About the history of Futures Studies

The chapter presents an overview of the history of Futures Studies and the main problems of periodization and defining the origin of the discipline. The history of Futures Studies is traced back to the early 20th century, when two distinct objects of analysis - prediction of the future and visions of the future - began to converge. Nevertheless, a direct filiation of mid-20th-century futurology from 19th-century positivism can be traced. Modern Futures Studies grew out of a move away from the naive approach of futurology and an understanding that there is no ontological symmetry between past and future. Nonetheless, the empirical-predictive component has never been completely overcome and continues to resurface even after the postmodern turn and the emergence of critical and normative approaches. While the 1960s and 1970s saw the institutionalization of Futures Studies, beginning in the 1980s the professionalization of futurists became the most prominent trend. This now risks bringing back the old polarization between positivists and declinists that lies at the origins of the discipline.