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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