Prognostik und Zukunft im Mittelalter

Herbers, Klaus

doi:10.25162/9783515124270

Cited by 1 publication

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“…116 Do practices predominantly deal with the near future? 117 Is the observation by sociologists that the distant future appears to belong to the most privileged actors who can afford to make plans also true for the past? 118 Only with a better theoretical frame can we integrate the different brands in the literature that developed in parallel fashion since Koselleck.…”

Section: Much Of the Historiography Remains Eurocentric As Wellmentioning

confidence: 99%

State of the Field: Histories of the Future

Puttevils,

Bischoff,

Budts

et al. 2024

History

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In the last decade, future thinking has rapidly gained importance as a topic of historical study. This article provides an overview of the existing historiographies of future thinking as well as the actions and practices that follow such thoughts. We trace the pedigree of histories of the future back to the German historian of ideas Reinhart Koselleck and show how his conceptual framework has been adopted and adapted by later scholars. We highlight the sources and methods that are typically used. A particularly fruitful approach that emerges from our meta study revolves around the concept of pluritemporality – the coexistence of different layers of time. The article also seeks to uncover some weaknesses and biases that are still present in the field. The most urgent issue being probably the lack of consensus on a conceptual apparatus; other blind spots concern the relationship between future thinking and its linguistic expression in historical sources, the question of whose future thinking we are talking about, how future thinking relates to human action in the past, and how short‐term futures interact with their long‐term futures equivalents. Overall, however, the aim of this survey is to emphasise the potential of this burgeoning field for future historical research. Much is to be gained from new theories of historical time which are themselves the consequence of ideas about climate change and the dangers of the Anthropocene, human extinction and trans‐ and post‐humanism and about artificial intelligence and the digital world.

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Section: Much Of the Historiography Remains Eurocentric As Wellmentioning

confidence: 99%