Cognition, the Future, and the Romans (on M. Popkin and D. Ng, Future Thinking in Roman Culture)

he 'future thinking' of the title of Maggie L. Popkin and Diana Y. Ng's edited volume is not, as I had originally assumed, a slightly awkward way of expressing socio-specific ways of thinking about the future in the Roman world.Instead, it stands in more narrowly for prospection, the distinctively human ability to 'pre-experience' both things that we have already experienced, and things that we have not, and to act on the basis of this ability (1).Species-level approaches to prospection developed by scholars of psychology, philosophy, and psychiatry are highlighted as the volume's theoretical framework, but the editors emphasise at the same time the specificity of physical, social, and cultural environments of cognition within particular historical societies.In their breakdown of the different aspects and implications of prospection, they accordingly emphasise the ways in which 'texts, objects, and rituals' (4) were employed in attempts to shape and control that future.This attempt to bring already complex and highly interdisciplinary approaches to brain science into conversation with (for example) memory studies, much more familiar to the scholars and students of the ancient world who are the prime audience of the volume, is ambitious and demands a great deal of effort from contributors and readers alike.In what follows, I will outline and briefly evaluate the individual contributions, before offering some overall reflections.Popkin and Ng's Introduction (1-22) is a fitting preview of the volume's impressive, but somewhat bewildering breadth, with its deep dives into discrete areas of scholarship and material discussions, some less familiar than others.After a brief treatment of Roman examples of simulating the future, and strategies for remembering to do things (1-3), they plunge into approaches to cognition across multiple fields, highlighting the awareness of thought processes that encourages behaviours that help people to remember to do things, the phenomenon of 'mental time travel' that prompts actions aimed at securing the intended future state, the roles played by parts of the body, senses, T