{"id":3462,"date":"2015-07-17T22:27:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T03:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3462"},"modified":"2015-07-17T22:27:30","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T03:27:30","slug":"freethought-fridayreads-foundation-and-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2015\/07\/17\/freethought-fridayreads-foundation-and-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Freethought #FridayReads \u2013 Foundation and Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/07\/foundation-and-earth.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3468\" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/07\/foundation-and-earth-185x300.jpg\" alt=\"foundation and earth\" width=\"185\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/07\/foundation-and-earth-185x300.jpg 185w, https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/07\/foundation-and-earth.jpg 293w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 185px) 100vw, 185px\" \/><\/a>I don&#8217;t recommend reading this book until you&#8217;ve read the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Foundation_series\">first four Foundation novels<\/a>, starting with <i>Foundation<\/i>. You may also want to read all the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robot_series_(Asimov)\">Robot novels<\/a> as well. Come to think of it, don&#8217;t read this book until you&#8217;ve read all those other books first (excepting the prequels) since this is the capstone which ties them all together.<\/p>\n<p>Why am I even sharing it, then? Because Isaac Asimov slipped his own working definition of skepticism into the narrative. In the following passage, Trevize of Terminus along with Bliss of Gaia are querying an academic and native of the planet Comporellon, home to the oldest extant civilization colonized directly from Earth. They are in search of the original home planet itself, which has by this time been lost to history.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThen the word \u2018Earth\u2019 doesn\u2019t bother you at all, does it, Doctor?\u201d said Bliss.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot at all, dear lady. I am a Skeptic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trevize said, \u201cI know what the word \u2018skeptic\u2019 means in Galactic, but how. do you use the word?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExactly as you do, Councilman. I accept only what I am forced to accept by reasonably reliable evidence, and keep that acceptance tentative pending the arrival of further evidence. That doesn\u2019t make us popular.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy not?\u201d said Trevize.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t be popular anywhere. Where is the world whose people don\u2019t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?-Consider how you believe in the Seldon Plan without evidence.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It is glorious that\u00a0Asimov distilled the rational art of skepticism down to a single\u00a0sentence. Even better, his fictional skeptic went straight for the heart of the Foundation mythology, which is <em>actually true<\/em> in universe but rests on a fairly shaky evidential foundation (pardon the pun) by design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t recommend reading this book until you&#8217;ve read the first four Foundation novels, starting with Foundation. You may also&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freethought-in-popular-culture","category-friday-reads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}