There have always been many hunters to predict the future: fortune tellers, astrologers, palmists, and other Nostradamuses. In the same series, science fiction writers, utopian socialists. Is it possible to predict the future in a scientific way?

In reality, Marxists tried to convince us for almost a century and a half. And they often talked not only about what awaits humanity but even called the dates when there will be dramatic changes in the social structure. Their predictions were not justified. Were these the mistakes of individuals, or was the approach to designing the distant future itself flawed in principle?

An interesting answer to this question was given by the German philosopher W. Wundt, whose opinion was fully shared by our brilliant economist N. D. Kondratiev. The essence of Wundt’s idea is that a person, setting a goal and achieving it, meets with environmental resistance and, overcoming it, is forced to make adjustments to his plans or change them altogether. In other words, the result of conscious activity never coincides with the plan. Wundt called it the principle of> heterogeneity of goals. It is this principle that prevents the ability to look far enough ahead.

Even more obvious is WundtТs correctness in predicting the development of scientific knowledge. Could one have predicted the creation of the theory of relativity or the discovery of the chain reaction of uranium fission? Could it have been predicted that Bill Gates would invent an operating system for the personal computer? But these discoveries and inventions radically changed human civilization.

Familiarity with the work of modern forecasters constantly makes sure Wundt is right: the future is fundamentally unknowable and unpredictable.