their European colleagues did the same. The euphoria of those researchers was infectious. Futurology became famous through depicting a future characterized by elephantiasis and giantism. Powerful mirrors located around the year 2000 exaggerated everything: prosperity, national income, production, the inventiveness of technology, and science. They also exaggerated the conflicts - the nuclear ones, e.g., which received special attention from the futurologist H. Kahn who was enthusiastic about eschatology. Those splendid mirrors vanished without a trace. Where is the infamous "post-industrial" society of Bell and Kahn, when the largest thing that the U.S. have today is their budget deficit (70 billion dollars)? Where is Fritz Baade's world full of food? Finally we were advised to look into new mirrors which especially magnified the present crises. They are magnifying them to such a degree that they indicate the end of the world.
All these undertakings are based on the conviction that the future is predictable. This view comes close to historicism as Popper understands it. According to historicism, history shows reliable regularities. And in this respect it is foreseeable. This is what futurology bets on.
Sixteen years ago, when I was writing this book and nobody had heard about futurology yet, I assumed that history is unpredictable. That one could not determine what would happen in five, ten, or fifty years. Thus the problem that I confronted myself with was like a paradoxon: To predict what could not be predicted. I am an anti-historicist - like Popper who thinks that history is as unforeseeable as the natural evolution of the species. On this I agree with him.
History and evolution are games of one and the same type. In both, the players are changing as well as the physical environmental conditions under which the game runs, and even the rules of the game. And although it is humans who are fighting each other in history, whereas in evolution species are competing, their main opponent is nature. Both evolution and history are games in which nature is a strange partner due to its unpredictability. Sometimes it appears to be hostile, sometimes benevolent. This is just because nature is an impersonal partner which does not care at all, a partner who is indifferent to both victories and defeats of the living players.
The evolutionary future of the species is a resultant of two independent variables: the physics of the planet and the dynamics of life. These variables are not totally independent. But their mutual interdependence is a variable itself. Often it is a random variable. Therefore one can predict neither the coming success of one species nor the decline of others.
The historical future of humans is equally unforeseeable. It is, if we may say so, unforeseeable even to a higher degree than the course of evolution since there are fewer variables in evolution than in history. An invariant of the game of evolution is the strategy of life which always fights for its survival according to the rule "catch as catch can". In history, on the other hand, the strategies of humans are modified by the cultural factor and the technological variable of the possibilities of action. This variable and this factor have been called "progress" for some time. That has always been an exaggeration (see the crematories and Hiroshima). An evolutionary invariant is the total balance of the game: the mass of living organisms is a constant, depending on the astronomical conditions of the planet (solar influx, atmosphere, water, etc.) One has to die for another one to live.
I would like to formulate Poppers quote given above in a slightly different way.
It is true that we cannot know anything with certainty or precision in both history and evolution. This does not mean, however, that we cannot find out or guess anything at all. Maybe it is a game of chance, but we can still investigate the potential for development here and there. These prognostic chances will never become certainty. They necessarily remain possibilities with an undetermined realization probability. But to recognize the outlines of distant possibilities is better than nothing.
Exploring possibilities means building mental models of nonexisting things. To build a mental model, one needs a starting pattern. Futurology has traditionally used the mirror and took present achievements and the current state of the Earth's politics, science, economy, and technology as the pattern. But these achievements are overly pitiful and the states too changeable to be prolonged into the future and taken as the foundation of a far-reaching vision. One cannot learn anything about the look of the future of humans by examining their history or their present views, hopes, and fears.
When searching for models, one has to transcend civilization, society, and culture. We should look for the mental models in natural evolution - because only in this way we can stay away from both megalomania and misanthropy. Here, by evolutionary mental models, I mean not only the technological patterns, the production recipes that were used by evolution for the construction of living organisms. The most important lesson is the one we can learn from evolution as a whole. What counts is to copy from evolution not the constructive knowledge, but the procedure by which evolution collected this knowledge. Insight - that's true information. Evolution is a billion year synthesis of such information, collected with constructive intention and verified. Could this task not be generalized in such a way that any information is synthesized using the evolutionary method? Any kind of knowledge? In saying this, I don't formulate a problem, I merely pose a question. But even a question posed like this makes some room for new chances.
What I have said here is, in my view, not a discovery, not even the announcement of one. It is simply an example that illustrates which methods I used to break the mirror that we put up in order to look into the future. We live in an epoch of decline and are in despair about it since from the end of one epoch, the next one always looks dangerously dark due to the uncertainties involved. One cannot light up this darkness, but one can at least penetrate it with assumptions, reaching as far as the mental horizon that limits the thinking. This book is neither a creed for a glorious future of humanity nor a prediction of its terrible end. It is a risky attempt that I took because the alternative is passivity, is giving up the use of reason. I think it is always too early for this.
It should be clear from what I have said why, after the cavalcade of futurologic literature, I have changed nothing in this book.
Krakow, March 1976