"...the terrors and insecurity of that ultimate isolation..."
-Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation (London, 1964), PART II, 8, p. 83.
That sounds like:
"...the madness and sorrow of the human soul..."
-see here.
Both the Second Foundation and the Psychotechnic Institute address fundamental problems within human psyches but their solutions are opposite. Whereas the Institute aims to produce intelligent, integrated citizens, the Second Foundation writes off the bulk of the population as incapable of understanding mental science and aims instead to become a ruling elite.
The Second Foundation identifies the problem as the inadequacy of language to express thoughts and emotions whereas I argue that, without language, we would not have human thoughts or emotions:
Asimov comments that speech transmits thoughts imperfectly. However, abstract thinking is internalized language. Seldon’s sociology is said to be generalized from individual psychology. However, individuals originate in social contexts.
-copied from here.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, Asimov's "psychohistory" was inadequately and unconvincingly thought out. And his Second Foundationers reminded me more of the exiled psychotechnicians we see in Anderson's THE SNOWS OF GANYMEDE.
AND the sheer complexity of human lives and societies eventually overwhelmed the Psychotechnic Institute's efforts to develop "integrated" human beings. Which must have contributed to Anderson abandoning such notions.
Ad astra! Sean
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