The term prognostics (from Greek prógnōsis, “foreknowledge”) denotes the practice of predicting future developments; its forms vary from culture to culture. In contrast to prophecy and soothsaying, it did not legitimate its knowledge of the future by appealing to a charismatically endowed visionary but developed a rationally comprehensible procedure based on the causes of change. Given its function of reducing the contingency of the future (Future, expectations of), prognostics met a…