The Discovery Of The Future

by H. G. Wells

Overview

It will lead into my subject most conveniently to contrast and separate two divergent types of mind, types which are to be distinguished chiefly by their attitude toward time, and more particularly by the relative importance they attach and the relative amount of thought they give to the future. The first of these two types of mind, and it is, I think, the predominant type, the type of the majority of living people, is that which seems scarcely to think of the future at all, which regards it as a sort of blank non-existence upon which the advancing present will presently write events. The second type, which is, I think, a more modern and much less abundant type of mind, thinks constantly and by preference of things to come, and of present things mainly in relation to the results that must arise from them. The former type of mind, when one gets it in its purity, is retrospective in habit, and it interprets the things of the present, and gives value to this and denies it to that, entirely with relation to the past. The latter type of mind is constructive in habit, it interprets the things of the present and gives value to this or that, entirely in relation to things designed or foreseen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781535001038
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	02/06/1902
Pages:	28
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.06(d)

About the Author

H.G. Wells (1866–1946), born Herbert George Wells, was an English author known for not only his popular science fiction books but also works of social commentary, history and biography. His first novel, The Time Machine, was published in 1895. Socially progressive and visionary in intellect, H.G. Wells became one of the most prolific writers of his generation. Through books like The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and War of the Worlds, Wells delved into a plethora of social, philosophical and political ideas through the medium of what we now call science fiction.

Date of Birth:

September 21, 1866

Date of Death:

August 13, 1946

Place of Birth:

Bromley, Kent, England

Place of Death:

London, England

Education:

Normal School of Science, London, England

Read an Excerpt

that the essential thing in the scientific pro- cess is not the collection of facts, but the analysis of facts. Facts are the raw mate- rial and not the substance of science. JJti is analysis that has given us all ordered' knowledge, and you know that the aim and the test and the justification of the scientific process is not a marketable conjuring trick, but prophecy. Until a scientific theory yields confident forecasts you know it is un- sound and tentative; it is mere theorizing, as evanescent as art talk or the phantoms politicians talk about. The splendid body of gravitational astronomy, for example, es- tablishes itself upon the certain forecast of stellar movements, and you would absolute- ly refuse to believe its amazing assertions if it were not for these same unerring fore- casts. The whole body of medical science aims, and claims the ability, to diagnose. Meteorology constantly and persistently aims at prophecy, and it will never stand in a place of honor until it can certainly fore- tell. The chemist forecasts elements before he meets themit is very properly his boast =and the splendid manner in which the mind of Clerk Maxwell reached in front of all experiments and foretold those things that Marconi has materialized is familiar to us all. All applied mathematics resolves into computation to foretell things which otherwise can only be determined by trial. Even in so unscientific a science as economics there have been forecasts. And if I am right in saying that science aims at prophecy, and if the specialist in each science is in fact doing his best now to prophesy within the limits of his field, what is there to stand in the way of our building up this growing body offorecast into an ordered picture of the future that will be just as certain, just as stri...