Predicting the Future (Darwin College Lectures, Series Number 5)

Howe, Leo [Editor]; Wain, Alan [Editor];

ISBN 10: 0521413230 / ISBN 13: 9780521413237

Published by Cambridge University Press, 1993

About this Item

Shelf wear to dust jacket. Marks to endpaper. Same day dispatch (Mon- Fri) from the UK if ordered by 1pm.

Seller Inventory # SS34221011001

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Predicting the Future (Darwin College Lectures, Series Number 5)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521413230
• ISBN 13: 9780521413237
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Weight: 24 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science & Technology

About this title

Synopsis

Whether there is a future to predict is not a question many people care to think about too deeply, though the process of predicting the future has itself a history. We did not always predict from the same assumptions as we do now, or for the same reasons. Today, on the basis of empirical observation and scientific theory, accredited experts and specialists forecast the economy, the social consequences of medical innovation and even what will happen to the universe in billions of years time. In the past soothsayers, priests, oracles and comets foretold the future on the basis of religious ideology and traditional authority. In a remarkable series of thought-provoking essays the authors examine both approaches and their consequences and chart our continuing attempts to see beyond the present.

Book Description

Auguries, oracles, omens ... and software simulation. From antiquity to the electronic age, Predicting the Future examines humankind's obsessive urge to look beyond the present in the hope of controlling events in the days to come with contributions from such well known authors as Stephen Hawking and Don Cupitt.