The deeper details of psychohistory aren't explained, but the bigger picture is. A few times the books make the analogy to it being like the science that predicts the movements of gases. While the individual movements of the particles that make up the gases are unpredictable, in totality the movement of a cloud of gas is predictable. The same can be said of individuals to their various social formations.
I wouldn't call this dialectical. But I'd have to reread some before completely dismissing Asimov as anti-dialectical.
I think psychohistory is certainly not dialectical, but i don't know that that means Asimov is anti-dialectical though. Marx use of dialectics are an admission that the sort of reductive analysis that science relies on isn't possible on a society. You can't easily cut society up and analyze part of it in a vacuum. I think Asimov asked the opposite question (instead of what do we do if we can't be reductive) he asks what would be needed to be reductive. Hari Seldon is given everything he needs to do that. He gets access to a robot who has access to history long since forgotten, and who is capable of reading and manipulating minds, and who has done so for the purpose of changing history. He further had access to all of the psychological and mathematical knowledge of the empire.
I don't think so. Asimov's conception of "psychohistory" is more of the "empire gets too big and decadent and then it just falls apart due to the decadence and nothing else" meme and less a fictional version of historical materialism.
At least that's how I'm remembering it there might be more nuance to it.
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I liked it.
The deeper details of psychohistory aren't explained, but the bigger picture is. A few times the books make the analogy to it being like the science that predicts the movements of gases. While the individual movements of the particles that make up the gases are unpredictable, in totality the movement of a cloud of gas is predictable. The same can be said of individuals to their various social formations.
I wouldn't call this dialectical. But I'd have to reread some before completely dismissing Asimov as anti-dialectical.
I think psychohistory is certainly not dialectical, but i don't know that that means Asimov is anti-dialectical though. Marx use of dialectics are an admission that the sort of reductive analysis that science relies on isn't possible on a society. You can't easily cut society up and analyze part of it in a vacuum. I think Asimov asked the opposite question (instead of what do we do if we can't be reductive) he asks what would be needed to be reductive. Hari Seldon is given everything he needs to do that. He gets access to a robot who has access to history long since forgotten, and who is capable of reading and manipulating minds, and who has done so for the purpose of changing history. He further had access to all of the psychological and mathematical knowledge of the empire.
I don't think so. Asimov's conception of "psychohistory" is more of the "empire gets too big and decadent and then it just falls apart due to the decadence and nothing else" meme and less a fictional version of historical materialism.
At least that's how I'm remembering it there might be more nuance to it.
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I mean, we're talking about a book series where they have nuclear ashtrays. That gets my vote.
I love the Foundation books