In a book about the history of Azerbaijan I am reading I find the following sentence:
"The course of history is easy to foresee, but hard to predict-events tend to be man-made, determined by man's passions and shortcomings as well as by man's willpower"
The first part seems like outright contradiction to me. Or is it entirely clear what the author means?
Contradictory to me too. They're technically not quite synonymous: foreseeing is knowing or seeing what's going to happen, prediction is saying what's going to happen. But that's not the distinction he's making.
Pretentious twaddle. The author is striving after a rhetorical flourish but failing miserably.
The only thing I can think of is that you can predict the future--make an educated guess about what will happen--but you can't forsee who will make it happen or how it will come about.
I think it's like someone in 1770 predicting "there will be a revolution in France one of these days," but having no idea how the revolution might occur--not foreseeing the Reign of Terror, for instance.
Doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's my guess as to what the author was trying to say.
The only thing I can think of is that you can predict the future--make an educated guess about what will happen--but you can't forsee who will make it happen or how it will come about.
I think it's like someone in 1770 predicting "there will be a revolution in France one of these days," but having no idea how the revolution might occur--not foreseeing the Reign of Terror, for instance.
Doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's my guess as to what the author was trying to say.
Imaginative. But you've reversed the terms. Per the OP, said person would foresee a revolution in France, but not predict the Reign of Terror.
Which is ever so slightly more nonsensical, since "foresight" is generally given more credence than a "prediction." But in general "foresee" vs. "predict" is a classic example of "a distinction without a difference."
It looks like the author may have wanted to say that the lines of history are easy to see (ex post -- Can I say "ex post", or is that legalese?), but hard to predict.
I think that "hard to predict-events" is hyphenated in the wrong place, throwing everybody on the wrong trail. That way, easy to foresee, but hard to predict - events... is indeed nonsense.
But if you write hard-to-predict events tend to be man-made, I think I can find some meaning in it. Man-made events are hard to predict.
Working a little more with what zashibis says, predicting the future is easy, It's getting it right that's hard. It's like calling spirits from the vasty deep.
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?
(Henry IV, Part 2)
In any case, whatever the writer meant to say, he didn't say it.
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee but to enable it." Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Abraham Lincoln or Peter Drucker
Winston Churchill! - "I always avoid prophesying beforehand because it is much better to prophesy after the event has already taken place."
In any case, if there is no free will, then everything is predetermined, even if we don't and can't work out (foresee or predict either) what it is.
The science of working out what is already certain is a difficult nigh impossible thing. We may as well treat it as uncertain...
...and then pretend to foresee or predict it, rather than scientifically fall flat on our feet!