The Role of the Individual in the Economic World of the Future

Abstract

F THE time allotted for this paper, a part must be spent in explaining why I cannot discuss subject as stated in title assigned and in delimiting it down to a topic on which I may hope to say something worth saying in remaining portion of my time. Beginning at latter end of subject as announced-with words the future-I am neither a prophet nor of prophetic lineage, and anything of nature of literal prediction is simply out. In fact, first and most important proposition for any discussion of course of human events is that there neither is nor can be in history and social affairs any science remotely analogous to celestial mechanics, which enables astronomer to predict eclipses, forward and backward for thousands of years, and to time and measure them out to every so many decimal places. Even laboratory physicist can only predict conditionally. He can say what result will follow if he manipulates a f amiliar piece of apparatus in a familiar way. He cannot predict result of any real experiment, or he would not need to perform it-it would not be an experiment. (Incidentally, one would not play any game if result could be accurately foreseen.) And he cannot predict actual course of events in his own laboratory, as dependent on his own acts, an hour in advance, while an outsider, however competent in science, would be almost completely helpless in face of task. Moreover, in so far as any individual is able to predict his own future behavior, he acts on basis of principles very different from those which underlie predictions of sciences dealing with processes under human