Prelude to Foundation - Isaac Asimov [20]
Seldon said, "Worlds and people would continue, I presume."
"Don't you feel any serious need of probing the possible conditions under which they would continue to exist.
"One would assume they would exist much as they do now."
"One would assume. But could one know by this art of prediction that you speak of?"
"Psychohistory is what I call it. In theory, one could."
"And you feel no pressure to turn that theory into practice."
"I would love to, Hummin, but the desire to do so doesn't automatically manufacture the ability to do so. I told the Emperor that psychohistory could not be turned into a practical technique and I am forced to tell you the same thing."
"And you have no intention of even trying to find the technique?"
"No, I don't, any more than I would feel I ought to try to tackle a pile of pebbles the size of Trantor, count them one by one, and arrange them in order of decreasing mass. I would know it was not something I could accomplish in a lifetime and I would not be fool enough to make a pretense of trying."
"Would you try if you knew the truth about humanity's situation?"
"That's an impossible question. What it the truth about humanity's situation? Do you claim to know it?"
"Yes, I do. And in five words." Hummin's eyes faced forward again, turning briefly toward the blank changelessness of the tunnel as it pushed toward them, expanding until it passed and then dwindling as it slipped away. He then spoke those five words grimly.
He said, "The Galactic Empire is dying."
* * *
University
STREELING UNIVERSITY-. . . An institution of higher learning in the Streeling Sector of ancient Trantor . . . Despite all these claims to fame in the fields of the humanities and silences alike, is is not for those that the University looms large in today's consciousness. It would probably have come as a coral surprise to the generations of scholars ac the University to know that in lacer times Streeling University would be most remembered because a certain Hari Seldon, during the period of The Flight, had been in residence there for a shore time.
ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA
11.
Hari Seldon remained uncomfortably silent for a while after Hummin's quiet statement. He shrank within himself in sudden recognition of his own deficiencies.
He had invented a new science: psychohistory. He had extended the laws of probability in a very subtle manner to take into account new complexities and uncertainties and had ended up with elegant equations in innumerable unknowns. -Possibly an infinite number; he couldn't tell.
But it was a mathematical game and nothing more.
He had psychohistory--or at least the basis of psychohistory but only as a mathematical curiosity. Where was the historical knowledge that could perhaps give some meaning to the empty equations?
He had none. He had never been interested in history. He knew the outline of Heliconian history. Courses in that small fragment of the human story had, of course, been compulsory in the Heliconian schools. But what was there beyond that? Surely what else he had picked up was merely the bare skeletons that everyone gatheredhalf legend, the other half surely distorted.
Still, how could one say that the Galactic Empire was dying? It had existed for ten thousand years as an accepted Empire and even before that, Trantor, as the capital of the dominating kingdom, had held