Futures studies also includes normative or preferred futures, but a major contribution involves connecting both
extrapolated (exploratory) and normative research to help individuals and organisations to build better social futures
amid a (presumed) landscape of shifting social changes. Practitioners use varying proportions of inspiration and
research. Futures studies only rarely uses the scientific method in the sense of controlled, repeatable and falsifiable
experiments with highly standardized methodologies, given that environmental conditions for repeating a predictive
scheme are usually quite hard to control. However, many futurists are informed by scientific techniques. Some
historians project patterns observed in past civilizations upon present-day society to anticipate what will happen in
the future. Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West" argued, for instance, that western society, like imperial Rome,
had reached a stage of cultural maturity that would inexorably lead to decline, in measurable ways.
Futures studies is often summarized as being concerned with "three Ps and a W", or possible, probable, and
preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are low probability but high impact events (positive or negative), should
they occur. Many futurists, however, do not use the wild card approach. Rather, they use a methodology called
Emerging Issues Analysis. It searches for the seeds of change, issues that are likely to move from unknown to the
known, from low impact to high impact.