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For the study of the psychological motivation of historical and current events, see Psychohistory

Psychohistory is the name of a fictional science, which combined history, sociology, and mathematical statistics, in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe, to create a (nearly) exact science of the actions of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire.

Contents 1 Underlying assumptions 2 Development of psychohistory 3 Limitations of psychohistory 4 Asimov on psychohistory 5 Psychohistory in other fiction 6 Psychohistory Beyond Fiction 7 Psychohistory in Role Playing Games 8 Literary influences 9 See also 10 Notes and references 11 External links

The basis of psychohistory is the idea that, while the actions of a particular individual could not be foreseen, the laws of statistics could be applied to large groups of people and used to predict the general flow of future events. Asimov used the analogy of a gas: in a gas, the motion of a single molecule is very difficult to predict, but the mass action of the gas can be predicted to a high level of accuracy - known in physics as the Kinetic Theory. Asimov applied this concept to the population of the fictional Galactic Empire, which numbered in a quintillion. The character responsible for the science's creation, Hari Seldon, established two postulates:

• That the population whose behaviour was modeled should be sufficiently large
• They should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses.

Later on in his career, Asimov described historical (pre-Seldon) origins of Psychohistory. In The Robots of Dawn, which takes place thousands of years before Foundation, he describes roboticist Han Fastolfe's attempts to create the science based on careful observation of others, particularly his daughter Vasilia. In Prelude to Foundation we learn that it was in fact one of Fastolfe's robots, R. Daneel Olivaw, that manipulated Seldon into practical application of this science.

The fact that Seldon established a Second Foundation of psychic adepts to oversee his Seldon Plan, can be taken as an indication that even Seldon himself had doubts about the ultimate ability of a purely mathematical approach to predicting historical process, and that he recognized that the development of psychic skills such as those used by the Mule, had the ability to invalidate the assumptions his models were based upon. The Seldon methodology, might therefore only work at a certain level of species development, and would over time become less useful.

Psychohistory has one basic, underlying limitation which was only first postulated on literally the last page of the final book in the Foundation series: Psychohistory only functions in a galaxy populated only by humans. In Asimov's Foundation series, humans are the only sentient race that developed in the entire Milky Way Galaxy. Psychohistory was developed to predict the actions of large groups of humans. Even robots technically fall under the umbrella of psychohistory, because they were built by humans, and are thus more or less a human "action", or at least, possess a thought-framework similar enough to that of their human creators that psychohistory can predict their actions. However, psychohistory cannot predict the actions of a sentient alien race; their psychology is so divergent from that of humans that normal psychohistory cannot understand or predict their actions. The end of the series offered two possibilities. The first was that sentient races actually very rarely develop, i.e. only humans evolved in the Milky Way Galaxy, and in most other galaxies, it was probable that only one sentient race would develop. However, statistically two or more alien races might evolve in the same galaxy, leading them into inevitable conflict. The fighting in this other galaxy would only end when one race emerged the victor, and after the prolonged conflict with other races, would have developed an aggressive and expansionist mindset. In contrast, humans had never encountered another sentient species in the Milky Way galaxy, so they never felt greatly compelled to expand to other galaxies, but instead to fight other humans over control of the Milky Way. Eventually, such an aggressive alien race would expand from galaxy to galaxy, and eventually try to invade the Milky Way galaxy. The other possibility was that through genetic engineering, subsets of humanity could alter themselves so significantly from baseline humans that they could for all intents and purposes be considered "aliens". The specific candidate for this theory was the Solarians; humans evolved from an old Spacer world which had genetically modified themselves into hermaphrodites with incredible telekinetic mental powers.

On September 25, 1987, Asimov gave an interview to Terry Gross on her National Public Radio program, Fresh Air. In it, Gross asked him about psychohistory:

Gross: "What did you have in mind when you coined the term and the concept?"

Asimov: "Well, I wanted to write a short story about the fall of the Galactic Empire. I had just finished reading the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [for] the second time, and I thought I might as well adapt it on a much larger scale to the Galactic Empire and get a story out of it. And my editor John Campbell was much taken with the idea, and said he didn't want it wasted on a short story. He wanted an open-ended series so it lasts forever, perhaps. And so I started doing that. In order to keep the story going from story to story, I was essentially writing future history, and I had to make it sufficiently different from modern history to give it that science fictional touch. And so I assumed that the time would come when there would be a science in which things could be predicted on a probabilistic or statistical basis."

Gross: "Do you think that would be good if there really was such a science?"

Asimov: "Well, I can't help but think it would be good, except that in my stories, I always have opposing views. In other words, people argue all possible... all possible... ways of looking at psychohistory and deciding whether it is good or bad. So you can't really tell. I happen to feel sort of on the optimistic side. I think if we can somehow get across some of the problems that face us now, humanity has a glorious future, and that if we could use the tenets of psychohistory to guide ourselves we might avoid a great many troubles. But on the other hand, it might create troubles. It's impossible to tell in advance."

Asimov's ideas figure prominently in Donald Kingsbury's novel Psychohistorical Crisis, a re-imagining of the world of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, set after the establishment of the Second Empire.

In Fantastic Four #542, Mister Fantastic, involved in the Marvel Universe's Civil War event, reveals that his real reason for supporting the superhero registration act which prompted the Civil War is due to his development of a working version of Isaac Asimov's fictional Psychohistory concept. Mister Fantastic's application of this science indicates to him that billions will die in escalating conflicts unless the act is made law.

The concept of psychohistory is also present in the Legend of the Galactic Heroes (銀河英雄伝説, Ginga Eiyū Densetsu) by Yoshiki Tanaka.

There are currently individuals and groups around the globe that inspired by Asimov's Psychohistory, seriously explore the possibility of a working psychohistory not unlike the one imagined by Asimov. As a statistical study of history that could help in the formulation of some "theory of history" and maybe as a tool of historical prediction. One notable such group is "The psychohistory project"[1]. A book has also been published on the subject, in 2002 in Greek only: "Psychohistory" (A tool for Historical Prediction) by Christos Z. Konstas[2]ISBN : 960-7928-72-5.

Psychohistory is included in the Traveller science fiction roleplaying game, released in 1977. The alien race known as the Hivers use extensive manipulation of other cultures based on psychohistorical data to achieve their own ends. The assassination of the Third Imperium's Emperor Strephon has been rumoured to be a Hiver manipulation which was based on the psychohistorical data indicating the eventual fall of the Third Imperium.

Literary critics have described Asimov's psychohistory as a reformulation, either for better or worse, of Karl Marx's theory of history (Historical Materialism) or Kant's theory of controllable history, though Asimov denied any direct influence.^[1] Psychohistory also has echoes of work in the social sciences that by the 1960s would lead to attempts at large-scale social prediction and control such as Project Camelot and modernization theory.

• Psychohistory, the study of the psychological motivation of historical and current events
• Macroeconomics, the real economics sub-field that considers aggregate behavior
• Robopsychology, the fictional study of the personalities of intelligent machines
• Quantitative psychology, the real psychology sub-field that attempts to apply statistical mathematics to psychology

1. ^ Booker, M. Keith. Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001. pp. 34-38. "Numerous critics have noticed the parallels between Marx's and Seldon's visions of history." Among the critics Booker discusses regarding the connection between Marxism and psychohistory are: James Gunn, Donald Wollheim, and Charles Elkins.

• Asimov interviews (including the above)