Prelude: scientists as prophets and the rhetoric of prophecy
The Delphic oracle and ancient prophetic ethos
The natural magician and the prophet: Francis Bacon's ethical alchemy
Confirming signs: the prophetic ethos of the early Royal Society
Interlude: competing ethical models and a catch-22
J. Robert Oppenheimer: cultic prophet
Rachel Carson, kairotic prophet
Media, metaphor, and the "oracles of science"
Climate change and the technologies of prophecy
Postlude: problems and solutions.