The Future and Future Studies in Social Science Prospects for Bridging Knowledge and Method

Abstract

Future studies has accumulated a vast amount of research and attempts to lay scientific bases, and has come to rely on precise scientific methods based on comprehensive philosophies of time, the future, and laws. However, its role is still marginal in Arab academia, particularly in the social sciences. This study tries to deal with one of the main reasons for this vacuum: the weak bridging between the cognitive and the methodological and between the academic specialisms in the Arab knowledge field at a time when the paradigm of distinct specialism has broken down in favor of theoretical and methodological integration between the disciplines. Hence, this research intends to study the possibilities of integrating future studies into sociological research as a specialism by defining the epistemological and methodological gap between forecasting and sociology, and the possible approaches to bridging the gap between them.