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Predicting History: What Works and What Doesn't
Taylor, James B.
Taylor, James B.
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Abstract
This book is about large scale, ambitious predictions—the kinds of predictions historians might make if they could truly foretell the future. It is about the prediction of war and peace, the prediction of depressions and recessions, the prediction of the rise and fall of nations and empires. It is about technological predictions and the prediction of populations and economics, about the prediction of climate change and politics. It is about how such predictions have been made in the past and about how they might better be made in the future.
In this book we search for accurate predictions and how they got made. We look at several approaches. The first approach seeks to forecast the big happenings by looking at major trends and processes. Such efforts may look ahead for a century or more, and they seek general principles.
We also look at some of the big surprises in recent history. These are the events that appear out of the blue, without warning or prediction, and suddenly seem to transform the world. The 1990 dissolution of the USSR was one such surprise; the 2016 election of President Trump was another. For each such unexpected surprises we ask, “Who succeeded in predicting this? And on what basis?”
We do the same for other big events—for economic booms, for inflations and depressions, for the rise and fall of empires, for the development of new technologies, and for the coming of wars. For each we ask, “Who succeeded in predicting this? And how?” We draw our lessons accordingly.
The book ends by bringing these pieces together, and by using what we’ve learned to predict aspects of the next fifty years. We suggest some general rules for prediction—the forecasting procedures that seem to work best. We also note some things to avoid.
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About the author:
Dr. James B. Taylor was the author of numerous papers on psycho-social measurement, the clinical effects of psychosocial change, and the practice of community mental health. He was the senior author of Tornado! A Community Responds to Disaster (University of Washington Press, 1970), Community Worker (Jason Aronson, 1975) and Using Microcomputers in Social Agencies (Sage, 1981). He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Washington in 1958, having completed a 2-year clinical internship at the Veterans Administration. Taylor was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington. He took over as Director of the Menninger Foundation’s Research Department in 1969 in Topeka, Kansas. Taylor joined the faculty of the School of Social Welfare at the University of Kansas in 1976, where he served until his retirement in 2002. He passed away on January 3, 2024.
Date
2026-02
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University of Kansas Libraries
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This item contains archived web content.
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Keywords
Historical predictions, Statistical modeling