Visions Making Sense of the Present and Co-Creating the Future

Excerpt

In the late 1950s, C.P. (Charles Percy) Snow famously stated that “[i]f the scientists have the future in their bones, then the traditional culture responds by wishing the future did not exist” ([1], 11). By “traditional culture” he meant novelists and writers in the humanities. This dualism was questionable from the start, however; nowadays the notion that (natural) scientists tend to express futuristic views while representatives of “traditional culture” wallow in the past and peer anxiously into the future seems more implausible than ever. Many natural scientists and engineers either appear to doubt whether lofty visions that equate technoscientific advances with human progress are justifiable, or hesitate to express such visions so as not to give (organised civil) society reason to fear that they may be suffering from delusions of technoscientific grandeur. On the other hand, certain social scientists and humanities scholars articulate very optimistic visions of the future of science, technology and society in line with the extremely progressivist traditions of nineteenth century sociology (for example in Positivism). Moreover, many philosophers, humanities scholars and social scientists who are sceptical about such optimistic visions have come to realise since the 2000s that far-reaching visions of the future play a crucial role in discussions on science, technology and society of our times. …