The future according to Frederik Lodewijk Polak: finding the roots of contemporary futures studies

Among the founders of the futures studies field, the Dutch sociologist Fred Polak is one of the least known. Although he is still mentioned by several renowned futurists, very little has been written about the evolution of Polak's ideas and as far as we have been able to trace back, no retrospective work has been published. Today, Polak is mostly known for his opus magnum 'The Image of the Future', an impressive cultural-historic study of the relation between images of the future and the dynamics of culture. He was an original thinker, but his work was remarkably uneven: his encyclopaedic and erudite style has led to both very deep and very shallow analyses. Especially his earlier contributions in the 1950s and 1960s still prove a very valuable resource, although many of his ideas should be handled with care. However, his later works in the 1970s are out of tune with the rise of a more critical approach to the study of the future. This contribution fills in the need for a retrospective view. It describes the evolution of Fred Polak through several evolutionary steps from a normative sociology to a science of the future. With the aim to offer a reliable overview, we use a descriptive-analytical approach. In later work, this should be succeeded by a more synthetic approach in order to evaluate and assess the value of his thoughts.