Futurecasting

Definition (Hans Ozbekhan)
Willed future (Hans Ozbekhan)
Requirements (Pierre Massé)
Imagination and will (Pierre Massé)
The possible and the desirable (Pierre Massé)
Logical vs. willed future (René Dubos)

Definition

[1968] Hans Ozbekhan in Eric Jantsch ed., Perspectives of Planning, OECD
"I shall call anticipations such intellectually constructed models of possible futures so as to distinguish them ... from predictions, forecasts, projections, etc."
"This future-defining, creative, inventive, purposeful, conscious and rational act is what, on other occasions, I have called an anticipation. Anticipations represent the willing a specified future state of the system to result from action."
"The main attributes that pertain to such anticipations are normative, telic and kinetic. They are normative in that the purpose they represent is an abstraction of those factors we consider significant or valuable. They are telic in that significance or value can exist only with respect to some end in view which the whole planning model serves. They are kinetic in that the recognition of a goal imbued with significance and value by a larger end is, or should be, causative of action." (Toward a General Theory of Planning, p. 130)

Willed future

[1968] Hans Ozbekhan in Eric Jantsch ed., Perspectives of Planning, OECD
"Futures-creation ... requires intellectual and emotional qualities of pure creativity and original synthesis. It calls for the ability to define goals and norms, to embody different sets of envisioned situations into evolving constructs, to abstract different alternatives from them, and to choose among such alternatives. It depends on one’s capacity to distinguish between what is constant and what variable, and to deal with large numbers of relevant, interconnected but casually unrelated variables. Finally ... the resulting construct will necessarily be different from the present state of the system and this difference must symbolize some good, or virtue, that the present lacks." (pp. 87-88)
"By willed future I mean that conception of the future which transcends mere feasibility and which results from judgments and choices formed with reference, first to the idea of ‘desirable’, then to that of ‘betterment'." (p. 90)

Requirements

[1965] Pierre Massé, Le Plan ou l'Anti-hasard
"Il s’agit de lui [l'être humaine] fournir des éléments de décision qui lui permettent de faire face à l’incertitude par l’action. Il ne s’agit pas de deviner l’avenir, mais de contribuer à le construire." (p. 27)
"... le passage de la rétrospective à la prospective, attitude ouverte en face d’un avenir ouvert, inquiétude intellectuelle cherchant à se résoudre en optimisme d’action, recherche servant de trait d’union entre la pluralité des possibles - y compris ce que nous serons devenus nous-mêmes - et la décision unique à prendre à l’instant présent. La prospective regarde en avant. Mais le regard n’est pour elle que le premier temps de l’action." (p. 32)
"...au sein de l’imaginaire elle [la recherche prospective] recherche le souhaitable, soit pour ses éléments positifs, soit pour sa valeur décisive contre certains périls." "Au commencement est ainsi l’imagination, complétée par la volonté." (p. 33)

Imagination and will

[1965] Pierre Massé, Le Plan ou l'Anti-hasard
"Le passé est un, l’avenir multiple. Le passé appartient à la mémoire, l’avenir à l’imagination et à la volonté."
(Chapter I, p. 28)

The possible and the desirable

[1965] Pierre Massé, Le Plan ou l'Anti-hasard
"Après l’étude du champ des possibles s’ouvre la phase la plus importante et la plus difficile de la recherche, le raccordement au réel. " (p. 36)
"Une telle situation sera dit plausible s'il existe un ensemble de décisions praticables permettant d'atteindre probablement cette situation ou une situation au moins aussi bonne." (pp. 37-38)
"... l'intérêt est d’éclairer la dialectique du souhaitable et du probable." (p. 38)

Logical vs. willed future

[1968] René Dubos in Erich Jantsch ed., Perspectives of Planning
"There is a 'logical' future which is the expression of natural forces and antecedents events. On the other hand, there is also a 'willed' future which comes into being because man makes the effort to imagine it and to build it."
("Future-Oriented Science", p. 175)

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