The Apolyton Science Fiction Book Club: Foundation

[St Leo]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I have read tolkien more than any other work

Jon Miller

I've read LotR 10+ times. I've read the Guide 20+ times.

LotR does suck.

[Static Universe]

Here's something interesting I found about a man named R.N. Elliott and his Wave principle.

http://members.tripod.com/vismath7/proceedings/green.htm

Elliott applied the principles of holism, waves, pluralism and internal self-organization independently of external causes to develop an understanding of human society. Elliott thought that mass psychology, impelled by emotion and not reason, was the driving force of human society. Thus, the waves that passed through society were emotional moods

http://www.elliottwave.com/education/welcome/1.htm

The Wave Principle is a detailed description of how groups of people behave. It reveals that mass psychology swings from pessimism to optimism and back in a natural sequence, creating specific and measurable patterns.

One of the easiest places to see this phenomenon at work is in the financial markets, where changing investor psychology is recorded in the form of price movements. If you can identify repeating patterns in prices, and figure out where in those repeating patterns we are today, then you can predict where we are going in the future.

The Elliott Wave Principle is named for its discoverer, Ralph Nelson Elliott. Mr. Elliott completed the bulk of his work on the Principle in the 1930s and 1940s.

He was writing in the forties at roughly the same time Asimov was writing Foundation. He started out trying to predict the stock market, but later generalized his views to emcompass all society. Some of this stuff is very similar to psychohistry.

I googled "Elliot Wave Principle", and apparently this is still used in stock market analysis by some.

Any thoughts, anyone?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Very interesting. It seems psychohistory isn't so far out after all, not that it bothered me anyway.

[Static Universe]

Here's another interesting link:

http://www.psychohistory.com/

Psychohistory, the science of historical motivation, combines the insights of psychotherapy with the research methodology of the social sciences to understand the emotional origin of the social and political behavior of groups and nations, past and present.

The center of psychohistorical research around the globe is The Institute for Psychohistory, which is headquartered in New York City and has 18 branches in other countries. The Institute is chartered by the State of New York as a not-for-profit educational corporation, the Association for Psychohistory, Inc., and for the past 28 years has published The Journal of Psychohistory, various books by The Psychohistory Press, and has been affiliated with the International Psychohistorical Association, which holds an annual convention. Its director is Lloyd deMause, whose work (see below for full texts) is used in most college courses in psychohistory.

This website contains extensive material reproduced from The Journal of Psychohistory and from deMause's books: Foundations of Psychohistory, Reagan's America and The Emotional Life of Nations. It also contains addresses of Institute branches and links to the International Psychohistorical Association and other websites and discussion lists.

[JohnT]

From the quote above:

The Wave Principle is a detailed description of how groups of people behave. It reveals that mass psychology swings from pessimism to optimism and back in a natural sequence, creating specific and measurable patterns.

One of the easiest places to see this phenomenon at work is in the financial markets, where changing investor psychology is recorded in the form of price movements. If you can identify repeating patterns in prices, and figure out where in those repeating patterns we are today, then you can predict where we are going in the future.

I said as much in this thread, in counter to some posters who can believe that the market can be mathematically timed using combinations P/E ratios and other financial numbers. My point is that it is the inexperienced investors psychology that drives the market, especially those points in history when the markets goes stark, raving mad.

[chequita guevara]

Bounce, for my benefit, so I can read it the thread weekend.

[JohnT]

Bouncing the Ender's Game one would be nice too...

[Wraith]

--"Bouncing the Ender's Game one would be nice too..."

I seem to recall warning people about that.

Next month's book is going to be pretty light on the discussion, for that matter. Unless people get into picking at the science in the book, anyway.

Hopefully the one after that will be interesting.

Wraith
"I will tell you we're doing the right thing, but I will not look at you."
-- Wally ("Dilbert")

[chequita guevara]

As a story, I think Foundation fails (yeah, I just finished reading it). At no point is there any doubt that each plan will come together exactly as planned. There is no scrambling, no uncertainty. The only suspence in the book is because we don't know the Seldon Plan, so to speak.

It was an interesting read, and in some ways, I felt like I was reading an analgoy of the history of another philosophy I hold close to my heart. Psychohistory is teleological. Everything is building towards an "unstoppable goal. (though the idea that something as fluid as history could be planned so far in advance is laughable)."

Like my own philosophy, psychohistory argues that it is the movement of larger historical forces (i.e., objective factors)that make history. It has a critical weakness, however, in that it assumes that the right person, the subjective factor, will always be present. This is only sometimes the case. They don't make the wrong choices in Foundation. They never make mistakes, or rather, only the antagonists make mistakes, not the protagonists. What if the right person isn't on the scene?

[St Leo]

What if the right person isn't on the scene?

Then another right person is on the scene. The Seldon plan canna fail.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Totally right, St. Leo.

There is one obvious answer when a crisis constrains action. A right person that sees this will be there. That is the beauty of psychohistory.

[JohnT]

Which, of course, totally obviates the "great man" hypothesis.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Why?

You assume that Seldon didn't predict great men to be there when the crisis constrains action. Even Sermak, who stands in the way, is a 'great man'. For Seldon, the crisis constrains action to an obvious answer, but it takes a great man, which he has foreseen will be there, to SEE this answer.

Predetermination and great man theory can live side by side.... though your opinion of this great man may be reduced by the knowledge of predetermination.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Why?

You assume that Seldon didn't predict great men to be there when the crisis constrains action.

No, I don't, since, as explained to us in the book, it can only predict the movement of larger forces, not individuals.

[Imran Siddiqui]

No, I don't, since, as explained to us in the book, it can only predict the movement of larger forces, not individuals.

But someone must do things to make these larger forces move in the way that they do. Someone must decide the cause of action when crisis' arise. You can either believe the masses do it, or great men.

In the prediction of larger forces (societal movements), I can easily imagine that part of that is that whenever there is a crisis, a great man will rise up.

Whoever said Seldon predicted the rise of Hardin? He simply predicted that SOME great man would arise, because that is what happens when society reaches crisis.