Things To Come
Hughes, Peter
Book Review: Things to Come by Herman Kahn and B. Bruce-Biggs Macmillan Co., $6.95 B. Bruce-Biggs, a lecturer at the Hudson Institute, and Herman Kahn, Director and lecturer at the Institute,...
...there is an awful lot of wave pressure, but none of the harmony and sensitivity of a Bachian fugue...
...The same cannot be said for this latest book...
...Things To Come leaves me with the same feeling...
...All of which Kahn has done before...
...Kahn offers an excellent example in how a writer can soak his material tor all its worth...
...In a later book, Thinking About The Unthinkable, The Year 2000...
...the emergence of a sensate culture...
...Kahn is primarily a scientist and not a philosopher, and he overshadows Bruce-Biggs, the historian...
...it suggests the fallacy of Malthusian economics by taking scenarios to a punktum ad absur-dum and by justifying these scenarios on the argumentum ad ignoratium...
...Things To Come offers little new material if a reader is familiar with the heretofore mentioned books and The Emerging Japanese Superstate...
...an impossible task, man being what he is...
...Things To Come is logical enough and perhaps too scientific...
...the so-called "big questions" which have stymied philosophers through the ages...
...Albert Einstein was once asked if he believed that everything could be expressed scientifically...
...Their optimism is, to say the least, debatable...
...Things To Come is a synthesis of Kahn's earlier writings...
...While the merits and weaknesses of Kahn's arguments found no concensus, no one could deny their heuristic value...
...But the areas the authors cover in such brief space is too voluminous to get the attention deserved...
...Pundits covering the entire philosophical spectrum have drawn upon the same premise, while drawing radically different conclusions...
...Peter Hughes...
...His controversial study, On Thermonuclear War, gave physics and mathematics a new relevancy for the political and policy scientist, when Kahn developed deterrence and counter-deterrence strategy to its ultimate, rational and logical end...
...In their conclusion, the authors say that man has lost his faith in material progress...
...Their pe-ception of the future, however, is based on the premise that "modern man" (they include themselves) share the - "contemporary views of scientific laws' " and they believe that the future will be eclectic and syncretic...
...The rise of neo-classical conservatism grew out of similar convictions, i.e., Leo Strauss has argued that widespread nihilism in Western Civilization was the inevitable nemesis of liberalism and philosophical Conventionalism...
...Kahn's scenarios once again aroused debate among the academic and professional community, both in terms of efficacy, methodology, and application...
...As such, logic goes beyond the point of relevance...
...But here the similarity ends...
...However, a lack of references undermines even this purpose...
...From this the authors proceed into various scenarios, and they offer a case study in methodology in a chapter on Japan...
...Herman Kahn's books are rarely dull, but his latest publication is a disappointment...
...It also does the author(s) a disservice, since its appeal could only be for a reader seeking an introduction to Kahn...
...this is hardly a startling revelation...
...He replied that it could, but that it would make no sense: "It would be a description without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as variations of wave pressure...
...They argue that much has already been attained...
...Book Review: Things to Come by Herman Kahn and B. Bruce-Biggs Macmillan Co., $6.95 B. Bruce-Biggs, a lecturer at the Hudson Institute, and Herman Kahn, Director and lecturer at the Institute, have produced a book which continues in the strain of the Kahn tradition...
...they cover the psycho-sociological, politico-economic, philosophical, and technological development, drawing conclusions and offering projections...
...Whereas e.g., Illich called for the birth of a new epimethean man, Strauss called for the reawakening of classical values, the belief in natural right...
...Kahn and Bruce-Biggs believe that the future can and should be altered nor-matively, by varying man...
...The discussion and organization resembles a glob of silly putty, with little coherence...
...it does neither the author(s), nor the reader justice...
...Kahn's books were never meant for the casual reader, and this one is no exception...
...his first magnum opus produced a furor, his latest will not even cause a tremor...
...The defrocked priest and Marcusian philosopher, Ivan Illich, has argued that present society resembles Ambrosia, a picture of society with declining hopes and rising expectations, which expected the engineer to increase its satisfaction while reducing its wants...
...Kahn is widely recognized as a leading thinker in the field of politico-military strategy, and as a major figure in the "science of futurology...
...Although the book expresses a concern for values, the tools of the scientist cannot hope to approach grasping, and certainly not answering...
...since World War II they identify a growing awareness of global community, that the globe is recognizing the need for a res communis omnium...
...He covers the long term multifold trend of western culture, based on Pitrim Sorokin's terminology (although not his concepts), i.e...
...Implicit in this philosophical interpretation seems to be a revival of Positivism, i.e., the birth of a new man who no longer has the need for metaphysics and theology...
Vol. 6 • December 1972 • No. 3
