In the modern world, why do we still resort to speculation? Advances in scientific and statistical reasoning are supposed to have provided greater certainty in making claims about the future. Yet we constantly spin out scenarios about tomorrow, for ourselves or for entire societies, with flimsy or no evidence. Insubstantial speculations—from utopian thinking to high-risk stock gambles—often provoke fierce backlash, even when they prove prophetic for the world we come to inhabit. Why does this hypothetical way of thinking generate such controversy?

In this cultural, literary, and intellectual history, Gayle Rogers traces debates over speculation from antiquity to the present. Celebrated by Boethius as the height of humanity’s mental powers but denigrated as sinful by John Calvin, speculation eventually became central to the scientific revolution’s new methods of seeing the natural world. In the nineteenth century, writers such as Jane Austen used the concept to diagnose the marriage market, redefining speculation for the purpose of social critique. Speculation fueled the development of modern capitalism, spurring booms, busts, and bubbles, and recently artificial intelligence has automated the speculation previously done by humans, with uncertain and troubling consequences. Unraveling these histories and many other disputes, Rogers argues that what has always been at stake in arguments over speculation, and why it so often appears so threatening, is the authority to produce and control knowledge about the future.

Recasting centuries of contests over the power to anticipate tomorrow, this book reveals the crucial role speculation has played in how we create—and potentially destroy—the future.

"Impressive for its breadth of erudition, Speculation offers an original history of a pivotal concept in Western culture from the Middle Ages to the present. Further, the book advances an innovative critical methodology by exfoliating the connotations of a single word. . . [T]he whole book is fired with the author’s intellectual enthusiasm. Indeed, the book is so lucidly written that it has every chance of reaching beyond literary studies to a wider public interested in the history of ideas and the words in which that history is encapsulated." - Critical Inquiry

"Any reader interested in a different conceptual introduction in the history of economics may take up this book. Equally enjoyable for language and philosophy enthusiasts." - Omnivore Scientist

"Roger’s study, engagingly and accessibly written, represents comparative scholarship at its best. Equally at home in radically different contexts and eras, its expositions are vivid and its arguments compelling." - The Comparatist

"A lively and intriguing investigation . . . Considering that speculative thinking tends to be forward-looking, Rogers’s study takes us back through history, offering a fascinating genealogy of future thinking." - American Literary History