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Edward De Bono is a longtime guru in the field of creativity, specializing in horizontal thinking ( De Bono prefers the older terminology he coined, “Lateral Thinking“). Hat tip to David Armano ( on Twitter).

My esteemed blogfriend of longstanding, Sir Younghusband of Coming Anarchy, took issue with my remarks in the previous post and commented ( seconded by ubiwar):

“Historians and futurists use complementary methodologies …”In my experience futurists and historians are at one another’s throats over methodology. I would like to compare these methodologies in more detail. Can you elaborate on what you mean?

There is a clash of professional cultures and perspectives between academic historians and futurists, no argument. That’s why I used the term “complementary” in the previous post – the respective methodologies are divergent enough to remediate the weaknesses of the other for those thinkers open to broadening their analytical horizons. Not everyone has the comfort zone demonstratedby Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz; methodologically conservative “old school” historians who disdain the skill-sets of even cognate social science fields and highly speculative futurists are quite likely to talk past one another. A shame, in my view.

To begin, it’s an epistemological error to confuse either field with physics. Futurism has strongly imaginative, insight-generative and generally “fuzzy” aspects even when rarefied computer modeling, prediction markets or mathematically advanced techniques for making probabilistic estimates are being employed  (none of which I am qualified to comment upon in depth) and as a field, it is still in the pioneering stage.  History has a longer intellectual pedigree, stretching back to Herodotus and Thucydides with the advent of modern historical techniques beginning with Leopold von Ranke and the professionalization of academia by the German university system that became the model for the Western world, particularly the noveau-riche United States of the late 19th century. Historical methodology is accepted by historians as a yardstick to measure one another’s work and is the basis for much of the nitpicking “gotcha” nature of historiagrahical criticism. Alternative methods are viewed with suspicion; it took decades for academic historians to begin giving any credence whatsoever to oral history, for example.

Ideally, historians approach a question with skepticism and attempt to fnd an explain causation within an accurate context by working backwards toward the point of origin. “Primary source” documents are privileged as evidence by which they mean certain kinds of documents, preferably government records and memoranda, alongside private papers, scrutinized with great care. These are supplemented by authoritative secondary material that helps the historian understand the primary sources within the accurate context of the time rather than anachronistically. These discrete facts and clues are then reinterpreted by the historian in the form of a comprehensible narrative that does not deviate from the evidentiary trail. History is a craft, not a science.

Naturally, historical methodology, which seeks to demonstrate the verifiable, is an approach with the potential for generating enormous lacunae. Government officials do not always put their most sensitive discussions or actions on paper or destroy such documents after the fact (ex.- both Beria and Khrushchev ransacked Stalin’s private archive after the dictator’s death). Even when such papers exist, they are seldom readily accessible or are written in euphemistic, elusive, terminology or bureaucratic jargon. The unofficial, personal, relationships upon which many decisions hinge are often entirely absent from the “official” paper record as are often the human circumstances of the “deciders”. It takes superhuman detective work to fill in these kinds of blanks and a tolerance for sources of uncertain reliability ( this is a job for…a biographer! See Ron Chernow, Robert Caro etc.).

Futurists, as the term implies, look forward, rather than back. They begin with intuitive assumptions and engage in a variety of means of extrapolation ranging from ( among many)  logical-philosophical thought experiments mapped out as decision trees to the construction of imaginative but complex scenarios for “free play” exercises to building models of great mathematical rigor. Futurists scan widely for potential variables and patterns. Imagination and synthesis play a significant role in framing the initial starting point for analytical extrapolation. Futurists are t panoramic vision to the historian’s telescope ( or at times, microscope).

The problem with futurists is that their predictions are all too frequently in error, generally suffering from a bias toward dystopian outcomes, overestimation of the linear downstream effect of favored variables relative to the effects of the variable’s interaction with all other variables along with overestimating of the synchronicity of all variables (most variables are asynchronous – otherwise the human race would be in a near-constant state of catastrophe. The “perfect storm” rarely comes together). Their scenarios, in other  words,  lack the level of “friction” present in historical case studies, much less that of real life.

Futurists can inject a far greater range of possibilities to consider for causation for historians while historians can help bring greater realism to futurist scenarios. The two fields, both of which must deal with uncertainty, are ready-made for collaboration

I’ve come to greatly appreciate the intellectual depth and range of Charles Cameron ever since having been “introduced” to him (in the online sense) by my seagoing friend, Web 2.0 visioneer Critt Jarvis. Today, Charles pointed me to a veritable archive of writings by Michael Wilson, a futurist, scholar and former member of the IC. Some of the ideas and conclusions that I have been working toward on this blog these past few years were literally being advocated by Wilson well over a decade ago.

I’ve only just begun to look at these and I’m posting them here for those readers whose interests gravitate toward issues of intel analysis and futurism:

7Pillars Partners – Papers by Michael Wilson

Continual & Complete Intelligence: A 21st Century Approach

Addendum:

Charles Cameron is cordially invited to expand on the subject of Mr. Wilson and I will happily publish such remarks here.

Military education reformer and author Don Vandergriff has joined the blogosphere and  he is off to a nice start:

First of all, my hat’s off to anyone that ventures out and participates in something like the adaptability conference. It takes moral courage to admit, “maybe I can get better, let’s see what happens here.” More compliments to the person’s organization if the organization was willing to support and encourage its people to get better. Too many organizations focus on the short term profit and simply don’t want to lose control of its people, don’t take the opportunity to make a long term investment in making its people more competent and confident. These attributes are the hallmark of adaptability.

I use a series of different games and scenario based education to involve the students (or participants) in the discussion about how to evolve adaptability in themselves and in their organization. The students end up doing the talking and usually solving or finding the answers to their questions. Each and every time any group does these exercises, they assume that I, as the facilitator, limit what they can do, like asking question to broaden their assumptions and courses of actions, and that I will always say no if they do ask a question, like “can we have more time.”

I will leave you with this thought, after doing this approach with games and getting similar results from audiences the past 50 times, why do students box themselves in? What does that tell us about ourselves and our organizations, when we always assume the negative? How does this limit our “evolutionary adaptability”?

Facilitation is the skill that separates the great teacher, who leaves an intellectual legacy in the form of students whose worldviews they have been profoundly impacted, from the scholar who is merely competent in the classroom. The latter knows their field while the former knows how to elicit students to think about the field in a deep and meaningful way.

Not all “star” scholars are great facilitators because that skill requires a good deal of self-restraint to guide students to the point where they can make the leap to discovery and comprehension on their own ( genuine learning, in other words). A high tolerance for failure and error is required because students will initially go down well-trod blind alleys ( well trod to the instructor, not to the students – this is a perspective that academics frequently overlook) before realizing that they need to generate alternative solutions. Facilitation, unlike pontification, keeps students cognitively active and on-task with timely re-direction or adaptively ( modeling for the students) takes advantage of a student insight to create a learning moment for the larger group.

I look forward to reading more in this vein from Major Vandergriff in the future ( Hat tip to DNI )

Charles Cameron, who already blogs in his area of professional expertise at Forensic Theology, has added Hipbone Out Loud to his arsenal:

Understanding is modeling, mapping.

In this blog, I want to capture the glimpses I have of an extraordinary world, each glimpse being a tiny area of a vast map – certainly more sophisticated than any individual can generate with data visualization tools and modeling software, perhaps more complicated than a single culture can grasp as a collective – but important, as it is the matrix in which our individual and cultural life-maps fall.

You will find I favor quotes and anecdotes as nodes in my personal style of mapping – which lacks the benefits of quantitative modeling, the precision with which feedback loops can be tracked, but more than compensates in my view, since it includes emotion, human identification, tone of voice.

The grand map I envision skitters across the so-styled “Cartesian divide” between mind and brain. It is not and cannot be limited to the “external” world, it is not and cannot be limited to the quantifiable, it locates powerful tugs on behavior within imagination and powerful tugs on vision within hard, solid fact.

Doubts in the mind and runs on the market may correlate closely across the divide, and we ignore the impacts of hope, fear, anger and insight at our peril.

I’ve featured the writing of Charles Cameron here before because he produces posts rich in both complexity and depth, generating intriguing horizontal-thinking patterns that would have easily escaped my attention.  This another blog that I’ll be checking frequently.

The other day I was contacted by one of Frans Johansson’s people, Kristian Ribberström who blogs at Stories From the Intersection and he asked me, as I have blogged on The Medici Effect a number of times, to mention the upcoming The Medici Summit on innovation and creativity to my readers. A description by Johansson:

“It is also high-noon time for me to announce what promises to be an amazing event! The Medici Summit on March 3^rd and 4^th next year will be unusual in its structure, exciting, inspiring and just plain fun. It is now open for registration and I am really very excited about this. It has long been a desire of mine to put together a conference that mimics the Medici Effect where people can come in with their own ideas and leave with those ideas recombined with someone else’s. There will be awesome speakers and plenty of opportunity to connect with others (some of them will be surprises and are not outlined exactly in the schedule). Very, very excited about this one! It is open for registration right now so head over there and register“