Dune, Foundation | Chaos Theory

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Hi guys, it's Quinn here. If you appreciate my content, consider hitting the like button. It's the best way to get the YouTube algorithm to notice this channel. If you want to do more to support this channel, consider checking out the Patreon link in the description. Hi guys, it's Quinn here, and I decided to make another one of my unscripted videos to talk about something that's been on my mind recently that I think you guys will find pretty interesting. As some of you might know, I've been working on my very long history of science fiction video, and it's been great to learn about different eras of science fiction and contextualize some of my favorite works of science fiction, including Frank Herbert's Dune and Asimov's Foundation. These are two book series that often get compared for various reasons. I think one, the similar writing style. Every chapter in Dune opens with an in-universe quote, and the same is true for Foundation. Both series are concerned with the far future of humanity. Both of them are concerned with the long view of history. Both of them are concerned with humanity's longevity within the cosmos. Both of them deal with a sprawling galactic empire. Both of them have narratives that circle around the politics of said galactic empires. Both of them involve characters who have the ability to predict the future. So there are a lot of similarities between Dune and Foundation, but there are some key distinctions, and I thought I would go over them in this video. Alright, so Foundation was first serialized in the 1940s. This is during the golden age of science fiction. Some call this era of science fiction the Cambelian era of science fiction, and that is Cambelian for John Campbell, who was a highly influential editor in science fiction magazines around the time. Specifically Astounding Science Fiction, which first published Asimov at the age of 19. Science fiction of the Golden Age was de-emphasizing science fiction as purely escapist adventure, you know, such as Eggaris Burroughs Mars series, science fiction that had come earlier, and had more of an emphasis on logical consistency, had more of an emphasis on heroes that were using consistent reason and logic to attempt to solve problems. Now, this of course buds off of Gernsbecky in science fiction, of course, referring to Hugo Gernsback, but we'll talk about that more in the documentary. So Foundation begins being serialized in 1942 and is republished in 1951, and that's when it kind of really takes off. And several books are eventually published in the series over the course of the next several decades. The key novum in Foundation would be psychohistory, and psychohistry is a form of science slash mathematics that exist in this universe that allows one to basically calculate the future. And there is this character named Harry Selden who realizes that the galactic empire is going to fall, and he devises a plan that will allow humanity to survive and allow the empire to rebuild itself eventually. So the essential conceit is there is a way to predict the future through science. It basically accepts that determinism is true. It's the age-old question: if we had a smart enough machine, could we predict the future? According to Isaac Asimov, through psychohistory, we can. Now just put a pin in that and let's move on to Dune. In Dune, we have the Quiz of Tatarak, and the Quiz of Tatarak has this mystical ability to see multiple paths into the future. He can predict the future. But even the vision of the Quizatarak is not exact. It can be interrupted and changed. There's an element of chaos that is added here in comparison to psycho history. One example would be in Dune Messiah. This is a slight spoiler for Dune Messiah. Paul only sees one child. And as we know, the third book is not called Child of Dune, it's called Children of Dune. Paul's vision is not exact. It's arguable that even Leto II's vision is not exact. Now, Dune was first published in 1965. This is not the golden age of science fiction anymore. We are now in the new wave of science fiction, and new wave science fiction sought to subvert golden age science fiction. New wave science fiction also saw a return to the dialectic of mysticism and techno-rationalism that define science fiction from the very beginning. So that's the reason that Foundation has this idea of a science so comprehensive that it can predict the future, and Dune instead presents the ability to see the future as something sublime and mystical. Now, I read a textbook by Adam Roberts called A History of Science Fiction, highly recommended, and he has a great quote about Dune and Asimov's foundation. He says, Frank Herbert intuitively felt towards an understanding that history was governed by irrational rather than rational laws. Dune stands up well today in ways that Foundation's blind faith in science does not. Something else began to happen in the 1960s that might have influenced Dune as well. There was this guy named Edward Lorenz. He was a meteorologist and he discovered what became known as the butterfly effect while working on a weather project. In 1963, he released a paper on deterministic non-periodic flow, and this is a foundational work in chaos theory. So I do agree with Adam Roberts that that is part of the reason that Dune resonates more with modern audiences than Foundation, and it's part of the reason that we can get an adaptation like Villeneuve's Dune Part 1 and Part 2 that resembles the themes of the book, but the Apple Asimov Foundation adaptation fails so drastically to represent the themes of Asimov's work because people no longer buy into this idea of determinism. And the creators of the show obviously didn't feel confident enough in this idea and how it would resonate in the modern era to do a show that resembled the Asimov books. Chaos theory became widely accepted by the 80s and 90s, and it applies to all systems that are deterministic, meaning that their behavior follows specific rules, but are practically unpredictable due to their sensitivity to initial conditions. And an example is weather forecasting. It is difficult beyond a few days because tiny measurement errors grow exponentially over time. In the modern era, we understand that the universe is chaotic, and that's something that Dune inherently understands as well. There are obviously other differences between Dune and Foundation, but these are all more superficial. You know, Dune has more of a focus on characters, whereas Foundation is drier and has much less of an emphasis on individual characters. But the main difference is the way they approach determinism. Statistical determinism is at the center of the Foundation series, and Dune doesn't seem to believe in determinism really at all, and it accepts the chaotic nature of human existence and of the universe itself. This is a quote from God Emperor of Dune. I give you a new kind of time. Without parallels, he said. It will always diverge. There will be no concurrent points on its curves. I give you the golden path. That is my gift. Never again will you have the kind of concurrence that once you had. There is this idea early on in Dune that by predicting the future one can become trapped by the future. Leto II essentially wants to make sure that that can never, ever happen. Basically, he's saying that the only way that humanity can survive is if history no longer follows predictable patterns or repeating cycles. In essence, Leto II thought that prescience was bad for humanity and bad for the universe. And by the end of God Emperor of Dune, humanity moves forward on a unique, unpredictable trajectory, which also means that perhaps his vision of the future isn't exactly set in stone either, because of chaos. So that's my take on the main core differences between Dune and Foundation. I've done another video comparing Dune and Foundation. You can check that out, link in the description. Thanks so much, guys, for watching. Make sure you like and subscribe for more Queens ideas.