SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS PROGNOSTICATION AND ITS ROOTS

Complex contemporary societies resort to diverse methods for predicting and planning the future. Predictive techniques, forecasting models, and statistical algorithms are commonly adopted by meteorology and environmental sciences, economics, epidemiology, etc. Predictive methods also have political relevance insofar as they impact on citizens’ lives, inform public debate, legitimize specialists of prognostication as political advisors. Contemporary strategies used to foretell and appropriate the future can be seen as the result of a centuries-old intellectual elaboration and belong to the intangible cultural heritage of European civilization. Only in the perspective of “longue durée” can these strategies be fully understood, reinterpreted, and valorized.

This two-year project investigates the techniques for coping with the future in the medieval European and Mediterranean societies from the perspective of the history of philosophy, ideas, and culture, with the support of textual philology, and using innovative approaches of information technology and digital humanities. 

We focus on the Middle Ages because crucial aspects of modern Europe began to develop during the medieval centuries. Further, the concern of the medieval people with the future –both the eschatological future and short- and middle-term futures– produced conceptual models and practical attitudes that reflected social demands, religious beliefs, and political processes. A scientific debate took place both on the cognitive aspects of foreknowledge and its political and religious connotations as part of a multicultural process that saw different traditions (ancient, Christian, Arabo-Islamic, Jewish, Persian) interact. The study of this conceptual constellation is crucial to a historical understanding of both modern predictive methods and the social, political, and religious factors inherent in forecasting.