My own philosophical position, if I may put it that way, is very briefly as follows: (1) I think about the future, therefore I am and can be a human being; (2) The future is partly knowable for man: thinking back = thinking forward; (3) Anyone who ponders the future will learn that this is still open to a considerable extent that can be further determined from case to case... (4) Determining one’s own destiny implies two things: ready acceptance of a stewardship for the future and of the duty to make a choice; (5) Everyone must therefore be able to have access, as soon and as completely as possible, to all available data for, and possible consequences of, this choice to be made... (6) For this purpose everyone, choosing in complete freedom and on his own responsibility, must be able and permitted to utilize all the philosophical and scientific thought models useful for this vital choice; (7) Thought models, or models of the future, are useful insofar as they can reasonably contribute towards the optimum realization of man’s future-directed wishes and actions in a given situation or period; (8) Optimum realization aims at a harmonious synthesis of effectiveness and justice in the furthest possible surveyable part of future time; (9) The effectiveness to be aimed at calls for the application and refinement of all conceivable prognostic techniques for adding to knowledge of the future, including those which can be effectively developed over an ever-wider time scale... (10) All objectives meet in the endlessly continued approach to and progress towards the ideal “summum bonum”, though this, the most valuable humanistic good of a full human society, may perhaps never be capable of realization in total perfection.
Fred Polak, Prognostics