Dave Farber
2018-11-01 04:29:30 UTC
Date: November 1, 2018 12:38:03 JST
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] What Isaac Asimov Taught Us About Predicting the Future
[Note: This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis. DLH]
What Isaac Asimov Taught Us About Predicting the Future
By Alec Nevala-Lee
Oct 31 2018
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/books/review/isaac-asimov-psychohistory.html>
In February, the spaceflight company founded by Elon Musk conducted a test launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket, which successfully sent its payload into orbit around the sun. Its cargo included a Tesla Roadster â which now looks like a sign of Muskâs midlife crisis â and a digital copy of the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. Two months later, Apple announced that it was developing a television version of the classic science-fiction saga for its new streaming service. Previous attempts to adapt the series have failed, which might not have surprised Asimov, who, after rereading it, confessed, âI couldnât help noticing, of course, that there was not very much action in it.â
If the Foundation trilogy still appeals to a wide audience â as well as to corporations hoping to associate themselves with its vision of tomorrow â this has less to do with the plots or characters than with the booksâ fictional science of psychohistory, a system for predicting future events even thousands of years from the present. The notion captivated fans like the economist Paul Krugman, who recalled of the mathematician and psychologist portrayed by Asimov as the creator of psychohistory: âI grew up wanting to be Hari Seldon.â The books made an equally profound impression on a teenage Newt Gingrich, who later wrote, âFor a high school student who loved history, Asimovâs most exhilarating invention was the âpsychohistorianâ Hari Seldon.â
The historical moment that inspired Asimov has striking parallels to our own. On Aug. 1, 1941, Asimov, then a 21-year-old writer and graduate student at Columbia University, was riding the subway in New York. He was headed to his monthly meeting with John W. Campbell Jr., the editor of the pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction, whom Asimov later praised as an intellectual mentor and âthe most powerful force in science fiction ever.â On the train, Asimov came up with the premise for a story about the decline of a galactic empire, and when he described it in the meeting that afternoon, he remembered, âCampbell blazed up as I had never seen him do.â
Yet Campbell was drawn less to the story line than to the opportunity it suggested for exploring the idea of forecasting the future, which doesnât seem to have been part of Asimovâs initial pitch. The year before, shortly after German troops marched into Paris, Campbell had published an article by the writer L. Sprague de Camp on the theories of historians like Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee, who conceived of civilization as a series of recurring cycles. As the world entered an era of frightening instability, Campbell urged his writers to expand on a theme later expressed by a character in a story he printed by Jack Williamson: âIt remained for me to reduce the laws of the rise and fall of human cultures to the exact science that I call destiny.â
At the office, the two men hashed out the rules of psychohistory, and Asimov returned the following month with the first story of the series, which was published in the May 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The details of psychohistory were vague, but Asimov left no doubt about its effectiveness: âA great psychologist such as Seldon could unravel human emotions and human reactions sufficiently to be able to predict broadly the historical sweep of the future.â As Hitler rewrote the map of Europe, Asimovâs story implied that such events could be foreseen, even altered before they occurred, and the idea resonated with readers who were justifiably afraid of what the future might bring.
Asimov later acknowledged that psychohistory amounted to a kind of emotional reassurance: âHitler kept winning victories, and the only way that I could possibly find life bearable at the time was to convince myself that no matter what he did, he was doomed to defeat in the end.â The notion was framed as a science that could predict events centuries in advance, but it was driven by a desire to know what would happen in the war over the next few months â a form of wishful thinking that is all but inevitable at times of profound uncertainty. Before the last presidential election, this impulse manifested itself in a widespread obsession with poll numbers and data journalism, as captured by a headline in Wired: âI Just Want Nate Silver to Tell Me Itâs All Going to Be Fine.â
[snip]
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-------------------------------------------Subject: [Dewayne-Net] What Isaac Asimov Taught Us About Predicting the Future
[Note: This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis. DLH]
What Isaac Asimov Taught Us About Predicting the Future
By Alec Nevala-Lee
Oct 31 2018
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/books/review/isaac-asimov-psychohistory.html>
In February, the spaceflight company founded by Elon Musk conducted a test launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket, which successfully sent its payload into orbit around the sun. Its cargo included a Tesla Roadster â which now looks like a sign of Muskâs midlife crisis â and a digital copy of the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. Two months later, Apple announced that it was developing a television version of the classic science-fiction saga for its new streaming service. Previous attempts to adapt the series have failed, which might not have surprised Asimov, who, after rereading it, confessed, âI couldnât help noticing, of course, that there was not very much action in it.â
If the Foundation trilogy still appeals to a wide audience â as well as to corporations hoping to associate themselves with its vision of tomorrow â this has less to do with the plots or characters than with the booksâ fictional science of psychohistory, a system for predicting future events even thousands of years from the present. The notion captivated fans like the economist Paul Krugman, who recalled of the mathematician and psychologist portrayed by Asimov as the creator of psychohistory: âI grew up wanting to be Hari Seldon.â The books made an equally profound impression on a teenage Newt Gingrich, who later wrote, âFor a high school student who loved history, Asimovâs most exhilarating invention was the âpsychohistorianâ Hari Seldon.â
The historical moment that inspired Asimov has striking parallels to our own. On Aug. 1, 1941, Asimov, then a 21-year-old writer and graduate student at Columbia University, was riding the subway in New York. He was headed to his monthly meeting with John W. Campbell Jr., the editor of the pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction, whom Asimov later praised as an intellectual mentor and âthe most powerful force in science fiction ever.â On the train, Asimov came up with the premise for a story about the decline of a galactic empire, and when he described it in the meeting that afternoon, he remembered, âCampbell blazed up as I had never seen him do.â
Yet Campbell was drawn less to the story line than to the opportunity it suggested for exploring the idea of forecasting the future, which doesnât seem to have been part of Asimovâs initial pitch. The year before, shortly after German troops marched into Paris, Campbell had published an article by the writer L. Sprague de Camp on the theories of historians like Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee, who conceived of civilization as a series of recurring cycles. As the world entered an era of frightening instability, Campbell urged his writers to expand on a theme later expressed by a character in a story he printed by Jack Williamson: âIt remained for me to reduce the laws of the rise and fall of human cultures to the exact science that I call destiny.â
At the office, the two men hashed out the rules of psychohistory, and Asimov returned the following month with the first story of the series, which was published in the May 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The details of psychohistory were vague, but Asimov left no doubt about its effectiveness: âA great psychologist such as Seldon could unravel human emotions and human reactions sufficiently to be able to predict broadly the historical sweep of the future.â As Hitler rewrote the map of Europe, Asimovâs story implied that such events could be foreseen, even altered before they occurred, and the idea resonated with readers who were justifiably afraid of what the future might bring.
Asimov later acknowledged that psychohistory amounted to a kind of emotional reassurance: âHitler kept winning victories, and the only way that I could possibly find life bearable at the time was to convince myself that no matter what he did, he was doomed to defeat in the end.â The notion was framed as a science that could predict events centuries in advance, but it was driven by a desire to know what would happen in the war over the next few months â a form of wishful thinking that is all but inevitable at times of profound uncertainty. Before the last presidential election, this impulse manifested itself in a widespread obsession with poll numbers and data journalism, as captured by a headline in Wired: âI Just Want Nate Silver to Tell Me Itâs All Going to Be Fine.â
[snip]
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