Anticipation

Meta-level research – such as data-mining of published research – is associated with established fields of scientific inquiry. Anticipation, ascertaining an alternative perspective, suggests a new frontier in science. The realisation of the integrated nature of knowledge about anticipation will eventually supersede the current fragmentation of research in this new inquiry domain. The subject's inter- and cross-disciplinarity justifies the effort to document the breadth and depth of the anticipation research, even when the word anticipation is not spelled out. The identifier is clear: what happens before a possible outcome is even triggered? The aim is to assist those who are still not fully aware of the encompassing nature of anticipation, but interested in the subject, to formulate and test their own hypotheses. In some areas (such as computer-based applications), the expectation of reproducible results (characteristic of the nomothetic) is justified; in others, pertinent to the living (characteristic of the idiographic), anticipation proves rather difficult to define and probably impossible to emulate.