Herman Kahn ( born Herman Kahn , February 15, 1922 - July 7, 1983 ) is an American economist, one of the most famous futurologists in the last third of the 20th century . He was the founder of the think tank and director of the Hudson Institute (since 1961), a supporter of state-monopoly regulation of the economy, as well as the development of multinational corporations.
| Hermann Kahn | |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | |
| Place of Birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
| A country | |
| Place of work | |
| Alma mater | |
Content
Biography
Born into a family of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father, Abram Kahn, was a tailor, his mother, Yetta Kozlovskaya, was a housewife; relative of Robert Kahn .
Forecasts
Initially, he was a military strategist and systems theorist , working for RAND Corporation (USA). Hermann Kahn was known for his analyzes of the likely consequences of a nuclear war and recommendations for ways to increase survival.
His theories have made a significant contribution to the development of the United States nuclear strategy. He first formulated the idea of the Doomsday Machine - a kind of apotheosis of the doctrine of mutual guaranteed destruction .
Against the backdrop of the ongoing Japanese economic miracle , in the early 1970s he predicted the development of Japan as a superpower.
Criticism
Stanislav Lem pointed out that there are features of fantasy even in his strategic works [4] .
His most popular work - “2000” (1967) - was subjected to various criticisms [5] . Stanislav Lem carefully examined it as one of the examples of expert futurological forecasts to identify the shortcomings that even they are subject to. Lem came to the conclusions of the simplicity and actual unsuitability of its methodology, noting the abundance in the book of also meaningless and useless predictions (creating "pseudo vision"), the presence of deliberately fantastic (in particular, gravity shielding ). Kahn practically does not consider changes in the social sphere, according to Lem, not taking into account, for example, the possibility of a political coup in the United States, which is less likely for him than a perpetual motion machine based on shielding gravity [5] .
The book "The Next 200 Years", written with the participation of employees of the Hudson Institute, Lem cites as an example of "literature, extorting the future, which, aiming at the coming centuries, drowned in non-plot fantasy." She was guaranteed global popularity by general optimism, but there is not a word about the emerging branches of technology (already then considered in the works of some authors), which over time become leading positions — information networks , biotechnology , genomics , nanotechnology , and cyborgization [6] .
Bibliography
Works written by Kahn include:
- On Thermonuclear War . Princeton University Press, 1960. ISBN 0-313-20060-2
- Thinking about the unthinkable . Horizon Press, 1962.
- On Escalation . Princeton University Press, 1965.
- Herman Kahn, Anthony J. Wiener, The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years . MacMillan, 1967. ISBN 0-02-560440-6
- Emerging Japanese Superstate: Challenge and Response . Prentice Hall, 1970. ISBN 0-13-274670-0
- The Japanese challenge: The success and failure of economic success . Morrow, 1971. ISBN 0-688-08710-8
- Things to Come: Thinking About the Seventies and Eighties . MacMillan, 1972. ISBN 0-02-560470-8
- Herman Kahn, Jerome Agel, Herman Kahnsciousness ;: The megaton ideas of the one-man think tank . New American Library, 1973.
- The Next 200 Years . Morrow, 1976. ISBN 0-688-08029-4
- World Economic Development: 1979 and Beyond . William Morrow, 1979. ISBN 0-688-03479-9
- Will she be right ?: The future of Australia . University of Queensland Press, 1981. ISBN 0-7022-1569-4
- The Coming Boom: Economic, Political, and Social . Simon & Schuster, 1983. ISBN 0-671-49265-9
- The nature and feasibility of war, deterrence, and arms control (Central nuclear war monograph series). Hudson Institute)
- A slightly optimistic world context for 1975-2000 (Hudson Institute. HI)
- Social limits to growth: "creeping stagnation" vs. "natural and inevitable" (HPS paper)
- A new kind of class struggle in the United States? (Corporate Environment Program. Research memorandum)
- Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace (Dial Press div of Simon & Schuster)
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ 1 2 SNAC - 2010.
- ↑ 1 2 Internet Speculative Fiction Database - 1995.
- ↑ Stanislav Lem. Science Fiction and Futurology (1970). Book 1 (I. Catastrophe) / trans. S. Makartseva, V.I. Borisova. - M .: AST, Ermak, 2004.
- ↑ 1 2 Stanislav Lem. Fiction and futurology. Book 1 (Epistemology of science fiction: 4. The futility of futurology). 2nd ed. (1972).
- ↑ The Next Two Hundred Years (= Następne dwieście lat) // Finger in the Sky // Stanislav Lem. Black and white. - M .: AST, 2015 .-- S. 464-471.
Literature
- Kahn, German / Bestuzhev-Lada I.V. // Iceland - Clericalism. - M .: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2008. - P. 662. - ( Great Russian Encyclopedia : [in 35 vols.] / Ch. Ed. Yu. S. Osipov ; 2004—2017, vol. 12). - ISBN 978-5-85270-343-9 .
Links
- Essays by G. Kahn and about him (Eng.) (Retrieved June 30, 2009)
- The Escalation Stair Cana (Eng.) (Retrieved June 30, 2009)
- "Herman Kahn's Doomsday Machine" by Andrew Yale Glikman, 26 September 1999.] (English) (Retrieved June 30, 2009)
- Unclassified Documents by Hermann Kahn at RAND Corporation, 1948-59 (Eng.) (Retrieved June 30, 2009)
- Unclassified Articles and Documents by Herman Kahn at the Hudson Institute, 1962-84 (Eng.) (Retrieved June 30, 2009)
- Charity, History of Cannes Science (Eng.) (Retrieved June 30, 2009)