Full text
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| Author(s): |
Fabio Sapragonas Andrioni
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2014-12-19 |
| Examining board members: |
Fredric Michael Litto;
Sara Albieri;
Estevão Chaves de Rezende Martins;
Francisco Assis de Queiroz;
Francisco Carlos Teixeira da Silva
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| Advisor: | Fredric Michael Litto |
| Abstract | |
The object of this dissertation is an idea of future or, more specifically, how the future was comprehended in a given historical moment and under certain conditions. This idea of future in our analysis is centered on Herman Kahn, a physic, military strategist and futurist. The constitution of this idea of future was not separated from a comprehension of history and it established a link between among past, present and future. To build it we based on Kosellecks concepts of space of experience and horizon of expectation and we used some ideas from Kosellecks conceptual history. Kahns idea of future started at RAND Corporation, the famous American think tank that advised the US Air Force. At that period, the future was only short term, it was thought at most fifteen years ahead and historical references were also recent, going back only until I and II Wars. Thus, the questions were restricted to the national security, the US defense and the relations with Asia and Europe. After his first book, On thermonuclear war, in 1960, Herman Kahn abandoned RAND. The book was very polemical. Kahn analyzed and accounted in details how a nuclear war could happen and how the country could rise after it. Out of RAND, Kahn established his own think tank, the Hudson Institute, in 1961. Hudson Institute and Herman Kahn widened the time analyzed, reaching two hundred years to the future and ten thousand year to the past in the book The next 200 years, in 1976. This broadened future accompanied a change of US government orientation and some financial difficulties faced by Hudson Institute that stretched for the sixties and the seventies. Beyond that, Hudson Institute was operating not only with American issues, but it was also working with world issues intending to influence multinational corporations and other countries. One of these countries was Brazil. However, in Brazil, Kahn and Hudson Institute suffered ruthless, sarcastic and aggressive critics due to polemical plans and changing and uncertain data. So the Brazilian critics were based on some mistakes of Kahn future study method, but they were based in an emphatic Brazilian government policy. We believe this exposition and analysis of Herman Kahns future studies since 1947 to 1979 provide us a deep reflection about history and the relations among past, present and future, so it is possible to state that some future or past formulation has embedded an implicit formulation about the opposite time. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 11/10952-3 - From spin of roulette to future architecture: the science of future and the history in Herman Kahn work (1947-1984) |
| Grantee: | Fabio Sapragonas Andrioni |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |