Preface
Introduction
Preliminaries
The Shape of Things to Come
I. BACKGROUND
1. The Philosophical Anthropology of Forecasting
The Indispensability of Forecasters
Attitudes toward Foreknowledge: Predictability Believers and Skeptics
2. Historical Stagesetting
From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The Nineteenth Century
The Rise (and Fall?) of Futurology in the Post-World War II Era
II. CONCEPTUAL, EPISTEMIC, AND ONTOLOGICAL BASICS
3. Conceptual Preliminaries
Predictive Questions and Answers
Predictions versus Forecasts
Prediction and Probability
Pseudoprediction and Spurious Futurity
Prediction and Mathematics
Metapredictions, Reflexivity, and Feedback Phenomena
4. Basic Epistemic Issues
Rational Anticipation: The Need for Predictive Cogency
The Information Sensitivity of Prediction
The Essentiality of Detail and the Security Definiteness Tradeoff
The Prospect of Rational Prediction and the Justification of Induction
The Risk of Error
5. Some Ontological Issues
Futuristic Ontology: The Truth Status of Claims about the Future
Predictability versus Predetermination: The LaPlacean Vision
Statistical Predictability
Predictive Reach: Forecasting Horizons and Short-Range versus Long-Range Forecasting
Volatility and the Prospects of Prediction: The Circ*mstantiality or Prediction
III. PREDICTIVE METHODS AND THEIR POTENTIAL
6. Predictive Methods
Predictive Methodologies
Unformalized (Judgmental) Predictions
Amalgamating Expert Predictions: Aggregation Process (Averaging)
Amalgamating Expert Predictions: Delphi Methodology and Concensus
Systematized Expertise ("Expert Systems" or "Bootstrapping")
Some Formal Methods of Prediction: Trend Extrapolation, Pattern Fitting
Indicators (Rationalized and Unexplained)
Black-Box Prediction and Its Role
Scientific Prediction: Predictive Validation via Laws and Modeling
Second-Order Processes: Forecast Amalgamation
7. The Evaluation of Prediction and Predictors
Evaluating Predictive Questions
The Resolvability of Predictive Questions
Difficulty
The Relevancy of Predictive Answers
Predictive Detail: Specifics versus Generalities
Correctness
Accuracy
Credibility / Evidentiation / Probability
The Dialectic of Credibility and Correctness
Robustness
On Evaluating Predictors: Standards of Predictive Competence
8. Obstacles to Predictive Foreknowledge
The Epistemological and Ontological Limits of Predictability
Uncertainty: Ignorance as a Prime Obstacle to Prediction
Anarchy and Instability
Ontological Impredictability: Chance
More on Chance and Uncertainty: The Case of the Surprise Examination
Chaos (Or Extreme Volatility)
Spontaneity, Choice, and Free Will
Innovation
Fuzziness: Problems of Quantum Indeterminism
Myopia
Inferential Incapacity
Factor Exfoliation and Impredictability Diffusion
Misprediction: Prediction Spoilers
IV. PREDICTIVE PRACTICE
9. Prediction in the Sciences
Prediction and the Aims of Science
The Supposed Symmetry of Prediction and Explanation
The Harmony Thesis: The Symbiosis of Explanation and Prediction
Predicitve Slack: The Looseness of Fit between Predictive Performance and the Truth of Theories
Limits to Predictive Capacity
10. Predictions about Natural Science: The Problem of Future Knowledge
The Impermanence of Theory in Natural Science: Why Theories Fail
Difficulites in Predicting Future Science
In Natural Science, the Present Cannot Speak for the Future
Could Natural Science Achieve Predictive Completeness?
The Infeasibility of Identifying Insolubilia
Predictive Implications of the Information / Knowledge Relationship
11. Prediction in Human Affairs
The Fate of Individuals and Groups
Prediction in Economics
Other Social Sciences (Demographics, Sociology, Politics, etc.)
Can History Predict?
V. PREDICTIVE LIMITS
12. Fundamental Limits on Predictors
The Impracticability of an All-Purpose Predictive Engine
Problems of Reflexivity and Metaprediction
Predictive Exaggeration and Other Biases
13. Predictive Incapacity and Rational Decision Problems
Rationality and Predictability
Predictive Overdetermination: The Case of the Predictive Poisoner
Another Case of Analysis Underdetermination: The Prisoner's Dilemma
Lessons
14. The Shape of Things to Come: Facing the Future
Key Aspects of the Future
The Problem of the Future's Tractability
Coping with Impotence
The Portent of the Future: Optimism versus Pessimism
Would We Really Want to Know?
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Names
