Qu’est ce que la prospective ?
Foresight requires an Exercise in Forecasting: How are we to conduct such Thinking about the Future?
There are many registers of discourse about the future that foresight may use. But the process of forecasting in foresight also has its own characteristics. In foresight, thinking about the future is:
— Open, since it is not about predicting the future but exploring the different possible futures. That is why foresighters try to imagine the continuations of present trends and grasp their consequences, but also look at emergent phenomena and breaks in those trends, which may alter the course of events. ‘One of the rules in foresight is to permit oneself to reimagine everything, to question and reconstruct everything’ (Bertrand Schwartz, ‘Réflexions prospectives’, Éducation permanente, 1969, p. 3).
— Analytical: to build its arguments, the foresight approach draws on the observation of realities and on a rational analysis of phenomena. In order to be intelligible, foresight discourse is based on reason. Admittedly, foresight work is informed and inspired by artistic creation, social and individual imagination and narratives from science fiction, but it is quite distinct from these things. When the foresight approach points to radical new phenomena, it has to show that they are possible. Contemporary foresight approaches also give prominence to the analysis of the (non-measurable) perceptions and behaviour of actors. Lastly, foresight is close to ‘constructivism’, which foregrounds knowledge as a model (and not an absolute), whereby, through the understanding of a phenomenon that it affords, that phenomenon can be acted upon. Jean-Louis Le Moigne uses the expression ‘actionable knowledge’ in his book Le Constructivisme (VOL 3: Modéliser pour comprendre [Modelling for Understanding], 2004).
— Systemic: in order to forecast what may eventuate, foresight exercises have to reflect on the interactions between phenomena. The latter may be isolated for purposes of scientific study, hut they have to be viewed together when the goal is to describe realistic possible futures. In this sense, and because it partly takes account of qualitative data, foresight differs from forecasting which, for its part, is based on mathematical models.
