
Professor Hari Seldon explaining, to his fellow social scientists, at a time 50,000 years into the future, how the new science of "psychohistory" will be able to shorten the time (transition state) between during the transition to the new civilization.

Professor Hari Seldon explaining, to his fellow social scientists, at a time 50,000 years into the future, how the new science of "psychohistory" will be able to shorten the time (transition state) between during the transition to the new civilization.

In hmolscience, psychohistory (CR:6) is a fictional scientific theory, developed by Isaac Asimov, as told through the mind of the character Hari Seldon, in his seven-volume Foundation Series (1942-1993), conceptualized as futuristic science that is able to predict the rise and fall of a fictional Galactic Empire, similar, in some ways, to earlier non-fictional social physics stylized attempts to predict the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, such as told in Edward Gibbon’s six-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89), which Asimov had just finished reading (for the second time), when he conceived the concept.

Cliodynamics
In 2007, Russian-born American scientist Peter Turchin (1957-) (Ѻ), who read Asimov’s Foundation Series 30-years ago, developed his own free will implicit so-named “cliodynamics” (Ѻ), from Clio, the muse of history, and dynamics, Greek “power” (forces moving bodies per unit time), conceptualized as non-fictional version of psychohistory (Ѻ)(Ѻ), some of which is supposedly found in his War and Peace and War: the Rise and Fall of Empires. (Ѻ)

Quotes
The following are representative quotes:

“The laws of history are absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.”
— Isaac Asimov (1952), “girl describing Hari Sheldon’s psychohistory”, Foundation and Empire [1]

“Hari Seldon devised psychohistory by modeling it upon the kinetic theory of gases. Each atom or molecule in a gas moves randomly so that we can’t know the position or velocity of any one of them. Nevertheless, using statistics, we can work out the rules governing their overall behavior with great precision. In the same way, Seldon intended to work out the overall behavior of human societies even though the solutions would not apply to the behavior of individual human beings.”

— Isaac Asimov (1986), “Explanation by character Janov Pelorat” [2]

“I assumed that the time would come when there would be a science in which things could be predicted on a probabilistic or statistical basis.”
— Isaac Asimov (1987), “Interview on Psychohistory with Terry Gross”, NPR Fresh Air, Sep 25

“Consider the manner in which scientists have dealt with subatomic particles. There are enormous numbers of these, each moving or vibrating in random and unpredictable manner, but this chaos turns out to have an underlying order, so that we can work out a quantum mechanics that answers all the questions we know how to ask. In studying society, we put human beings in the place of subatomic particles, but now there is the added factor of the human mind. To take into account the various attitudes and impulses of mind adds so much complexity that there lacks time to take care of it all.”
— Isaac Asimov (1989), “Hari Sheldon” to Emperor Cleon”, Prelude to Foundation [3]

“Could not mind, as well as mindless motion, have an underlying order.”
— Isaac Asimov (1988), “Emperor Cleon to Hari Seldon” [4]

“The three theorems of psychohistorical quantitivity: The population under scrutiny is oblivious to the existence of the science of Psychohistory. The time periods dealt with are in the region of three generations. The population must be in the billions (±75 billions) for a statistical probability to have a psychohistorical validity.”
— Isaac Asimov (c.1985) (Ѻ)

References
1. (a) Asimov, Isaac. (1983). Foundation and Empire (pg. 96). Gnome Press.
(b) Siegfried, Tom. (2006). A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature (pg. 127). National Academies Press.
2. Asimov, Isaac. (1986). Foundation and Earth (pg. 132). DoubleDay.
3. (a) Asimov, Isaac. (1988). Prelude to Foundation (pgs. 11-12). Doubleday.
(b) Siegfried, Tom. (2006). A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature (pg. 114). National Academies Press.
4. Asimov, Isaac. (1988). Prelude to Foundation (pg. 13). DoubleDay.

External links
● Psychohistory (fictional) – Wikipedia.