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141-430: In the philosophy of time , presentism is the belief that only the present exists and the future and the past are unreal . Religions consider the future when they address issues such as karma , life after death , and eschatologies that study what the end of time and the end of the world will be. Religious figures such as prophets and diviners have claimed to see into the future. Future studies, or futurology ,

282-412: A " stream of consciousness ", had a direct and significant impact on avant-garde and modernist literature and art, notably in the case of James Joyce . In "What Pragmatism Means" (1906), James writes that the central point of his own doctrine of truth is, in brief: Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word

423-405: A "literature of ideas". Some science fiction authors construct a postulated history of the future called a " future history " that provides a common background for their fiction. Sometimes authors publish a timeline of events in their history, while other times the reader can reconstruct the order of the stories from information in the books. Some published works constitute "future history" in

564-408: A bucket, on Newton's account, this bucket could be set to spin relative to absolute space, and the water it contained would form the characteristic concave surface. But in the absence of anything else in the universe, it would be difficult to confirm that the bucket was indeed spinning. It seems equally possible that the surface of the water in the bucket would remain flat. Mach argued that, in effect,

705-473: A conclusion reached through a deliberate thought pattern that leads to a positive personal attitudes and by extension is linked to more philanthropic behaviours. Pessimism as stated before is the opposite of optimism. It is the tendency to see, anticipate, or emphasize only bad or undesirable outcomes, results, or problems. The word originates in Latin from Pessimus meaning worst and Malus meaning bad and has

846-503: A critical eye. More generally, one can regard science fiction as a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculations based on current or future science or technology . Science fiction is found in books, art, television, films, games, theater, and other media. Science fiction differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in

987-424: A cup of water which smashes into fragments on a hard floor, spilling the liquid. In this order, the causes of the resultant pattern of cup fragments and water spill is easily attributable in terms of the trajectory of the cup, irregularities in its structure, angle of its impact on the floor, etc. However, applying the same event in reverse, it is difficult to explain why the various pieces of the cup should fly up into

1128-454: A distinctive thrust towards rationalism and modernism through the use of advanced building materials. The ideals of futurism remain as significant components of modern Western culture ; the emphasis on youth, speed, power and technology finding expression in much of modern commercial cinema and commercial culture. Futurism has produced several reactions, including the 1980s-era literary genre of cyberpunk —which often treated technology with

1269-400: A function d as the identity function over all elements over the manifold M, excepting a small neighbourhood H belonging to M. Over H d comes to differ from identity by a smooth function . With use of this function d we can construct two mathematical models , where the second is generated by applying d to proper elements of the first, such that the two models are identical prior to

1410-505: A given gravitational field and that felt by an observer in an accelerating frame of reference are indistinguishable. This led to the conclusion that the mass of an object warps the geometry of the space-time surrounding it, as described in Einstein's field equations . In classical physics, an inertial reference frame is one in which an object that experiences no forces does not accelerate. In general relativity, an inertial frame of reference

1551-657: A groundbreaking text in the field of psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism , an important text in philosophy; and The Varieties of Religious Experience , an investigation of different forms of religious experience , including theories on mind-cure . William James was born at the Astor House in New York City on January 11, 1842. He was the son of Henry James Sr. , a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with

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1692-582: A holistic or systemic view based on insights from a range of different disciplines. Third, futures studies challenges and unpacks the assumptions behind dominant and contending views of the future. The future thus is not empty but fraught with hidden assumptions. Futures studies do not generally include the work of economists who forecast movements of interest rates over the next business cycle, or of managers or investors with short-term time horizons. Most strategic planning, which develops operational plans for preferred futures with time horizons of one to three years,

1833-530: A large proportion of discussion within the philosophy of space and time, as well as the philosophy of physics . The following is a short list of topics. According to special relativity each point in the universe can have a different set of events that compose its present instant. This has been used in the Rietdijk–Putnam argument to demonstrate that relativity predicts a block universe in which events are fixed in four dimensions. A further application of

1974-405: A life after death. Members of some generally non-theistic religions such as Buddhism , tend to believe in an afterlife like reincarnation but without reference to God . Agnostics generally hold the position that like the existence of God, the existence of supernatural phenomena, such as souls or life after death, is unverifiable and therefore unknowable. Many religions, whether they believe in

2115-443: A link to misanthropic belief systems. Religions consider the future when they address issues such as karma , life after death , and eschatologies which consider what the end of time and the end of the world will be like. In religion, major prophets are said to have the power to change the future. Common religious figures have claimed to see into the future, such as minor prophets and diviners . The term "afterlife" refers to

2256-936: A lively group informally known as The Metaphysical Club in 1872. Louis Menand (2001) suggested that this Club provided a foundation for American intellectual thought for decades to come. James joined the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898, in opposition to the United States annexation of the Philippines. Among James's students at Harvard University were Boris Sidis , Theodore Roosevelt , George Santayana , W. E. B. Du Bois , G. Stanley Hall , Ralph Barton Perry , Gertrude Stein , Horace Kallen , Morris Raphael Cohen , Walter Lippmann , Alain Locke , C. I. Lewis , and Mary Whiton Calkins . Antiquarian bookseller Gabriel Wells tutored under him at Harvard in

2397-423: A mathematical spatial extension. His experimental disproof of the extramission hypothesis of vision led to changes in the understanding of the visual perception of space, contrary to the previous emission theory of vision supported by Euclid and Ptolemy . In "tying the visual perception of space to prior bodily experience, Alhacen unequivocally rejected the intuitiveness of spatial perception and, therefore,

2538-400: A more literal sense—i.e., stories or whole books written in the style of a history book but describing events in the future. Examples include H.G. Wells ' The Shape of Things to Come (1933)—written in the form of a history book published in the year 2106 and in the manner of a real history book with numerous footnotes and references to the works of (mostly fictitious) prominent historians of

2679-402: A number of basic issues, including whether time and space exist independently of the mind, whether they exist independently of one another, what accounts for time's apparently unidirectional flow, whether times other than the present moment exist, and questions about the nature of identity (particularly the nature of identity over time). The earliest recorded philosophy of time was expounded by

2820-409: A person traveling for even a short time at near light speed will return to an Earth that is many years in the future. Some physicists claim that by using a wormhole to connect two regions of spacetime a person could theoretically travel in time. Physicist Michio Kaku points out that to power this hypothetical time machine and "punch a hole into the fabric of space-time" would require the energy of

2961-683: A physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave". He interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson , his godson William James Sidis , as well as Charles Sanders Peirce , Bertrand Russell , Josiah Royce , Ernst Mach , John Dewey , Macedonio Fernández , Walter Lippmann , Mark Twain , Horatio Alger , G. Stanley Hall , Henri Bergson , Carl Jung , Jane Addams and Sigmund Freud . James spent almost all of his academic career at Harvard. He

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3102-522: A priori features of experience, and therefore not simply "subjective," variable, or accidental perceptions in a given consciousness. Some idealist writers, such as J. M. E. McTaggart in The Unreality of Time , have argued that time is an illusion (see also The flow of time , below). The writers discussed here are for the most part realists in this regard; for instance, Gottfried Leibniz held that his monads existed, at least independently of

3243-422: A relation between those objects. Newtonian space provided the absolute frame of reference within which objects can have motion. In Newton's system, the frame of reference exists independently of the objects contained within it. These objects can be described as moving in relation to space itself. For almost two centuries, the evidence of a concave water surface held authority. Another important figure in this debate

3384-445: A set of objects equally well, based on considerations from his sphere-world . This view was developed and updated to include considerations from relativistic physics by Hans Reichenbach . Reichenbach's conventionalism, applying to space and time, focuses around the idea of coordinative definition . Coordinative definition has two major features. The first has to do with coordinating units of length with certain physical objects. This

3525-909: A significant worker in the Erie Canal project and helping Albany become a major center of trade, he then became the first vice-president of the Albany Savings Bank. William James (grandfather) went from being a poor Irish immigrant to one of the richest men in New York. After his death, his son Henry James inherited his fortune and lived in Europe and the United States searching for the meaning of life. Of James' five children, two—Margaret and Alexander—are known to have had children. Descendants of Alexander are still living. William James wrote voluminously throughout his life. A non-exhaustive bibliography of his writings, compiled by John McDermott ,

3666-474: A specific time in the future, and actions described by the future perfect continuous tense are expected to be continuing as of a specific time in the future. "The trouble with the future is that it's so much less knowable than the past."   John Lewis Gaddis , The Landscape of History . The linear view of time (common in Western thought ) draws a stronger distinction between past and future than does

3807-473: A star. Another theory is that a person could travel in time with cosmic strings . In the philosophy of time , presentism is the belief that only the present exists , and the future and past are unreal . Past and future "entities" are construed as logical constructions or fictions . The opposite of presentism is ' eternalism ', which is the belief that things in the past and things yet to come exist eternally . Another view (not held by many philosophers)

3948-406: A story might still be pure imaginative speculation). Settings may include the future, or alternative time-lines, and stories may depict new or speculative scientific principles (such as time travel or psionics ), or new technology (such as nanotechnology , faster-than-light travel or robots ). Exploring the consequences of such differences is the traditional purpose of science fiction, making it

4089-419: A systematic framework we use to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantitatively compare the interval between (or duration of) events . Although space and time are held to be transcendentally ideal in this sense—that is, mind-dependent—they are also empirically real —that is, according to Kant's definitions,

4230-401: A temporal ordering could easily become circular. The second problem with this view is its explanatory power. While the causation account, if successful, may account for some time-asymmetric phenomena like perception and action, it does not account for many others. However, asymmetry of causation can be observed in a non-arbitrary way which is not metaphysical in the case of a human hand dropping

4371-557: A thing as absolute space exists. Such a situation, however, is not possible, according to Leibniz, for if it were, a universe's position in absolute space would have no sufficient reason, as it might very well have been anywhere else. Therefore, it contradicts the principle of sufficient reason, and there could exist two distinct universes that were in all ways indiscernible, thus contradicting the identity of indiscernibles. Standing out in Clarke's (and Newton's) response to Leibniz's arguments

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4512-474: A variety of psychological symptoms which were diagnosed at the time as neurasthenia , and which included periods of depression during which he contemplated suicide for months on end. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson ( Wilkie ) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the American Civil War . James himself was an advocate of peace. He suggested that instead of youth serving in the military that they serve

4653-419: A view if its conception of truth is analyzed and justified through interpretation, pragmatically. As a matter of fact, James's whole philosophy is of productive beliefs. Belief in anything involves conceiving of how it is real, but disbelief is the result when we dismiss something because it contradicts another thing we think of as real. In his "Sentiment of Rationality", saying that crucial beliefs are not known

4794-406: Is 19th-century physicist Ernst Mach . While he did not deny the existence of phenomena like that seen in the bucket argument, he still denied the absolutist conclusion by offering a different answer as to what the bucket was rotating in relation to: the fixed stars . Mach suggested that thought experiments like the bucket argument are problematic. If we were to imagine a universe that only contains

4935-601: Is 47 pages long. He gained widespread recognition with his monumental The Principles of Psychology (1890), totaling twelve hundred pages in two volumes, which took twelve years to complete. Psychology: The Briefer Course , was an 1892 abridgement designed as a less rigorous introduction to the field. These works criticized both the English associationist school and the Hegelianism of his day as competing dogmatisms of little explanatory value, and sought to re-conceive

5076-481: Is a formalization of the principle of relativity that does not contain a privileged inertial frame of reference, such as the luminiferous ether or absolute space, from which Einstein inferred that no such frame exists. Einstein generalized relativity to frames of reference that were non-inertial. He achieved this by positing the Equivalence Principle , which states that the force felt by an observer in

5217-583: Is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with the final events in the Human history , or the ultimate destiny of humanity , commonly referred to as the end of the world. While in mysticism the phrase refers metaphorically to the end of ordinary reality and reunion with the Divine, in many traditional religions it is taught as an actual future event prophesied in sacred texts or folklore . More broadly, eschatology may encompass related concepts such as

5358-427: Is also not considered futures. But plans and strategies with longer time horizons that specifically attempt to anticipate and be robust to possible future events, are part of a major subdiscipline of futures studies called strategic foresight. The futures field also excludes those who make future predictions through professed supernatural means. At the same time, it does seek to understand the model's such groups use and

5499-441: Is an interdisciplinary field, studying yesterday's and today's changes, and aggregating and analyzing both lay and professional strategies, and opinions with respect to tomorrow. It includes analyzing the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in the attempt to develop foresight and to map possible futures. Modern practitioners stress the importance of alternative and plural futures, rather than one monolithic future, and

5640-403: Is completed as of a specific time in the future. Finally, verbs in the future perfect continuous tense combine the features of the perfect and continuous tenses, describing the future status of actions that have been happening continually from now or the past through to a particular time in the future. In the sentence, "She will have been walking home," the verb phrase "will have been walking" is in

5781-555: Is considered one of the most important and influential texts in 20th-century musical aesthetics. Other examples of futurist music include Arthur Honegger 's " Pacific 231 " (1923), which imitates the sound of a steam locomotive, Prokofiev 's " The Steel Step " (1926), Alexander Mosolov 's " Iron Foundry " (1927), and the experiments of Edgard Varèse . Literary futurism made its debut with F.T. Marinetti 's Manifesto of Futurism (1909). Futurist poetry used unexpected combinations of images and hyper-conciseness (not to be confused with

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5922-440: Is far superior to classical thermodynamics, in that thermodynamic behavior, such as glass breaking, can be explained by the fundamental laws of physics paired with a statistical postulate. But statistical mechanics, unlike classical thermodynamics, is time-reversal symmetric. The second law of thermodynamics, as it arises in statistical mechanics, merely states that it is overwhelmingly likely that net entropy will increase, but it

6063-436: Is generally seen to start from a position where many facts about objects are incorporated in that theory, and as history progresses, more and more structure is removed. For example, Aristotelian space and time has both absolute position and special places, such as the center of the cosmos, and the circumference. Newtonian space and time has absolute position and is Galilean invariant , but does not have special positions. With

6204-449: Is in the future continuous tense because the action described is not happening now, but will happen sometime afterwards and is expected to continue happening for some time. Verbs in the future perfect tense indicate actions that will be completed at a particular point in the future. For example, the verb phrase , "will have walked," in the sentence, "She will have walked home," is in the future perfect tense because it refers to an action that

6345-658: Is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The "facts" themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them. Richard Rorty made the contested claim that James did not mean to give a theory of truth with this statement and that we should not regard it as such. However, other pragmatism scholars such as Susan Haack and Howard Mounce do not share Rorty's instrumentalist interpretation of James. In The Meaning of Truth (1909), James seems to speak of truth in relativistic terms, in reference to critics of pragmatism: "The critic's trouble … seems to come from his taking

6486-538: Is known to encompass anticipation of the future. Anticipatory behavior can be the result of a psychological outlook toward the future, for examples optimism , pessimism , and hope . Optimism is an outlook on life such that one maintains a view of the world as a positive place. People would say that optimism is seeing the glass "half full" of water as opposed to half empty . It is the philosophical opposite of pessimism. Optimists generally believe that people and events are inherently good, so that most situations work out in

6627-899: Is motivated by the fact that we can never directly apprehend length. Instead we must choose some physical object, say the Standard Metre at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (International Bureau of Weights and Measures), or the wavelength of cadmium to stand in as our unit of length. The second feature deals with separated objects. Although we can, presumably, directly test the equality of length of two measuring rods when they are next to one another, we can not find out as much for two rods distant from one another. Even supposing that two rods, whenever brought near to one another are seen to be equal in length, we are not justified in stating that they are always equal in length. This impossibility undermines our ability to decide

6768-530: Is not an absolute law. William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States , and the "Father of American psychology." Along with Charles Sanders Peirce , James established

6909-450: Is one that is following a geodesic of space-time. An object that moves against a geodesic experiences a force. An object in free fall does not experience a force, because it is following a geodesic. An object standing on the earth, however, will experience a force, as it is being held against the geodesic by the surface of the planet. Einstein partially advocates Mach's principle in that distant stars explain inertia because they provide

7050-473: Is set. As in the absolutism/relationalism debate, contemporary philosophy is still in disagreement as to the correctness of the conventionalist doctrine. Building from a mix of insights from the historical debates of absolutism and conventionalism as well as reflecting on the import of the technical apparatus of the General Theory of Relativity, details as to the structure of space-time have made up

7191-559: Is similar to forecasting but is used more generally, for instance, to also include baseless claims on the future. Organized efforts to predict the future began with practices like astrology , haruspicy , and augury . These are all considered to be pseudoscience today, evolving from the human desire to know the future in advance. Modern efforts such as futures studies attempt to predict technological and societal trends, while more ancient practices, such as weather forecasting, have benefited from scientific and causal modelling . Despite

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7332-431: Is sometimes called the ' growing block ' theory of time—which postulates that the past and present exist, but the future does not. Presentism is compatible with Galilean relativity , in which time is independent of space, but is probably incompatible with Lorentzian / Albert Einsteinian relativity in conjunction with certain other philosophical theses that many find uncontroversial. Saint Augustine proposed that

7473-407: Is the bucket argument : Water in a bucket, hung from a rope and set to spin, will start with a flat surface. As the water begins to spin in the bucket, the surface of the water will become concave. If the bucket is stopped, the water will continue to spin, and while the spin continues, the surface will remain concave. The concave surface is apparently not the result of the interaction of the bucket and

7614-400: Is the science, art, and practice of postulating possible futures. Modern practitioners stress the importance of alternative and plural futures, rather than one monolithic future, and the limitations of prediction and probability , versus the creation of possible and preferable futures. Predeterminism is the belief that the past, present, and future have been already decided . The concept of

7755-404: Is the way it is and not otherwise. The identity of indiscernibles states that if there is no way of telling two entities apart, then they are one and the same thing. The example Leibniz uses involves two proposed universes situated in absolute space. The only discernible difference between them is that the latter is positioned five feet to the left of the first. The example is only possible if such

7896-400: Is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not." He goes on to comment on the difficulty of thinking about time, pointing out the inaccuracy of common speech: "For but few things are there of which we speak properly; of most things we speak improperly, still, the things intended are understood." But Augustine presented the first philosophical argument for

8037-400: Is verifiable through its correspondence to reality, and its observable effects of putting the idea to practice. For example, James extends his Pragmatism to the hypothesis of God: "On pragmatic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. … The problem is to build it out and determine it so that it will combine satisfactorily with all

8178-794: The North American Review . James finally earned his MD degree in June 1869 but he never practiced medicine. What he called his "soul-sickness" would only be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching. He married Alice Gibbens in 1878. In 1882 he joined the Theosophical Society . James's time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, helping him find that his true interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology. Later, in 1902 he would write: "I originally studied medicine in order to be

8319-987: The Psychological Review . He challenged his professional colleagues not to let a narrow mindset prevent an honest appraisal of those beliefs. In an empirical study by Haggbloom et al. using six criteria such as citations and recognition, James was found to be the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. William James was the son of Henry James (Senior) of Albany, and Mary Robertson Walsh. He had four siblings: Henry (the novelist), Garth Wilkinson, Robertson, and Alice . William became engaged to Alice Howe Gibbens on May 10, 1878; they were married on July 10. They had 5 children: Henry (May 18, 1879 – 1947), William (June 17, 1882 – 1961), Herman (1884, died in infancy), Margaret (March 1887 – 1950) and Alexander (December 22, 1890 – 1946). Most of William James's ancestors arrived in America from Scotland or Ireland in

8460-528: The Amazon River , but aborted his trip after eight months, as he suffered bouts of severe seasickness and mild smallpox . His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867. He traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868; at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he began to publish; reviews of his works appeared in literary periodicals such as

8601-463: The Buddhists (in the tradition of Indian Buddhism ). A leading scholar from the modern era on Buddhist philosophy is Stcherbatsky , who has written extensively on Buddhist presentism: Everything past is unreal, everything future is unreal, everything imagined, absent, mental... is unreal... Ultimately real is only the present moment of physical efficiency [i.e., causation ]. Human behavior

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8742-593: The Messiah or Messianic Age , the end time , and the end of days . In grammar , actions are classified according to one of the following twelve verb tenses: past ( past , past continuous , past perfect , or past perfect continuous ), present ( present , present continuous , present perfect , or present perfect continuous ), or future (future, future continuous , future perfect , or future perfect continuous ). The future tense refers to actions that have not yet happened, but which are due, expected, or may occur in

8883-433: The ancient Egyptian thinker Ptahhotep (c. 2650–2600 BC) who said: Follow your desire as long as you live, and do not perform more than is ordered, do not lessen the time of the following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit... The Vedas , the earliest texts on Indian philosophy and Hindu philosophy , dating back to the late 2nd millennium BC , describe ancient Hindu cosmology , in which

9024-527: The direction of time arises directly from two contradictory facts. Firstly, the fundamental physical laws are time-reversal invariant ; if a cinematographic film were taken of any process describable by means of the aforementioned laws and then played backwards, it would still portray a physically possible process. Secondly, our experience of time, at the macroscopic level, is not time-reversal invariant. Glasses can fall and break, but shards of glass cannot reassemble and fly up onto tables. We have memories of

9165-411: The luminiferous ether . In contrast, the theory of special relativity postulates that light propagates at the speed of light in all inertial frames, and examines the implications of this postulate. All attempts to measure any speed relative to this ether failed, which can be seen as a confirmation of Einstein's postulate that light propagates at the same speed in all reference frames. Special relativity

9306-542: The soul to transfer to another body ( reincarnation ). The major views on the afterlife derive from religion , esotericism and metaphysics . There are those who are skeptical of the existence of the afterlife, or believe that it is absolutely impossible, such as the materialist -reductionists, who believe that the topic is supernatural , therefore does not really exist or is unknowable. In metaphysical models, theists generally, believe some sort of afterlife awaits people when they die. Atheists generally do not believe in

9447-463: The universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction, and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4,320,000,000 years. Ancient Greek philosophers , including Parmenides and Heraclitus , wrote essays on the nature of time. Incas regarded space and time as a single concept, named pacha ( Quechua : pacha , Aymara : pacha ). Plato , in the Timaeus , identified time with

9588-456: The 18th century. Many of them settled in eastern New York or New Jersey. All of James's ancestors were Protestant, well educated, and of character. Within their communities, they worked as farmers, merchants, and traders who were all heavily involved with their church. The last ancestor to arrive in America was William James's paternal grandfather also named William James. He came to America from Ballyjamesduff , County Cavan, Ireland in 1789 when he

9729-421: The 20th and 21st centuries. Philosophy of time Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology and epistemology of space and time . While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a central aspect of early analytic philosophy . The subject focuses on

9870-632: The actual length of the poem). Futurist theater works have scenes a few sentences long, use nonsensical humor, and try to discredit the deep-rooted dramatic traditions with parody. Longer literature forms, such as novels, had no place in the Futurist aesthetic, which had an obsession with speed and compression. Futurism expanded to encompass other artistic domains and ultimately included painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design , industrial design, interior design, theatre design, textiles, drama, literature, music and architecture. In architecture, it featured

10011-481: The assumption that it is possible to identify the underlying factors that might influence the variable that is being forecast. If the causes are understood, projections of the influencing variables can be made and used in the forecast. Judgmental forecasting methods incorporate intuitive judgments, opinions, and probability estimates, as in the case of the Delphi method , scenario building , and simulations . Prediction

10152-418: The autonomy of vision. Without tangible notions of distance and size for correlation, sight can tell us next to nothing about such things." A traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. Idealists , by contrast, deny or doubt the existence of objects independent of the mind. Some anti-realists , whose ontological position is that objects outside

10293-442: The brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James . James trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practiced medicine. Instead, he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. He wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology , education, metaphysics , psychology , religion, and mysticism . Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology ,

10434-544: The classic problems of politics: how to sustain political unity and civic virtue in the absence of war or a credible threat", and which "sounds a rallying cry for service in the interests of the individual and the nation". In simple terms, his philosophy and writings can be understood as an emphasis on "fruits over roots," a reflection of his pragmatist tendency to focus on the practical consequences of ideas rather than become mired in unproductive metaphysical arguments or fruitless attempts to ground truth in abstract ways. Ever

10575-696: The concept of the universe having a finite past with a beginning, now known as temporal finitism . The Christian philosopher John Philoponus presented early arguments, adopted by later Christian philosophers and theologians of the form "argument from the impossibility of the existence of an actual infinite", which states: In the early 11th century, the Muslim physicist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen or Alhazen) discussed space perception and its epistemological implications in his Book of Optics (1021). He also rejected Aristotle's definition of topos ( Physics IV) by way of geometric demonstrations and defined place as

10716-412: The concepts of "agreement" and "reality", the last reasoning before thoughts settle and become autonomous for us. However, he contrasts this by supporting a more practical interpretation that: a true idea or belief is one that we can blend with our thinking so that it can be justified through experiences. If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in

10857-403: The continuation of existence of the soul , spirit or mind of a human (or animal) after physical death , typically in a spiritual or ghostlike afterworld. Deceased persons are usually believed to go to a specific region or plane of existence in this afterworld, often depending on the rightness of their actions during life. Some believe the afterlife includes some form of preparation for

10998-399: The curvature in the water. Mach argued that the momentum of an object, whether angular or linear, exists as a result of the sum of the effects of other objects in the universe ( Mach's Principle ). Albert Einstein proposed that the laws of physics should be based on the principle of relativity . This principle holds that the rules of physics must be the same for all observers, regardless of

11139-414: The curvature of the water occurs in the rotating bucket as well as in the stationary bucket containing spinning water, it can only be explained by stating that the water is rotating in relation to the presence of some third thing—absolute space. Leibniz describes a space that exists only as a relation between objects, and which has no existence apart from the existence of those objects. Motion exists only as

11280-702: The destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman." Though it owed much of its character and some of its ideas to radical political movements , it had little involvement in politics until the autumn of 1913. Futurism in Classical Music arose during this same time period. Closely identified with the central Italian Futurist movement were brother composers Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) and Antonio Russolo (1877–1942), who used instruments known as intonarumori —essentially sound boxes used to create music out of noise. Luigi Russolo's futurist manifesto, " The Art of Noises ",

11421-784: The development of cognitive instruments for the comprehension of future, the stochastic and chaotic nature of many natural and social processes has made precise forecasting of the future elusive. Futurism as an art movement originated in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century. It developed largely in Italy and in Russia , although it also had adherents in other countries—in England and Portugal for example. The Futurists explored every medium of art, including painting , sculpture , poetry , theatre , music , architecture , and even gastronomy . Futurists had passionate loathing of ideas from

11562-429: The discipline thus seeks a systematic and pattern-based understanding of past and present, and to determine the likelihood of future events and trends. A key part of this process is understanding the potential future impact of decisions made by individuals, organizations, and governments. Leaders use the results of such work to assist in decision-making. Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you. Futures

11703-443: The empiricist, James believes we are better off evaluating the fruitfulness of ideas by testing them in the common ground of lived experience. James was remembered as one of America's representative thinkers, psychologist, and philosopher. William James was also an influential writer on religion, psychical research, and self-help. James defined true beliefs as those that prove useful to the believer. His pragmatic theory of truth

11844-438: The end for the best. Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope implies a certain amount of despair, wanting, wishing, suffering or perseverance—i.e., believing that a better or positive outcome is possible even when there is some evidence to the contrary. "Hopefulness" is somewhat different from optimism in that hope is an emotional state, whereas some theories point to optimism as

11985-405: The equality of length of two distant objects. Sameness of length, to the contrary, must be set by definition. Such a use of coordinative definition is in effect, on Reichenbach's conventionalism, in the General Theory of Relativity where light is assumed, i.e. not discovered, to mark out equal distances in equal times. After this setting of coordinative definition, however, the geometry of spacetime

12126-401: The form of a simple story: A live squirrel supposed to be clinging on one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree's opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and

12267-499: The founder of experimental psychology. James also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism . James's work has influenced philosophers and academics such as Alan Watts , W. E. B. Du Bois , Edmund Husserl , Bertrand Russell , Ludwig Wittgenstein , Hilary Putnam , and Richard Rorty . Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and

12408-414: The frame of reference that is used, and that light propagates at the same speed in all reference frames. This theory was motivated by Maxwell's equations , which show that electromagnetic waves propagate in a vacuum at the speed of light . However, Maxwell's equations give no indication of what this speed is relative to. Prior to Einstein, it was thought that this speed was relative to a fixed medium, called

12549-410: The function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatsoever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for "to be true" means only to perform this marriage-function. James held a world view in line with pragmatism , declaring that the value of any truth was utterly dependent upon its use to

12690-403: The future has been explored extensively in cultural production, including art movements and genres devoted entirely to its elucidation, such as the 20th-century movement futurism . In physics, time is the fourth dimension. Physicists argue that spacetime can be understood as a sort of stretchy fabric that bends due to forces such as gravity. In classical physics the future is just a half of

12831-432: The future perfect continuous tense because it refers to an action that the speaker anticipates will be finished in the future. Another way to think of the various future tenses is that actions described by the future tense will be completed at an unspecified time in the future, actions described by the future continuous tense will keep happening in the future, actions described by the future perfect tense will be completed at

12972-423: The future. For example, in the sentence, "She will walk home," the verb "will walk" is in the future tense because it refers to an action that is going to, or may, happen at a point in time beyond the present. Verbs in the future continuous tense indicate actions that will happen beyond the present and will continue for a period of time. In the sentence, "She will be walking home," the verb phrase "will be walking"

13113-455: The general theory of relativity, the traditional debate between absolutism and relationalism has been shifted to whether spacetime is a substance, since the general theory of relativity largely rules out the existence of, e.g., absolute positions. One powerful argument against spacetime substantivalism , offered by John Earman is known as the " hole argument ". This is a technical mathematical argument but can be paraphrased as follows: Define

13254-422: The gravitational field against which acceleration and inertia occur. But contrary to Leibniz's account, this warped space-time is as integral a part of an object as are its other defining characteristics, such as volume and mass. If one holds, contrary to idealist beliefs, that objects exist independently of the mind, it seems that relativistics commits one to also hold the idea that space and temporality have exactly

13395-415: The human hand and reassemble precisely into the shape of a cup, or why the water should position itself entirely within the cup. The causes of the resultant structure and shape of the cup and the encapsulation of the water by the hand within the cup are not easily attributable, as neither hand nor floor can achieve such formations of the cup or water. This asymmetry is perceivable on account of two features: i)

13536-537: The human mind as inherently purposive and selective. President Jimmy Carter's Moral Equivalent of War Speech , on April 17, 1977, equating the United States' 1970s energy crisis , oil crisis, and the changes and sacrifices Carter's proposed plans would require with the "moral equivalent of war", may have borrowed its title and much of its theme from James's classic essay "The Moral Equivalent of War" derived from his last speech, delivered at Stanford University in 1906, and published in 1910, in which "James considered one of

13677-502: The implications of form and functional capacity. The application of these ideas of form and functional capacity only dictates temporal direction in relation to complex scenarios involving specific, non-metaphysical agency which is not merely dependent on human perception of time. However, this last observation in itself is not sufficient to invalidate the implications of the example for the progressive nature of time in general. The second major family of solutions to this problem, and by far

13818-503: The interpretations they give to these models. Forecasting is the process of estimating outcomes in uncontrolled situations. Forecasting is applied in many areas, such as weather forecasting , earthquake prediction , transport planning , and labour market planning. Due to the element of the unknown, risk and uncertainty are central to forecasting. Statistically based forecasting employs time series with cross-sectional or longitudinal data. Econometric forecasting methods use

13959-415: The late 1890s. His students enjoyed his brilliance and his manner of teaching was free of personal arrogance. They remember him for his kindness and humble attitude. His respectful attitude towards them speaks well of his character. Following his January 1907 retirement from Harvard, James continued to write and lecture, publishing Pragmatism , A Pluralistic Universe , and The Meaning of Truth . James

14100-424: The limitations of prediction and probability, versus the creation of possible and preferable futures. Three factors usually distinguish futures studies from the research conducted by other disciplines (although all disciplines overlap, to differing degrees). First, futures studies often examines not only possible but also probable, preferable, and "wild card" futures. Second, futures studies typically attempts to gain

14241-539: The literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics. William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French. Education in the James household encouraged cosmopolitanism . The family made two trips to Europe while William James

14382-464: The man occupies the space facing the squirrel's belly, back and sides. Depending on what the debaters meant by "going round", the answer would be clear. From this example James derives the definition of the pragmatic method : to settle metaphysical disputes, one must simply make a distinction of practical consequences between notions, then, the answer is either clear, or the "dispute is idle". Both James and his colleague, Charles Sanders Peirce , coined

14523-408: The man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical problem now is this: Does the man go round the squirrel or not? James solves the issue by making a distinction between practical meaning. That is, the distinction between meanings of "round". Round in the sense that the man occupies the space north, east, south, and west of the squirrel; and round in the sense that

14664-592: The mind do exist, nevertheless doubt the independent existence of time and space. In 1781, Immanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason , one of the most influential works in the history of the philosophy of space and time. He describes time as an a priori notion that, together with other a priori notions such as space , allows us to comprehend sense experience . Kant holds that neither space nor time are substance , entities in themselves, or learned by experience; he holds, rather, that both are elements of

14805-469: The mind of the observer and the act of observation affect any empirical approach to truth. The mind, its experiences, and nature are inseparable. James's emphasis on diversity as the default human condition—over and against duality, especially Hegelian dialectical duality—has maintained a strong influence in American culture. James's description of the mind-world connection, which he described in terms of

14946-486: The mind of the observer. The great debate between defining notions of space and time as real objects themselves (absolute), or mere orderings upon actual objects ( relational ), began between physicists Isaac Newton (via his spokesman, Samuel Clarke) and Gottfried Leibniz in the papers of the Leibniz–Clarke correspondence . Arguing against the absolutist position, Leibniz offers a number of thought experiments with

15087-417: The modern mathematical methods, in league with the idea of invariance and covariance groups, is to try to interpret historical views of space and time in modern, mathematical language. In these translations, a theory of space and time is seen as a manifold paired with vector spaces , the more vector spaces the more facts there are about objects in that theory. The historical development of spacetime theories

15228-399: The more common cyclic time of cultures such as India, where past and future can coalesce much more readily. Futures studies or futurology is the science, art, and practice of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. Futures studies seek to understand what is likely to continue, what is likely to change, and what is novel. Part of

15369-584: The one that has generated the most literature, finds the existence of the direction of time as relating to the nature of thermodynamics. The answer from classical thermodynamics states that while our basic physical theory is, in fact, time-reversal symmetric, thermodynamics is not. In particular, the second law of thermodynamics states that the net entropy of a closed system never decreases, and this explains why we often see glass breaking, but not coming back together. But in statistical mechanics things become more complicated. On one hand, statistical mechanics

15510-509: The other working truths." From this, we also know that "new" truths must also correspond to already existent truths as well. From the introduction by Bruce Kuklick (1981, p. xiv) to James's Pragmatism : James went on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemological problem of truth. He would seek the meaning of "true" by examining how the idea functioned in our lives. A belief was true, he said, if it worked for all of us, and guided us expeditiously through our semihospitable world. James

15651-435: The past because the elements of the past are causes for the effect that is our perception. We can not affect the past but we can affect the outcome of the future because we learn from our past and utilized ideas from allowing our past incident from reoccurring. There are two main objections to this view. First is the problem of distinguishing the cause from the effect in a non-arbitrary way. The use of causation in constructing

15792-436: The past, and none of the future. We feel we can't change the past but can influence the future. There is no future without our past. Today is the time given to shape the outcome of the future and we are individually responsible for the future we want to see for the next generations. One solution to this problem takes a metaphysical view, in which the direction of time follows from an asymmetry of causation . We know more about

15933-503: The past, especially political and artistic traditions. They also espoused a love of speed , technology , and violence . Futurists dubbed the love of the past passéisme . The car, the plane, and the industrial town were all legendary for the Futurists because they represented the technological triumph of people over nature . The Futurist Manifesto of 1909 declared: "We will glorify war—the world's only hygiene—militarism, patriotism,

16074-458: The period of motion of the heavenly bodies, and space as that in which things come to be. Aristotle , in Book IV of his Physics , defined time as the number of changes with respect to before and after, and the place of an object as the innermost motionless boundary of that which surrounds it. In Book 11 of St. Augustine's Confessions , he reflects on the nature of time, asking, "What then

16215-402: The person who held it. Additional tenets of James's pragmatism include the view that the world is a mosaic of diverse experiences that can only be properly interpreted and understood through an application of " radical empiricism ". Radical empiricism , not related to the everyday scientific empiricism , asserts that the world and experience can never be halted for an entirely objective analysis;

16356-473: The philosophical school known as pragmatism , and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology . A Review of General Psychology analysis, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. A survey published in American Psychologist in 1991 ranked James's reputation in second place, after Wilhelm Wundt , who is widely regarded as

16497-485: The pragmatic theory of truth applied Darwinian ideas in philosophy; it made survival the test of intellectual as well as biological fitness . James's book of lectures on pragmatism is arguably the most influential book of American philosophy . The lectures inside depict his position on the subject. In his sixth lecture, he begins by defining truth as "agreement with reality". With this, James warns that there will be disagreements between pragmatics and intellectualists over

16638-484: The present is a knife edge between the past and the future and could not contain any extended period of time. Contrary to Saint Augustine, some philosophers propose that conscious experience is extended in time. For instance, William James said that time is "...the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible." Augustine proposed that God is outside of time and present for all times, in eternity . Other early philosophers who were presentists include

16779-405: The public in a term of service, "to get the childishness knocked out of them." The other three siblings (William, Henry, and Alice James) all suffered from periods of invalidism . He took up medical studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864 (according to his brother Henry James , the author). He took a break in the spring of 1865 to join naturalist Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up

16920-401: The purpose of showing that there is contradiction in assuming the existence of facts such as absolute location and velocity. These arguments trade heavily on two principles central to his philosophy: the principle of sufficient reason and the identity of indiscernibles . The principle of sufficient reason holds that for every fact, there is a reason that is sufficient to explain what and why it

17061-476: The reality of Creation (against Aristotle) in the context of his discussion of time, saying that knowledge of time depends on the knowledge of the movement of things, and therefore time cannot be where there are no creatures to measure its passing ( Confessions Book XI ¶30; City of God Book XI ch.6). In contrast to ancient Greek philosophers who believed that the universe had an infinite past with no beginning, medieval philosophers and theologians developed

17202-427: The relationship between the agent capacities of the human hand (i.e., what it is and is not capable of and what it is for) and non-animal agency (i.e., what floors are and are not capable of and what they are for) and ii) that the pieces of cup came to possess exactly the nature and number of those of a cup before assembling. In short, such asymmetry is attributable to the relationship between i) temporal direction and ii)

17343-424: The same type of independent existence. The position of conventionalism states that there is no fact of the matter as to the geometry of space and time, but that it is decided by convention. The first proponent of such a view, Henri Poincaré , reacting to the creation of the new non-Euclidean geometry , argued that which geometry applied to a space was decided by convention, since different geometries will describe

17484-441: The sense of being good for so much. For how much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged. Whereby the agreement of truths with "reality" results in useful outcomes, "the 'reality' with which truths must agree has three dimensions": According to James's pragmatic approach to belief, knowledge is commonly viewed as a justified and true belief. James will accept

17625-444: The soul's existence in another world like Christianity, Islam and many pagan belief systems, or in reincarnation like many forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, believe that one's status in the afterlife is a reward or punishment for their conduct during life, with the exception of Calvinistic variants of Protestant Christianity, which believe one's status in the afterlife is a gift from God and cannot be earned during life. Eschatology

17766-400: The term " cash value ": When he said that the whole meaning of a (clear) conception consists in the entire set of its practical consequences, he had in mind that a meaningful conception must have some sort of experiential "cash value," must somehow be capable of being related to some sort of collection of possible empirical observations under specifiable conditions. A statement's truthfulness

17907-456: The three spatial dimensions, many physicists argue you are only able to move forward in time. One of the outcomes of Special Relativity Theory is that a person can travel into the future (but never come back) by traveling at very high speeds. While this effect is negligible under ordinary conditions, space travel at very high speeds can change the flow of time considerably. As depicted in many science fiction stories and movies (e.g. Déjà Vu ),

18048-453: The time t =0, where t is a time function created by a foliation of spacetime, but differ after t =0. These considerations show that, since substantivalism allows the construction of holes, that the universe must, on that view, be indeterministic. Which, Earman argues, is a case against substantivalism, as the case between determinism or indeterminism should be a question of physics, not of our commitment to substantivalism. The problem of

18189-433: The timeline, which is the same for all observers. In special relativity the flow of time is relative to the observer's frame of reference . The faster an observer is traveling away from a reference object, the slower that object seems to move through time. Hence, the future is not an objective notion anymore. A more modern notion is absolute future , or the future light cone . While a person can move backward or forwards in

18330-411: The water experiment in an otherwise empty universe would remain flat. But if another object were introduced into this universe, perhaps a distant star, there would now be something relative to which the bucket could be seen as rotating. The water inside the bucket could possibly have a slight curve. To account for the curve that we observe, an increase in the number of objects in the universe also increases

18471-402: The water, since the surface is flat when the bucket first starts to spin, it becomes concave as the water starts to spin, and it remains concave as the bucket stops. In this response, Clarke argues for the necessity of the existence of absolute space to account for phenomena like rotation and acceleration that cannot be accounted for on a purely relationalist account . Clarke argues that since

18612-489: The word 'true' irrelatively, whereas the pragmatist always means 'true for him who experiences the workings.'" However, James responded to critics accusing him of relativism , skepticism , or agnosticism, and of believing only in relative truths. To the contrary, he supported an epistemological realism position. Pragmatism is a philosophical approach that seeks to both define truth and resolve metaphysical issues. William James demonstrates an application of his method in

18753-418: Was 18 years old. There is suspicion that he fled to America because his family tried to force him into the ministry. After traveling to America with no money left, he found a job at a store as a clerk. After continuously working, he was able to own the store himself. As he traveled west to find more job opportunities, he was involved in various jobs such as the salt industry and the Erie Canal project. After being

18894-672: Was a synthesis of correspondence theory of truth and coherence theory of truth , with an added dimension. Truth is verifiable to the extent that thoughts and statements correspond with actual things, as well as the extent to which they "hang together", or cohere, as pieces of a puzzle might fit together; these are in turn verified by the observed results of the application of an idea to actual practice. The most ancient parts of truth … also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment

19035-480: Was also not what he wanted to do, he then announced he was going to specialize in the nervous system and psychology. James then switched in 1861 to scientific studies at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard College . In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach, and skin. He was also tone deaf . He was subject to

19176-418: Was anxious to uncover what true beliefs amounted to in human life, what their "cash value" was, and what consequences they led to. A belief was not a mental entity which somehow mysteriously corresponded to an external reality if the belief were true. Beliefs were ways of acting with reference to a precarious environment, and to say they were true was to say they were efficacious in this environment. In this sense

19317-432: Was appointed instructor in physiology for the spring 1873 term, instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, full professor in 1885, endowed chair in psychology in 1889, return to philosophy in 1897, and emeritus professor of philosophy in 1907. James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and began to teach in those subjects, but

19458-701: Was buried in the family plot in Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts . He was one of the strongest proponents of the school of functionalism in psychology and of pragmatism in philosophy. He was a founder of the American Society for Psychical Research , as well as a champion of alternative approaches to healing. In 1884 and 1885 he became president of the British Society for Psychical Research for which he wrote in Mind and in

19599-638: Was drawn to the scientific study of the human mind at a time when psychology was constituting itself as a science. James's acquaintance with the work of figures like Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France facilitated his introduction of courses in scientific psychology at Harvard University . He taught his first experimental psychology course at Harvard in the 1875–1876 academic year. During his Harvard years, James joined in philosophical discussions and debates with Charles Peirce , Oliver Wendell Holmes , and Chauncey Wright that evolved into

19740-557: Was increasingly afflicted with cardiac pain during his last years. It worsened in 1909 while he worked on a philosophy text (unfinished but posthumously published as Some Problems in Philosophy ). James sailed to Europe in the spring of 1910 to take experimental treatments for his heart ailment that proved unsuccessful, and returned home on August 18. His heart failed on August 26, 1910, at his home in Chocorua, New Hampshire . He

19881-485: Was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. James wished to pursue painting, his early artistic bent led to an apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island , but his father urged him to become a physician instead. Since this did not align with James's interests, he stated that he wanted to specialize in physiology. Once he figured this

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