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The diffusion of ideas is difficult to track and rarely do ideas have unique sources. So Asimov may have been influenced by Richardson as well as others, or com

The diffusion of ideas is difficult to track and rarely do ideas have unique sources. So Asimov may have been influenced by Richardson as well as others, or come to similar conclusions on his own. John von Neuman believed that automated computation would allow something like Asimov's psychohistory, and there were other people thinking along similar lines. In the modern world (shameless plug) my own novel deals with the problem of war from the point of view of computational biology (although, like Richardson, I am a physicist): http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe-ebook/dp/B00KBH5O8K/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1406867026&sr=8-1&keywords=darwin%27s+theorem http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe-ebook/dp/... One of the internal debates I had while writing it was whether to reference Asimov, but eventually decided not to, as the route by which I'd arrived at the ideas in the book had nothing to do with reading Foundation at the age of 13 many years ago (at least not so far as I could tell.)

bostik 12y ago
If I have understood correctly, the original Foundation (first 4+1 short stories) were themselves inspired by a mammoth tome, The Rise and Fall of Roman Empire. I would love to know where the idea of mathematically calculable sociological movements came from. (History playing itself out in cycles was certainly not a new idea.) I do know that the stories have inspired a number of economists, and the modern age, big-data driven behavioural modeling does have a certain familiar vibe to it...
- igravious 12y ago
  I would love to know also. I believe (gut, hunch, intuition) that it's an idea who's time has come of age. All we need are the right models, the right models are the hard part when it comes to society because you have to model the Earth's resources and geography and whatnot (society's environment) as well as take into consideration that the individual actors in society are autonomous sentient beings. I'd like to know who besides Azimov talked about this in the past. I think it would be fascinating to be able to predict the chance of political or economic instability or what have you. A lot of people are resistant to this idea because they feel humans are either too special or too complex to model in aggregate, or at least their (our I mean, giving my robot self away there) interactions are.

bostik 12y ago

If I have understood correctly, the original Foundation (first 4+1 short stories) were themselves inspired by a mammoth tome, The Rise and Fall of Roman Empire. I would love to know where the idea of mathematically calculable sociological movements came from. (History playing itself out in cycles was certainly not a new idea.) I do know that the stories have inspired a number of economists, and the modern age, big-data driven behavioural modeling does have a certain familiar vibe to it...

igravious 12y ago
I would love to know also. I believe (gut, hunch, intuition) that it's an idea who's time has come of age. All we need are the right models, the right models are the hard part when it comes to society because you have to model the Earth's resources and geography and whatnot (society's environment) as well as take into consideration that the individual actors in society are autonomous sentient beings. I'd like to know who besides Azimov talked about this in the past. I think it would be fascinating to be able to predict the chance of political or economic instability or what have you. A lot of people are resistant to this idea because they feel humans are either too special or too complex to model in aggregate, or at least their (our I mean, giving my robot self away there) interactions are.