Understanding the philosophical aspect of the concept of time likely serves as a crucial starting point for grasping the subject of futures studies. Time has been a topic of debate among philosophers since the inception of philosophy itself.
Philosophers have divided into two main schools: one considers time as a concept separate from others, leading to the belief in its permanence, as evident in the philosophies of Parmenides and Zeno, culminating in Kant. They posited that time precedes phenomena, thus it is not an empirical concept; it exists in the mind like the forms in Plato’s philosophy. Conversely, the second school rejects the idea of time as separate from motion and phenomena. Heraclitus famously stated, “You cannot step into the same river twice,” indicating that temporal change is intrinsic to motion. Aristotle expressed that time is defined “by movement,” noting that a sleeper lacks a sense of time, while John Locke described it as the “quantitative change of events.” Islamic philosophy generally aligns more closely with the second view, with Al-Ash’ari stating that time is the distinction between movements, Al-Khwarizmi describing it as “duration measured by movement,” and Al-Ma’arri referring to it as the “quantum of movement.”
The contemporary concept of time aligns with the latter definition in Einstein’s theory, where moving the hands of a clock forward does not mean that one’s life has increased; rather, the vessel of time requires movement to be filled. However, other philosophers emphasized the aspect of temporal sensation and its rhythm, a crucial point requiring a deeper examination. For example, philosopher Gustav Fechner conducted a study where he presented engaging images to a group of individuals, followed by dull ones, while ensuring the duration of both presentations was the same. The group perceived the engaging images as being presented for a shorter span, indicating an awareness of the rhythm of time—suggesting that the essence of time, measured by the occurrences contained within it, varies across different contexts. Thus, a year as a container of movement in a developing country does not equate to a year in a developed nation. This dissimilarity indicates that discerning movement, measuring its quantity, and illustrating its rhythm is foundational to understanding the dynamics of any phenomenon, whether political, social, or economic.
The other dimension of futures studies pertains to the various alternatives for the pathways a phenomenon might take in its evolution.
Time is segmented into three phases: the past, which is everything that precedes the current state; the present, which encompasses all that is currently happening; and the future, which follows the present. The distinction among these three phases is that the past has become a reality that cannot be altered, and human will proves ineffective in it. The present, however, is a dynamic process that is not yet complete, and intervention in its trajectory will have only a relative impact. In contrast, the future represents the only domain available for human intervention, yet such intervention calls for an awareness of all potential outcomes associated with the studied phenomenon, which necessitates a rigorous and advanced scientific methodology—what researchers have strived to provide through what is known as futures studies techniques.
Based on the aforementioned, futures studies can be defined as “the science that monitors changes in a specific phenomenon and seeks to identify the various possibilities for its future development, describing what facilitates favoring one probability over another.” Consequently, futures studies diverge from strategic studies, as the latter is oriented toward a pre-established goal and then searches for means to achieve that goal, while futures studies aim to explore the diverse possibilities of the phenomenon. Futures studies also differ from forecasting, as the latter conclusively determines that a phenomenon will follow a particular path, a presumption not claimed by futures studies.
Stages of Development in Futures Studies:
The human desire to know what tomorrow holds is a historical phenomenon experienced throughout different stages of human development. This desire extends not only to individuals but also to political authorities, which have historically engaged in attempts to predict the future, be it regarding potential victories or defeats or the machinations of political rivals in secrecy. Historical pages are filled with anecdotes and myths about emperors, caliphs, and leaders consulting oracles, prophets, and astrologers to uncover the secrets of the future, with records from Roman times and the Pharaohs of Egypt illustrating this. The Oracle of Delphi in Greece stands out as one of history’s most notable institutions in this realm. Even contemporary daily newspapers occasionally report on figures maintaining relationships with soothsayers and oracles. However, all this falls under the category of human anxiety regarding the future and the attempts to create means to enhance one’s comfort about it, even if these means are unscientific and dubious.
The scientific history of the phenomenon of futures studies begins from a point of trying to establish an actionable scientific methodology that can accumulate knowledge regarding what comes after the present reality. Thus, we can categorize the development stages of this field into three phases:
First Phase: Utopianism:
Without delving deeply into the concept of utopia, it’s important to note that one characteristic of structured human thought is imagining social structures or systems capable of resolving real-world problems, despite insufficient indicators that such imaginary structures could materialize. Plato envisioned a just society with philosopher-kings, believing that it was feasible only if its leaders were philosophers, with society adhering to his classifications of rulers, soldiers, etc. Augustine imagined a conflict between the City of God, based on virtue, and the City of Man, rooted in vanity and evil, hypothesizing that the first would emerge victorious and urging people to strive for it. Francis Bacon imagined a “New Atlantis” supporting human greatness, while Thomas More envisioned a community based on communal property, eliminating individual ownership in favor of collective will. Marx argued that human development would lead to a classless society, which, in his view, was the cause of human conflicts.
Futurist “Fred Polak” asserts that the ideas of these philosophers reflect the social structures from which they emerged, linked to the desires of individuals in those societies. However, some researchers in futures studies claim that the notion of a global government, popularized by utopian thought, is no longer merely an idealistic vision, as many contemporary globalization thinkers believe such a government is attainable. Furthermore, the science fiction that we observe on cinema and television screens suggests that human trust in imagination and its realization fuels futures studies by integrating imagination into varying possibilities when examining phenomena. Russian scholar N. V. Ignetov articulated this idea by suggesting that whatever we imagine falls within the realm of the possible, asserting that the individual who envisioned moving quickly from one place to another in ancient times now sees that imagination transformed into tangible reality.
This debate has led researchers in futures studies to distinguish among three dimensions of the various pathways for the phenomenon under study:
- Possible: This refers to the probabilities that the phenomenon might take, which reality provides sufficient indicators to validate.
- Probable: This is one likelihood concerning the phenomenon’s development; however, indicators of this probability are not sufficiently grounded in reality.
- Preferable: This is the probability toward which we desire the phenomenon to evolve, despite the significant limitations of objective groundwork for its realization.
Utopian studies have been integrated into futures studies as a form of the third type, the preferable.
Second Phase: Planning:
The establishment of the Soviet government in 1921 to create a committee tasked with devising a governmental plan to generalize electricity across most of the Soviet Union within five years marked a pivotal moment in futures studies. Despite skepticism regarding the possibility of controlling the trajectory of events over five years, the successful realization of the plan stimulated thoughts on long-term planning, predicting changes, and researching mechanisms to adapt to these changes—opening avenues for studying change and adaptation and the interaction between the two. This complexity and laborious nature left its mark on Western researchers, crystallizing in the early appearance of the journal “Tomorrow” in the UK in 1938. Notably, this magazine emphasized the necessity of establishing a Ministry for the Future in Britain.
The tragic outcomes of World War II fostered a prevailing sense of a bleak future for the world, creating a psychological state unfriendly to futures studies. Nonetheless, several philosophers, including French philosopher Gaston Berger, challenged this outlook and established, in 1957, the International Center for Foresight (Centre International de Prospective) to encourage researchers to view the future with a more optimistic lens. Berger’s efforts concentrated on two aspects:
- The connection between social phenomena and technological development. He initiated the linkage between two dimensions: futures studies concerning technological advancements and futures studies concerning the impacts of these advancements on social phenomena while also focusing on political dimensions.
The second significant impact of this phase was a unique focus on the long-term effects and trends, rather than isolated events. This gave rise to the Minnesota classification for the temporal span of futures studies, encompassing five dimensions:
- Direct future: Two years.
- Near future: Between two and five years.
- Medium future: Between five and twenty years.
- Far future: Between twenty and fifty years.
- Unforeseen future: Over fifty years.
The year Berger established his center brought about a qualitative shift in the field through the initiatives of the French scholar Bertrand de Jouvenel in collaboration with the Ford Foundation, culminating in the project “Futuribles.” This project asserts that the future is not predestined but rather serves as a domain for exercising freedom through conscious intervention in the current reality’s structure toward the “preferable.” Thus, the future is viewed as multiplicative, unlike the singular past, through the idea of multiple possibilities. His renowned book, “The Art of Conjecture,” represented a significant breakthrough in futures studies, detailing how to operate what he termed “provisional forums” that conduct futures studies for specific countries.
Jouvenel emphasized three aspects when conducting futures studies:
- Observing the prevailing trends in a specific phenomenon and determining how to monitor those trends.
- The speed of trends, which involves measuring the quantity of change in a specific phenomenon over a designated time and the acceleration of that change, a concept that evolved within futures studies through employing mathematical laws of acceleration and incorporating them into analysis.
- Interrelationships among phenomena, which means establishing a theoretical framework that acknowledges the interactive dynamics between phenomena, regardless of how unrelated they appear, rejecting reductionism in favor of a holistic approach (where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts).
The US military recognized the utility of futures studies, focusing on its application for national security, with the US Air Force being particularly invested. The Rand Corporation, through the efforts of mathematician Olaf Helmer, played a prominent role in expanding the application of Delphi techniques. Furthermore, American scholar Herman Kahn pioneered the development of the scenario technique, based on the “If-Then” premise—one of the most popular yet often misapplied methods among researchers.
In addition to France and the US, European scholars emerged, such as the Dutch Fred Polak, who published “The Image of the Future” in 1961 and subsequently the influential “Prognostics” in 1971, leaving a mark on the Dutch government, leading to the establishment of a futures studies unit in 1974, mimicking the initiative taken by the Swedish government in 1973 under the leadership of Prime Minister Olof Palme to reinforce the Secretariat of Futures Studies affiliated with the Prime Minister’s office.
Britain, through Sussex University, established a research unit concentrating on interdisciplinary integration and critiquing international models. Meanwhile, socialist countries focused their futures studies efforts on tangible variables, particularly economic and technological changes, without giving substantial importance to individual dimensions or moral aspects, notably as Freud and psychoanalysis were excluded from Soviet universities until the 1960s. The Soviet Academy of Sciences, through its various branches, contributed to the theoretical development of futures studies, particularly with what became known as futures seminars, which became notably vibrant starting in 1967 through Kiev and Leningrad seminars, featuring the Soviet scholar Igor Bestuzhev Lada.
The Soviet school of futures studies is characterized by:
- Specialization: Regular seminars focused on specific themes; for instance, the Leningrad seminar centered on urbanization’s impact on political stability, while the Kiev seminar addressed the effects of technology on political stability, and Vilnius focused on regional forecasts prioritizing particular regions through aligning available capabilities with possible alternatives for a particular plan.
- Linking study outcomes across sectors—a point that American schools initially lacked—resulting in the emergence of techniques like the matrix and Futures Wheel that connect phenomena with indirect and unexpected outcomes.
In developing countries, Francophone nations led in futures studies, influenced by French efforts. Some Latin American countries, particularly Argentina and Mexico, made attempts in this field, while the Arab world was one of the last to adopt this subject, with futures studies emerging as an academic discipline in Arabic universities in the mid-1980s, though it gradually expanded subsequently, primarily dominated by impressionistic studies lacking in the scientific techniques employed in the field.
Third Phase: Global Models:
The preceding phase of futures studies mainly concentrated on national or regional futures, but a significant development emerged by transitioning the focus of futures studies from single nations to a global scale. Researchers began to prioritize the future of the international community or world system, or topics of international importance, such as weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, humanitarian intervention, and environmental issues—subjects that extend beyond specific nations or regions.
The Club of Rome was perhaps a pioneering entity in this domain. In 1967, an assembly gathered influential Italian businessman Aurelio Peccei and scientific director of the OECD Alexander King, who realized that several issues threatened international society, such as population growth, depletion of natural resources, and poverty, and noted the incapacity of international institutions to address these challenges. Drawing from this insight, they hosted the first assembly in Rome in 1968, attended by thirty scientists from ten countries, establishing what became known as the Club of Rome. Their studies concentrated on the increasing interdependence among societies and the development of methodologies facilitating the identification of various possibilities for global phenomena. The Club’s first report received significant attention, particularly for its pessimistic view of the world’s future, which predicted global catastrophe.
Following the Club of Rome, other academic endeavors emphasized global perspectives, including the Leontief and Bariloche models. The foundations of futures studies within these global models are based on:
- Identifying variables leading to either the collapse or sustained balance of the international system. A notable concept arisen in this aspect is that of renowned scholar Ilya Prigogine’s philosophy of instability, impacting the concept of order in futures studies significantly.
- Determining the mechanisms of adaptation available to the international system in facing potential changes, such as studying agricultural land to manage population growth or the future relationship between arms races and poverty.
- Identifying the capacity of existing international units to mobilize resources in response to these changes.
- Establishing the legal justifications for intervention by external powers to correct imbalances at the international level.
- Considering change as the norm.
Based on these principles, the methodological aspect of futures studies within global models took the following steps:
- Geographical classification of the world, where every model divides the world into a specific number of regions based on geographic proximity and historical interaction traditions.
- Identifying various sectors (political, technological, economic, etc.), considering these sectors as systems containing sub-systems (for example, subdividing the economy into its known branches).
- Studying the interactions between sectors and regions based on reciprocal impacts, employing functional interactions among sectors within regions and a geographical foundation noting each region’s effect on others.
- Identifying interaction trends to delineate future possibilities via futures studies techniques.
It’s impossible to discuss global models without acknowledging one of the most significant scholars in this field, classified by the World Futures Studies Federation as the foremost authority, American Buckminster Fuller. He is regarded as a leading figure in normative futures studies, particularly stressing the potential for achieving international peace. Fuller’s model, termed the Great Logistic Game, warrants summarization.
He constructed a dome equivalent to a basketball court’s area, mapping the world’s terrain on it, connecting it to a computer housing vast databases about global resources, human trends, needs, and international issues. He assigned a goal to each researcher: to devise the best equation for achieving optimal outcomes based on available data. For instance, if the model’s function is to minimize wars, the equation must utilize available resources strictly to realize this function in the shortest possible time—an endeavor demanding extensive knowledge in mathematical analysis.
Conclusion:
The evolution of futures studies can be seen as moving in two directions:
- Towards institutions, research centers, and scientific journals focusing on futures studies with a more global than regional or national approach. Currently, there are 124 organizations in Europe engaged in futures studies. Interestingly, 67% of futures studies are conducted by multinational corporations and military institutions, while 97% of spending on futures studies occurs in developed nations.
- Regarding the methodological direction in futures studies: Assuming the work of French scholar Condorcet, titled “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind” from 1793, as the first attempt to examine futures studies on scientifically methodological grounds, the evolution of futures studies can be summarized in the following stages:
- Emphasis on projection, intuition, and reductionist perspectives in the initial phase.
- Development of quantitative and inductive methodologies, such as mathematical matrices, scenarios, probability theory, and simulations.
- The third phase marks a gradual shift towards a holistic perspective, operating on the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, resulting in several consequences:
- Transitioning from a quantitative power model to a results-based power model.
- Evolving the concept of balance of power from a mere equivalent weight concept to an interconnected framework.
- Gradually shifting the perspective on international relations from zero-sum to non-zero-sum relationships, with all the implications that this transformation entails.
References
1) For more details on the concept of time, see: Alam al-Fikr, vol. 2, vol. VIII (July-August) 1977, pp. 110-141.
2) Edward Cornish-The Study of the Future,World Future Society, Washington.1977,pp.83-92.
3) Fred L. Polak:The Image of the Futurer:Enlightening the Past, Orienting the Present,Forecasting the Future 1st vol. Oceana Publications, 1961.
4) Keniche Ohmae:The Borderless World: POWER Strategy in the Interlinked Economy, Fontana, London.1990.
5) Alvin Toffler; Future Shock,Random House,N.Y,1970.P.181.
6) Walid Abdul Hai: Introduction to Future Studies in Political Science, Scientific Center for Political Studies, Amman, 2002, pp. 62-64.
7) Edward Cornish; Op. cit. pp 70-72.
8) Walid Abdel Hai: The development of curricula of future studies in international relations, cited in Hamdi Abdel Rahman (ed.) curriculum in political science, Al al-Bayt University, 1998, p 129
9) [1] On the techniques of future studies, see in detail: Walid Abdelhay Futuristic Studies in International Relations, Laayoune, Marrakech, second edition, 1992. pp. 23-145.
10) Timothy Mack:The Subtle Art of Scenario Building,Futures Research Quarterly,Vol.17.No.2,2001.pp12-19
11) Bertrand de Jovenel: The Art of Conjecture,Translated by Nikita Lary,Basic Books,N.Y.1967.passim.
12) On the details of this curriculum: See: Walid Abdel Hay: The transformation of postulates in the theory of international relations, Dar Al-Shorouk, Algeria, 1994, chapter I.
13) M.Mannermaa:New Tools and Knowledge for Sustainble Futures,Futures,vol.28,no,6/7,1996.pp.34-36.
14) Social Sciences”USSR Academy of Sciences,Moscow,vol.xvi,no.1,1985,pp.225-229
15) Forrester,Jay W.World Dynamics,Cambridge,Allen Press,1971
16) Globel Medard:The World Game at 2000,The Futurist,volxxi,no.5,Sep-Oct.1987.S
