A new path in foresight validation? Discussing the socio-epistemic underpinning of foresight quality criteria

At present, there are different attempts to establish quality criteria for foresight based on both, the epistemic and the procedural level and all these attempts contribute to a scientific discourse on foresight. But how can we evaluate whether these criteria are scientifically valid themselves and whether they correspond to a form of scientific criticism that is appropriate for foresight validation? This paper introduces exemplarily social epistemology as an underpinning theory for foresight validation by quality criteria. This is shown by the example of the foresight quality criteria developed by Kuusi, Cuhls and Steinmüller [12] in this Topical Collection, which are put in line with Helen Longino's concept of transformative criticism. Longino has been chosen because her theory includes the consideration of contextual values in discussions of scientific objectivity and provides concrete criteria of transformative criticism. This paper is a major contribution to underpinning foresight by social epistemology and to validating quality criteria by a comprehensive form of scientific criticism, which takes the scientific interdisciplinary nature of foresight into account.