Text books define history in terms of events and individuals. Hari Sheldon — the epicentre of thought in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series — posits an alternate perspective where the ebb and tide of the human saga is independent of both events and individuals and follows what others call the flow of destiny — the inevitable. But what sets Asimov’s interpretation stand apart from those of others is that he packages destiny in the garb of statistical inevitability.
What does this mean ?
It means that even if specific individual were not present, or specific events did not happen, the tide of history will — by and large — be the same. If Hitler was not born then the circumstances in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century would still have resulted in something like the Second World War. If Isaac Newton was not around and the apple did not fall on his head, it is very unlikely that we would still not have known about gravitation. Some one else would have figured this out … but this someone else could not have done this before the European Renaissance ! So it is these broad trends of society that are the real actors who play out saga of human history.
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