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.
6 comments:
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.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That interests me, about late 19th century physicists baffled by the Sun and Solar System. Asimov's THE UNIVERSE, a history of astronomy, might have mentioned it.
And what I recall of Mortimer Adler's discussion of the mind/body problem in THE DIFFERENCE OF MAN AND THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES seems to give the most satisfactory philosophic answer to that question.
Ad astra! Sea
Sean: I'm reminded of the saying that philosophy speculates about what science hasn't solved yet.
I've seen it written that 'science is philosophy with good data'.
There is a difference between empirical questions and conceptual questions. Socrates was not interested in how many material substances there were. He wanted to know the meanings of concepts like "Truth" and "the Good."
Theologian: "You are looking for a black cat in a dark cellar at midnight when you don't even know whether there is a cat there!"
Philosopher: "Yes but YOU would find it!"
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