Abstract

In this paper I consider the 1972 publication of the Limits to Growth report and the so-called decade of world modelling that followed it. For early proponents, world models offered not only super-human analytical and computational capacities but something perhaps more surprising: the promise of self-revelation and a new kind of human agency. By revealing the ineradicable role of human judgement and intuition in both model- and decision-making, they were seen as tools for elevating consciousness and motivating action on the urgent matter of the Earth’s future. Such an approach to modelling depended on self-reflexive attitudes on the part of modellers and a commitment to rendering the process of model-building at least somewhat transparent to outsiders. A series of conferences in the 1970s tried to do just this. In this paper, I consider the rise and eventual transformation (if not total fall) of the idea that world modelling could be a way to understand not only the complexity of the natural world but of what makes us human.