thoughts: Foundation

“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.’ I’ll improvise.”
-Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov is one of the most well known science fiction authors of all time. The period in which he wrote became known as the golden age of science fiction, due to the quality and progressiveness of his novels, along with the work of a few other renowned authors: John W. Campbell, Kurt Vonnegut, and Robert A. Heinlein to name a few. 

In was during this period that Asimov produced his most well known work, the Foundation series. Originally published in the 50's as a trilogy of novels, the series was later expanded, some 30 years later, to encompass 4 more novels; bringing the total to seven novels published over the course of four decades. Asimov also had a PhD in biochemistry, and he was a professor at Boston University (he eventually stopped teaching to pursue writing full time). Evidently, his academic background and high level of education convinced everyone that his books should be classified as a more legit version of science-fiction, and thus they are normally categorized under a genre referred to as hard science-fiction. How is it different than regular SF? As far as I can tell, it sounds like when your invented science and technology is believable enough, your work gets to be classified as hard science-fiction. Precisely who gets the privilege of deciding which sub-genre your science fiction belongs in, I am not sure.

I just finished reading Asimov's first hard SF novel, Foundation. It was recommended to me by my roommate Sam, so right away I knew it was probably going to be shit..but alas, even a broken clock makes good book recommendations twice a day.¹ I quite enjoyed Foundation, despite not experiencing the same sort of emotional engagement I do with other good sci-fi and fantasy novels. This is mainly because the book is actually structured as a number of unconnected (or loosely connected) stories, taking place in chronological order but involving mostly different characters and different places. As such, I wasn't able to invest as much into the characters when their development was limited to 30-50 pages or so.

The upside, however, is that this different sort of book structuring is one of the main reasons I liked it. I don't think I've ever read a SF novel like Foundation. The scale of time over which the story takes place and the multiple jumps in time to different eras should make it more difficult to feel any sort of plot continuity or momentum within the story, especially since many of the characters die within the time span covered. But it works because you are interested in a cause not limited or pursued by one singular individual, but a cause being pursued by generations of individuals - the establishment of a galaxy-wide empire! It is a really unique concept and it raises different sorts of questions and ideas than your typical hero-centric SF novel might.

The idea I thought about a lot is the concept of determinism in Foundation. Determinism is the notion that our actions and decisions are not of our own volition; instead they have already been predetermined and our future is already set in stone, it just hasn't happened yet. The rationale behind this line of thinking could be based in either science or religion (or in a bowl of alphagetti for that matter), but the psychological consequences are the same. 

From a religious perspective, Christian theology to be specific, the evidence for determinism is certainly indirect - as in God never out right said he already decided everything for you, but you can still find some pretty suggestive passages from the good ol' Holy Textbook:

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremih 29:11

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
Proverbs 16:9

Now, these are obviously quite subjective, and you could make a case that even if The Big Guy has set out a plan for you, you are not destined to follow it. But if we also take into account that God is said to be omnipresent and omniscient, i.e He exists at all points in time and is not temporally bound, then it's hard to logically reconcile this idea with the notion that we still have free will and the autonomy to change our futures. I haven't decided what I'm going to have for dinner yet, but God, in principle, should be able to tell me using his omniscient superpowers.

There is also an argument to be made for determinism from a scientific basis. It is based on the assumption that our brains are constrained by the same causal relationship that all physical matter is grounded in, in other words that our decisions are an effect of a set of preceding causes, and thus can be predetermined. As far as I understand the argument boils down to these assumptions:

1. Our brains, and by extension our minds, are governed solely by the laws of physics and our decisions are the result of an insanely complex interaction of chemical, electrical, and physical forces
   
2. The entire universe and all things within it are bound by the laws of physics.
3. The universe started from an initial point in time with a specifically defined set of conditions (big bang)
4. The laws of physics are objective, deterministic, and can be mathematically described

∴ The entire state of the universe can be calculated at any point in time, given a sufficiently powerful calculator.

Basically, the same way we can calculate the trajectory of a flying projectile, given its initial position and velocity, we could also calculate what I'm going to decide to have for dinner tonight if we knew: the laws of physics perfectly (which is possible according to assumption 4) and the complete initial conditions during the big bang (assumption 3).

Now I'm quite sure that the discovery of quantum mechanics and it's probabilistic nature has taken the wind out of determinism's sails - but my point is that the theory of determinism is an old concept, and one not completely without merit.  It has some interesting philosophical consequences, and I think that Asimov was trying to touch on some of these ideas when writing Foundation. I found that the story is very much thematically rooted in determinism, in a way. 

The basis for a deterministic universe in Foundation is the existence of a branch of science called psychohistory. Psychohistory is basically social statistics on steroids. By examining the state of society and various "forces" in motion, psychohistorians are able to mathematically make predictions about the future with extraordinary accuracy. Granted, psychohistory is not able to make accurate predictions about an individual's actions, as the science is still statistically based and deals with masses of humans. It follows the law of large numbers, so the bigger the population under analysis - for example the population of an entire galaxy - the more accurate the results will be. Asimov describes psychohistory in Foundation thus:

Psychohistory was the quintessence of sociology; it was the science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equations. [—] The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reaction of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy that could be achieved.

In the story, Dr. Hari Seldon is the greatest and most important contributor to the science of psychohistory ever, and he plays a central role in the novel's plot. So how is this the same as absolute determinism? Its not, technically, but I think it has similar psychological repercussions on the characters who understand and know of it. That's what I found quite interesting in the story - the actions of characters who are fully aware of the future course of events. They act in accordance with this knowledge to support the realization of these predictions, and I wonder if that is born out of a sense of obligation, or because they believe it is inevitable, or possibly because it fulfills them with a sense of purpose?

To provide some context, at the start of Foundation we meet the previously mentioned Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian working at the University of Trantor, on the planet of Trantor, which is the capital of the galactic empire. Seldon is unshakably sure in his prediction that the empire will collapse within 300 years, and his attempts to prepare for this situation are seen as treason in the eye's of the empire, and because of the public nature of his predictions, they decide to arrest him. As the result of a somewhat but not really judicious trial, the empire decides to send Seldon and his associates, who number in the tens of thousands, to a planet to work on their preparations (of course Seldon actually manipulated those in charge of sentencing into reaching this desired decision). This planet, named Terminus, happens to be at the farthest reaches of the galaxy, and their "preparations" are, by Seldon's insistence, the development of an encyclopedia with the entirety of the galaxy's collective knowledge within it, and definitely not the organization of an anti-imperial army to overtake the galaxy.

After the resolution of Seldon's trial, the story jumps to 50 years later on the planet Terminus. Seldon has died, yet before he did he established a way of communicating messages to his followers at predetermined intervals in the future, in order to relay additional guidance and information. It is here that the "encyclopedists" as they are called, hear Seldon's first postmortem message, and we find out that his plan all along was to organize an anti-imperial army to overtake the galaxy.  Seldon also describes how much their decisions have already been determined by him: 

To that end we have placed you on such a planet and at such a time that in fifty years you were manoeuvred to the point where you no longer have freedom of action. From now on, and into the centuries, the path you must take is inevitable. You will be faced with a series of crises, as you are now faced with the first, and in each case your freedom of action will become similarly circumscribed so that you will be forced along one, and only one, path.

So after all that time, we find out the encyclopedia was merely a ploy, and all the men involved with its development over the past 50 years had the pleasure of hearing that first-hand from Seldon's holographic voice. I can't imagine what they must have said when they went home and their wives asked them how their day was. 50 years. 50 years of your life dedicated to something, and then a hologram of a dead old man appears and tells you he was just kidding.

The story of Foundation encompasses such a grand timescale and scope that it's easy to not pay attention to these small details, or the absence of them. I think its interesting though that Hari Seldon is portrayed in a god-like way in the story. His word is law, because he can "see" into the future, despite being dead for most of it. This brings me back to my main point about determinism, in that the characters in the story know about Seldon and of their role in his great plan to bring about a new galactic empire. They also are aware of its approximate completion date, which is 1000 years, which means they know they will be long dead before the plan is fully realized. So I'm curious as to the main motivation that drives these generations and generations of individuals to continue working in the name of Seldon, despite all of them playing such a cosmically insignificant role in its progression.

Now the main counter-argument to this might be that if you look at the actions and decisions of the "main" characters in the story, it would seem that their actions did have significant repercussions on the fate of Seldon's predictions. However, I still consider these actions trivially meaningful because, according to Seldon, psychohistory predicts outcomes for large masses, and due to its statistical nature the outcomes cannot, by definition, depend upon the actions of any individual. In other words these developments were inevitable and there were larger forces working to bring the events to fruition. Just because Salvor Hardin happened to be the one to overtake the scientists in charge of Terminus and lead the Foundation into its first militarized era, and just because Limmar Ponyets happened to be the trader that brought nucleic technology to planet Askone, this doesn't mean that their actions were pivotal and essential to the progression of the Foundation's fate which Seldon planned. The only way Seldon's predictions could be so accurate is if these events, or ones with similar consequences, were likely to happen anyways. If you line 1000 people up the same distance from a red button and tell them whoever presses it first will get $5, it doesn't matter who touches it first, but you can be quite certain before they start running that the button will be pushed. 

Given this, I think the real question becomes, if these characters are intelligent and rational actors with knowledge of psychohistory and it's nature, they could come to the same conclusion I just described, and realize that their efforts in the name of Hari Seldon's plan are not actually necessary to its success. They could cease to exist completely and the new empire would continue to progress and grow. With this in mind, why do they still devote their lives to the advancement of Seldon's grand cosmic predictions? Maybe it's because, as I alluded to with the red button analogy, there is personal gain to be found in being the individual who pushes the red button, or leads the Foundation into a militarized era, or brings nucleic technology to the outer reaches of the galaxy

It's hard to really say whether the knowledge of these grand plans, or rather predictions I should call them, really have much effect on the motivations and decisions of all the individuals that are involved in their realization throughout. According to Hari Seldon, one of the basic tenets of psychohistory is the assumption that the populations being analyzed are not aware of the results of such analysis, otherwise it may alter the predictions, the assumption is that "the human conglomerate be itself unaware of psychohistoric analysis in order that its reactions be truly random".

In Foundation, it is never made explicitly clear how much the general public of Terminus knows about the course they are on, but it seems that only a select few high-ranking members of the Foundation are privy to the details of Seldon's predictions. Certainly anyone on planets other than Terminus (where the "Foundation" is established) do not have the slightest inkling of this future course of events, and my guess is that the small number of informed persons will not have a detrimental effect on the probability that the predictions are accurate. This raises an interesting point that actually contradicts my previous reasoning where I concluded, due to the statistical nature of psychohistory, that no individual could have a significant effect on the probability that a psychohistoric prediction is realized because all individuals are equally powerless to oppose the "forces" that are factored into psychohistoric analysis. However, if you had knowledge of accurate psychohistoric predictions for the future, you would be in a far better position to affect it than an uninformed individual would. This would support the notion that the actions of the characters we meet in the story have significance and non-trivial effects on the future course of events. 

 

 Regardless of the philosophical implications on the psyche's of the characters, the strange science of psychohistory made for an interesting element in the world of Foundation. I think it was a really novel concept to base a science-fiction around, and I can see why it is such a recognized and lauded series. It clearly made me think, and even now I don't think I have fully fleshed out my thoughts on psychohistory, maybe I should read the rest of the series before attempting to dissect is philosophy any more. 

I enjoyed Foundation because it introduced me to an extremely rich and detailed world that Asimov invented. The story, although structured differently than a typical science-fiction novel, was thoroughly intriguing and I am curious to find out what happens in the next novels. 

Foundation

Fiction Scoring
Imagery: 4 / 7
Entertainment: 5.5 / 7
Writing: 4.5 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: slow-roasted braised beef au jus on a fresh baguette

¹ just kidding bby :)

highlights: Everything and More

Everything and More is a non-fiction novel about the history and understanding of infinity in mathematics. It is written by renowned post-modern novelist David Foster Wallace, the author of two novels I've previously read: Infinite Jest and The Pale King. Everything and More was part of a series of novels about science and mathematics, commissioned by the publisher, W.W Norton, called "Great Discoveries" - the intention of which was to allow contemporary fiction writers to take on such subjects. I have not read any of the other books in the series, but if Everything and More was any indication, they probably should have left the technical writing to the experts. 

David Foster Wallace is well known for his literary style and distinctly post-modern writing techniques; this includes the rampant use of acronyms and abbreviations, footnotes, and what I would call "flexible prose", i.e the use of unique words and phrases, non-conventional syntax and semantics, liberal re-purposing of punctuation and run-on sentences like this one. Basically his writing intends to make the reader put in some effort so as to not be spoon fed the important information. I can appreciate the merit of writing in this style - it pushes the boundaries of writing and also engages and challenges the reader. However, it is unfortunate that Wallace decided that writing a non-fiction novel about an immensely complex and intricate subject was no reason to change this style.

The goal of a book like this should be to confer a greater understanding of the subject matter, and hopefully illuminate the significance and value of the subject  to the reader. By not sacrificing his artistic integrity for the sake of clarity, I feel that DFW has lost on both fronts in this case. I would have probably gained more from reading a more conventional text on infinity in math, of which there seems to be a multitude.  That's not to say I regret reading Everything and More, in fact I thought I learned quite a bit about the history of infinity as a concept, and it was taught through the words of one of my favourite writers. Although I wouldn't advocate for DFW to write any math textbooks, his writing is nonetheless very colourful and expressive. 

I feel like I may be in a better position than most to have enjoyed this book, seeing that I was exposed to some pretty advanced math during my undergraduate studies, therefore a lot of the concepts and arguments Wallace talked about were familiar to me. For someone with little math background, I can imagine it would be somewhat of a nightmare trying to comprehend the math while having to deal with parsing Wallace's writing as well. Which leads to my other advantage in that I've read a bit of DFW before, which if expressed as a Venn diagram in conjunction with my semi-advanced math background I would guess the overlap would be quite narrow. Therefore, as much as I didn't very much enjoy the book, I am confident most readers would enjoy it much less.

I don't have too much else to say about Everything and More. Despite learning about some of these mathematical concepts in school I am by no means in any position to critique the veracity of Wallace's proofs and explanations. However, from reading a couple reviews[LINKS] of the novel by people who are in such a position, it sounds like there are quite a few mathematical inaccuracies; both reviewers were also in agreement that the writing comes off as unnecessarily confusing - both were quite negative overall.

One of my favourite parts of the book was the introduction actually, written by science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson. It was a light-hearted and intriguing explanation of Wallace's character and how it was influenced by the nature of his upbringing. Stephenson describes the cultural identity of a MACT - a Midwestern American College Town, which is where both he and Wallace grew up:

"The premise of this introduction, which will be nailed to the mast very shortly, is that in Everything and More David Foster Wallace is speaking in a language and employing a style of inquiry that might strike people who have not breathed the air of Ames, Bloomington-Normal, and Champaign-Urbana as unusual enough to demand some sort of an explanation. And that, lacking such background, many of DFW’s critics fall into a common pattern of error, which consists of attempting to explain his style and approach by imputing certain stances or motives to him, then becoming nonplussed, huffy, or downright offended by same. It’s a mistake that befuddles MACT natives who see this book as simply what it is: one of the other smart kids trying to explain some cool stuff."

The first half of the introduction is essentially a look into the characteristics and peculiarities of a MACT, and how this is evident in both Wallace's persona and his writing. The second half is an analysis of the category that a book like Everything and More would belong to; unique in that it's a heavily technical non-fiction book, written with a causal slang-laden style by a fiction novelist with no technical background. Stephenson writes,

"To begin with, DFW was arguably a science fiction writer (Infinite Jest), although he probably would not have classified himself as such. Of course Everything and More is not SF, or even F, at all, pace some of its detractors, but the mere fact of DFW’s having been an SF kind of guy muddies the taxonomic waters before we have even gotten started. Novelists—who almost by definition hold motley and informal credentials, when they are credentialed at all—make for an uneasy fit with the academic world, where credentials are everything. And writers who produce books on technical subjects aimed at non-technical readers are doomed to get cranky reviews from both sides: anything short of a fully peer-reviewed monograph is simply wrong and subject to censure from people whose job it is to get it right, and any material that requires unusual effort to read undercuts the work’s claim to be accessible to a general audience. So in writing a book such as Everything and More, DFW reminds us of the soldier who earns a medal by calling in an artillery strike on his own position, with the possible elaboration that in this case he’s out in the middle of no-man’s land calling in strikes from both directions."

As for the actual text, Wallace does a fair job of exploring the history and progress of infinity as a concept throughout time. I learned a lot about the problems that philosophers and mathematicians alike have grappled with in the past as the definition of infinity has changed and been refined. Heavyweights like Aristotle, Pythagoras, Kant, and others have all had their hand at trying to rationalize and rigorously define infinity, but most ended up either shoehorning it into the existing axiomatic systems of math, or just hiding it's existence using words. For example, summarizing Aristotle's viewpoints from his Metaphysics, Wallace writes:

"The distinction is between actuality and potentiality as predicable qualities; and Aristotle’s general argument is that ∞ is a special type of thing that exists potentially but not actually, and that the word ‘infinite’ needs to be predicated of things accordingly, as the Dichotomy’s confusion demonstrates. Specifically, Aristotle claims that no spatial extension (e.g. the intercurb interval AB) is ‘actually infinite,’ but that all such extensions are ‘potentially infinite’ in the sense of being infinitely divisible."

It's only as this historical tour of infinity reaches the 19th and 20th centuries that Wallace's explanatory coherence begins to wane. Perhaps it's because the arguments of Cantor and Weierstrauss and Dedekind were too complex and technical for Wallace to explain them concisely. Or maybe they are too advanced for me. Either way, I found the last few sections rather tedious to get through, which is unfortunate as the ideas Wallace introduced were described as being solutions to the centuries-old intractable problems that had plagued infinity. Cantor's Set Theory finally provided a rigourous proof of the infinitely dense, continuous nature of the number line, which had been an underlying assumption of calculus but had never been officially proven until then. It was especially important for justifying the use of differentials, i.e the little "dx" you see sprinkled throughout calculus problems, which has some strange arithmetical properties like dx*y/dx = y and y + dx = y

Cantor proved, by deduction from first principles, that the set of "real" numbers (rational + irrational) comprise a type of infinity which is greater than the infinity of the "natural" numbers (only rational numbers). This proof put the assumptions about continuity and motion, as formulated in calculus, on solid footing for the first time. In my mind I think of it as the irrational numbers providing the "glue" which bridges the rational numbers, as there are an infinity of irrational numbers in between any two rational numbers. That is pretty mind blowing if you think about it. Irrational numbers are essentially unending sequences of numerical specificity (3.14159...), so I imagine this property, which prevents them from ever being precisely "located" at a zero-dimensional point is what allows them to connect their rational neighbours. Of course this explanation is entirely unsubstantiated, but I think it is decently intuitive, and provides somewhat of an answer for why the existence of irrational numbers is so necessary.

All in all, Everything and More wasn't awful. I suspect it'll probably end up being my least favorite book DFW ever wrote, but that's okay because now I know. I'm still going to read the rest of his stuff. The subject matter and tone was similar to that of Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, which is one of my favourite books of all time, so it was definitely nice to delve into these ideas again. Unfortunately Wallace did not deliver the same level of insight and depth that Hofstadter managed to. Oh well. I'll end my review of Everything and More with its own final words:

If you’re interested, Gödel’s own personal view was that the Continuum Hypothesis is false, that there are actually a whole ∞ of Zeno-type ∞s nested between  and c, and that sooner or later a principle would be found that proved this. As of now no such principle’s ever been found. Gödel and Cantor both died in confinement bequeathing a world with no finite circumference. One that spins, now, in a new kind of all-formal Void. Mathematics continues to get out of bed.

Non-Fiction Scoring
Value: 2 / 7
Interest: 3 / 7
Writing: 4 / 7

If this book was a sandwich it would be a: Tuna salad mixed with egg salad mixed with potato salad on toasted multigrain bread