Event Details

Every Tuesday 09.30 – 10.30, during term, we invite an academic to brief us on their research. The format is a 30 minute talk followed by discussion.

The Seeds of Time: Taming Chaos

Leslie Hallam

‘If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grains will grow and which will not, then speak to me…’ (Macbeth)

Human fascination with predicting the future extends back to pre-history, and has invested superstition and grisly ritual through pantheism, animism and magic to our current awe at ‘Big Data’. By knowing something of how events will unfold, we imagine, we can grasp some control and drive our personal (and to the extent they overlap, communal) agenda. We can impose our will upon destiny. To this extent most cultures have evolved elaborate technologies bent to this end – our own, no exception, with a flourishing industry around ‘Futurism’.

I’ve pursued this end, tacitly or explicitly, with commercial and not-for-profit organisations, for over thirty years, melding the perspectives of ‘experts’ with consumers, data-driven trend analysis with introspection, and – perhaps controversially – taking the alternative views of ‘high end intuitives’ (numerologists, astrologers, witches, scryers, tarot readers) into account, seeking a triangulation of predictions – the best of the best…with some modest successes. In the process of formalising this process (working title: AI: Artificial Intuition), I’m seeking input from academic colleagues who will, I’m sure, have valuable perspectives to offer across a range of disciplines.