Prophecy de novo: the nearly self-fulfilling doomsday forecast.(environmental catastrophism )

From: Independent Review | Date: January 1, 2003| Author: | Copyright information

The Limits to Growth, by Donella H. Meadows and three coauthors (1972), sold nine million copies in twenty-nine languages (Suter 1999, 2). The book awakened anticipation of a cataclysmic end of the world by allegedly seeing that possibility through a new kind of lens. Its prophecy sprang not from an individual claiming divine inspiration, but from the wizardry of the silicone chip processing precise mathematical expressions that defined the "predicament of mankind." The authors claimed that a computer analysis revealed that the final, short countdown had begun and that the ...

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