'Foundation' Season 3: What is the strange science of psychohistory in Apple TV+’s sci-fi saga?

Season 3 of Apple TV+'s ambitious adaptation of sci-fi master Isaac Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy" has passed the midway point of its 10-episode run and we've assessed the opinion that it's perhaps the finest season yet in terms of character development, story clarity, and startlingly beautiful visual effects.

One of the key concepts in the books and "Foundation" TV series is the fictional branch of science called psychohistory, which was dreamed up by the logically-minded Asimov as a mathematical means by which future events could be accurately predicted using a cocktail of historical equations, psychology, sociology, theology and the nature of human events played out.

But what exactly is psychohistory and how is it used? Let's break down this mind-blowing scientific tool and its far-reaching inferences and speculations.

Invented by the far-future mathematician named Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), psychohistory was the fictional genius's lifelong accomplishment that unfortunately was able to foretell the inevitable fall of the Galactic Empire that would then trigger a cataclysmic 30,000-year Dark Ages from which humankind might not ever emerge. This doomsday diagnosis become the catalyst for the events transpiring in the novels that have been loosely adapted into the narrative of Apple TV+'s immersive sci-fi show.

To "lighten the disaster," a Foundation was formed to create a timeless academic pillar, an encyclopedia galactica containing humanity’s total knowledge to hopefully shorten those millennia down to just 1,000 years of collapse before rebirth could naturally occur and restoration blossomed.

As Asimov wrote in the novel "Second Foundation": "Psychohistory was the quintessence of sociology; it was the science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equations. The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically."

With the Prime Radiant being a golden puzzle box receptacle for the mysterious mathematical algorithm built on pure logic and reason now in the hands of the ancient android Demerzel (Laura Birn), her millennia-old memories can now be used to fine tune the formulations. What's mucking up the process is a telepathic outlier named The Mule (Pilou Asbæk), whose ravenous appetite for galactic dominance has created anomalies in Seldon's branching prognostications of how this whole ordeal will unfold. A Second Foundation was later created to help keep things in check and on the rails.

Asimov's original idea was to conceive a sound system by which humanity's foibles and follies could be traced and tracked over centuries. Psychohistory stands way, way back and makes broad statistical predictions on a macro level by considering humanity's universal behavioral consequences. It posits that actions of an individual are often random and unpredictable, yet actions of vast populations can be predicted within a wide margin of accuracy.

Seldon's prodigy Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) is recruited to help guide the Foundation through the time stream to ensure things occur in proper order. She and The Mule are outliers in the formulations and appear as dark marks in the Prime Radiant's shimmering model, creating a layer of uncertainty in Seldon's plan and his declaration of the decimation of the Galactic Empire.

In past discussions, Asimov had employed the apt analogy of examining the elemental motion of gasses, where movements of each individual molecule is nearly impossible to predict, but taken as a whole its progressions and paths can be charted out across inconceivable oceans of time.

Asimov further stated in "Second Foundation": "It is the first lesson you must unlearn. The Seldon Plan is neither complete nor correct. Instead, it is merely the best that could be done at the time. Over a dozen generations of men have pored over these equations, worked at them, taken them apart to the last decimal place, and put them together again. They've done more than that. They've watched nearly four hundred years pass and against the predictions and equations, they've checked reality, and they have learned."

How psychohistory will be dished out and ingested in Apple TV+'s adaptation of Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy" remains to be seen as we descend further into Season 3, but we'll be gazing into those sparkling time strands flickering in mid-air right with you all the way to the cresting finale on Sept. 12, 2025.