Toward a Social Science Paradigm for Thinking About Futures. Working Draft.

The paradigm outlined in this paper is designed to aid in writing scenarios of alternative futures. Specifically the author outlines major conditions and processes in social life which should provide a scheme to be used in constructing or in criticizing scenarios developed by other methods. This scheme should provide assistance in several ways: 1) it should make forgetting or ignoring major actors in the social system less likely; 2) make the steps in the movement from one time to another more explicit; 3) increase the probability of explicit recognition of alternative developments; and, 4) assist in making the scenarios more plausible and more likely confirmed by future developments. The paradigm itself consists of four major parts: 1) the bases and varieties of the social units; 2) the fundamental social process among and within the social units; 3) the basic conditions of the units; and, 4) the interrelations of processes and conditions and variations in the outcome of different processes. (Author/AWW)