Anderson And Asimov On Individual And Society

See The Application Of Science To Society.

In Poul Anderson's fictional psychotechnics, there is a distinction between equations for human relations and discoveries about individual psychometrics. We found the same distinction between social and mental science in Asimov's Second Foundation. (At least, I thought that we did. See more on this below.)

Regarding the individual psychometrics:

"'A lot's been learned since Freud, both from the psychiatric and the neurological angle. Ultimately, these two are interchangeable.'"

-Poul Anderson,"The Sensitive Man" IN Anderson, The Psychotechnic League (New York, 1981), pp. 131-198 AT p. 196.

They are not interchangeable. A description of a neurological state is not a description of a mental state. Might someone with sufficient knowledge be able to deduce or infer a mental state from the corresponding neurological state? But each mental state is momentary and unique. Neurological states are objective and therefore empirically observable whereas mental states are subjective and directly experienced only by each individual. One observable neurological state causes and explains another but how does either explain something that is not observable?

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History was based on Robert Heinlein's Future History but is Anderson's equivalent of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy insofar as Valti's sociosymbolic logic parallels Seldon's mathematical equations. Anderson's Technic History parallels Foundation in a different way because it describes the rise and fall of an interstellar empire.

Both Foundation and the Psychotechnic History address the questions: what is the scientific basis of consciousness and what is the relationship between individual and society? By analyzing both works, we study how these issues were treated in sf back then. (Decades ago.)

Asimov tells us that:

"...scientists with a psychological orientation..."

- are:

"...men whose fundamental conception of scientific philosophy is pointed in an entirely different direction from all of the orientations we know. The 'psychology' of scientists brought up among the axioms deduced from the observational habits of physical science has only the vaguest relationship to PSYCHOLOGY.

"Which is about as far as I can go in explaining colour to a blind man - with myself as blind as the audience."

-Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation (London, 2016), Part I, FIRST INTERLUDE, p. 17.

Slow down there, Asimov. Axioms are not deduced from habits. Axioms are primary and deductions are made from them. If a conception is:

entirely different from anything we know;

not observational;

not a form of physical science;

as inconceivable to us as colour is to a blind man -

- then how is it a form of science? Is he referring to spirituality?

We proceed to a later chapter. The science of the Second Foundation:

"...dealt with mathematical concepts only..."

-Part II, 8, p. 95.

Maths only? OK. But that is not entirely different from anything we know. We are told that this science is similar to ancient, pretechnological speculations and that it has no gadgets but also that it has a remarkable gadget called the Prime Radiant which the present Second Foundationers use but do not understand. 

My observation: Pure mathematics is pre-scientific if, by "science," we mean empirical science.

Paraphrasing:

men transmitted thoughts and emotions through speech;

but speech degenerates mental delicacies into "...gross and guttural signalling." (p. 96);

therefore, men never really understand each other;

therefore, there is isolation, conflict and suffering;

semantics, symbolic logic and psychoanalysis refine or bypass speech;

Seldon truly developed psychology by mathematically understanding "...neural physiology and the electro-chemistry of the nervous system..." (p. 97);

generalizing psychology from individual to group mathematicized sociology;

as an aside, it is emphatically stated that neural physiology and nervous system electro-chemistry "...had to be, had to be, traced down to nuclear forces..." (ibid.) (Asimov's emphasis);

the Second Foundationers do not communicate with speech because their training enables them to deduce each other's thoughts from facial expressions and slight gestures (!)

My Observations

The mental delicacies of abstract thought are possible only because we have internalized symbolic communication.

Despite what I thought before, psychohistory is generalized from individual psychology. Psychohistory is statistical but the statistics are applied to astronomical numbers of fully understood physiologies.

The Second Foundationers fully understand each other? So they have transcended isolation, conflict and suffering? That is not borne out by later volumes. (A later volume also shows Second Foundationers transmitting thoughts across interstellar distances, which is supposed to be impossible to them or even to the Mule, but I am not going to look that up now.)

No one can deduce thoughts from expressions and gestures! Thoughts need symbols.

Everything having to be traced down to nuclear forces is reductionist and contradicts the idea of a science that is supposed to be completely different from physics.

Everything is not traceable to nuclear forces. New properties, and particularly consciousness, emerge at more complex levels of material organization. Such properties are not reducible to the properties of less complex, including nuclear, levels. They have their own laws and have to be understood on their own terms. Psychology cannot be understood simply by understanding neurons, physiology and electro-chemistry. We cannot understand Hamlet merely by understanding ink and paper.