A cognitive science perspective on historical narratives and future scenarios: Commentary on Schoemaker 2020

Abstract

The scholarly breadth of Schoemaker's work is manifest in the topic itself, linking one of the core disciplines in the humanities to a newer area of applied social science. Equally notable is its thorough coverage of the multiple links between these two areas of human inquiry. The focus of this commentary is on more specific elements of the article. Those elements are narrative coherence and the goals that drive scenarios. How to cite this article: Russo JE. A cognitive science perspective on historical narratives and future scenarios:

Still fooled by randomness, twenty years later?

“…"Seen as experiments" writes Aligica (2005: 820), "scenarios are thought experiments, and as such they do not directly deal with the empirical reality […] and yet, they have empirical and practical relevance" (on laboratories of the future, see van der Heijden, 1996; on scenarios as a research tool, see Ramírez et al, 2015). Thought experiments are, ergo, useful for structuring inquiry into phenomena when empirical data or evidence is unavailable (see, e.g., Russo, 2020), which is routinely the case with the future, or rather futures, because, as "the logic goes, the future is-now and forever-in the future" (Rowland & Spaniol, 2015: 560). Thought experiments may be necessary for most forms of foresight given that firm "prediction," without reservation or limitation, Jaiswal (2003: 22) suggests, "necessitates knowledge of the future," which, for the most part, simply does not exist.…”