Predictions

A look at the application of scientific concepts to predicting social phenomena illuminates such diverse subjects as the death rate from auto accidents, Mozart's musical genius, the probable cure for AIDS, and more. 40,000 first printing.

Modis believes that the S-curves that mathematicians use to chart natural growth processes can also be used to predict social phenomena, including the life cycles of products, tourism trends and patterns of creativity. Utilizing S-curves and related techniques, he estimates the number of westward expeditions that failed prior to Columbus's voyage; suggests that Mozart may have exhausted his creative potential at the age of 35; and predicts that the discovery of a cure for AIDS is unlikely until a relatively dramatic decline in the yearly number of AIDS deaths occurs. In what sometimes seems like an intellectual parlor game, Modis, a management science consultant, applies his sweeping theories to criminal careers, energy consumption and human life expectancy. He also posits a 56-year cycle that purportedly rocks society with alternating waves of violence and achievement, prosperity and economic depression. Mathematics buffs will be the most likely readers of this offbeat excursion.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The art of curve-fitting is elevated to high science in this curious collection of data compiled by a physicist/management- science-consultant living in Geneva. Modis acknowledges a major debt to mentors at the International Institute of Advanced Systems Analysis near Vienna, one Cesare Marchetti in particular. The basic theory applies the concept of invariants--constants over time--with growth curves describing how animal species fill an ecological niche in the face of competition for limited resources. Equations of this type were described 50 years ago; it was Marchetti's notion to apply them to nonbiological phenomena, such as discoveries and inventions, energy sources, and much human activity, from a composer's productivity to the spread of disease. The two basic curves involved are the bell- shaped normal distribution curve and the slanty S-shaped curve that represents cumulative growth over time. The latter starts out almost flat, rises diagonally, and then ceilings-out in another almost flat line. Does the theory work? Maybe, in some cases. Especially if you buy the kind of number-crunching and plot-fitting that Modis and his mentors swear by. So the book tells us that humans universally are happy with 70 minutes of travel time a day; that motor-vehicle deaths have occurred at the rate of 24 per 100,000 for the past 65 years; that energy-source competition and substitution evolves naturally, no matter what governments do or do not do, and so on. Capping all this predictive optimism about optimization and natural evolution are...are you ready for it? Cycles: 56-year intervals that describe economic cycles of boom or bust, innovation or saturation (and that also match eclipse- phenomena and sunspots and holes at Stonehenge). You could argue that there is a lot of selectivity in the data adduced, a blurring of time periods, a discounting of chaos and chance, and some pretty wild notions about human behavior. And you would be right. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

When the scale of measurement is the cumulative amount of heartbeats in a lifetime, plotted on an S-curve, most mammals die at the same age! Modis uses this science of S-curves to establish a growth process in order to predict the future. He makes such diverse predictions as an AIDS cure and an increase in human life expectancy, but he also "back-forecasts" the origins of Christianity and Columbus's discovery of America. This is very technical stuff, suitable for statisticians or other scientists, and will be extremely intimidating to lay readers. Other recent futurist material, such as Taichi Sakaiya's The Knowledge-Value Revolution ( LJ 8/91), will be more generally accessible. For libraries with strong technical or scientific collections.
- Dale Farris, Groves, Tex.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.