Astronomers deliberate about whether they should plan large telescope arrays to study black holes in remote galaxies or rather to divert those resources into a new generation space telescope. Archaeologists debate whether they should excavate a site rich in important but fragile ancient artifacts now or rather wait another generation or two until methods and preservation technologies have hopefully improved. In order for science and scholarship to go on, their practitioners must imagine and plan for the future, sometimes a future that stretches centuries ahead.
To plan for the future is to imagine the future—or rather, several alternative futures simultaneously. Two Balzan Summer Schools in Berlin (June 14–18 and 26–30, 2028) will explore how disciplines imagine their future under conditions of radical uncertainty. Since the early nineteenth century at latest, it has been clear to scientists and scholars that progress in their disciplines will not always be gradual, linear, and cumulative; it will be punctuated at irregular intervals by surprises that could not have been extrapolated from what came before and which may shake the foundations of the discipline. The vocabulary of “revolutions” and “breakthroughs” tries to capture the abruptness of these moments of non-linear progress. To imagine and invest in a scientific future is therefore inherently paradoxical: if the wager pays off, it will be thanks to scientific progress that could not possibly be foreseen.
This project is supported by the Balzan Prize awarded to Lorraine Daston in 2024.