Not sure I agree, to be honest.
Psychohistory can be passed off as just applied sociology. No drama there, but not too silly. The problem for me is that the original novels are simply too episodic.
You could do Foundation's Edge or Foundation and Earth as more straightforward dramas - but without the prior stuff, they'd make no sense.
I think.
I mean, it's 30 years since I read any of 'em.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 19:32,
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I understood Psychohistory as extremely advanced mathematics rather than sociology. Maybe I need to read that again.
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evil_andy Stick stick stick stick sticky sticky stick stick, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 21:06,
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I think it's a kind of probablistic forecasting.
I read somewhere that Asimov considered the possibility that he should have called it psychosociology or something.
It doesn't strike me as all that important. It's still a matter of extrapolating trends to predict the future (though in Foundation it does seem ridiculously precise).
Hari Seldon was basically a Space Actuary.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 26 Aug 2020, 22:43,
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Not all that important? It is the foundation of The Foundation!
Isaac Arthur has an episode explaining many reasons why it cannot work (black swans, unpredictable quantum events, lack of computing power, stacking errors/random variables, 'free will,' quantum cheeseburgers, etc.)...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uh-VQy24l8
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 14:51,
Reply)
I think it's meant to be a combination of both.
Like, once the you're dealing with social organisations of many billions of individuals, then your sociology is predictable with maths.
I always saw it as analogous to chemistry... you don't know what any individual molecule is doing precisely, but you do know how an Avogadro constant of molecules will behave in general.
(, Thu 27 Aug 2020, 10:31, Reply)