Domains can have a strategic or exploratory focus and must narrow down the scope of the research. It examines what will, and more importantly, will not be discussed in the research. Futures practitioners study trends focusing on STEEP (Social, Technological, Economic, Environments and Political) baselines. Baseline exploration examine current STEEP environments to determine normal trends, called baselines. Next, practitioners use scenarios to explore different futures outcomes. Scenarios examine how the future can be different. 1. Collapse Scenarios seek to answer: What happens if the STEEP baselines fall into ruin and no longer exist? How will that impact STEEP categories? 2. Transformation Scenarios: explore futures with the baseline of society transiting to a "new" state. How are the STEEP categories effected if society has a whole new structure? 3. New Equilibrium: examines an entire change to the structure of the domain. What happens if the baseline changes to a "new" baseline within the same structure of society? History Origins Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah argue that the search for grand patterns goes all the way back to Sima Qian (145–90 BC) and Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). Early western examples include Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1516) in which a future society has overcome poverty and misery. Advances in mathematics in the 17th century prompted attempts to calculate statistical and probabilistic concepts. Objectivity became linked to knowledge that could be expressed in numerical data. In 18th century Britain, investors established mathematical formulas to assess the future value of an asset. In 1758 the French economist François Quesnay proceeded to establish a quantitative model of the entire economy, known as the Tableau Economique, so that future production could be planned. Meanwhile, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot first articulated the law of diminishing returns. In 1793 the Chinese bureaucrat Hong Liangji foretasted future population growth. The industrial revolution was on the verge of spreading across the European continent, when in 1798 Thomas Malthus published An essay on the principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society. Malthus questioned optimistic utopias and theories of progress. Mathus' fear about the survival of the human race is regarded as an early European dystopia. Starting in the 1830s, Auguste Comte developed theories of social evolution and claimed that metapatterns could be discerned in social change. In the 1870s Herbert Spencer blended Compte's theories with Charles Darwin's biological evolution theory. Social Darwinism became popular in Europe and the USA.