Quotes About Psycho-history

My favorite Asimov works were the 'Foundation' books because the concept, at the time, was crazy, but psycho-history has now turned out to be an actual real thing. You can predict the actions of large groups of people once you understand, for lack of a better way to put it, their way of existing and their prejudices.

Pyscho-history dealt not with man, but with man-masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in their billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser science could bring to the forecast of a rebound of a billiard ball. The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again.

For the first time, the Foundation has been faced, or perhaps, is in the last stages of facing, civil war. Till now, the attacks from without have been adequately beaten off, and inevitably so, according to the strict laws of psycho-history. The attack at present is that of a too-undisciplined outer group of the Foundation against the too-authoritarian central government. The procedure was necessary, the result obvious.

Ebling Mis said unhurriedly, 'You know what I'm doing these days?' 'I have your reports here,' replied the mayor, with satisfaction, 'together with authorized summaries of them. As I understand it, your investigations into the mathematics of psycho-history have been intended to duplicate Hari Seldon's work and, eventually, trace the projected course of future history, for the use of the Foundation.