Future Psychohistory

In his mid-20 century science fiction trilogy Foundation, Isaac Asimov used the fanciful science of ‘psychohistory’ as a literary trellis to weave a story around. The concept was simple yet intriguing: humanity’s course could be analyzed, predicted, and even guided using this new science that combined elements of mathematics, psychology, and history. New science was a familiar theme of the time. This was the dawn of the atomic age, the blossoming of the computer age, a time of recent and breathtaking expansion of the cosmological model, and the eve of the genetics revolution. Our world view had been radically re-shaped by Darwin, Einstein, Hubble, Turing, and many others.