A Critique of the Philosophical Fundamentals of Strategic Foresight Interdisciplinary as a Modern Socio-Humanistic Science (Stressing the Founding of Strategic Foresight Methodology on Bhaskar’s Critical Realism)

Examining the method and methodology requires entering the field of philosophy of science. Sciences have gotten help from methodology for their improvement in researches, and the science of foresight is not an exception. With the emergence of foresight in 1940’s and its establishment as a science in later decades, various methodologies were employed in this science which in the beginning mainly relied on experimentalism and were used for analyzing concepts. However, in recent decades, this philosophical basis has encountered some challenges. In this article we would undertake to study the philosophical fundamentals and the interdisciplinary nature of foresight and examine the proportion of basing the methodology of strategic foresight on Bhaskar’s critical realism. The present research is of descriptive type. Data are collected with library method and are critically reviewed with an analytical-critical approach. The results of the research indicate that the strategic foresight as a human and social science is of an interdisciplinary nature and tends to employ an intermingled approach in methodology, in which (from this perspective) Bhaskar’s critical realism can provide a suitable epistemic ground in this arena.