thejdizzler
18d ago
The Foundation by Asimov Review: Materialist vs Great Man Theories of History
My History with this Book
Every summer my philosophy book group reads one to three novels, both to connect with themes that are more difficult to convey through rhetoric, and to give ourselves a small break while people are traveling, working additional jobs, or trying to recover from the school year. We first read Blood Meridian in June and July, which I did not enjoy but managed to get a lot out of philosophically. By popular vote, the second book, to be discussed in August, was determined to be Foundation, the first book in the American science fiction great’s imaginatively named Foundation trilogy. I was a little skeptical of this book before it was even put forward as an option. I had last read it when I was fourteen [1], and I found my friend Bella’s pitch for reading the book, which was concerned with free will versus determinism, to be rather uninteresting [2].
However, the people spoke and we did end up reading this book. Much to my surprise it ended up being the perfect thematic counterpart to Blood Meridian’s focus on the power of violence, and brought up an interesting debate about different theories of history [3], despite being of relatively poor literary quality on the level of prose, plot, or characters.
Short Plot Summary
The Galactic Empire is entering a period of decadence, which will, within a few short decades, transform into a decline, and then finally into a fall within three centuries. Of course, this being the height of the Empire’s power and influence, no one believes this is likely to happen at all, except for Peter Turchin, sorry I mean Hari Seldon, who has used advanced statistics and sociology to predict that the capitol, Trantor, will fall into anarchy within three hundred years. According to Seldon and his philosophical/scientific movement of psychohistory, there’s nothing that can be done about it at this point, but if the Empire plays its cards right and provides resources for a scientific station called the Foundation at the edge of the galaxy, the coming dark ages can be shortened significantly.
Of course, suggesting that the Empire could possibly fall or that there could be anything wrong with the current clearly corrupt and ineffective ruling structure of the galactic government is high treason. Seldon is put on trial, and his project is discredited, although the government does provision the outer rim world of Terminus for the project of constructing a galactic encyclopedia.
Seldon foresaw that the galactic government would be completely unwilling to take his project seriously, and so both his trial and the founding of a scientific colony on Terminus are exactly according to his plan. This colony, known as the Foundation, is slowly guided through a series of crises by various Hari Seldon clones [4]. These individuals use the power of religion and economics to first assert the independence of the Foundation, and then to dominate its local interstellar neighborhood by the end of the book.
Non-violence as a Sustainable Way to Establish Political Power
In contrast to Blood Meridian, and perhaps surprisingly given the premise of galactic (re)conquest, Foundation is an almost completely non-violent book. This is certainly deliberate: one of the early Hari Seldon clones (Salvador Hardin) actually states the following when asked to sanction a bloody war with the Foundation’s neighbors:
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
All three of the major crises in this book are overcome through non-violent and rather clever means, which reeks a little bit of a revenge of the nerds fantasy, although it still makes a certain amount of sense.
Wars are generally very costly because the capital expended to run them successfully is often completely destroyed, meaning that war is usually not even a zero-sum game, but actually a negative sum game. Even if you win, the resources and lives lost by both sides cannot be recovered, meaning war is an incredibly short-sighted way of winning and maintaining political power, especially if you want to rule over the entire galaxy. Those lives and resources will be needed to help you win influence later in the process!
Blood Meridian in its own way actually supports this thesis on violence too. All the destruction caused by Glanton’s gang doesn’t actually lead them anywhere, and every single one of them ends up hanging from some kind of rope (literal or metaphorical) by the end of the book.
That said, war is sometimes inevitable, as “the last argument of kings,” and I believe in the later entries of this series, it is given its proper place as a political tool.
Structural-Demographic or Great Man Theories of History?
The most interesting part of the book for me was the academic discipline of psychohistory, which Seldon and his trainees used to make large-scale predictions about the future of galactic civilization. These methods are implied to be largely statistical: they cannot predict with certainty that certain events will or will not occur, but they can provide confidence intervals and probabilities for such occurrences. While this might seem like science fiction technology on the level of the fusion drive, it’s actually something that we can more or less do now. Human behavior becomes more, not less, predictable as the number of individuals under consideration increases, making it relatively simple to predict certain facts about the future. For instance, because of declining birth rates across the whole world, we know that there will be a reckoning with the current pension system sometime this century, just as certainly as we know that the sun will cook all life to a crisp on Earth in around a billion years. Marx, perhaps the first psychohistorian, and later scientists like Peter Turchin and Joseph Tainter have formalized this study as an academic discipline. Turchin’s work, which he dubs structural-demographic theory of history, I find to be particularly interesting.
In the book, Seldon recognizes that the Galactic Empire is almost certainly going to collapse within three centuries. The probability of this is so high in his calculations that it’s not worth it to even bother trying anything to avert it. He does however see a possibility of reducing the amount of time between the fall of this empire and the rise of the next through the creation of the eponymous Foundation. Because he is predicting so far in the future, this seemingly small action actually can have a very profound effect, as in Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder where treading on the wing of a butterfly in the Cretaceous completely changes human society [5].
The novel, probably because it is a novel and not a hypothetical research paper, has to rely on another theory of history to drive its plot forward. While Seldon is able to predict with broad strokes the various crises that the Foundation faces, the polity relies on the genius of various great men to get them out of these crises. I wrote an essay a long time ago in support of this theory of history and I still stand by a lot of what I said, but with many more caveats.
In the pre-modern world where populations and material throughput were comparatively much smaller, statistical prediction was much less effective at plotting the course of history. A single battle or a single bad harvest can make or break a nation: that’s how you see Alexander triumph over the Persians in the 4th century BC and Canada today speaking French and English rather than Norwegian.
Of course, material factors are still important. Rome underwent a similar demographic decline to us, which locked in the empire’s fate at a certain point, and the increase of salt concentrations in the soil of the Fertile Crescent due to poor irrigation practices also doomed that region to relative irrelevance in the modern era.
In modern times, great men are still important, but more as a vehicle for what Hegel calls “Die Weltseele” [6] or the world-soul in English. Large movements like the French Revolution, the various communist revolutions, and the rise of fascism were all inevitable from a statistical understanding of history. The leaders of these movements did not necessarily bring them into being, but rather channeled the underlying forces that already existed in the population.
Maybe this latter concept is what Asimov intended his characters in Foundation to portray, but it didn’t really come through that way to me. The various Hari Seldon clones seemed to be acting against the forces of common wisdom in society, which seems much more like classic Great Man Theory to me, and in turn makes the book significantly weaker by undercutting the power of psychohistory.
Bad Writing
Despite the interesting themes of the work, I didn’t find Foundation to be a very good book. Most of this was due to the piss-poor character work done by Asimov. Despite being decades, if not centuries, apart, all the principal protagonists speak and act exactly like Hari Seldon. The villains that these glorified clones have to face, both within the government of the Foundation and in local star systems, also think and act shockingly alike. These dynamics mean that the character work that is there is both repetitive and one-dimensional.
The plot, despite being easy to follow, was similarly uninteresting. Because the central premise of the series is that Seldon’s predictions do have actual value, we know, at least in this entry, that the Foundation is going to succeed. This robs the plot of any kind of dramatic tension and leaves us only with the question of how the puzzle will be solved, not its eventual outcome.
Asimov’s galactic spirit religion was also quite difficult for me to believe in. While there have always been cynical atheist types in every society and indeed in every religious hierarchy, I have a hard time believing that something this obviously top-down and fake could actually inspire people without also converting the leadership into believers eventually. While you might be able to argue that Mormon founder Joseph Smith was a cynical con-man who just wanted a justification to sleep with his neighbors’ wives, subsequent generations of Mormon leadership clearly believed (and still believe) in the Book of Mormon. I just don’t see a way for the separation between the religious leadership on Terminus and the gullible provincials to be maintained for as long as it is in this book.
- It was also a recommendation from my dad, and I enjoyed it back then. Neither of which were very good signs for a dense philosophical text that could generate a rich discussion.
- We know that determinism is true because of physics and biology, and even when we examine our subjective feelings of choice, there’s nothing that we can actually come away with that looks like “free will”.
- Which was the topic of one of my first blog posts ever.
- Not literally, it just feels that way, probably because Asimov’s character work is so poor.
- One of the inspirations for the term “Butterfly Effect”
- This is from a letter that Hegel sent to Niethammer while in Jena, where he saw Napoleon (the current world-soul) on horseback.
thejdizzler
23d ago
On a meta note I am impressed that we are continuing to do these nearly 8 months into the year!
- Work: Quantifying images this week which I find to be extremely tedious. Accepted the position to start in May, so have a firm deadline to graduate, which is nice.
- Fitness. Another week another 63 miles. Weight is dropping slight (at 166 again) which is good. Feeling prepared for the marathon. Hours: 8.1 running, 1 swimming.
- Intellectual stuff: Started reading Lenin, finished Feast and two of my Spanish books. Hoping to get one more good blog post in this month. Spanish Immersion hours last week: 6.** Blog posts this month**: 2
- Finances: No ZIM divvy, but will definitely be below 4k for this month. Beginning to house hunt in Baltimore. Monthly spending so far: 3657.
- Dating. Second date sunday, have a third date coming up with the same girl on Thursday at my house! Really want to completely quit porn and masturbation and I think this potential relationship is giving the motivation to actually do so.
- Tarot. Discussed my old roommates romantic life, and how I should wrap up my PhD.
- Socializing: Long run with my friend Jeff on saturday, potluck later that day, and helping new roommate move in last week.
- Screen time: 1.9 hours. Too much scrolling.
- Meditation: 5 minutes 3x last week. Would like to make this more of a priority.
thejdizzler
25d ago
Still reading Feast. Finished my Spanish book which was depressing (really glad I wasn't on the losing side of the civil war, which knowing my politics, especially my youthful politics, I would have been). Starting on State and Revolution by Lenin for book club.
thejdizzler
26d ago
There's nowhere else for money to go but into stocks. Bond yields are still too low. Thus the climbing P/E ratio.
I used to only buy stocks with P/E of 10-20, preferably 10-15. That's completely impossible now.
thejdizzler
28d ago
Wicked is an adaption of the play not of the book. Much easier to pull off. I didn't care for PHM (although to be fair, I didn't care for the book either). The Boys starts off fine, but goes off the rails when it starts deviating from its source material too much.
thejdizzler
28d ago
Roughly yes. I don’t mind if an adaption strays from the canon as long as the changes reinforce the themes that I think the story is aiming for.
thejdizzler
28d ago
I liked Hitchhiker's Guide for capturing the atmosphere of the book(s) really well. The Lord of the Rings I also really enjoyed. Anything Kubrick has done (other than Clockwork Orange) is a good adaption in my books. The first Jurassic Park movie is a really good adaption as well.
I want to talk a little bit about film and television adaptions, and why, at least in the last ten to fifteen years, they've done such a bad job at adapting the source material. The first guilty party on this front, is of course Nolan's Odyssey, which I saw this past Tuesday. While entertaining and beautiful to look at, this film failed completely to capture the experience of reading or listening to the poem it's based on. The dialogue was flat, wooden, and filled with exposition dumps. The gods aren't present in any meaningful way, other than through storms and other weather events, which can easily be interpreted through the eyes of atheist Christopher Nolan as natural phenomena. And most importantly, the characters and themes are unrecognizable. Odysseus is just Matt Damon who feels bad about being Matt Damon: there's none of the flirtatious, prideful intelligence that defines his character in the poem. Because of this subversion of Odysseus, Telemachus's character also falls flat— how can you have an effective coming of age story when you subvert and deconstruct every part of what it means to be a man/king/father figure by tearing down Odysseus?
I don't think this phenomena is limited to the Odyssey. The newest version of Wuthering Heights is basically a porno. The final seasons of Games of Thrones devolved into a nihilistic gore-fest, which the source material most certainly is not. Even the Hobbit all the way back in 2012-2014 tried to make the charming, relatively low stakes kids book into another version of The Lord of the Rings.
It's tempting for me to blame woke for a lot of these changes, and that's undoubtedly part of it. If many of the values that were historically important in Western Civilization are now taboo, of course there will have to be heavy modification of the source material. However, I don't think this is the full picture. Many of these movies are doing really well at the box office, and I don't think woke has that much cultural appeal to the average American. Rather, I think a combination of the inherent limitations of visual storytelling and the dumbing down of stories in general because of reductions in attention spans is a more likely set of culprits.
Neil Postman wrote extensively about the first problem in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Visual media neither gives us the interiority that allows us to understand a point of view from the inside, nor really forces us to engage with an artists arguments: the movie will play on with or without our engagement in it.
I don't think this critique is entirely fair. You can certainly do a lot of subtle storytelling with television and film. The problem is now that people's attention spans are so fried that you need to beat them over the head with the themes of the work through dialogue and exposition dumps. The Odyssey is extremely guilty of this, which is probably part of the reason I had such a hard time watching it.
Why do you think visual media, specifically adaptions, have declined in quality over the past decade?
thejdizzler
30d ago
- Work: Got the job for next year which is nice! Doesn't pay amazing (62k to start, rising quite a bit every year to a max of 80k after 5 years), but I will either be transitioning to industry or taking a faculty position after 3-5 years, so it's fine. I'm excited about the project too and having a cut-off for the end of my PHD.
- Fitness. Another week another 60 miles. Think I could be eating slightly more as my sleep and anxiety have been a bit worse than usual. Returned to swimming this week too. Hours: 8.3 running, 1 swimming
- Intellectual stuff: Wrote a blog post on my Spanish learning journey. Finished our summer novels for philosophy book club and we are returning to philosophy, with a focus on historical materialism reading either Lenin or Peter Turchin. Spanish Immersion hours last week: 8. Blog posts this month: 2
- Finances: Just trying to keep spending below 4k. Next month is going to be great with reduced rent and utilities and hopefully a large ZIM divvy because they had some good earnings. Now that I'm going to be staying in Baltimore, I'm going to be house (and car) hunting. This should help both my finances and dating. Monthly spending so far: 3340.
- Dating. Went on a date with a girl Sunday. Have another one this Sunday. Was fun, but I think I may find her to be too boring.
- Tarot. No session this week
- Socializing: Ran with the pacemakers Saturday, which is a group of a bunch of old people. Nice change of pace to hear from some boomers. Also got dinner with my lab mate Thursday and saw the Odyssey with some friends last night.
- Screen time: 1.4 hours.
- Meditation: 5 minutes 3x last week. Would like to make this more of a priority.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
I'm intrigued. Tell me more about this trilogy.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
AFFC and perhaps to an even greater extent ADWD are much better written, at least at a prose level than the first three books. Much better dialogue, much more beautiful descriptions, much more interiority for all of our characters. The problem with both books is that they don't advance the plot very much and they completely explode the number of POV characters. Which would be fine is GRRM was willing to just Wheel of Time it and write 14 books, but he clearly isn't, so here we stand.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
Dance used to be my favorite book in the series. Last reread I could not stomach most of it. I think the Mereenese Blot (Adam Feldman) does a good job at unpacking the themes, and there is a lot of good stuff there. It's just not engaging in the way that the King's Landing stuff is. The North Plotline in that book is pretty good, but again it's because as you say, that George is focused on plotting and backstabbing.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
A Feast for Crows. Favorite ASOIAF book hands down. Don't mind the plot slowdown as much as some others, and although I clearly recognize that it is an inferior book to ASOS, I really enjoy the deeper interiority we get with the characters and the general theme of the book (what happens to a kingdom country when all the competent people are gone).
Also reading Los girasoles ciegos (the blind sunflowers) which was a gift from my Spanish friend. Definitely a challenge for my Spanish, but also enjoying it.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
Also don't feel bad, although I worry that his death will shield him, and academia, from a reckoning with DEI and productivity in general.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
Hope you’re doing okay man. Sorry to hear about the relationship end!
thejdizzler
1mo ago
- Work. Going to take a postdoc job here in Baltimore next year to give myself a bit more experience working with bacteria to pivot to industry after.
- Fitness. Workouts are very up and down depending on the weather, but I hit 60 miles last week and had a great long run. 9 weeks until chicago. Weekly hours: 8.1 running.
- Intellectual stuff: Now that I'm pretty much definitely not moving to Germany, I can really focus on Spanish. Wrote a blog post last week on my 6 years of Anki usage that got some traction. Spanish Immersion hours last week: 10.5. Blog posts this month: 1
- Finances: seems like the roommate isn't coming until the end of this month, so finances will continue to bad this month, especially since I bought two new pairs of running shoes ($350) and train tickets to Boston Labor Day weekend ($400). Seems like I'm going to be way over budget this month. Monthly spending so far: 2988.
- Dating. Nothing.
- Tarot. No session this week
- Socializing: Ran with my friend Monday morning and had a board game night with my lab yesterday.
- Screen time: 1.4 hours. That's more like it
- Meditation: 5 minutes 3x last week. Would like to make this more of a priority.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
A Storm of Swords for my third reread+ a Spanish audiobook about the Isabella of Castille learning chess (El tablero de la reina). The former is as awesome as I remember it, and Tywin comes off worse and worse on each reread. The latter is okay, but very Ken Follett-coded and I don't believe the characters are real medieval people.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
I'm not sure why you're being so obtuse about this point. The phone is specifically designed to make it very difficult for you to avoid hyper stimuli. Yes you can change the settings to turn off notifications, make the phone greyscale, restriction app usage, etc. When I have done those things they make me use my phone less, because, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's much more pleasant to read on a physical book or e-reader than on your phone, it's much more pleasant to write essays on a laptop or physical notebook, and its much more pleasant to talk to people in real life (or call them without the screen on). When you remove the super stimuli, the phone is not that useful, so I don't see a very big difference between what you recommend and locking it up.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
- Work. Work has been going well. I have been both much more productive and much less stressed. Turns out doing one thing at a time and taking frequent breaks means I get more done and am not exhausted during the day.
- Fitness. Unfortunately most of the weight loss was completely ephemeral (likely a combination of water loss from reduced glycogen stores and less fibrous shit sitting in my gut). However, I am feeling great running wise and have crushed my workouts last weekend/this week. 10 weeks until chicago. Weekly hours: 7.66 running.
- Intellectual stuff: Finished Foundation. Way more entertaining than Blood Meridian and I think it'll make for some great discussion in philosophy book club. I do have some very strong disagreements with the author's worldview, but that is not unexpected given when he was writing the book. Now am focusing very hard on Spanish (frustrated that my grammar and output seems to be so stuck) and economics.
- Finances: new roommate finally moves in this month which will help out finances ALOT. Ended up donating about $250 last month. 110 went to a yearly subscription to a substack I like (with no paid articles). The rest went to the guaranteed income program I'm part of. Monthly spending so far: $1703.
- Dating. Nothing.
- Tarot. Good session this weekend with my ex-roommate. Asked the deck about career moves and about my friend's romantic life.
- Socializing: Ran with my friend Monday morning and had a board game night with my lab yesterday.
- Screen time: 2.5 hours, need to get out of the bad habits engendered by the trip.
- Meditation: 5 minutes 4x last week. Little by little.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
I've had one of these for about 5 years now. They are amazing. Don't always use it (because my discipline is weak) but it makes it much easier to resist temptation because you only have to make one decision (rather than many). Cold Turkey for laptops helps a lot (you can make it so your computer auto-shuts off after a certain time).
thejdizzler
1mo ago
This is a good idea. I used to give to my Catholic Church quite a bit, but I am put off by the tithe to the Vatican and the stupid spending habits of my pastor.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
Ahhh okay thanks for the terminology clarification!
thejdizzler
1mo ago
Yes, corrected.
You can get 3 month treasury bonds....
Very cynical. This take has convinced me that this is at least plausible, so I guess Asimov's religion comes off better in this light.
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