The Knowledge of the Future

When Future no longer indicates the final judgement of the world, or the lapse of time until its arrival, then our vision of the time to come has changed profoundly. Future then, as Reinhard Koselleck has pointed out, can only be projected as an “empty space of time”, and that means that a great number of institutions and practices make their appearance, promising to make safe with their scientific models the journey into the unknown, possible shifts and formations: demographic development, climate change, energy supply, technological and geopolitical impact assessments, prospects for the stock market. Prognostics if not prophecies of the Future are the result of the changing world of today, often experienced as insecure and menacing. We have to realize, that the Futures we have are nothing but social constructions, a texture of the presence. Even in antiquity the divinatory knowledge of the oracle was not meant to “really see” the future reality. Nonetheless mights and morals and their perspectives could well be named and judged from the currently visible, from recognition and plausibility. Future knowledge is orientation knowledge, relevant in any policy advising. In this program of the Mosse-Lectures the scientific and imaginary knowledge of the Future in different disciplines, in the arts and religions will be negotiated, also the unknowing we have to admit. From the art of fortune telling in the Ancient Orient up to the present time of Big Data’s future viability the genesis and legitimacy of prognostics will be discussed. What does the reference of the future tell about the self conception of society? What are the rhetorical, technical und media means and tools to shape and perform the knowledge of the future? Beyond the classical apocalypse, how can collective desires and anxieties coin our notion of an ultimate future?