Prediction is one of the gold standards of modern science and scientists have laid claim to authority over the future. But prediction is a risky endeavor, and when forecasts fail, their makers risk condemnation as false prophets. Tracing both intellectual and cultural threads, this seminar will survey the history of “scientific” prediction methods from antiquity through the rise of probability and statistics to the era of computer simulation, with a particular focus on predictive strategies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The accuracy of predictions will be less interesting to us than the cultural settings and intellectual worlds of their production. We will consider how these forecasts and imaginations were not just passive reflections of their present moments—they have also been active forces in history, shaping views of the future’s possibilities, as well as individual and societal responsibilities.
