History repeats itself

Posted by Henry on November 09, 2003

In Reply to: Who said this? posted by gayle on November 08, 2003

: "the best predictor of human behavior is past behavior"
: probably some psychologist - anybody know who?

'The best predictor of the future is the past' is a phrase common to many disciplines. I can't find an attribution to a single writer. It reflects the principle of uniformitarianism as opposed to catastrophism.

The ideas behind uniformitarianism originated with the work of Scottish geologist James Hutton. In 1785, Hutton presented at the meetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh that the Earth had a long history and that this history could be interpreted in terms of processes currently observed.