ABSTRACT
It was suggested earlier that there is a pressing need within Futures Studies (FS) to develop methods that go beyond the limitations of dominant American models. For many years, there has been a near-exclusive emphasis on understanding the external world ‘out there’. But as time has gone by, so it has become clear that our ability to understand the world ‘out there’ crucially depends on an underlying world of reference that is ‘in here’. Understanding the near-future environment calls not for one or the other but for a combination of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ views that, for example, give as much credence to intuition and judgement as to calculation and modelling. This chapter begins the task of working out how to include these very different ‘ways of knowing’ and what their contributions might be. The aim is to go beyond what might be termed ‘mundane’ analysis, that is, that which is preoccupied with surfaces, and to open out a broader arena for futures enquiry.
