Reading Henry Thomas Buckle's History of Civilization in England Volume I invoked Isaac Asimov's Foundation series so vividly in my mind that I dug out my copies of the books and started in on it.
I read the original trilogy when I was in high school, before there were any other books, so this time I was going to be treading on some new territory...as I was beginning with the first Asimov prelude novel, appropriately entitled Prelude to Foundation. And even though I only read it when I'm in bed (about to fall asleep, when I wake up in the middle of the night, and when I wake up in the morning and am waiting for Joe's early am phone call), I've knocked out a couple of hundred pages of it, and am thoroughly enjoying it and looking forward to the rest of the series.
I've also been keeping an eye out for any Buckle references...just in case. Is it possible that Asimov was inspired to create his series because he had read Buckle? Well, of course it's possible.
But in today's History of Civilization in England reading, the obverse occurred.
Check this out.
First, an exact statement of Asimov's basic axiom of psychohistory:
But it gets even better. As you can see, there's a footnote (240) at the end of the sentence I've underlined here. Check out the contents of that footnote:
How do you like them 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎?
Coincidence...or something else?
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