IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-137-02070-3_1.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Introduction

In: Teaching about the Future

Author

Listed:
  • Peter C. Bishop

    (University of Houston)

  • Andy Hines

    (University of Houston)

Abstract

Foresight is fundamentally about the study of change. Of course, futurists are not the only ones who study change. Scientists study change in physics (the motion of bodies), astronomy (the formation of stars and planets), chemistry (chemical reactions), biology (the evolution of species), and in a whole host of other disciplines. The social sciences also study change at the personal level (psychology), at the group, organizational and societal levels (sociology), and at the cultural level (anthropology). In fact, two disciplines are particularly concerned with change: history studies change in the past; journalism chronicles change in the present. And that is where foresight fits in. Most people think of time as flowing from the past (history), through the present (journalism), and into the future. Therefore, just as historians study the past and journalists the present, so futurists study the future. It is interesting that history is an ancient discipline and journalism has been around a long time. Why don’t we have an academic discipline that studies the future?

Suggested Citation

  • Peter C. Bishop & Andy Hines, 2012. "Introduction," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Teaching about the Future, pages 1-16, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-02070-3_1
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137020703_1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-02070-3_1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.