| Books-Commentary - Isaac Asimov |
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Was Psychohistory Actually Workable?
No it wasn't, at least according to Isaac Asimov himself. In the first Foundation book Asimov maintained that psychohistory could predict and shape the future. But by the second book it became clear that it could only deal in probabilities, and over time, sooner or later, a society would fall outside those probabilities, which is why the second foundation, the mental control department, was needed to set everything right.
But if they had the mind control fellows to set everything right, doesn't that show that psychohistory couldn't predict things very well, and indeed, wasn't even needed? What was the whole point of psychohistory if they had the mind control guys to run things?
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The commentator Delilah Finch
posts on 6/30/2008 5:23:18 AM
Actually, Psychohistory WAS worthless according to R. Daneel.According to Olivaw,the Second Foundation wasnt a backup but the ultimate goal. He/It discovered mentalics a while back. And "guided" Seldon to create the First Foundation for the purpose of gathering mentalics for procreation,to become the ancestors of the Second Foundation. And neither the First nor Second foundations could predict such an anomoly as the Mule which is why he wreaked so much havoc. The Second Foundation had no detection method for anyone related to the Gaia world-mind(where the Mule ended up getting exiled from.
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The commentator io
posts on 9/13/2005 4:07:55 PM
As any statistical discipline concerning human behavior, psychohistory can just rely on probabilities or, to be more exact, on merely probable predictions about the future. The fact is that a science based on man-masses (as Asimov calls them) can't take into account single individuals' behaviors and this is a very big problem when you think that the main decisions that alter the course of history are made by single individuals. See, it's probably true that the several trends characterizing history depend on man-masses (they make these trends "trendy" and that's why most of people will follow them), but still the big decisions are made by a small group of individuals deciding for everyone. And this is where psychohistory would likely fail if it was applied on our real world. Just to make some examples of what I mean: who could have predicted the birth of a man such as Napoleon Bonaparte, a man who radically changed the strategy of war, with all the consequences this fact dragged along? Who could have predicted that Columbus would one day sail off the old continent and discover a whole new continent without the tiniest clue about where he had just landed? That's why I don't think psychohistory would work so perfectly in our real world as it does in Asimov's fiction.
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The very well respected commentator Alex
posts on 8/20/2005 9:40:48 PM
It's just like Io said. The second Foundation and the mind control guys were only there to put the galaxy back on track if something should happen like thw Mule taking over the galazy or however it was.
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The commentator io
posts on 8/19/2005 12:35:05 PM
It's not like psychohistory is useless because of the mind-control guys from the second foundation: first because these guys use psychohistory themselves and couldn't accomplish their tasks without it and then because the existence of the second foundation itself was planned by Seldon and isn't out of his project. Indeed, the second foundation should be seen as a back-up plan in case Seldon project goes through some unpredictable event the jeopardize the very project: in this case the second foundation would see to fix the plan back to the original project (that's what happens when the Mule conquers the first foundation). That's why psychohistory and mind-control guys can't exist without each other.
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Eric Voorhies
posts on 8/11/2005 4:36:36 AM
The reason the Second Foundation was needed was that the First Foundation was a very, very long shot. Think of a pool shot in which you hit one ball, which bounces around like crazy and sinks five others. Something like that.
Furthermore, Seldon wanted the 'New Empire' to have access to psychohistory, but couldn't afford to make the techniques available to the First Foundation. So a Second Foundation that would eventually merge with the First was required.
In Asimov's setting, psychohistory allowed Seldon to set up a Foundation that would eventually overcome all contenders and become very powerful. So yes, it worked. But it had limits, because it could not be used to predict the actions of individuals, or even of individual planets.
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The commentator John Ohrenstein
posts on 6/26/2005 5:34:41 PM
Given the time period when Asimov was writing Foundation, psychohistory was an interesting idea. That was an era when we (the US of the 1950s)thought everything could be quantified and made predictable.
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The commentator Jess
posts on 3/10/2005 12:12:53 AM
how do you work psychohistory? Is there a formula?
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the posters.
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