[ noun ] the power to foresee the future <noun.cognition>
Prescience \Pre"sci*ence\ (pr[=e]"sh[i^]*ens or pr[=e]"shens; 277), n. [F. prescience, L. praescientia. See {Prescient}.] Knowledge of events before they take place; foresight.
God's certain prescience of the volitions of moral agents. --J. Edwards.
Schwarzkopf can rightly claim a certain prescience about war in the Persian Gulf.
In the best of current fashion, columnists have wryly admitted to their (modest) share of bloopers in the preceding year, the same columns of self-denigration being carefully laced with references to their prescience as well.
Not only did she predict the 1987 crash, but she had the prescience to do so on television.
And it is in its very painterliness, rather than any symbolic intent, that its prescience lies.
But the cruciform yarnwinder represents the cross and the Virgin's solemn expression suggests prescience of the sacrifice which her son will one day eagerly embrace. Many painters, notably Raphael, took up the idea of baby Jesus as an active little chap.
I have not discussed his prescience in the 1940s and 1950s, in identifying the flaws in communism and also in predicting the stagflationary woes of the western democracies.