The Future History: future history, a future revolution, immortality, a generation ship.
Poul Anderson
The Psychotechnic History: all of the above.
Also: other future histories and immortality in two other novels.
Isaac Asimov
I, Robot: robots.
Foundation: future history, psychohistory, the Fall of the Galactic Empire and its aftermath.
Poul Anderson
The Psychotechnic History: psychotechnics and one robot.
The Technic History: the Fall of the Terran Empire and its aftermath.
Foundation
Psychohistory: a predictive statistical science of (very) large populations.
Mental science: theoretical and practical understanding of individual psychology, enabling new means of communication.
Mental control of other minds and their bodies by the Mule and the Second Foundationers.
(These are three different concepts. Mental control is not an application of mental science which in turn is not an application of psychohistory although Asimov's readers might get these impressions.)
Psychotechnics
A predictive science of society but also a means of understanding and enhancing physiology.
My Philosophical Observation
Hello. This is me speaking now. Being has become conscious. It experiences itself through individual psychophysical organisms, both animal and human. Being is one but experience divides into subjective and objective. Science is objective. Can scientists also study subjectivity?
The concept, "soul," is objectified subjectivity. Subjectivity is a property of conscious organisms, not an independent substance. Our understanding must be neither dualist nor reductionist. There will be more on this when I have carefully reread what Asimov and Anderson wrote about mental science and psychotechnics, respectively.
1 comment:
We don't -understand- our consciousness yet. That doesn't mean we won't.
In the late 19th century, physicists were increasing troubled by the solar system.
They couldn't account for the sun's energy output or age using existing physics. That didn't mean there was any unsolvable mystery.
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