Re: Reply to Denemark: Predictions of the Future of the World System

Didn't Wallerstein make some statement years ago to the effect that we
cannot predict the future but only the past? His predictions I have read
always seem caveated with the notion that history is emergent and
indeterminant. Why? Wallerstein says in a recent piece: because of the
arrow of time. But there are these pulses that indicate something of what
we might expect. 

For me the matter of determinancy and indeterminancy is too often fixed as
a dichotomy when it is more appropriately understood as a continuum.
Because of the organic composition, contingent nature, asymmetrical
development, etc., of the world, determinism ought better be recast in
terms of limits, conditions, counteractions, and so on. We can understand
the present and future in terms of the past and present only in broad
outlines, since the rhythms of historical orders/disorders are the pulse
of living and change systems, never quite what they were before. 

Putting ourselves in the hands of prediction is tricky business. Making
predictive validity the only, or even the most important test for our
theory may be a mistake. The epistemic power of any given standpoint is as
much found in where we want to go as it is in where history takes us. 
Indeed, knowledge about where we want to go, and putting this knowledge
into practice, may be the only truth we can count on. 

Andy