Predictions And Details

How precise might a science of society become?

"In the main, sociodynamic theory predicted quite accurately the effects of the secondary drive."

-Poul Anderson, "Inside Straight" IN Anderson, Seven Conquests (New York, 1970), pp. 95-118.

- although there were:

"...errors of detail." (ibid.)

When spacemen build a starport big enough to be called "City" in orbit around the humanly colonized planet Landomar, some young Landomarians visit or work in City:

"The elders grumbled, until we brought in sociodynamicists to extrapolate the trend for them and prove that it would never really affect their own timeless oneness with the planet. At most, a cluster of small space-oriented service enterprises would develop groundside. Which is what happened."

-Poul Anderson, World Without Stars (New York, 1966), II, p. 8.

If only all conflicts could be resolved by bringing in sociodynamicists...

"...[a] few lines of text and paramathematical symbology concerned eight billion human lives."

-"Details," p. 120.

"...backward planets were, mathematically, an elementary proposition...Great Designer, only a single world to worry about..." (ibid.)

But the point of "Details" is that the details upset the mathematics even on a single planet.

Is the opening statement that the League is a mature culture ironic? This culture caters to the whims of its leaders because their total personalities must be satisfied...