Does the solution to our energy crisis depend upon the de velopment of coal, nuclear, solar, or some other energy source? Are we better off because science and technology have made us less vulnerable to natural catastrophes? How, in fact, do we see ourselves now in relation to our natural world? The answers to these questions lie as much within the humanities as in the sciences. Problems as seemingly unrelated as our vulnerability to OPEC oil price hikes or a smog alert in Los Angeles or Tokyo often have common, hidden causes. One of these causes is simply the way our society sees its place in nature. There are many reasons for the heavy demand for oil. Among these we vii viii I PREFACE can include desire for industrial growth, hopes for improved living standards, mobility through automobiles and rapid transportation systems, and, not least, an attempt to loosen the constraints on man imposed by nature. These constraints and man's concomitant dependence upon nature are exam ples of the intense and finely interwoven relationship be tween man and nature, a relationship that constitutes a pri mordial bond forged long before the era of modem technology. Similarly, man has explored this primordial bond through the humanities for all the centuries prior to our present techno logical age. As we will see in this exploration, the bond un derlies many of the environmental and technological prob lems we have come to label the ecological crisis."

Social and natural scientists often are called upon to produce, or participate, in the pro duction of forecasts. This volume assembles essays that (a) describe the organizational and political context of applied forecasting, (b) review the state-of-the-art for many fore casting models and methods, and (c) discuss issues of predictability, the implications of forecaSt errors, and model construction, linkage and verification. The essays should be of particular interest to social and natural scientists concerned with forecasting large-scale systems. This project had its origins in discussions of social forecasts and forecasting method ologies initiated a few years ago by several social and natural science members of the Social Science Research Council's Committee on Social Indicators. It became appar ent in these discussions that certain similar problems were confronted in forecasting large-scale systems-be they social or natural. In response, the Committee hypothesized that much could be learned through more extended and systematic interchanges among social and natural scientists focusing on the formal methodologies applied in forecasting. To put this conjecture to the test, the Committee sponsored a conference at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, on June 10-13, 1984, on forecasting in the social and natural sciences. The conference was co-chaired by Committee members Kenneth C. Land and Stephen H. Schneider representing, respectively, the social and natural science mem bership of the Committee. Support for the conference was provided by a grant to the Council from the Division of Social and Economic Science of the National Science Foundation."