The nature of a non-profit is much like a for profit in many ways, and
the Encyclopedia Foundation is no exception. Business plans and budgets
are as needful for either. And non-profits – like for profits –
actually compete. Sounds funny, but they do. Same as churches, though
that sounds even funnier.
But consider. Each person only has so
much money. Much will be spent on living expenses, some on luxuries,
and if the person is blessed, some will be available for doing
charitable works. There are tens of thousands of charitable non-profits
though, and he can’t give to them all. So non-profits (and churches)
try to market themselves.
For a non-profit, this would be the
claim that your charitable dollar goes further with them then other
charities. Or perhaps they are filling a specific niche you like that
others aren’t. Donating to the Red Cross might be good if you value
reliability, but if you value some unusual charity like “blankets for
handicapped puppies” you’ll have to look further!
Churches must
be competitive, too. One of the nice evolutions of Christian thought
since the founding of the United States is simply this – they are nicer.
When churches were a single unified whole, and attendance was law,
they were very harsh in the message. But when freedom of religion was
established, and people only came to your church if they wanted to, you
had to stop with the scary talk of hell for unbaptized babies, and start
with what had been the original peace and light message. It made them
better. Competition usually does.
What of the Encyclopedia
Foundation? Well, we’re different than other foundations. And other
charities. And churches and businesses.
You see, in our business
plan, we specifically do not worry about competition. In fact, we
actively wish it. We are a Foundation in which the more “competition”
we have, the happier we are. We want our ideas taken and used by
others, whether they credit us or not. We want our plans for the
preservation of knowledge to be looked over by others, and put to those
people’s use. We want tons of competitors, each of them looking over
our shoulder to learn the best ways to preserve books.
We want
them all to “steal” our hard won knowledge, we want them to make use of
all of our efforts, to do their own book preserving projects!
Our
ideal dream would be that some rich celebrity gets behind this cause,
but either doesn’t hear of us, or doesn’t care, and makes it his or her
own. And goes on television telling everyone exactly how to preserve
knowledge for ten thousand years! And, taking all the credit, starts a
movement in which metal disc books are hid in safe rooms and vaults in
at least 75% of the houses in America!
Are we crazy? No. It’s
just that the point of the Encyclopedia Foundation is not to “make
money” like a for profit, or even to “get a larger portion of the
charitable donations available” like a regular non-profit. The goal is
to preserve knowledge, and the more people doing that, the more likely
it is that at least one of them will succeed.
Don’t
misunderstand, we are as human as anyone. Given a choice between
“knowledge preserved with people knowing it was us” versus “knowledge
preserved because some B-list starlet claimed our idea as hers” I
suppose that we’d prefer people know it was us. Kind of. Probably not
as much as you think. For unlike that hypothetical B-list celeb, we
know something she would not. “Sic transit Gloria mundi”, or “this
earthly glory is fleeting”.
No one cares who thought of what.
That it’s thought and done is all that counts. “The deed is everything,
the glory is naught” said Goethe. And what if in 200 years, due solely
to the idea of preserving knowledge, that the B-list celebs name was
known instead of ours? It wouldn’t matter. It would only be a name.
They would no more “know” her – or us – than you “know” any name from
the past. You know a name, you never know the person.
Ever hear
of “Sargon”? Sure. And you might – if you were pretty well educated –
rattle off some data. But do you “know” him? And does your knowledge
or lack of knowledge of him in any way change that he’s dead?
If
you don’t understand that, don’t worry, it’s not that important, but the
point is that we understand it. The deed is everything. The point is
to have the knowledge last ten thousand years – and in our very business
plan we state that if someone is inspired by us to do that, then we
count that as a win! And we do. We also are the first to point out
that it isn’t actually our idea, anyway. The late great Dr. Isaac
Asimov dreamt it up for a fiction book! And others before him had the
idea – such as anyone who ever helped on the Library of Alexandria in
ancient Egypt!
We don’t even claim that we are unique in
welcoming competition. There are other long range Foundations (notably
“The Long Now”) that are thinking in terms of ten thousand years, and we
are very, very glad of that. At least when we have an abundance of
metal discs we can send some to them. That way even if we don’t
succeed, they might, and their success will be our success, too!
The
Encyclopedia Foundation welcomes competition, and hopes that any who
wish to do exactly as we are doing contact us. We will be happy to tell
you how. It will take you a lot of good hard work, that will never end
in your lifetime or your great-grandchildren’s lifetime, and that you
will probably never be recognized for. But you will know it is worth
it. Those who know and love you will know it is worth it.
And if the knowledge is one day needed, those you save in some distant future will know it was worth it.
“The deed is everything…”
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Foundation and Preparations
At the Encyclopedia Foundation, we are well familiar with the old
saying, “When you are busy fighting alligators, it’s difficult to
remember that your job was to drain the swamp.” Sometimes, a thing you
must do to accomplish your goal takes so much effort, it can seem like
you forgot your original goal.
Consider the importance of preserving knowledge, the goal of the Encyclopedia Foundation. How do you do that? You make a plan. But here’s the funny thing, you know just where the “knowledge” is, in the 21st century it is everywhere and freely available, it’s the “preserving” you don’t have.
So you start working on the “preserving”. That can take a lot – and it has. The finding and purchasing of the first house, and its renovation, for starters. But you need a place for the books. A book is no good without a “library” of some sort. Are you ready for the books now? No, you aren’t, the “library” is no good without a “librarian”, so you have to arrange things so that there can be on site maintenance and upkeep and such.
And it helps to have a program that can make the Encyclopedia Foundation financially self-sufficient. So that needs to be worked on, too.
Then, you can start getting books. Had you done so before, they’d be sitting in the rain, or in an abandoned house. But now you can get the books.
But did you notice that “books” and “knowledge” are two different words?
The goal is preserving “knowledge”. In actuality, you may preserve knowledge with a really, really good memory, and passing it on to a young assistant who does the same thing. And for some surprisingly large amounts of knowledge, that can work well. But for the knowledge of mankind, it is not only handier, but essential, that we take advantage of the method of knowledge preservation called “writing”. Such “writings” are put together in “books”. So you need books – not because “books” are your goal, but because they are the means to the end of preserving knowledge.
Seems a silly distinction, but it’s not. If we were only about preserving books – instead of knowledge – then we’d be focusing on how to create a sealed environment that preserves a paper book for ten thousand years. Toss in an Archie comic and you’re done! But recognizing that it’s the knowledge that’s essential, we knew we’d have to take books with knowledge, and transcribe the words in them on to metal plates. That’s a more durable medium, and will allow the words of the original paper books to be preserved for 10,000 years.
But that’s still not enough. If we can say that it’s not the book that’s important, but the “words”, then we must also realize that it’s not the “words” that are important, but the “knowledge” the words represent.
Imagine a book that would solve every problem you have, and help you immeasurably. And now imagine it is in Sanskrit, but that you don’t even know it’s Sanskrit, just that your happiness and safety depend on knowing what it means.
That would be frustrating.
Yet in any project involving the preservation of knowledge, we must realize that when we store that knowledge on metal plates, with written words, that we are still trying to preserve knowledge. Not just metal plates with marks.
It is daunting to realize just how long 10,000 years is and how much can go wrong. It is not just a matter of planning for if civilization has an interruption. For in such a case, the Foundation would still exist, the books would still be there, the knowledge could be shared, and things put back on track. But we must do more. We must plan for in case the Foundation as an entity collapses, too. So that the books will carry on, and be understandable, to anyone who finds them, even if it’s 300 years after a collapse. Or 3,000.
In another article we spoke of the need for a Rosetta Disc with 1,000 of the world’s languages on them, and how we would at least be having language dictionaries of the five major languages of Earth. And we believe that in the next ten thousand years, given trends in “language freezing” that there will always be someone, even if they are a wandering savage, who speaks some form of one of those five languages.
It would seem that then we would be done. But no. What if the savage is illiterate? Another article will explain the choices in some of the books we are preserving, including children’s educational books. But such will do no good if they cannot be read. A third generation post-atomic war savage – to take the dramatic example! – may be a great hunter, but have not ever been taught to read. He knows English, but cannot read it.
So the vault will be very important – it must teach the savage to read the books it preserves. It must let him know the marks on metal mean something, and that he can learn them. And it can leave nothing to chance.
Pictographs are notoriously unreliable. No one looks at a symbol of a bird and thinks “birds fly, that’s an easy way of travelling like a god, travel takes you to distant lands, therefore this symbol means ‘far’!”, but that is about how most pictographs work. Even things as simple as an arrow – well, look at one, do you see how while you see it pointing in one direction, that the three lines are all pointing in the opposite direction? Three being more than one, wouldn’t a reasonable savage believe it was pointing to the left instead of right? If he caught on that it was a directional marker at all…
There are enormous difficulties to this, but they are not insurmountable. How we will surmount them will be detailed in another article. Suffice that you know from this article, that there is more to preserving knowledge than having a book, or any number of books. Much more.
The preparations – the “fighting of alligators” – cannot let us lose sight of the swamp draining job of preserving knowledge. But such “alligators” of preparation do need to be fought and conquered, or the real goal won’t ever succeed. Such work can seem boring and off topic – fixing houses, researching books, researching other time vaults, studying various long term organizations, coming up with esoteric solutions to fabulously unlikely future problems - but it’s all needful.
In fact – essential.
Consider the importance of preserving knowledge, the goal of the Encyclopedia Foundation. How do you do that? You make a plan. But here’s the funny thing, you know just where the “knowledge” is, in the 21st century it is everywhere and freely available, it’s the “preserving” you don’t have.
So you start working on the “preserving”. That can take a lot – and it has. The finding and purchasing of the first house, and its renovation, for starters. But you need a place for the books. A book is no good without a “library” of some sort. Are you ready for the books now? No, you aren’t, the “library” is no good without a “librarian”, so you have to arrange things so that there can be on site maintenance and upkeep and such.
And it helps to have a program that can make the Encyclopedia Foundation financially self-sufficient. So that needs to be worked on, too.
Then, you can start getting books. Had you done so before, they’d be sitting in the rain, or in an abandoned house. But now you can get the books.
But did you notice that “books” and “knowledge” are two different words?
The goal is preserving “knowledge”. In actuality, you may preserve knowledge with a really, really good memory, and passing it on to a young assistant who does the same thing. And for some surprisingly large amounts of knowledge, that can work well. But for the knowledge of mankind, it is not only handier, but essential, that we take advantage of the method of knowledge preservation called “writing”. Such “writings” are put together in “books”. So you need books – not because “books” are your goal, but because they are the means to the end of preserving knowledge.
Seems a silly distinction, but it’s not. If we were only about preserving books – instead of knowledge – then we’d be focusing on how to create a sealed environment that preserves a paper book for ten thousand years. Toss in an Archie comic and you’re done! But recognizing that it’s the knowledge that’s essential, we knew we’d have to take books with knowledge, and transcribe the words in them on to metal plates. That’s a more durable medium, and will allow the words of the original paper books to be preserved for 10,000 years.
But that’s still not enough. If we can say that it’s not the book that’s important, but the “words”, then we must also realize that it’s not the “words” that are important, but the “knowledge” the words represent.
Imagine a book that would solve every problem you have, and help you immeasurably. And now imagine it is in Sanskrit, but that you don’t even know it’s Sanskrit, just that your happiness and safety depend on knowing what it means.
That would be frustrating.
Yet in any project involving the preservation of knowledge, we must realize that when we store that knowledge on metal plates, with written words, that we are still trying to preserve knowledge. Not just metal plates with marks.
It is daunting to realize just how long 10,000 years is and how much can go wrong. It is not just a matter of planning for if civilization has an interruption. For in such a case, the Foundation would still exist, the books would still be there, the knowledge could be shared, and things put back on track. But we must do more. We must plan for in case the Foundation as an entity collapses, too. So that the books will carry on, and be understandable, to anyone who finds them, even if it’s 300 years after a collapse. Or 3,000.
In another article we spoke of the need for a Rosetta Disc with 1,000 of the world’s languages on them, and how we would at least be having language dictionaries of the five major languages of Earth. And we believe that in the next ten thousand years, given trends in “language freezing” that there will always be someone, even if they are a wandering savage, who speaks some form of one of those five languages.
It would seem that then we would be done. But no. What if the savage is illiterate? Another article will explain the choices in some of the books we are preserving, including children’s educational books. But such will do no good if they cannot be read. A third generation post-atomic war savage – to take the dramatic example! – may be a great hunter, but have not ever been taught to read. He knows English, but cannot read it.
So the vault will be very important – it must teach the savage to read the books it preserves. It must let him know the marks on metal mean something, and that he can learn them. And it can leave nothing to chance.
Pictographs are notoriously unreliable. No one looks at a symbol of a bird and thinks “birds fly, that’s an easy way of travelling like a god, travel takes you to distant lands, therefore this symbol means ‘far’!”, but that is about how most pictographs work. Even things as simple as an arrow – well, look at one, do you see how while you see it pointing in one direction, that the three lines are all pointing in the opposite direction? Three being more than one, wouldn’t a reasonable savage believe it was pointing to the left instead of right? If he caught on that it was a directional marker at all…
There are enormous difficulties to this, but they are not insurmountable. How we will surmount them will be detailed in another article. Suffice that you know from this article, that there is more to preserving knowledge than having a book, or any number of books. Much more.
The preparations – the “fighting of alligators” – cannot let us lose sight of the swamp draining job of preserving knowledge. But such “alligators” of preparation do need to be fought and conquered, or the real goal won’t ever succeed. Such work can seem boring and off topic – fixing houses, researching books, researching other time vaults, studying various long term organizations, coming up with esoteric solutions to fabulously unlikely future problems - but it’s all needful.
In fact – essential.
The Cost of Pioneering
Let us think about the people of Trantor that were to be a part of the
Encyclopedia Foundation. Hari Seldon had arranged for them all –
100,000 or so – to be exiled to Terminus, there to work on collecting
and storing all the knowledge of mankind. We might presume the Emperor
himself funded the trip, but then again, this was an exile, not an
award, so it is perfectly possible that those of the Encyclopedia
Foundation had to foot the bill themselves.
How much did that cost? Was it even credible that it could be done, or was Dr. Asimov taking liberties?
Freeman Dyson once speculated in 1978 that space colonization would be impractical until the cost could come down to about $40,000. In 2011, that translates into a little over $130,000. Per person. He derived these figures from examining the detailed accounts of the Pilgrims of the early 1600s and the Latter Day Saints who pioneered in the mid-19th century. He realized that if you couldn’t get it down to that sum, then it would be impractical for any but governments or large corporations to afford.
$130,000 is a lot of money. And while space colonization still costs much more (which is why it’s not being done yet) that cost would be enough to keep most from trying. But, as it works out to three to six years wages for an “average” man, then given some dedication, and a willingness to go into some form of debt (perhaps even indentured servitude) one can see that would be doable.
Those of Trantor getting ready to go to Terminus for work on the Encyclopedia Foundation had some plusses and minuses in their trip. On the plus side, after 20,000 years (and then some) of space travel, we may assume that the costs were more comparable to relocating from wherever you are to the furthest point on Earth away from you. If we figure Chicago to Mongolia, that is a flight of under $2,000. Presumably freighting your stuff would not exceed another $3000, but even if it did, it still would be possible to “move” there for under $10,000.
Great! No problem for the “pioneers” then, right? Well, let’s look at some “minuses”. For starters, the Galactic Empire is falling, and space travel isn’t what it used to be. But that’s not too big an issue, after all, the Empire still has all the amenities on Trantor, so it won’t affect their move. The bigger factor is that they are not moving to a place where there is already a civilization up and running, where they can rent apartments or buy houses that are already there. No, they are moving to the barren planet of Terminus, with little land available, and none of that developed, and no easily minable metals.
In other words, they are actually – in our terms – moving to Antarctica. And that costs a lot more than Mongolia. It’s about $10,000 just to get down there. Taking all into account, you are looking – if you were going to colonize – about the same amount as Freeman Dyson estimated would be needful for space colonization to be practical. About $130,000. (On the upside, it looks as if it is now becoming possible to colonize Antarctica, should any hardy pioneers wish it!)
So those of the Encyclopedia Foundation were in every sense “pioneers” as it would cost them about the same to colonize Terminus as it would cost us to colonize Antarctica, or what it cost earlier pioneers. Which still leaves another problem…
The pioneers of America had time. They didn’t have to leave, it was their choice. They left when they could afford to, or when they could find sponsors. They weren’t hurried. Those of Hari Seldon’s project were hurried. And given that they probably had not been saving up for three to six years, it is doubtful that many of them had the price of the colonization effort.
Back to a plus, they were professional people. A simple cashing out of all they owned may have assisted. Most reasonably responsible middle aged people can, if cashing out, come up with $50,000 to $100,000 by the simple expedient of selling their house and cars and electronics. They were not janitors and fry clerks, they were degreed professionals, and on average of middle age and with families.
So they’d have been able to come up with some noticeable amounts. Perhaps then those who agreed with Hari in private were sponsoring this, even if they weren’t going themselves. It was an unpopular group though, so they'd have had to have done it quietly. Realistically, when all was said and done, it was probably the Emperor who made up the difference. If we assume that each could raise $100,000 by cashing out, and that this was split amongst the average of four per family, then the Emperor would need to chip in about $100,000 per person to get rid of these folks. That’s about $10 billion.
One starts to see why Lewis Pirenne – on the Board of Directors of the Encyclopedia Foundation – was so sure that the Emperor wouldn’t let the King of Anacreon interfere with them! The Emperor, no matter what additional donations came in – clearly had to put up a lot of the costs. However, as the U.S. government spends that in roughly two and a half days, one can assume that the Emperor of the entire Galaxy would regard that as a minutely small expenditure. But how small? How do we figure what $10 billion would be to the Emperor of the Galaxy?
Consider that the U.S. has 300,000,000 people to draw from in raising $10,000,000,000. The Emperor would have had far more people to tax for this. There were said to be 25,000,000 worlds in the Galactic Empire, if each had but one billion people that would work out to 25,000,000,000,000,000 (25 quadrillion) people! So while each of the citizens of the United States would have had to pay $33.33 on this, the same $10 billion would have each citizen of the Galactic Empire paying about four ten millionths of a penny!
While such a program at $33 per citizen would be too minor for the U.S. government to worry about, imagine how much less that they’d worry about a program that only cost each citizen less than a millionth of a penny? In fact, if you wish to know how easily the Emperor could afford to get to get rid of the Encyclopedists, consider that ten billion dollars is to the Emperor what $120 would be to the President of the United States!
So one sees why Lewis Pirenne was wrong about how much the Emperor cared after all!
The hardy pioneers would have had to cash out, the Emperor’s men would have seen to that. No one wanted Hari Seldon and his people to have it easy. But the cost of making up the difference, while large to an individual, was as nothing to a galaxy spanning Empire. One of the Emperor’s fifth assistant commissioner’s secretary could have approved that from the petty cash of any sub-department!
So Asimov took no liberties at all. The personal costs per pioneer, while devastating, were then easily supplemented from the Galactic Treasury.
How much did that cost? Was it even credible that it could be done, or was Dr. Asimov taking liberties?
Freeman Dyson once speculated in 1978 that space colonization would be impractical until the cost could come down to about $40,000. In 2011, that translates into a little over $130,000. Per person. He derived these figures from examining the detailed accounts of the Pilgrims of the early 1600s and the Latter Day Saints who pioneered in the mid-19th century. He realized that if you couldn’t get it down to that sum, then it would be impractical for any but governments or large corporations to afford.
$130,000 is a lot of money. And while space colonization still costs much more (which is why it’s not being done yet) that cost would be enough to keep most from trying. But, as it works out to three to six years wages for an “average” man, then given some dedication, and a willingness to go into some form of debt (perhaps even indentured servitude) one can see that would be doable.
Those of Trantor getting ready to go to Terminus for work on the Encyclopedia Foundation had some plusses and minuses in their trip. On the plus side, after 20,000 years (and then some) of space travel, we may assume that the costs were more comparable to relocating from wherever you are to the furthest point on Earth away from you. If we figure Chicago to Mongolia, that is a flight of under $2,000. Presumably freighting your stuff would not exceed another $3000, but even if it did, it still would be possible to “move” there for under $10,000.
Great! No problem for the “pioneers” then, right? Well, let’s look at some “minuses”. For starters, the Galactic Empire is falling, and space travel isn’t what it used to be. But that’s not too big an issue, after all, the Empire still has all the amenities on Trantor, so it won’t affect their move. The bigger factor is that they are not moving to a place where there is already a civilization up and running, where they can rent apartments or buy houses that are already there. No, they are moving to the barren planet of Terminus, with little land available, and none of that developed, and no easily minable metals.
In other words, they are actually – in our terms – moving to Antarctica. And that costs a lot more than Mongolia. It’s about $10,000 just to get down there. Taking all into account, you are looking – if you were going to colonize – about the same amount as Freeman Dyson estimated would be needful for space colonization to be practical. About $130,000. (On the upside, it looks as if it is now becoming possible to colonize Antarctica, should any hardy pioneers wish it!)
So those of the Encyclopedia Foundation were in every sense “pioneers” as it would cost them about the same to colonize Terminus as it would cost us to colonize Antarctica, or what it cost earlier pioneers. Which still leaves another problem…
The pioneers of America had time. They didn’t have to leave, it was their choice. They left when they could afford to, or when they could find sponsors. They weren’t hurried. Those of Hari Seldon’s project were hurried. And given that they probably had not been saving up for three to six years, it is doubtful that many of them had the price of the colonization effort.
Back to a plus, they were professional people. A simple cashing out of all they owned may have assisted. Most reasonably responsible middle aged people can, if cashing out, come up with $50,000 to $100,000 by the simple expedient of selling their house and cars and electronics. They were not janitors and fry clerks, they were degreed professionals, and on average of middle age and with families.
So they’d have been able to come up with some noticeable amounts. Perhaps then those who agreed with Hari in private were sponsoring this, even if they weren’t going themselves. It was an unpopular group though, so they'd have had to have done it quietly. Realistically, when all was said and done, it was probably the Emperor who made up the difference. If we assume that each could raise $100,000 by cashing out, and that this was split amongst the average of four per family, then the Emperor would need to chip in about $100,000 per person to get rid of these folks. That’s about $10 billion.
One starts to see why Lewis Pirenne – on the Board of Directors of the Encyclopedia Foundation – was so sure that the Emperor wouldn’t let the King of Anacreon interfere with them! The Emperor, no matter what additional donations came in – clearly had to put up a lot of the costs. However, as the U.S. government spends that in roughly two and a half days, one can assume that the Emperor of the entire Galaxy would regard that as a minutely small expenditure. But how small? How do we figure what $10 billion would be to the Emperor of the Galaxy?
Consider that the U.S. has 300,000,000 people to draw from in raising $10,000,000,000. The Emperor would have had far more people to tax for this. There were said to be 25,000,000 worlds in the Galactic Empire, if each had but one billion people that would work out to 25,000,000,000,000,000 (25 quadrillion) people! So while each of the citizens of the United States would have had to pay $33.33 on this, the same $10 billion would have each citizen of the Galactic Empire paying about four ten millionths of a penny!
While such a program at $33 per citizen would be too minor for the U.S. government to worry about, imagine how much less that they’d worry about a program that only cost each citizen less than a millionth of a penny? In fact, if you wish to know how easily the Emperor could afford to get to get rid of the Encyclopedists, consider that ten billion dollars is to the Emperor what $120 would be to the President of the United States!
So one sees why Lewis Pirenne was wrong about how much the Emperor cared after all!
The hardy pioneers would have had to cash out, the Emperor’s men would have seen to that. No one wanted Hari Seldon and his people to have it easy. But the cost of making up the difference, while large to an individual, was as nothing to a galaxy spanning Empire. One of the Emperor’s fifth assistant commissioner’s secretary could have approved that from the petty cash of any sub-department!
So Asimov took no liberties at all. The personal costs per pioneer, while devastating, were then easily supplemented from the Galactic Treasury.
The Language Barrier
It is little known, even among the late Dr. Asimov’s fans, but he
wrote more on the Encyclopedia Foundation than you might think. At
least more on the galaxy in which it existed.
For instance, in his short story “Blind Alley” there are a group of aliens that must be dealt with by the Trantorian Bureaucracy. They apparently read minds, and this helps them escape. Though while dealing with aliens, there is no mention of language difficulties.
In the universe of the Encyclopedia Foundation of Terminus, there are some references to aliens of a sort, like the Gaians or the Solarians. The Gaians are basically human, though. And the Solarians are human derived. We could also count the sentient robots, but they are humaniform, and originally created by humans.
In almost no cases are there serious language difficulties. “Galactic Standard” is spoken every where, with only minor and quaint regional dialects. In “Foundation’s Edge”, Golan and Janov find themselves on Sayshell, and see a sign that says “Sayshell Outworld Milieu” which translates to “Sayshell Tourist Center”.
On Trantor, in the same book, we see the Hamish speaking a very thick dialect, in which “scholar” is pronounced “scowler” and even some words have a different meaning, such as “thoughtful” meaning “smart” instead of “considerate”.
But in one particular case, the dialect was so different as to be virtually a different language. On Solaria, robot protectors were designed to interpret anyone not speaking the local dialect as non-human threats. Yet even there, Galactic Standard was still known by some there listening to broadcasts.
By all accounts then, the Encyclopedia Foundation of Terminus could create the Encyclopedia Galactica in just one language, and be confident that no matter what section of the galaxy needed rebuilding, that the collected works of knowledge would be ready to aid them.
Not so here at the Encyclopedia Foundation here on this planet. There are various estimates, but to say there are over 6,000 languages would not be an exaggeration. If one is trying to preserve knowledge for ten thousand years, one must take this into account.
Consider. It is 8,000 BC. Writing hasn’t been invented yet, but what if it were? What language would you pick to make sure it survived readable till the year 2000? If you had great foresight, you might pick some proto-Sumerian tongue. That would be the most popular language for many thousands of years. Or much later in history, when Sumerian faded as the language of scholars, you might choose Latin. And for two thousand years you would be correct.
But neither of those languages lasted. And who really could foretell that Sumeria would be where civilization started, or that Rome would become civilization long after that? And as to English, that is a good one now. More speak it as a first or second language than any other. But it will it always be so?
The smart person would have writing in several languages, to increase the odds of it being understood later. So what do we do now with 6,000 languages to choose from?
There is a project of the Long Now Foundation called “The Rosetta Project”. They have had a three inch disc constructed that has 1,000 languages on it. If one then had that, then no matter what language was popular in the future, it could allow them to translate the English of the discs into whichever of the 1,000 languages was in fashion.
And it is a fact that the majority of the people of Earth speak English, Chinese Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi and Arabic. So long as those five languages are included, the likelihood is that one of them will survive for 10,000 years. One must also consider that our languages have “frozen” a bit. They used to change a lot, but with the invention of the printing press, the words got “frozen” in meaning. The difference between English now and English 300 years ago is not very much at all. But the difference between English 300 years ago and English 600 years ago is much greater. Compare “The Canterbury Tales” with “The Complete Works of Shakespeare”. But also compare “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” by John Locke with any book now.
The written word – not to mention the standardization of language that television, movies and the internet brings – will keep (we believe) our current major languages roughly unchanged for several thousand years.
However, the Encyclopedia Foundation – us! – are not going to rely on probabilities. We will have that Rosetta Disc. But for our own purposes, we will have the top five major languages in dictionary form transcribed on metal plates that require the same type of magnification we will use for all of our preserved works. And we’ll go ahead and include instructions as to how to grind lenses and build a microscope to see the Rosetta Disc with those 1,000 languages.
For the next ten thousand years then, no matter who comes across the Encyclopedia Foundation’s plates, they will be able to read it, or translate it and read it. Unless they are illiterate, but that is another article…
For instance, in his short story “Blind Alley” there are a group of aliens that must be dealt with by the Trantorian Bureaucracy. They apparently read minds, and this helps them escape. Though while dealing with aliens, there is no mention of language difficulties.
In the universe of the Encyclopedia Foundation of Terminus, there are some references to aliens of a sort, like the Gaians or the Solarians. The Gaians are basically human, though. And the Solarians are human derived. We could also count the sentient robots, but they are humaniform, and originally created by humans.
In almost no cases are there serious language difficulties. “Galactic Standard” is spoken every where, with only minor and quaint regional dialects. In “Foundation’s Edge”, Golan and Janov find themselves on Sayshell, and see a sign that says “Sayshell Outworld Milieu” which translates to “Sayshell Tourist Center”.
On Trantor, in the same book, we see the Hamish speaking a very thick dialect, in which “scholar” is pronounced “scowler” and even some words have a different meaning, such as “thoughtful” meaning “smart” instead of “considerate”.
But in one particular case, the dialect was so different as to be virtually a different language. On Solaria, robot protectors were designed to interpret anyone not speaking the local dialect as non-human threats. Yet even there, Galactic Standard was still known by some there listening to broadcasts.
By all accounts then, the Encyclopedia Foundation of Terminus could create the Encyclopedia Galactica in just one language, and be confident that no matter what section of the galaxy needed rebuilding, that the collected works of knowledge would be ready to aid them.
Not so here at the Encyclopedia Foundation here on this planet. There are various estimates, but to say there are over 6,000 languages would not be an exaggeration. If one is trying to preserve knowledge for ten thousand years, one must take this into account.
Consider. It is 8,000 BC. Writing hasn’t been invented yet, but what if it were? What language would you pick to make sure it survived readable till the year 2000? If you had great foresight, you might pick some proto-Sumerian tongue. That would be the most popular language for many thousands of years. Or much later in history, when Sumerian faded as the language of scholars, you might choose Latin. And for two thousand years you would be correct.
But neither of those languages lasted. And who really could foretell that Sumeria would be where civilization started, or that Rome would become civilization long after that? And as to English, that is a good one now. More speak it as a first or second language than any other. But it will it always be so?
The smart person would have writing in several languages, to increase the odds of it being understood later. So what do we do now with 6,000 languages to choose from?
There is a project of the Long Now Foundation called “The Rosetta Project”. They have had a three inch disc constructed that has 1,000 languages on it. If one then had that, then no matter what language was popular in the future, it could allow them to translate the English of the discs into whichever of the 1,000 languages was in fashion.
And it is a fact that the majority of the people of Earth speak English, Chinese Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi and Arabic. So long as those five languages are included, the likelihood is that one of them will survive for 10,000 years. One must also consider that our languages have “frozen” a bit. They used to change a lot, but with the invention of the printing press, the words got “frozen” in meaning. The difference between English now and English 300 years ago is not very much at all. But the difference between English 300 years ago and English 600 years ago is much greater. Compare “The Canterbury Tales” with “The Complete Works of Shakespeare”. But also compare “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” by John Locke with any book now.
The written word – not to mention the standardization of language that television, movies and the internet brings – will keep (we believe) our current major languages roughly unchanged for several thousand years.
However, the Encyclopedia Foundation – us! – are not going to rely on probabilities. We will have that Rosetta Disc. But for our own purposes, we will have the top five major languages in dictionary form transcribed on metal plates that require the same type of magnification we will use for all of our preserved works. And we’ll go ahead and include instructions as to how to grind lenses and build a microscope to see the Rosetta Disc with those 1,000 languages.
For the next ten thousand years then, no matter who comes across the Encyclopedia Foundation’s plates, they will be able to read it, or translate it and read it. Unless they are illiterate, but that is another article…
The Cultural Legacy of Isaac Asimov
The Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus had tough times. The enormity
of preserving 20,000 years of accumulated knowledge, on a planet that
they had just colonized, and with little able to have been brought from
the Imperial Library on Trantor, must have been daunting!
Yet they did it, though as mentioned in other articles, it would either have been wrote microscopically, or would have been a very, very large collection of books, with an index that might have been several large books! And apparently they did more than gather raw knowledge, as difficult as that alone would have been.
It is referenced that they had data on various wars and political leaders. It seems unlikely that these books would have been brought from Trantor in the original exodus, but there was still trade and communications for awhile, so perhaps they got more then.
Likewise, at the Encyclopedia Foundation on this planet, we intend to do more than just compile the raw facts needed for a re-building. We also intend on preserving our cultural legacy. You have seen on our site how we intend to preserve the Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge. Those are fifty books generally believed to be sufficient to give one the equivalent of a liberal arts degree from Harvard University, in the early 20th century. We also intend to preserve the works of Shakespeare and the KJV Bible.
Will that be all? No. A great start, no doubt, and if any one disc could be had, that (plus the 12th edition Encyclopedia Britannica) would be the one to have. But we’ve made mention that we would have other discs with all the science and technological works needed to rebuild.
Additionally, besides that data, we will be preserving other cultural works. While the Harvard set does admirably well for Western thought, we will also be preserving books representative of Eastern thought, such as to be found in India, China and such.
We also will not be stopping with pre-20th century Western works. We intend on including works from Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and of course – the late Dr. Isaac Asimov.
Isaac Asimov was one of the most prolific authors the world has ever known. He wrote over 500 books and essays and articles on every conceivable subject. His fiction and non-fiction works are unrivaled. The Encyclopedia Foundation was inspired by his “Foundation Trilogy”, so that to the extent we succeed in preserving the knowledge of mankind for 10,000 years the credit will be all his.
While it is only fair than that his works be preserved for all time, we can say – from having read many of them – that they are worth inclusion even if he had never wrote the “Foundation Trilogy” at all.
We are as yet some years from getting to the preservation of cultural works. We will be finishing up becoming self-sufficient, then we will be working on the first disc mentioned, then the rest of science and technology, then the cultural works. But on that day, Asimov will be included. Other authors will be forgot, but he will never be.
Yet they did it, though as mentioned in other articles, it would either have been wrote microscopically, or would have been a very, very large collection of books, with an index that might have been several large books! And apparently they did more than gather raw knowledge, as difficult as that alone would have been.
It is referenced that they had data on various wars and political leaders. It seems unlikely that these books would have been brought from Trantor in the original exodus, but there was still trade and communications for awhile, so perhaps they got more then.
Likewise, at the Encyclopedia Foundation on this planet, we intend to do more than just compile the raw facts needed for a re-building. We also intend on preserving our cultural legacy. You have seen on our site how we intend to preserve the Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge. Those are fifty books generally believed to be sufficient to give one the equivalent of a liberal arts degree from Harvard University, in the early 20th century. We also intend to preserve the works of Shakespeare and the KJV Bible.
Will that be all? No. A great start, no doubt, and if any one disc could be had, that (plus the 12th edition Encyclopedia Britannica) would be the one to have. But we’ve made mention that we would have other discs with all the science and technological works needed to rebuild.
Additionally, besides that data, we will be preserving other cultural works. While the Harvard set does admirably well for Western thought, we will also be preserving books representative of Eastern thought, such as to be found in India, China and such.
We also will not be stopping with pre-20th century Western works. We intend on including works from Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and of course – the late Dr. Isaac Asimov.
Isaac Asimov was one of the most prolific authors the world has ever known. He wrote over 500 books and essays and articles on every conceivable subject. His fiction and non-fiction works are unrivaled. The Encyclopedia Foundation was inspired by his “Foundation Trilogy”, so that to the extent we succeed in preserving the knowledge of mankind for 10,000 years the credit will be all his.
While it is only fair than that his works be preserved for all time, we can say – from having read many of them – that they are worth inclusion even if he had never wrote the “Foundation Trilogy” at all.
We are as yet some years from getting to the preservation of cultural works. We will be finishing up becoming self-sufficient, then we will be working on the first disc mentioned, then the rest of science and technology, then the cultural works. But on that day, Asimov will be included. Other authors will be forgot, but he will never be.
Encyclopedia Galactica
Picture the Encyclopedists at the Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus!
They have already had an arduous journey from Trantor, in which they
were not able to take much from the Imperial Library. Somehow the town
has been built, and “fun time” is over, it’s time to get to work on the
Encyclopedia Galactica!
When we think of this, we think of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the obvious standard against which all other encyclopedias are measured by – and fall short of! But our imaginings may be a bit off. The Encyclopedia Galactica would have to be vastly different.
Oh, to see some of the chapter headings in Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy”, you’d think it was the same. The standard entries of political leaders and wars and battles. Sure sounds like one of our encyclopedias! But what of the mission? Hari Seldon did not tell them they were being sent to the Periphery so that the fall of the Galactic Empire could be prevented by knowing who Cleon was, or when he ascended the throne! No amount of knowledge of such political figures and battles over the course of 20,000 years would be of much relevance.
Apparently they did collect such trivial information, and store it, though we may hope not until they started archiving by computers. But what would have been the first kind of encyclopedia? The one that was to have all the knowledge of mankind? The one that was to avert the fall of civilization, and allow for rebuilding in 1,000 years instead of 30,000 years? You know, the encyclopedia that while a diversion, was the basis for the Encyclopedia Foundation’s technological edge over first, the Periphery, and later, the Galaxy?
That would have looked much different.
For starters, it would not have dealt with 20,000 years of politicians. No one cares who was the President of Helicon in 12,399 GE. Or what battle was fought when Rossem was first brought into the Trantorian Hegemony! It would have dealt with solid and useful facts. The Encyclopedia Foundation would have focused first and foremost in “how to rebuild”. From the ground up.
Farming? Yes. All manner of books on agriculture. Mining? Yes. And metal working and blacksmithing and forging and such. Carpentry? Yes. And masonry and brick laying and plastics. What of the sciences? Of course. Physics, biology, geology, chemistry – but not just the latest texts, the text books themselves, from elementary school through getting your doctorate at a University. The assumption is that they are starting from scratch. How to build a steam engine would be handy. Electricity. Plumbing. Medicine would be a large topic.
The Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus would be doing much of what we at the Encyclopedia Foundation on Earth are doing. Trying to store the knowledge of getting back to 20th century levels. With selected texts and subjects from the 20th century. Refrigeration. Electronics. Rocketry. Atomics.
The Encyclopedia Galactica would be enormous. And while not said, it was either miniaturized, or was a very large collection. It would look like a bunch of text books, and would require a special ordering and a heck of an index. If you have an old fashioned encyclopedia, go look up “biology”. See how long that is? Perhaps even four or five pages? Now realize that in the B section of the Encyclopedia Galactica, when you got to “biology”, you would see at least a dozen text books, taking one from a child’s understanding, to an experts. And that dozen would – by the way – still just be an overview. It would not be an exhaustive compilation of all we know of biology, not even at our “pre-Galactic Empire” level!
Elsewhere we’ve mentioned – on this site, and in earlier blog articles – that the 12th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge would be two of the first sets to be transcribed. Along with Shakespeare and the KJV Bible. But that is just the start.
All about science and technology, at least up to the early 20th century, will be stored. And several fields of 20th century science and technology. And in each case, be it farming, medicine or sewer engineering, it will start from childhood texts to doctoral level. Such that any could learn.
For this to work though, we will have to go further, to something that Dr. Asimov did not think of at first, but later did think of…but that’s another article.
When we think of this, we think of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the obvious standard against which all other encyclopedias are measured by – and fall short of! But our imaginings may be a bit off. The Encyclopedia Galactica would have to be vastly different.
Oh, to see some of the chapter headings in Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy”, you’d think it was the same. The standard entries of political leaders and wars and battles. Sure sounds like one of our encyclopedias! But what of the mission? Hari Seldon did not tell them they were being sent to the Periphery so that the fall of the Galactic Empire could be prevented by knowing who Cleon was, or when he ascended the throne! No amount of knowledge of such political figures and battles over the course of 20,000 years would be of much relevance.
Apparently they did collect such trivial information, and store it, though we may hope not until they started archiving by computers. But what would have been the first kind of encyclopedia? The one that was to have all the knowledge of mankind? The one that was to avert the fall of civilization, and allow for rebuilding in 1,000 years instead of 30,000 years? You know, the encyclopedia that while a diversion, was the basis for the Encyclopedia Foundation’s technological edge over first, the Periphery, and later, the Galaxy?
That would have looked much different.
For starters, it would not have dealt with 20,000 years of politicians. No one cares who was the President of Helicon in 12,399 GE. Or what battle was fought when Rossem was first brought into the Trantorian Hegemony! It would have dealt with solid and useful facts. The Encyclopedia Foundation would have focused first and foremost in “how to rebuild”. From the ground up.
Farming? Yes. All manner of books on agriculture. Mining? Yes. And metal working and blacksmithing and forging and such. Carpentry? Yes. And masonry and brick laying and plastics. What of the sciences? Of course. Physics, biology, geology, chemistry – but not just the latest texts, the text books themselves, from elementary school through getting your doctorate at a University. The assumption is that they are starting from scratch. How to build a steam engine would be handy. Electricity. Plumbing. Medicine would be a large topic.
The Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus would be doing much of what we at the Encyclopedia Foundation on Earth are doing. Trying to store the knowledge of getting back to 20th century levels. With selected texts and subjects from the 20th century. Refrigeration. Electronics. Rocketry. Atomics.
The Encyclopedia Galactica would be enormous. And while not said, it was either miniaturized, or was a very large collection. It would look like a bunch of text books, and would require a special ordering and a heck of an index. If you have an old fashioned encyclopedia, go look up “biology”. See how long that is? Perhaps even four or five pages? Now realize that in the B section of the Encyclopedia Galactica, when you got to “biology”, you would see at least a dozen text books, taking one from a child’s understanding, to an experts. And that dozen would – by the way – still just be an overview. It would not be an exhaustive compilation of all we know of biology, not even at our “pre-Galactic Empire” level!
Elsewhere we’ve mentioned – on this site, and in earlier blog articles – that the 12th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge would be two of the first sets to be transcribed. Along with Shakespeare and the KJV Bible. But that is just the start.
All about science and technology, at least up to the early 20th century, will be stored. And several fields of 20th century science and technology. And in each case, be it farming, medicine or sewer engineering, it will start from childhood texts to doctoral level. Such that any could learn.
For this to work though, we will have to go further, to something that Dr. Asimov did not think of at first, but later did think of…but that’s another article.
Church of Scientism
The Encyclopedia Foundation was a fictional construct in the late Dr.
Isaac Asimov’s Hugo Award winning “Foundation Trilogy”. It was about a
group of scientists and scholars exiled to the outer edge of the galaxy,
where they worked on preserving the knowledge of all mankind. They
were putting into a book set famously called “The Encyclopedia
Galactica”.
Life was not easy for those on that distant planet of Terminus. The Galactic Empire was falling, and the Prefects of the Periphery were seceding and declaring themselves Kingdoms. At one point in the history of Terminus, it was determined that the best way to spread knowledge was to start a proselytizing religion and introduce science that way.
It would also give the hierarchy on Terminus some control over the hostile Kingdoms. Elsewhere we have wrote of those priests who spread the faith, and how they must have been sincere. But what of the Church and its mission itself?
Oddly enough, it was never named. No where in the “Foundation Trilogy” does Asimov mention a “Church of Scientism”. It has simply been named that by fans since the works came out in the nineteen forties. There is even a Wikipedia article on it!
Could such a thing work? Well, yes and no. No, it could not work as described. But if we assume that there were some activities that were going on “off scene” so to speak, then yes, there would be a chance. But contrary to some people’s beliefs it is near impossible to just “make up” a religion.
A religion, true or false, needs several things. It needs a plausible origin. By which it is meant that it must either be a continuation or off-shoot of a presently existing one, or if it’s entirely new, it takes an enormous event or an enormously persuasive leader, not to mention enormously persuasive assistants. It is actually very, very rare for an entirely new religion to be created. Or rather, many new ones are started, but very few outlast their founders.
Christianity and Islam were offshoots of Judaism. Buddhism was a slow evolution from previous faith systems. Most all churches you know of come from Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism, one way or another. Isaac Asimov was not actually trying to “create” a new religion, he just needed one for purposes of his books. Hence his not fleshing it out. It was peripheral to the overall story, and we only learned what we needed to for the story.
A religion also has to do something, besides aggrandizing the leader. At least if it expects to last longer than the leader’s lifetime. It must actually give something to the people. This in all cases must be real, and even the obviously fake religions do provide real service. Some such services are a sense of community and belonging. A shoulder to cry on. The solace of confession. The feeling of working for a greater purpose. Actual material aid in emergencies. Moral guidance for day to day living.
These are real and valuable things, and no religion that fails to provide them will last long, whether they are objectively true or not. This so-called “Church of Scientism” would have had to provide those things. It is funny, Asimov made such a great point of how it was just a device to fool the masses, but in his life he had far more regard for the masses than that. His kind hearted socialism was well known. But we know the quote he had Hober Mallow say, don’t we?
Whenever the Foundation Federation was attacked, such as in “Foundation and Empire”, the citizens of it, including from the planets of the original Four Kingdoms, always leapt to the Foundation’s defense. This is not the type of action one expects from the masses when the religion they follow is an entire fraud. Clearly, they had good reason to believe in it, far more than just “it keeps the lights on”.
It could be speculated that the religion of Terminus was based upon a variety of belief systems generally known to the Galaxy, and of some popularity in the Periphery. It would have to be presented as a “clarification” or “codification”, as opposed to out and out new. After all, if your planet has slipped into barbarism – as defined by having a coal and oil economy instead of nuclear – that does not mean you are a shivering peasant worshipping the moon. We on this planet are primarily coal and oil!
No, Hober Mallow had to have found some actual priests of other faiths, and got them to help him work out this “new” faith. It would have to have been real, previously existing, and fully believed by the line priests and missionaries trained to go out into the Kingdoms. And note that it had a “Bible”, called “Book of the Spirit”. That either existed already, or more likely was wrote by the priests and missionaries gathered together to form this new faith.
It could be granted that the highest of the leaders might not have believed, but the rest would have had to. There is a type of doublethink known as a “pious fraud”, that would have aided this.
In any case, we can see by this that such a church would have had to be about a lot more than simply guiding political policy. Heck, most all churches in America and elsewhere do that, or at least try! No, this church from Terminus would have to be fully about good works, not just good words. It can be assumed that while Asimov wrote about the church running the hospitals and naval yards, that they were also busy running soup lines and shelters. And surely schools.
And let’s not forget those temples. Each week, at no cost, the peoples of the variety of worlds getting moral instruction, a sense of community and a knowledge of working for a greater good. Politics would have been a distant, distant, second.
From all this we may believe that this church did not actually die, though it was not mentioned in the series after the book “Foundation”. But given that they were well established in many star systems, had a membership of billions, and that eventually so many planets were a part of the Foundation Federation that they’d not have cared about whether missionaries came or not, we may assume it continued to grow.
In fact, we may assume it grew a lot. Consider in the other books afterward how reverentially people spoke of the Foundation. “It is foretold it cannot fall!” and such awe-filled regard as that. Clearly the inhabitants of all the Foundation Federation, and the other third of the galaxy under their influence, and the last third of the galaxy that only had heard of them, all felt that there was something mystical about the Foundation Federation!
Clearly, the church, no matter how first started, grew! And could only have done so through good works. In these new Foundation novels that some are writing, it would be nice if some mention of that church could be made!
Life was not easy for those on that distant planet of Terminus. The Galactic Empire was falling, and the Prefects of the Periphery were seceding and declaring themselves Kingdoms. At one point in the history of Terminus, it was determined that the best way to spread knowledge was to start a proselytizing religion and introduce science that way.
It would also give the hierarchy on Terminus some control over the hostile Kingdoms. Elsewhere we have wrote of those priests who spread the faith, and how they must have been sincere. But what of the Church and its mission itself?
Oddly enough, it was never named. No where in the “Foundation Trilogy” does Asimov mention a “Church of Scientism”. It has simply been named that by fans since the works came out in the nineteen forties. There is even a Wikipedia article on it!
Could such a thing work? Well, yes and no. No, it could not work as described. But if we assume that there were some activities that were going on “off scene” so to speak, then yes, there would be a chance. But contrary to some people’s beliefs it is near impossible to just “make up” a religion.
A religion, true or false, needs several things. It needs a plausible origin. By which it is meant that it must either be a continuation or off-shoot of a presently existing one, or if it’s entirely new, it takes an enormous event or an enormously persuasive leader, not to mention enormously persuasive assistants. It is actually very, very rare for an entirely new religion to be created. Or rather, many new ones are started, but very few outlast their founders.
Christianity and Islam were offshoots of Judaism. Buddhism was a slow evolution from previous faith systems. Most all churches you know of come from Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism, one way or another. Isaac Asimov was not actually trying to “create” a new religion, he just needed one for purposes of his books. Hence his not fleshing it out. It was peripheral to the overall story, and we only learned what we needed to for the story.
A religion also has to do something, besides aggrandizing the leader. At least if it expects to last longer than the leader’s lifetime. It must actually give something to the people. This in all cases must be real, and even the obviously fake religions do provide real service. Some such services are a sense of community and belonging. A shoulder to cry on. The solace of confession. The feeling of working for a greater purpose. Actual material aid in emergencies. Moral guidance for day to day living.
These are real and valuable things, and no religion that fails to provide them will last long, whether they are objectively true or not. This so-called “Church of Scientism” would have had to provide those things. It is funny, Asimov made such a great point of how it was just a device to fool the masses, but in his life he had far more regard for the masses than that. His kind hearted socialism was well known. But we know the quote he had Hober Mallow say, don’t we?
Whenever the Foundation Federation was attacked, such as in “Foundation and Empire”, the citizens of it, including from the planets of the original Four Kingdoms, always leapt to the Foundation’s defense. This is not the type of action one expects from the masses when the religion they follow is an entire fraud. Clearly, they had good reason to believe in it, far more than just “it keeps the lights on”.
It could be speculated that the religion of Terminus was based upon a variety of belief systems generally known to the Galaxy, and of some popularity in the Periphery. It would have to be presented as a “clarification” or “codification”, as opposed to out and out new. After all, if your planet has slipped into barbarism – as defined by having a coal and oil economy instead of nuclear – that does not mean you are a shivering peasant worshipping the moon. We on this planet are primarily coal and oil!
No, Hober Mallow had to have found some actual priests of other faiths, and got them to help him work out this “new” faith. It would have to have been real, previously existing, and fully believed by the line priests and missionaries trained to go out into the Kingdoms. And note that it had a “Bible”, called “Book of the Spirit”. That either existed already, or more likely was wrote by the priests and missionaries gathered together to form this new faith.
It could be granted that the highest of the leaders might not have believed, but the rest would have had to. There is a type of doublethink known as a “pious fraud”, that would have aided this.
In any case, we can see by this that such a church would have had to be about a lot more than simply guiding political policy. Heck, most all churches in America and elsewhere do that, or at least try! No, this church from Terminus would have to be fully about good works, not just good words. It can be assumed that while Asimov wrote about the church running the hospitals and naval yards, that they were also busy running soup lines and shelters. And surely schools.
And let’s not forget those temples. Each week, at no cost, the peoples of the variety of worlds getting moral instruction, a sense of community and a knowledge of working for a greater good. Politics would have been a distant, distant, second.
From all this we may believe that this church did not actually die, though it was not mentioned in the series after the book “Foundation”. But given that they were well established in many star systems, had a membership of billions, and that eventually so many planets were a part of the Foundation Federation that they’d not have cared about whether missionaries came or not, we may assume it continued to grow.
In fact, we may assume it grew a lot. Consider in the other books afterward how reverentially people spoke of the Foundation. “It is foretold it cannot fall!” and such awe-filled regard as that. Clearly the inhabitants of all the Foundation Federation, and the other third of the galaxy under their influence, and the last third of the galaxy that only had heard of them, all felt that there was something mystical about the Foundation Federation!
Clearly, the church, no matter how first started, grew! And could only have done so through good works. In these new Foundation novels that some are writing, it would be nice if some mention of that church could be made!
The Books
So, you’re a member of the Encyclopedia Foundation, not a popular group
on Trantor. You just heard the news, that Hari Seldon was not executed
by the Emperor, but that he managed to get himself – and you and
everyone you know! – exiled to some dirt poor planet out way past any
decent place to live!
You know some of the 100,000 people that are working on this project seem happy about it, but you, you are not. You see, you’re one of the ones who has to go to the Imperial Library and start making copies of punch cards and book spools, so as to have the start of the Encyclopedia Foundation!
The Galactic Empire is declining, after all, and to read Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy”, they lost computer technology first! There are no USB Flash Drives, there is no Internet, and the only thing you are going to “download” is yourself into a chair! It’s time to sort through the “card catalogue” to find out what’s what!
And don’t think the Imperial Library staff is going to be much help. You don’t know it, but they are all agents of the Second Foundation, not a group known for having the best interests of the Encyclopedia Foundation at heart! At least not for the short term, anyway!
So what do you take? What books or book sets would you preserve, knowing that it is your responsibility to see to it that the knowledge of mankind is preserved?
Well, this is the question that we at the Encyclopedia Foundation here and now, on this planet, have to come up with answers to! Our mission says to preserve the knowledge of mankind, in a durable medium to last 10,000 years, but obviously we can’t preserve all books or book sets. True, any of us carries a more sophisticated computer in our pocket (iphone) than the whole Galactic Empire had, and more powerful than anything the Foundation Federation had, too.
But that makes no difference. We can access any data we like, we can find any book or book set we like, and we can even get a copy if we wish. Any book, that is. But not every book. There are too many. By Google’s estimate, which they admit is probably low, there are about 130,000,000 books out there. Neverminding the cost of purchasing copyright permissions for all of those – a problem Google has yet to surmount – there would be the matter of us having to afford so much metal.
If a book is – on average – 250 pages, and we can put 1,000 pages on a single metal plate, then we would need 32,500,000 metal plates. That’s a bit beyond our budget at this point, especially as there are issues of storage and issues of how they are all being printed.
Bear in mind, in Asimov’s book series, the Encyclopedists were to have gathered this information from the Imperial Library and had it packed and ready to go in about six months. We here at the Encyclopedia Foundation are estimating that whatever books we save, we are looking at closer to six years. And it will not be 130,000,000 books saved.
Fortunately for us – and mankind – it need not be. Not all books are worth as much as other books. There are the issues of fiction versus non-fiction, and obviously we will be leaning to non-fiction. Predominantly so. And then there is the fact that not every book – fiction or non-fiction – is as good as other similar books.
And there is this, neither the Encyclopedia Foundation of Terminus, or the Encyclopedia Foundation here, has to bring along instructions for how to sew a brightly colored sash for Golan Trevize to wear! It is sufficient to have a book on sewing, by the time Golan wishes a sash, they’ll have re-figured it out! Likewise, if one has books on the internal combustion engine and automotive design, one does not also needs the specs for every make and model that ever was.
And does one need both an Encyclopedia Britannica and a Colliers? One has more information than the other, so the other can be discarded. And of all the editions of Britannica, are there any superior to any other? Yes, there is, so we can narrow it down even further.
The suspense is ended on our “Goals” page, we have selected The Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge series and the 12th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And the complete works of William Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible. This, we may confidently assert, would allow a culture to rebuild to early 20th century levels. And preserve much of Western Culture.
And some small equivalent kernel may well have been all that they could take to Terminus. We hope they could take more, though. We plan on preserving more. That first disc will just be the start.
You know some of the 100,000 people that are working on this project seem happy about it, but you, you are not. You see, you’re one of the ones who has to go to the Imperial Library and start making copies of punch cards and book spools, so as to have the start of the Encyclopedia Foundation!
The Galactic Empire is declining, after all, and to read Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy”, they lost computer technology first! There are no USB Flash Drives, there is no Internet, and the only thing you are going to “download” is yourself into a chair! It’s time to sort through the “card catalogue” to find out what’s what!
And don’t think the Imperial Library staff is going to be much help. You don’t know it, but they are all agents of the Second Foundation, not a group known for having the best interests of the Encyclopedia Foundation at heart! At least not for the short term, anyway!
So what do you take? What books or book sets would you preserve, knowing that it is your responsibility to see to it that the knowledge of mankind is preserved?
Well, this is the question that we at the Encyclopedia Foundation here and now, on this planet, have to come up with answers to! Our mission says to preserve the knowledge of mankind, in a durable medium to last 10,000 years, but obviously we can’t preserve all books or book sets. True, any of us carries a more sophisticated computer in our pocket (iphone) than the whole Galactic Empire had, and more powerful than anything the Foundation Federation had, too.
But that makes no difference. We can access any data we like, we can find any book or book set we like, and we can even get a copy if we wish. Any book, that is. But not every book. There are too many. By Google’s estimate, which they admit is probably low, there are about 130,000,000 books out there. Neverminding the cost of purchasing copyright permissions for all of those – a problem Google has yet to surmount – there would be the matter of us having to afford so much metal.
If a book is – on average – 250 pages, and we can put 1,000 pages on a single metal plate, then we would need 32,500,000 metal plates. That’s a bit beyond our budget at this point, especially as there are issues of storage and issues of how they are all being printed.
Bear in mind, in Asimov’s book series, the Encyclopedists were to have gathered this information from the Imperial Library and had it packed and ready to go in about six months. We here at the Encyclopedia Foundation are estimating that whatever books we save, we are looking at closer to six years. And it will not be 130,000,000 books saved.
Fortunately for us – and mankind – it need not be. Not all books are worth as much as other books. There are the issues of fiction versus non-fiction, and obviously we will be leaning to non-fiction. Predominantly so. And then there is the fact that not every book – fiction or non-fiction – is as good as other similar books.
And there is this, neither the Encyclopedia Foundation of Terminus, or the Encyclopedia Foundation here, has to bring along instructions for how to sew a brightly colored sash for Golan Trevize to wear! It is sufficient to have a book on sewing, by the time Golan wishes a sash, they’ll have re-figured it out! Likewise, if one has books on the internal combustion engine and automotive design, one does not also needs the specs for every make and model that ever was.
And does one need both an Encyclopedia Britannica and a Colliers? One has more information than the other, so the other can be discarded. And of all the editions of Britannica, are there any superior to any other? Yes, there is, so we can narrow it down even further.
The suspense is ended on our “Goals” page, we have selected The Harvard Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge series and the 12th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. And the complete works of William Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible. This, we may confidently assert, would allow a culture to rebuild to early 20th century levels. And preserve much of Western Culture.
And some small equivalent kernel may well have been all that they could take to Terminus. We hope they could take more, though. We plan on preserving more. That first disc will just be the start.
The Durable Medium
How does one store data in the best and most durable medium? At the
Encyclopedia Foundation, that is a crucial question. Oh, we know many
ways of storing data, and many ways that are good and durable, but which
is the best?
Our parameters are stated in our mission statement, to preserve the knowledge of mankind for ten thousand years. True, the Encyclopedia Foundation in the late Dr. Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy” were only shooting for 1,000 years, but even the Second Foundation was thinking longer! So we are, too!
If it were just a matter of 1,000 years, almost anyone could do it, with perhaps a bit more effort than they’d care to make. But ten thousand, that has never been done, and the intricacies involved are enormous.
Consider that an average book lasts about 75 years. This is due to the cheap paper we use, which does make books more affordable, but they last a shorter time. Books from centuries ago were made out of a kind of linen, and the paper is not only still readable now, but will continue to be for some centuries. But it won’t last forever.
Now if you had a book, made out of special paper, and preserved it in a nitrogen environment, it might last a thousand or so years. But ten thousand, probably not. If nothing else, it would be hard to keep the chamber sealed so long. (The reason it is good to store books in a place with no oxygen is because book paper slowly combusts over time. That’s why it turns yellow, then brown. It is combusting slow motion. No oxygen, no combustion.)
An obvious solution is plastic. Hard, cheap, durable…wait, durable? Well, we think so. But plastic has not been around very long, so its properties, and how long it lasts, can only be theorized. In fact, the Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus is said to have been constructed with many things out of plastic, and Dr. Asimov had Golan Trevize comment on “old plastic, pink with age”. Asimov was guessing, we don’t know what plastic will look like in 500 years, as we have not had plastic around for 500 years.
Therefore, it might not be wise to use plastic. We can not be sure it would last 1,000 years, let alone 10,000. There are very old pieces of wood and papyrus, but these are more preserved due to the environment they were fortunate enough to be in.
Clay or stone? Stone, perhaps. But it’s heavy and bulky. Metal? Now we are getting somewhere. Not iron, or anything prone to rust or decay, but a nickel, perhaps. Rhodium, but that’s more costly.
There are organizations that deal with long term issues. Such as the Long Now Foundation. They are working with a group to have a Rosetta Disc that has all the languages of Earth on it. Or at least a lot of those languages. The disc is no more than two inches in diameter, and is micro-engraved. It’s quite beautiful. But perhaps a bit impractical. Don’t misunderstand, with the proper lenses you can read it, but will such lenses always be available?
For long term storage, one must take into account the shifting of technologies. If in the far distant future of Asimov’s Encyclopedia Foundation, computers are almost unheard of, what other technologies might a future society here lack? Lenses? Special computers? Electron microscopes?
Frankly, it is possible to put 100,000 pages of print on a disc two inches square. But how practical would that be? Cool? Yes. Practical? No. It reminds one of the story about how you could – in theory – represent all the information of mankind by one single line on a bar.
How? Take a bar of an exact – and I mean EXACT – length. Now, assign three numbers to each letter of the alphabet and a three number code for spaces, commas, etc. Now translate every book, every encyclopedia, every text book and article mankind has ever wrote into one very, very , VERY long number. Now imagine a decimal point to the left of it.
What divided by what will give you that number? (You will need a computer for that.) Now that is a fraction. So place the one line on the bar so that it divides two sections of it into exactly – EXACTLY – that fraction. Later, if someone wishes to know the knowledge of all mankind, they can take that bar, determine the two numbers to divide by the place of the line, do the math (!) and re-translate that immensely long number into all the books ever wrote!
Cool? Yes. Practical? No.
Likewise, 100,000 pages on a disc is impractical for our purposes. Though we advocate that for general storage, as we do have computers that you could place that disc in and have it read. We picture larger pieces of metal, perhaps even the size of a small page, in which the print is micro, but such that a rudimentary magnifying lens would let you read. True, there might “only” be ten thousand pages on it, but that’s not too shabby, and one can have as many of those discs as one needs.
They will still be small, and thus can be safe guarded against being stressed or broke. And if only one lens is required – as opposed to a series of lenses – then such lenses could be stored in a fashion as to prevent them from being stressed or made useless. Then one could have the knowledge of mankind on a series of metal plates that were still accessible to the common man, regardless as to the technological level of the society the man found himself in.
As to which books…well, that is an issue that I imagine those in the Encyclopedia Foundation of Asimov’s universe had to ponder on, as they were leaving Trantor and could not take the whole Imperial Library with them. It is an issue that we are confronting, too.
Our parameters are stated in our mission statement, to preserve the knowledge of mankind for ten thousand years. True, the Encyclopedia Foundation in the late Dr. Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy” were only shooting for 1,000 years, but even the Second Foundation was thinking longer! So we are, too!
If it were just a matter of 1,000 years, almost anyone could do it, with perhaps a bit more effort than they’d care to make. But ten thousand, that has never been done, and the intricacies involved are enormous.
Consider that an average book lasts about 75 years. This is due to the cheap paper we use, which does make books more affordable, but they last a shorter time. Books from centuries ago were made out of a kind of linen, and the paper is not only still readable now, but will continue to be for some centuries. But it won’t last forever.
Now if you had a book, made out of special paper, and preserved it in a nitrogen environment, it might last a thousand or so years. But ten thousand, probably not. If nothing else, it would be hard to keep the chamber sealed so long. (The reason it is good to store books in a place with no oxygen is because book paper slowly combusts over time. That’s why it turns yellow, then brown. It is combusting slow motion. No oxygen, no combustion.)
An obvious solution is plastic. Hard, cheap, durable…wait, durable? Well, we think so. But plastic has not been around very long, so its properties, and how long it lasts, can only be theorized. In fact, the Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus is said to have been constructed with many things out of plastic, and Dr. Asimov had Golan Trevize comment on “old plastic, pink with age”. Asimov was guessing, we don’t know what plastic will look like in 500 years, as we have not had plastic around for 500 years.
Therefore, it might not be wise to use plastic. We can not be sure it would last 1,000 years, let alone 10,000. There are very old pieces of wood and papyrus, but these are more preserved due to the environment they were fortunate enough to be in.
Clay or stone? Stone, perhaps. But it’s heavy and bulky. Metal? Now we are getting somewhere. Not iron, or anything prone to rust or decay, but a nickel, perhaps. Rhodium, but that’s more costly.
There are organizations that deal with long term issues. Such as the Long Now Foundation. They are working with a group to have a Rosetta Disc that has all the languages of Earth on it. Or at least a lot of those languages. The disc is no more than two inches in diameter, and is micro-engraved. It’s quite beautiful. But perhaps a bit impractical. Don’t misunderstand, with the proper lenses you can read it, but will such lenses always be available?
For long term storage, one must take into account the shifting of technologies. If in the far distant future of Asimov’s Encyclopedia Foundation, computers are almost unheard of, what other technologies might a future society here lack? Lenses? Special computers? Electron microscopes?
Frankly, it is possible to put 100,000 pages of print on a disc two inches square. But how practical would that be? Cool? Yes. Practical? No. It reminds one of the story about how you could – in theory – represent all the information of mankind by one single line on a bar.
How? Take a bar of an exact – and I mean EXACT – length. Now, assign three numbers to each letter of the alphabet and a three number code for spaces, commas, etc. Now translate every book, every encyclopedia, every text book and article mankind has ever wrote into one very, very , VERY long number. Now imagine a decimal point to the left of it.
What divided by what will give you that number? (You will need a computer for that.) Now that is a fraction. So place the one line on the bar so that it divides two sections of it into exactly – EXACTLY – that fraction. Later, if someone wishes to know the knowledge of all mankind, they can take that bar, determine the two numbers to divide by the place of the line, do the math (!) and re-translate that immensely long number into all the books ever wrote!
Cool? Yes. Practical? No.
Likewise, 100,000 pages on a disc is impractical for our purposes. Though we advocate that for general storage, as we do have computers that you could place that disc in and have it read. We picture larger pieces of metal, perhaps even the size of a small page, in which the print is micro, but such that a rudimentary magnifying lens would let you read. True, there might “only” be ten thousand pages on it, but that’s not too shabby, and one can have as many of those discs as one needs.
They will still be small, and thus can be safe guarded against being stressed or broke. And if only one lens is required – as opposed to a series of lenses – then such lenses could be stored in a fashion as to prevent them from being stressed or made useless. Then one could have the knowledge of mankind on a series of metal plates that were still accessible to the common man, regardless as to the technological level of the society the man found himself in.
As to which books…well, that is an issue that I imagine those in the Encyclopedia Foundation of Asimov’s universe had to ponder on, as they were leaving Trantor and could not take the whole Imperial Library with them. It is an issue that we are confronting, too.
The Archivists
How exactly did those in the Encyclopedia Foundation preserve data?
Information would seem to be scanty, but there are some clues. But they
would tend to indicate that it was a massive and enormous undertaking.
Consider the book “Foundation’s Edge” set almost 500 years after the Encyclopedia Foundation was up and running. It is now the Foundation Federation, and spans one third of the Galaxy, with influence strong in another third of it. Its technology is higher than it’s ever been, higher – we are told – than the former Galactic Empire at its height.
Enter Janov Pelorat, a scholar of an arcane field, but noted in that field nonetheless. Born and raised on Terminus, and has never left it. He has spent his entire life on the planet that is completely dedicated to learning – with the implications that this is where they have the most need for stored data of past discoveries to build off of.
We don’t even need that implication, it was referenced in earlier books that the Encyclopedia Foundation did fulfill their goal and that the Encyclopedia Galactica is a reality. And continuously updated.
But when Golan Trevize asks Janov Pelorat if he is ready to board the ship, Janov says that he is now, because he has managed to fit all of his data – about Earth and the myths surrounding it – on to “one wafer”. One wafer? One wafer!
And this wafer, is it a thumbnail sized disc? No, it is described as being 20 centimeters by 20 centimeters, which for those raised in America is about 8 inches per side. Or substantially bigger than your iphone, but smaller – a bit – than your laptop. But it was just for storage, and still needed a computer to fit into.
And on that enormous – by our standards – wafer, he did not have the collected knowledge of mankind, but only one small topic. Earth. You yourself could download all there was to know about Earth – far more than Janov knew – and store it in a medium the size of your thumb. With room for three other subjects just as vast. And any encyclopedia set you liked!
Yet this is the time when we are told that there have been rapid advances in computer technology throughout the Foundation Federation. So we can only assume that things were much worse 500 years earlier. But how much worse?
Well, we know that when Hari Seldon was talking to Gaal Dornick in the first book, that they used a calculator such as we had in the nineteen seventies. Handheld, only did math, a smidge bigger than you iphone, and definitely thicker. Clearly, the Foundation’s technological advances have not been focused on computer technology! Back in those days, if their data storage was on a par with ours of the seventies, then they were still thinking that punch cards were the latest. IBM had punch cards that could store 64 bytes of data.
Today, in 2011, we can store 256 Giga Bytes of information on a USB Flash Drive. It weighs about an ounce, and is the size of your thumb. This is one billion bytes, as opposed to 64 bytes. It would take 15 million 625 thousand punch cards to hold one billion bytes.
Clearly, the Foundation Federation was substantially lacking in computer scientists, and perhaps the Galactic Empire itself had forgotten this entire field tens of thousands of years back. It apparently not only needed to be re-discovered, but it developed at what – to us – would seem a glacial pace. In fairness, they were busy rebuilding nuclear power plants, and miniaturizing power sources, and they were far in excess of us in that.
But how then was all the information in the Galactic Library on Trantor transferred to Terminus? The answer, implied in the books, is that it was not. After all, the first place Janov Pelorat wants to go to is Trantor, to check out the remains of the Library – wait, what?
Think about that! Janov is on the one planet in the Galaxy in which one would expect ALL the knowledge of mankind to be! The Encyclopedia Foundation itself is right there! But he must go to Trantor, the very place the first Encyclopedists came from, to see what else they have?
This is yet another clue that their data storage technology was severely lacking. Apparently they were not able to take all the data from Trantor, even on billions of punch cards! They thus took what they could, and did a lot of starting from scratch – which apparently Hari Seldon kind of wanted them to do.
What storage mediums did they end up using? Apparently electronic books in which one would plug in the appropriate “cassette”, which for those under the age of 40, was something about the size of a cell phone, which had a magnetized tape on it, from which information could be recovered. Principally sounds, as in music, but it served as data storage for us once, too.
Well, you can fit about 1,320,000 bytes on a cassette tape, depending on various factors. That still works out to a lot of tapes to be stored, and transported. One wonders why the Encyclopedia Foundation – with its love of miniaturization – would not have worked on micro-miniaturizing the print on regular metal or plastic discs?
Consider the book “Foundation’s Edge” set almost 500 years after the Encyclopedia Foundation was up and running. It is now the Foundation Federation, and spans one third of the Galaxy, with influence strong in another third of it. Its technology is higher than it’s ever been, higher – we are told – than the former Galactic Empire at its height.
Enter Janov Pelorat, a scholar of an arcane field, but noted in that field nonetheless. Born and raised on Terminus, and has never left it. He has spent his entire life on the planet that is completely dedicated to learning – with the implications that this is where they have the most need for stored data of past discoveries to build off of.
We don’t even need that implication, it was referenced in earlier books that the Encyclopedia Foundation did fulfill their goal and that the Encyclopedia Galactica is a reality. And continuously updated.
But when Golan Trevize asks Janov Pelorat if he is ready to board the ship, Janov says that he is now, because he has managed to fit all of his data – about Earth and the myths surrounding it – on to “one wafer”. One wafer? One wafer!
And this wafer, is it a thumbnail sized disc? No, it is described as being 20 centimeters by 20 centimeters, which for those raised in America is about 8 inches per side. Or substantially bigger than your iphone, but smaller – a bit – than your laptop. But it was just for storage, and still needed a computer to fit into.
And on that enormous – by our standards – wafer, he did not have the collected knowledge of mankind, but only one small topic. Earth. You yourself could download all there was to know about Earth – far more than Janov knew – and store it in a medium the size of your thumb. With room for three other subjects just as vast. And any encyclopedia set you liked!
Yet this is the time when we are told that there have been rapid advances in computer technology throughout the Foundation Federation. So we can only assume that things were much worse 500 years earlier. But how much worse?
Well, we know that when Hari Seldon was talking to Gaal Dornick in the first book, that they used a calculator such as we had in the nineteen seventies. Handheld, only did math, a smidge bigger than you iphone, and definitely thicker. Clearly, the Foundation’s technological advances have not been focused on computer technology! Back in those days, if their data storage was on a par with ours of the seventies, then they were still thinking that punch cards were the latest. IBM had punch cards that could store 64 bytes of data.
Today, in 2011, we can store 256 Giga Bytes of information on a USB Flash Drive. It weighs about an ounce, and is the size of your thumb. This is one billion bytes, as opposed to 64 bytes. It would take 15 million 625 thousand punch cards to hold one billion bytes.
Clearly, the Foundation Federation was substantially lacking in computer scientists, and perhaps the Galactic Empire itself had forgotten this entire field tens of thousands of years back. It apparently not only needed to be re-discovered, but it developed at what – to us – would seem a glacial pace. In fairness, they were busy rebuilding nuclear power plants, and miniaturizing power sources, and they were far in excess of us in that.
But how then was all the information in the Galactic Library on Trantor transferred to Terminus? The answer, implied in the books, is that it was not. After all, the first place Janov Pelorat wants to go to is Trantor, to check out the remains of the Library – wait, what?
Think about that! Janov is on the one planet in the Galaxy in which one would expect ALL the knowledge of mankind to be! The Encyclopedia Foundation itself is right there! But he must go to Trantor, the very place the first Encyclopedists came from, to see what else they have?
This is yet another clue that their data storage technology was severely lacking. Apparently they were not able to take all the data from Trantor, even on billions of punch cards! They thus took what they could, and did a lot of starting from scratch – which apparently Hari Seldon kind of wanted them to do.
What storage mediums did they end up using? Apparently electronic books in which one would plug in the appropriate “cassette”, which for those under the age of 40, was something about the size of a cell phone, which had a magnetized tape on it, from which information could be recovered. Principally sounds, as in music, but it served as data storage for us once, too.
Well, you can fit about 1,320,000 bytes on a cassette tape, depending on various factors. That still works out to a lot of tapes to be stored, and transported. One wonders why the Encyclopedia Foundation – with its love of miniaturization – would not have worked on micro-miniaturizing the print on regular metal or plastic discs?
The Journey
So you are a person who was working on Hari Seldon's Encyclopedia
project, and have now been told that you - and a hundred thousand others
- are being shipped off to Terminus, there to start The Encyclopedia
Foundation.
You didn't expect it. Hari Seldon knew you didn't, and even mentioned to Gaal Dornick that 100,000 people might not willingly move to the edge of the Galaxy. But given his performance at the hearing, the Emperor is now insisting on it.
We read much of their activities in "Foundation", the first in the original trilogy. But we read nothing about their trip from Trantor to Terminus. How long was it before they were even ready to go? What massive funding was needful? How many ships did it take? How long was the journey?
Remember, the era during which the Encyclopedia Foundation was started was a time of technological regression. Not only was technology and the standard of living diminishing, it had clearly been diminishing for some time. For example, the computer technology was at levels that we would think of as pre-nineteen eighties. For instance, they used hand calculators that while electronic, only calculated numbers. Newspapers were still being sold. Cell phones were unknown.
You are basically a pioneer, and the only additional technology to help that a mid-20th century person wouldn’t have is a spaceship capable of entering and exiting hyperspace.
Did they have to just take personal belongings? Who provided the raw materials that would create homes and factories at the other end, Terminus being devoid of metals? We know they used plastic a lot, where did the petrochemicals come from for that, Terminus being notably lacking in organic life?
Did each take a given amount of industrial supplies?
And then the journey. This wasn’t 500 years later, after the Foundation Federation had developed computer technology to let ships make a rapid series of jumps. It took months to get anywhere, and 100,000 eat a lot. And there aren’t any Star Trek “food replicators”. After each jump, from near the center of the Galaxy to it’s outermost edge, they had to stop, get a new answer from a very old and slow computer, check it’s math by paper and pencil, and jump again.
When we consider that it was 29 jumps from Terminus to Sayshell, we can see they had a very, very long trip.
When they got there, what did this band of scholars and researchers do? Someone had to build things, there were no robots – that they knew of! – to do any grunt work. Building a town for 100,000 people is not the easiest task, just laying a sewer system would be an enormous industrial undertaking. Clearly, Emperor Cleon was pulling out all the stops, and much more massively funding this project than we may have been led to believe. To give yourself a good idea of what it took, imagine if we relocated 100,000 professors and their families from east coast universities and libraries to a barren patch in Montana. What would we have to spend to move them there, build a town, and let them work on the Encyclopedia Foundation?
Now multiply that by lightyears, add increased time due to lack of computer power, and you’ll know what the Emperor had to have spent!
You didn't expect it. Hari Seldon knew you didn't, and even mentioned to Gaal Dornick that 100,000 people might not willingly move to the edge of the Galaxy. But given his performance at the hearing, the Emperor is now insisting on it.
We read much of their activities in "Foundation", the first in the original trilogy. But we read nothing about their trip from Trantor to Terminus. How long was it before they were even ready to go? What massive funding was needful? How many ships did it take? How long was the journey?
Remember, the era during which the Encyclopedia Foundation was started was a time of technological regression. Not only was technology and the standard of living diminishing, it had clearly been diminishing for some time. For example, the computer technology was at levels that we would think of as pre-nineteen eighties. For instance, they used hand calculators that while electronic, only calculated numbers. Newspapers were still being sold. Cell phones were unknown.
You are basically a pioneer, and the only additional technology to help that a mid-20th century person wouldn’t have is a spaceship capable of entering and exiting hyperspace.
Did they have to just take personal belongings? Who provided the raw materials that would create homes and factories at the other end, Terminus being devoid of metals? We know they used plastic a lot, where did the petrochemicals come from for that, Terminus being notably lacking in organic life?
Did each take a given amount of industrial supplies?
And then the journey. This wasn’t 500 years later, after the Foundation Federation had developed computer technology to let ships make a rapid series of jumps. It took months to get anywhere, and 100,000 eat a lot. And there aren’t any Star Trek “food replicators”. After each jump, from near the center of the Galaxy to it’s outermost edge, they had to stop, get a new answer from a very old and slow computer, check it’s math by paper and pencil, and jump again.
When we consider that it was 29 jumps from Terminus to Sayshell, we can see they had a very, very long trip.
When they got there, what did this band of scholars and researchers do? Someone had to build things, there were no robots – that they knew of! – to do any grunt work. Building a town for 100,000 people is not the easiest task, just laying a sewer system would be an enormous industrial undertaking. Clearly, Emperor Cleon was pulling out all the stops, and much more massively funding this project than we may have been led to believe. To give yourself a good idea of what it took, imagine if we relocated 100,000 professors and their families from east coast universities and libraries to a barren patch in Montana. What would we have to spend to move them there, build a town, and let them work on the Encyclopedia Foundation?
Now multiply that by lightyears, add increased time due to lack of computer power, and you’ll know what the Emperor had to have spent!
The Encyclopedists
Those who read the “Foundation Trilogy” by the late Dr. Isaac Asimov
must surely have noticed how “The Encyclopedists” were only one section
of the first book. Yet they were the original workers and scholars of
The Encyclopedia Foundation, the Foundation sent to Terminus by the
Emperor to collect and preserve all the knowledge of the galaxy.
What happened to them? There are only scattered references in the expanded series. Chapters often started with a quote from the Encyclopedia Galactica, indicating that over a 1,000 years after they started that they were done. And they had an edition out earlier than that, as Golan Trevize once mentioned in “Foundation’s Edge”.
We know that
Salvor Hardin took power away from the Board of Trustees and put
Terminus – and the Encyclopedia Foundation – on an expansionist course.
But he did not stop the original project. We just never heard about
the Encyclopedists specifically.
What difficulties did they encounter, and have to surmount? It was referenced that the physical scientists were the most highly regarded, while pure scholars like Janov Pelorat were looked down on. But even Janov was a “new researcher”, rather than an archivist or Encyclopedist.
It seems that while their founding was that of a scholarly institute, that those who labored at it were not well regarded. Tolerated, but thought to be somewhat useless. Elsewhere I have pointed out that this could not have been the case. That in spite of how the populace regarded them – if they were regarded at all – that they were the ones who made it possible for the technological growth of the Foundation Federation.
How was the situation on the Periphery described? A tour of those outer planets, in the first book, showed that they had “forgot” atomic power and were back to coal and oil. A person might “forget”, but when this is said of a culture, what it really means is that the books with that knowledge in it were lost or destroyed, and the last person to have read those books is dead or not speaking.
This then was the case on planets such as Anacreon and Locris and such. Their books were gone or destroyed, and no one was left who remembered the knowledge. Were it not for the Foundation, they would have slipped even further back into barbarism.
And were it not for the Encyclopedists, the Foundation would have been no help at all.
What happened to them? There are only scattered references in the expanded series. Chapters often started with a quote from the Encyclopedia Galactica, indicating that over a 1,000 years after they started that they were done. And they had an edition out earlier than that, as Golan Trevize once mentioned in “Foundation’s Edge”.
What difficulties did they encounter, and have to surmount? It was referenced that the physical scientists were the most highly regarded, while pure scholars like Janov Pelorat were looked down on. But even Janov was a “new researcher”, rather than an archivist or Encyclopedist.
It seems that while their founding was that of a scholarly institute, that those who labored at it were not well regarded. Tolerated, but thought to be somewhat useless. Elsewhere I have pointed out that this could not have been the case. That in spite of how the populace regarded them – if they were regarded at all – that they were the ones who made it possible for the technological growth of the Foundation Federation.
How was the situation on the Periphery described? A tour of those outer planets, in the first book, showed that they had “forgot” atomic power and were back to coal and oil. A person might “forget”, but when this is said of a culture, what it really means is that the books with that knowledge in it were lost or destroyed, and the last person to have read those books is dead or not speaking.
This then was the case on planets such as Anacreon and Locris and such. Their books were gone or destroyed, and no one was left who remembered the knowledge. Were it not for the Foundation, they would have slipped even further back into barbarism.
And were it not for the Encyclopedists, the Foundation would have been no help at all.
Lewis Pirenne
Readers of Dr. Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy" concerning the
establishment of the Encyclopedia Foundation on the planet Terminus will
vaguely recall Lewis Pirenne. He was the Chairman of the Board of
Trustees of the Encyclopedia Foundation Number One.
He was also the man who didn't want to militarize Terminus, or do anything to prevent it from being subdued by foreign powers. Mayor Salvor Hardin is regarded as a hero, and one of his claims to fame was subverting the power of Lewis Pirenne and the Board. He was upheld in his actions by Hari Seldon, at the time of the opening of the Time Vault.
But was Lewis the bad guy? I would suggest that he was not. As Chairman he had certain responsibilities, and he took them seriously. He placed the needs of the Encyclopedia Foundation first, last and always. Nothing, even a threat of war, could deter him from his single minded dedication to the collection and preservation of the Galaxy's knowledge.
What else would you actually wish from the Chairman of the Board of Trustees? No one has any problem with Mayor Hardin having pulled the stunts he pulled to preserve Terminus and it's peoples. That was his purpose, his monomania. And I'm sure no one would have any problem with the janitor of the Time Vault - unnamed and unsung! - focusing his efforts on keeping the place clean!
Each had their task, and for either to have performed it less well than they could would have been wrong. Mayor Hardin needed to keep Terminus free, which also helped preserve the Encyclopedia Foundation. But Chairman Pirenne - stuffed shirt though he may have came across - needed to be just as firm in keeping the scholars on track. So that there'd be more point to Terminus than it just being another planet in the Periphery.
Sure, it can be said that Hari Seldon himself said, "The Encyclopedia Foundation is a fraud, and always has been!" But he simply meant that there was more to it than publishing an encyclopedia. That he wished knowledge not to simply be collected and preserved, but to expand. His comment about not caring whether it was ever published, I take as hyperbole, and apparently the people of Terminus did, too.
For they continued to work on and publish the Encyclopedia Galactica. And a good thing - where would the Foundation scientists have learned their science in the first place, if the knowledge hadn't been preserved? How far would the Foundation have got in restoring civilization to the Galaxy if their scientists had to re-discover 20,000 plus years of science each generation?
I claim then that while the Foundation rightly enshrined Salvor Hardin and later Hober Mallow as right up there with Hari Seldon, that some reflection be given to one of the unsung heroes of the Foundation - Lewis Pirenne.
He was also the man who didn't want to militarize Terminus, or do anything to prevent it from being subdued by foreign powers. Mayor Salvor Hardin is regarded as a hero, and one of his claims to fame was subverting the power of Lewis Pirenne and the Board. He was upheld in his actions by Hari Seldon, at the time of the opening of the Time Vault.
But was Lewis the bad guy? I would suggest that he was not. As Chairman he had certain responsibilities, and he took them seriously. He placed the needs of the Encyclopedia Foundation first, last and always. Nothing, even a threat of war, could deter him from his single minded dedication to the collection and preservation of the Galaxy's knowledge.
What else would you actually wish from the Chairman of the Board of Trustees? No one has any problem with Mayor Hardin having pulled the stunts he pulled to preserve Terminus and it's peoples. That was his purpose, his monomania. And I'm sure no one would have any problem with the janitor of the Time Vault - unnamed and unsung! - focusing his efforts on keeping the place clean!
Each had their task, and for either to have performed it less well than they could would have been wrong. Mayor Hardin needed to keep Terminus free, which also helped preserve the Encyclopedia Foundation. But Chairman Pirenne - stuffed shirt though he may have came across - needed to be just as firm in keeping the scholars on track. So that there'd be more point to Terminus than it just being another planet in the Periphery.
Sure, it can be said that Hari Seldon himself said, "The Encyclopedia Foundation is a fraud, and always has been!" But he simply meant that there was more to it than publishing an encyclopedia. That he wished knowledge not to simply be collected and preserved, but to expand. His comment about not caring whether it was ever published, I take as hyperbole, and apparently the people of Terminus did, too.
For they continued to work on and publish the Encyclopedia Galactica. And a good thing - where would the Foundation scientists have learned their science in the first place, if the knowledge hadn't been preserved? How far would the Foundation have got in restoring civilization to the Galaxy if their scientists had to re-discover 20,000 plus years of science each generation?
I claim then that while the Foundation rightly enshrined Salvor Hardin and later Hober Mallow as right up there with Hari Seldon, that some reflection be given to one of the unsung heroes of the Foundation - Lewis Pirenne.
Empires
"The Galactic Empire was falling..."
It was with those words that Dr. Isaac Asimov described a situation in which an apparently strong Galactic Empire, that had lasted over 20,000 years, was nearing a collapse. He is said to have based that story, "The Foundation Trilogy", on "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbons.
What are these empires, in history and fiction, and what relevance do they have to us? An empire is a word that can be used for many things, but usually for a large and cohesive group, with a strong leader - or at least a strong sense of purpose.
In history, empires are known for two things. Always seeming to be eternal while you are in one. And it always being obvious that it had to fall, but only long after it fell.
We are familiar with many empires in history, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. We've more recently had the Spanish Empire and British Empire. It does not seem to us that there are empires any more, at least none that we call that.
But what of our nations, our alliances? Can they be said to be eternal? Is not the need for preserving knowledge against an unforeseen collapse or disaster as great now, as it was in the past, or was to be in Asimov's future?
The Encyclopedia Foundation was created in Asimov's series to preserve the knowledge of the Galaxy. And that is the need that this Encyclopedia Foundation intends on meeting.
Knowledge will be preserved to rebuild in the event of a disaster, natural or man made. Thus can the time period between a collapse and a new civilization be shortened from hundreds - or thousands - of years, to decades.
It was with those words that Dr. Isaac Asimov described a situation in which an apparently strong Galactic Empire, that had lasted over 20,000 years, was nearing a collapse. He is said to have based that story, "The Foundation Trilogy", on "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbons.
What are these empires, in history and fiction, and what relevance do they have to us? An empire is a word that can be used for many things, but usually for a large and cohesive group, with a strong leader - or at least a strong sense of purpose.
In history, empires are known for two things. Always seeming to be eternal while you are in one. And it always being obvious that it had to fall, but only long after it fell.
We are familiar with many empires in history, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. We've more recently had the Spanish Empire and British Empire. It does not seem to us that there are empires any more, at least none that we call that.
But what of our nations, our alliances? Can they be said to be eternal? Is not the need for preserving knowledge against an unforeseen collapse or disaster as great now, as it was in the past, or was to be in Asimov's future?
The Encyclopedia Foundation was created in Asimov's series to preserve the knowledge of the Galaxy. And that is the need that this Encyclopedia Foundation intends on meeting.
Knowledge will be preserved to rebuild in the event of a disaster, natural or man made. Thus can the time period between a collapse and a new civilization be shortened from hundreds - or thousands - of years, to decades.
Remember
As a child, there were few books that gave me as much enjoyment as those
of the late Dr. Isaac Asimov. Not only were his fiction stories great,
but his educational non-fiction books were almost my entire education,
as paying attention in class was beyond me. And we had no pills to end
daydreaming back then!
But I enjoyed his books, and he wrote on every subject, so I could learn math and history, biology and astronomy, and many more topics.
But it is his fiction work "The Foundation Trilogy" that has inspired this site, and like a character named Janov Pelorat, given me a life work. I, like Hari Seldon, though without his Psychohistorical Mathematics, have been concerned about the possibility of the knowledge being lost.
To that end, I started The Encyclopedia Foundation, the very name the group of scientists in Asimov's series chose. It's purpose is to preserve books. As one means to that end, it will also be helping those who are in need of shelter for a variety of reasons from homelessness to social problems.
We have purchased a condemned house and completely renovated it. We have purchased a second home right next door to it and are renovating that. We will have the means to assist many people, and in so doing will also be providing a safe haven for storing the collected knowledge of mankind.
For make no mistake, while it is an ambitious project, we fully intend to transcribe, on metal plates/discs, as comprehensive a collection of knowledge as has ever been, short of a library. And what we might lack in quantity, we will make up for in quality. Not all books at the Library of Congress are worth preserving, after all.
We hope you enjoy it!
But I enjoyed his books, and he wrote on every subject, so I could learn math and history, biology and astronomy, and many more topics.
But it is his fiction work "The Foundation Trilogy" that has inspired this site, and like a character named Janov Pelorat, given me a life work. I, like Hari Seldon, though without his Psychohistorical Mathematics, have been concerned about the possibility of the knowledge being lost.
To that end, I started The Encyclopedia Foundation, the very name the group of scientists in Asimov's series chose. It's purpose is to preserve books. As one means to that end, it will also be helping those who are in need of shelter for a variety of reasons from homelessness to social problems.
We have purchased a condemned house and completely renovated it. We have purchased a second home right next door to it and are renovating that. We will have the means to assist many people, and in so doing will also be providing a safe haven for storing the collected knowledge of mankind.
For make no mistake, while it is an ambitious project, we fully intend to transcribe, on metal plates/discs, as comprehensive a collection of knowledge as has ever been, short of a library. And what we might lack in quantity, we will make up for in quality. Not all books at the Library of Congress are worth preserving, after all.
We hope you enjoy it!
The Long Now
The Encyclopedia Foundation got its start as an idea – as described on
this very website – back in the eighties with the reading of “The
Foundation Trilogy” by Dr. Isaac Asimov. And long before him, as
mentioned in another article, people have had the idea of preserving
knowledge for very extended periods of time.
The Library of Alexandria was an attempt. And such a thing as a Bible is an attempt, given that the building of a cohesive multi-generational group that values a given book tends to be the best thing to preserve it. More on that in another article.
So it is not that the idea is unique to us. And while it may in some ways be pleasing that we seem to be amongst the few who have thought to do this, we are not alone in that regard, either. Nor would we wish to be. The more the merrier for such a task!
There have been time capsules and time vaults before us. But we are trying to be a bit more ambitious. Yes, we will have a time vault of sorts. And it will preserve the knowledge of mankind. In a durable medium that will last ten thousand years and be accessible no matter who is the one to find it. But we wish to do more.
So not only do we wish an organization in place that could possibly last that long – though none have so far in history – but we wish to increase the chances of success by the simple expedient of getting the idea out there. We want others to share this dream, this goal. And to work for it, with us, or separately from us, it makes no difference.
To that end we draw attention to a group called “The Long Now Foundation”. Originally a Foundation with the idea of getting people to think “long term” – as in ten thousand years – it started with the project of a mechanical clock that would keep time for ten thousand years. A very daunting project, but one they have succeeded admirably at. Though one supposes only…time…will tell!
We have contacted them before. On such matters as their Rosetta Disc with a thousand languages on a durable metal disc. And ideas on information storage in general. One gentleman there gave me a good tip on the problems with using pictographs to try to explain things to illiterate people. Invaluable, in fact.
More recently, the Long Now Foundation has had the desire to explore long term data storage, and we are very happy about this. So happy, that if anyone out there is looking to donate money, we would suggest that they look up the Long Now Foundation and donate that money to them instead of us. For starters, you could get a membership with them for a very reasonable monthly donation.
Why them instead of us? Well, several reasons. One, we could certainly make use of donations, but do not specifically need them. We plan on being self-sufficient, so while donations would put some of our projects further ahead, we know we’ll get those projects done eventually anyway.
For two, they are a tax exempt organization, so we know that your donation dollar would help you personally more there than here. And that should be a consideration.
But also, they are a larger and more polished organization than we are, they’ve been around longer – the nineties – and their goals are in every way things we wish for and support. Given that, we believe that they can do more towards our mutual goals than we can. At least at this point, and probably for a long time to come.
The path we are taking is one where donations will be increasingly irrelevant. We’ve not actually had any yet – besides those from our Directors – and we are hoping to arrange to never need them. We believe we can.
Therefore, it is with no reservations that we encourage any who wish to donate to the cause of preserving knowledge for ten thousand years that they consider the Long Now Foundation. And please, include a note stating that you really hope they do that data storage project. This will help them, and it will help us in knowing that they are becoming an increasingly more stable and longer lasting entity than they already are.
And it will help our mutual goals. Enormously. So please find them and donate to them.
The Library of Alexandria was an attempt. And such a thing as a Bible is an attempt, given that the building of a cohesive multi-generational group that values a given book tends to be the best thing to preserve it. More on that in another article.
So it is not that the idea is unique to us. And while it may in some ways be pleasing that we seem to be amongst the few who have thought to do this, we are not alone in that regard, either. Nor would we wish to be. The more the merrier for such a task!
There have been time capsules and time vaults before us. But we are trying to be a bit more ambitious. Yes, we will have a time vault of sorts. And it will preserve the knowledge of mankind. In a durable medium that will last ten thousand years and be accessible no matter who is the one to find it. But we wish to do more.
So not only do we wish an organization in place that could possibly last that long – though none have so far in history – but we wish to increase the chances of success by the simple expedient of getting the idea out there. We want others to share this dream, this goal. And to work for it, with us, or separately from us, it makes no difference.
To that end we draw attention to a group called “The Long Now Foundation”. Originally a Foundation with the idea of getting people to think “long term” – as in ten thousand years – it started with the project of a mechanical clock that would keep time for ten thousand years. A very daunting project, but one they have succeeded admirably at. Though one supposes only…time…will tell!
We have contacted them before. On such matters as their Rosetta Disc with a thousand languages on a durable metal disc. And ideas on information storage in general. One gentleman there gave me a good tip on the problems with using pictographs to try to explain things to illiterate people. Invaluable, in fact.
More recently, the Long Now Foundation has had the desire to explore long term data storage, and we are very happy about this. So happy, that if anyone out there is looking to donate money, we would suggest that they look up the Long Now Foundation and donate that money to them instead of us. For starters, you could get a membership with them for a very reasonable monthly donation.
Why them instead of us? Well, several reasons. One, we could certainly make use of donations, but do not specifically need them. We plan on being self-sufficient, so while donations would put some of our projects further ahead, we know we’ll get those projects done eventually anyway.
For two, they are a tax exempt organization, so we know that your donation dollar would help you personally more there than here. And that should be a consideration.
But also, they are a larger and more polished organization than we are, they’ve been around longer – the nineties – and their goals are in every way things we wish for and support. Given that, we believe that they can do more towards our mutual goals than we can. At least at this point, and probably for a long time to come.
The path we are taking is one where donations will be increasingly irrelevant. We’ve not actually had any yet – besides those from our Directors – and we are hoping to arrange to never need them. We believe we can.
Therefore, it is with no reservations that we encourage any who wish to donate to the cause of preserving knowledge for ten thousand years that they consider the Long Now Foundation. And please, include a note stating that you really hope they do that data storage project. This will help them, and it will help us in knowing that they are becoming an increasingly more stable and longer lasting entity than they already are.
And it will help our mutual goals. Enormously. So please find them and donate to them.
The First Metal Plate Will Have...
The Encyclopedia Foundation got started in 02008 with the purchase of
one house. Condemned. We fixed it first, before buying a second one.
Why? Obviously so that if we ran out of money, we’d still at least have
one working house. No sense worrying about a second house till the
first one was done. Not if safety, security and stability are our
watchwords. And they are.
Likewise our approach to preserving the knowledge of mankind. What if we run out of money? What if we are interrupted by a disaster that arrives sooner than expected?
We therefore made the determination that we would preserve one single plate of knowledge first, such that if that was all we ever did, it would serve as better than nothing. Then, after that was safely done, we would focus on additional knowledge, but such that it would only be an expansion of the first plate.
The first plate will have 20 volumes of children’s textbooks, including the six volume McGuffey Reader set for that time period (early 20th century, pre-1911) The 32 volume set of the 13th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911). The 51 volume set of the Harvard Classics (1910). The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (17th century). And the King James Version of the Holy Bible (17th century).
These total 105 books of varying sizes. You could picture it as a basic 100 volumes, but it is not the “100 books to reboot civilization” described in another article.
It’s something that we are hoping can be micro-engraved on one metal page. The Encyclopedia Foundation strongly believes that if your culture at any level had that one plate, that there would be some hope for rebuilding, and having a storehouse of mankind’s cultural, literary and historical treasures.
You would, after all, be able to read the educational books of that early 20th century time (the McGuffey’s Readers), you’d have the complete reference work of that time (the Encyclopedia Britannica), you’d have what then Harvard President Dr. Eliot said would give someone the equivalent of a liberal arts degree from the Harvard University of that time (the Harvard Classics), AND, you’d have the two most popular books to own at that time – Shakespeare and the Bible.
Having that plate would make you in every way conceivable a well educated man of 1911. With even a few “advanced” ideas that could be gleaned by the more modern children’s textbooks on the sciences. And don’t discount the “well educated man of 1911”. Humanity was at the top of it’s game, then, and it’s those guys who then started us on all that we have – and take for granted – today.
After that first plate, we will have that as a safe base. If we did nothing else, that would have achieved and fulfilled our mission statement.
But we will then start on a second plate. And that one will have the works described in “100 books to reboot civilization” described elsewhere, minus that which was already included on the first plate.
1. 3 books on measurements and scientific data: The Machinists Handbook. The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. The Handbook of Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry.
2. 9 books on Medicine: A general book on medical theory. A general book on surgical procedures. A general book on the history of Medical Science. “Gray’s Anatomy”, “Obstetrics and Gynecology” by Beckman, “Where there is no Doctor” by David Werner, “Where there is no Dentist” by Murray Dickson. “Diseases of Women” and “Pediatrics”.
3. 24 books on general information and mathematics. “Five Acres and Independence”, the “Foxfire Series” (There are 12 of those). A book each on Carpentry, Masonry and Bricklaying, Blacksmithing, Plumbing, Sewer Systems, and Electricity. Basic Mathematics, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and Trigonometry.
4. 5 books on guns, ammo, gunpowder making, explosives, and survival. The U.S. Army guides are good for some of these.
5. 3 books on how states can survive: “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “On War” by von Clausewitz, “Guerrilla Warfare” by Mao Tse-Tung.
6. 2 books to help leaders lead and followers keep watch: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. “The Rights of Man” by Thomas Paine.
That’s 46 more volumes. If you noticed some differences – like listing “Atlas Shrugged” instead of “The Wealth of Nations” it is because the Harvard Classics contain “The Wealth of Nations” in their 51 book set. And the Harvard Classics contain “The Prince” so that’s not on this specific list.
And yet to the extent that we can put about 100 books on one metal page, in a fashion that is appropriate to be read without an enormous electron microscope, we will fill out that list with another fifty four volumes. Such as several volumes on farming, agriculture, agronomy and Norman Borlaug’s works!
And that will be plate two. We may even make one plate – eventually – that has the plate covered on either side, so that all that – 200 volumes! – will be on one plate!
However, that said, it may be that for reasons of practicality that we have to just have fifty volumes per plate. In which case our first plate would actually be two plates, and those 46 volumes would make up Plate Three.
Now, however that works out – one double-sided plate, two plates of 100 or three plates of 50, that will be another stopping point. Such as if we had those, and could do no more, then that would well serve to reboot civilization and preserve a lot of mankind’s cultural heritage.
As we believe we’ll continue, then we’ll have more plates on specialized topics. Philosophy. Electronics. Computers. Rocketry and Space Travel. And more literature. Henry David Thoreau, Samuel Clemens, Isaac Asimov.
But picture our excitement at the thought of being able to get 100 volumes on a side and thus have two hundred volumes on a single plate! What a treasure such a plate would be!
Likewise our approach to preserving the knowledge of mankind. What if we run out of money? What if we are interrupted by a disaster that arrives sooner than expected?
We therefore made the determination that we would preserve one single plate of knowledge first, such that if that was all we ever did, it would serve as better than nothing. Then, after that was safely done, we would focus on additional knowledge, but such that it would only be an expansion of the first plate.
The first plate will have 20 volumes of children’s textbooks, including the six volume McGuffey Reader set for that time period (early 20th century, pre-1911) The 32 volume set of the 13th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911). The 51 volume set of the Harvard Classics (1910). The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (17th century). And the King James Version of the Holy Bible (17th century).
These total 105 books of varying sizes. You could picture it as a basic 100 volumes, but it is not the “100 books to reboot civilization” described in another article.
It’s something that we are hoping can be micro-engraved on one metal page. The Encyclopedia Foundation strongly believes that if your culture at any level had that one plate, that there would be some hope for rebuilding, and having a storehouse of mankind’s cultural, literary and historical treasures.
You would, after all, be able to read the educational books of that early 20th century time (the McGuffey’s Readers), you’d have the complete reference work of that time (the Encyclopedia Britannica), you’d have what then Harvard President Dr. Eliot said would give someone the equivalent of a liberal arts degree from the Harvard University of that time (the Harvard Classics), AND, you’d have the two most popular books to own at that time – Shakespeare and the Bible.
Having that plate would make you in every way conceivable a well educated man of 1911. With even a few “advanced” ideas that could be gleaned by the more modern children’s textbooks on the sciences. And don’t discount the “well educated man of 1911”. Humanity was at the top of it’s game, then, and it’s those guys who then started us on all that we have – and take for granted – today.
After that first plate, we will have that as a safe base. If we did nothing else, that would have achieved and fulfilled our mission statement.
But we will then start on a second plate. And that one will have the works described in “100 books to reboot civilization” described elsewhere, minus that which was already included on the first plate.
1. 3 books on measurements and scientific data: The Machinists Handbook. The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. The Handbook of Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry.
2. 9 books on Medicine: A general book on medical theory. A general book on surgical procedures. A general book on the history of Medical Science. “Gray’s Anatomy”, “Obstetrics and Gynecology” by Beckman, “Where there is no Doctor” by David Werner, “Where there is no Dentist” by Murray Dickson. “Diseases of Women” and “Pediatrics”.
3. 24 books on general information and mathematics. “Five Acres and Independence”, the “Foxfire Series” (There are 12 of those). A book each on Carpentry, Masonry and Bricklaying, Blacksmithing, Plumbing, Sewer Systems, and Electricity. Basic Mathematics, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and Trigonometry.
4. 5 books on guns, ammo, gunpowder making, explosives, and survival. The U.S. Army guides are good for some of these.
5. 3 books on how states can survive: “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “On War” by von Clausewitz, “Guerrilla Warfare” by Mao Tse-Tung.
6. 2 books to help leaders lead and followers keep watch: “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. “The Rights of Man” by Thomas Paine.
That’s 46 more volumes. If you noticed some differences – like listing “Atlas Shrugged” instead of “The Wealth of Nations” it is because the Harvard Classics contain “The Wealth of Nations” in their 51 book set. And the Harvard Classics contain “The Prince” so that’s not on this specific list.
And yet to the extent that we can put about 100 books on one metal page, in a fashion that is appropriate to be read without an enormous electron microscope, we will fill out that list with another fifty four volumes. Such as several volumes on farming, agriculture, agronomy and Norman Borlaug’s works!
And that will be plate two. We may even make one plate – eventually – that has the plate covered on either side, so that all that – 200 volumes! – will be on one plate!
However, that said, it may be that for reasons of practicality that we have to just have fifty volumes per plate. In which case our first plate would actually be two plates, and those 46 volumes would make up Plate Three.
Now, however that works out – one double-sided plate, two plates of 100 or three plates of 50, that will be another stopping point. Such as if we had those, and could do no more, then that would well serve to reboot civilization and preserve a lot of mankind’s cultural heritage.
As we believe we’ll continue, then we’ll have more plates on specialized topics. Philosophy. Electronics. Computers. Rocketry and Space Travel. And more literature. Henry David Thoreau, Samuel Clemens, Isaac Asimov.
But picture our excitement at the thought of being able to get 100 volumes on a side and thus have two hundred volumes on a single plate! What a treasure such a plate would be!
Plain List of 100 Books to Re-boot Civilization
The Encyclopedia Foundation presents this plain list of what 100 books
we feel would best "reboot" civilization. Use this list as you will for
any long term project you have. An explanation of this can be found in
the previous article called "Re-booting Civilization".
1. 20 textbooks for educating children K-12, we recommend six volumes be the McGuffey Readers, the rest High School Texts on History, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology.
2. 32 volumes of The 13th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The totality of knowledge of mankind up to 1911.
3. 3 books on measurements and scientific data: The Machinists Handbook. The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. The Handbook of Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry.
4. 9 books on Medicine: A general book on medical theory. A general book on surgical procedures. A general book on the history of Medical Science. “Gray’s Anatomy”, “Obstetrics and Gynecology” by Beckman, “Where there is no Doctor” by David Werner, “Where there is no Dentist” by Murray Dickson. “Diseases of Women” and “Pediatrics”.
5. 24 books on general information and mathematics. “Five Acres and Independence”, the “Foxfire Series” (There are 12 of those). A book each on Carpentry, Masonry and Bricklaying, Blacksmithing, Plumbing, Sewer Systems, and Electricity. Basic Mathematics, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and Trigonometry.
6. 5 books on guns, ammo, gunpowder making, explosives, and survival. The U.S. Army guides are good for some of these.
7. 4 books on how states can survive: “The Prince” by Machiavelli, “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “On War” by von Clausewitz, “Guerrilla Warfare” by Mao Tse-Tung.
8. 2 books to help leaders lead: “Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. “The Rights of Man” by Thomas Paine.
9. 1 King James Version Bible within the Standard Works (Quad) of the LDS Church.
1. 20 textbooks for educating children K-12, we recommend six volumes be the McGuffey Readers, the rest High School Texts on History, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology.
2. 32 volumes of The 13th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The totality of knowledge of mankind up to 1911.
3. 3 books on measurements and scientific data: The Machinists Handbook. The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. The Handbook of Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry.
4. 9 books on Medicine: A general book on medical theory. A general book on surgical procedures. A general book on the history of Medical Science. “Gray’s Anatomy”, “Obstetrics and Gynecology” by Beckman, “Where there is no Doctor” by David Werner, “Where there is no Dentist” by Murray Dickson. “Diseases of Women” and “Pediatrics”.
5. 24 books on general information and mathematics. “Five Acres and Independence”, the “Foxfire Series” (There are 12 of those). A book each on Carpentry, Masonry and Bricklaying, Blacksmithing, Plumbing, Sewer Systems, and Electricity. Basic Mathematics, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and Trigonometry.
6. 5 books on guns, ammo, gunpowder making, explosives, and survival. The U.S. Army guides are good for some of these.
7. 4 books on how states can survive: “The Prince” by Machiavelli, “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “On War” by von Clausewitz, “Guerrilla Warfare” by Mao Tse-Tung.
8. 2 books to help leaders lead: “Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. “The Rights of Man” by Thomas Paine.
9. 1 King James Version Bible within the Standard Works (Quad) of the LDS Church.
Re-booting Civilization
The Encyclopedia Foundation welcomes “competition”. We admire the Long
Now Foundation. We also admire a site we came across through the Long
Now’s website, it is an article from a site called “The Technium”.
They are apparently envisioning a “Library of Utility” that would be like a “seed bank”, but with books, to do a “reboot” of civilization. Not literature and culture, so much as science and technology.
They are thinking along the lines of ten thousand books saved for ten thousand years. A commendable goal.
However, it made us wonder how many books it would actually take. 10,000 seems a bit high to us. We have good reason to wonder about this. If each book can only last by being stored on metal plates, then given the cost of that, the fewer the better. And better to have 100 copies around the world of 100 good books, then 100 good books and 9,900 not so needful ones. Given that the cost would be the same.
Can it be done? Can civilization be “rebooted” in 100 books? A qualified “yes”. We feel that it could be, but that 1,000 would give one more room to be sure.
How do we come to that conclusion? The Encyclopedia Foundation thinks of the growth of knowledge as an inverted pyramid. There is one original great idea, then things grow from that, like a tree. The trunk of Science has thick branches of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology. Those thick branches split as well, so that from the thick branch of Biology it splits into everything from Anatomy to Zoology.
Now, here’s the thing. Each of the final “little branches” are very important – such as, for example, Automotive Design, a subset of the subject of Internal Combustion Engines, a subset of Machines, a subset of Physics, a subset of Science.
It can be readily seen that if someone has the books on Internal Combustion Engines, they as a society will derive – eventually – all they need to know about Automotive Design. We could also say that if they had the book on “Machines” in general, with but a passing reference to Internal Combustion Engines, that they could (though it would take longer) derive Automotive Design.
Taking it to the extreme, though, if they only had the books on the Scientific Method, with but a sentence’s worth of description for each marvel that Science could produce (“Rigorous application of mechanical principles is what led to the ability to mass produce automobiles.”) we can see that while it puts them on the road to it, that the destination is far too far away to be of much use.
So it is important to think about which are the key branching points. You don’t want to have to store 10,000 or even 100,000 twigs. But you don’t just want one tree stump book of “The Scientific Method” and call it good, either.
Another thing that must be taken into account is the populace. A civilization re-boot implies a massive disaster. It’s not actually a disaster on a civilization wrecking scale unless a thing that is called a “die back” takes place, wherein the population exceeds the capacity of the resources at hand to feed them, and thus dies off until a new equilibrium is reached at a drastically reduced level.
In other words, there won’t be 6.5 billion people when civilization collapses, and the biggest loss in population of all will be from the industrialized technology-dependent nations. You know, where we all know that meat comes from the back of the store and vegetables are off to one side in the store. Unlike places on Earth where they still farm for a living, the United States has less than 3 percent of its population familiar with that. And they depend on half a million dollar combines and plentiful fuel.
It might be said, “But if there’s a billion people left, and they have the books, so what?”
Well, it gets into the field of what’s called the “Diffusion of Innovations”. There is a good Wikipedia article on the subject. But in short, the billion aren’t all standing around the library waiting for the new idea.
How an idea spreads, and thus “reboots” civilization depends on who discovers the new idea – a tribal outcast or the Chief’s son? It depends on how fast communications are. Do they have heliographs and fast horse riders and are part of a network of communities? Or is their tribe of 1,000 survivors in a world of a scattered billion completely cut off?
Will they accept the idea, to the extent that they as a social organization will work towards using it? Can they even afford to? One man cannot build a car, even with a book and tools. And nor can the community afford to help, not when they work 12 hours a day in the fields.
There is a concept in this of “relative advantage” that is important. If the machines are rusted out hulks, or radioactive slag, and a farming community of 1,000 comes across the books, what will it do for them?
As they are back to horse drawn carts, we might imagine that they are eager for a book on Automotive Design. But we’re sorry to say that they would not be. They are 1,000 people scratching a living at farming, they don’t have enough workers to mine the metal to make a single part of that car! But they’d sure be interested in seeing an article about how you can make buggy rides less bumpy with the appropriate wooden suspension system that can be carved out by the elderly non-farmers in a week.
This is why the Encyclopedia Foundation wants a “reboot”, but only to early 20th century levels. At least sophisticated horse drawn carriages are possible for primitives to make. And if they benefit by that idea, they’ll be more likely to preserve those plates and make such use of them as they can later. From time to time. The more they use it to make incremental advances, the more time they’ll have to make use of the next one. We must regard them as third worlders. We wish to give them planes, but they really need a good pot to boil soup in. One is more glamorous, the other more useful. A society of pot and pan owners, with the machine culture that implies, will get to the plane making. But a plane won’t get them to pots and pans. Nor do they have any motivation at all for wishing a plane.
But the more such small advances as pots and pans help them thrive and grow, the more population they will have – and that’s important. It’s important because the more people you have, the more geniuses you have. Geniuses, by loose standards, make up 2% of the population. By stricter standards then is found on “Free IQ Tests” online, they make up less than one percent of the population. Let us say 1% even, but know that is too high.
In the world as it is, 6.5 billion people have the benefit of 65 million geniuses creating, discovering and inventing for them. If a die back occurs, and there are only 1 billion people left, then you only have 10,000,000. And sad to say, many of the geniuses (Like wheelchair bound Stephen Hawking) may be more likely to die in a disaster than Billy Bubba who has a truck farm and junkyard and Elijah Amishman who never noticed the collapse.
And even if all ten million lived, they are scattered. The hypothetical farming community of 1,000 could only be said to have 10 geniuses tops. And the other bad thing? Geniuses are specialized. The 10 that fate hands you are likely to be – as elsewhere – musicologists, computer science gurus, experts on baseball stats, and a million other “useless” fields. They are not, contrary to movies, types that can just look at equations and say, “Ahh, so, ve haff the makings uff civilization here!” (Nor do they really all speak “movie German”!)
Inventions come from one genius having an idea, and even mapping out the broad strokes. Then our mighty industrial civilization, driven by a billion people’s desire for more toys and a million people’s desire for more money and more status in making those toys, has armies of lesser lights fill in the gaps of the idea. Making it practical. Then we’ve the larger armies of those who get it produced one part at a time all over Earth. It’s a collective effort, and we are at the point where we do it effortlessly. You’d think that when a guy invents intermittent wipers that it’s him who is installing them on your car after making it in his garage personally. Not a chance. It is a million man effort each time – but we have not only the 65,000,000 geniuses, but the 6,435,000,000 workers to carry the idea to completion!
In other words, there is not a chance for a post-collapse civilization to find those books and – BAM – reboot to monorails, supersonic transports and orbiting comsats.
Thus the Encyclopedia Foundation regards 1911 as the “trunk and branches” needful to let humanity rediscover all else. It is the highest level of tech that is of remotely possible interest to an uneducated and impoverished community.
Given that, our choice of the 13th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica makes more sense to people. It has remarkable benefits and in only 32 volumes! It has articles on plenty of tech of the fancy kind most think of – planes, trains and automobiles – but it also has all the practical arts that would help give ideas and aid to those living at the level the Amish do.
It is both the “trunk and branches” with the start of some of the smaller branches. Just the start. But if they get back to the level of 1911, then obviously it will take them only 100 years to get to where we are. As before they can get back to that level, the population will have had to grow. With the books, you might not need the geniuses as much, but you sure need the workers for mass production so as to make stuff affordable, and thus be able to “diffuse” throughout the world.
Besides those 32 volumes, what other books to help “reboot”? You would need children’s educational books, Kindergarten through 12th grade, so that they could make sense of what they read in the Britannica. McGuffey’s Readers were the standard for that time period, and there were six of them. Add in some high school text books on Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology. Let us say that instructional texts, including McGuffey’s, works out to 20 volumes. That puts us up to 52 volumes.
You aren’t going to make them have to refigure out every measurement, are you? Include the Machinist’s Handbook. The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. The Handbook of Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry. That’s three more, or 55 total.
What about medicine? The Encyclopedia Foundation cannot emphasize enough how important a large population is for there to be any innovations. You will want a copy of Gray’s Anatomy. Still the standard. “Obstetrics and Gynecology” by Beckman. “Where there is no Doctor” by David Werner and “Where there is no Dentist” by Murray Dickson. “Diseases of Women”, “Pediatrics”. Those are medical texts. You can often find them in used stores. We’re up to 61 volumes now, but the more children are born and grow up the better. More minds. More hands.
“Five Acres and Independence” and the “Foxfire Series” (12 volumes) This brings us up to 74 volumes now, but the survivors must know how to be independent 19th century level farmers without fuel powered machinery.
The Encyclopedia Foundation expresses no preference as to what specific titles, but would wish for texts on Carpentry, Masonry and Bricklaying, Blacksmithing, Plumbing, Sewer Systems, and Electricity. Also texts on Basic Mathematics, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and Trigonometry. Now we’re at 85.
Have a general book on Medical Theory. A general overview about how Anatomy, Anesthesia and Antisepsis are the basis of modern surgery. And the germ theory of disease is the basis of modern medicine. Have a book on Surgical procedures, such as a doctor would have. For in case anyone has an appendicitis. And find a book on making Ether. That’s three more volumes.
Have a book or books on all aspects of guns. And ammo making and gunpowder making. We make no judgments, but know that any who survive will need to stay alive to benefit from the books. In this unpleasant “section” a book on explosives would be appropriate. The U.S. Army has some manuals on surviving in hostile territory and improvised explosives. We believe this section can be done in five volumes. That’s 93 total.
You will also need “The Prince” by Machiavelli, “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “On War” by von Clausewitz, “Guerrilla Warfare” by Mao Tse-Tung. If you don’t know why, or don’t agree, then you don’t understand what a collapse of civilization means, or that a “reboot” will not be conducted peaceably. Civilizations are formed by persuading, usually forcibly, a diverse group of people to come under the authority of one agency. Having done so, they may work and create in relative peace within the protected territory, being peaceably “robbed” a little by their leaders so as to not be utterly destroyed by looters elsewhere.
“Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. “The Rights of Man” by Thomas Paine. This will help those “leaders” know that the easier they are on their people, the more taxes they can get from them. 90% of a peasant’s income is nothing compared to 20% of an American worker’s income. And the freer the peoples, the less chance of having to put down a revolt.
Finally, the KJV Bible. (King James Version) There are practical reasons for this book, as detailed in another article. The proverbs alone make it worthwhile. And as a civilizing influence on leaders and subjects alike, it is without peer, regardless as to popular historical revisionism.
We hear you. That’s 100, but it’s not enough! What about refrigeration and electronics and computers and history and, and, and…we agree. And blueprints for machines and tool and die making and so on. This is just if you had to do it in 100 books. It’s the trunk and a few thick branches, not the whole tree. It would grow, though.
Now, from this you can see that if you were to shoot for 1,000 books, you could greatly expand this. Besides adding many more subjects, you could expand on the currently listed subjects. And you could add the Harvard Classics, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, other religious holy books, history books, Greek and Roman writings, Euclid, Aristotle and so on.
Frankly, you could call out names all day, call out subjects all night, suggest idea after idea, and after we put them all in, we’d still be under a thousand.
We suggest then that for any civilization re-booting project that the 100 books listed above be acquired and preserved first. Then add to that. With the 100 as a base, the more you add the better, but if you run out of funds or will power, then what you have will serve the future well.
The books should have two copies of each of them. One for the public to access now, and one sealed up to be preserved for later. Books of paper store best at 65 degrees Fahrenheit, 40% humidity, no light, and a non-oxygen atmosphere. In other words, shut them into a nitrogen filled vault, weld that shut and store it under your basement with a good concrete casing to keep water away from it.
Or put them on metal plates like we’re going to. Because that list above is the stuff we were planning on having on the other metal plates. The first metal plate will have the 13th Edition, the Harvard Classics, the children’s texts, Shakespeare and the KJV Bible. Then the others, one at a time, as much as we can fit on each plate, as appropriate.
The first plate first. We believe that alone could be a viable “civilization re-boot”. It would certainly be better than nothing. But after we have that one plate as our base, we will expand to the rest of those 100 books mentioned, that will be Plate Two. (Perhaps more if we end up not fitting as many volumes per plate as we are picturing) And after we have those two to five plates as our new base, we will shoot for that 1,000.
We have time.
They are apparently envisioning a “Library of Utility” that would be like a “seed bank”, but with books, to do a “reboot” of civilization. Not literature and culture, so much as science and technology.
They are thinking along the lines of ten thousand books saved for ten thousand years. A commendable goal.
However, it made us wonder how many books it would actually take. 10,000 seems a bit high to us. We have good reason to wonder about this. If each book can only last by being stored on metal plates, then given the cost of that, the fewer the better. And better to have 100 copies around the world of 100 good books, then 100 good books and 9,900 not so needful ones. Given that the cost would be the same.
Can it be done? Can civilization be “rebooted” in 100 books? A qualified “yes”. We feel that it could be, but that 1,000 would give one more room to be sure.
How do we come to that conclusion? The Encyclopedia Foundation thinks of the growth of knowledge as an inverted pyramid. There is one original great idea, then things grow from that, like a tree. The trunk of Science has thick branches of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology. Those thick branches split as well, so that from the thick branch of Biology it splits into everything from Anatomy to Zoology.
Now, here’s the thing. Each of the final “little branches” are very important – such as, for example, Automotive Design, a subset of the subject of Internal Combustion Engines, a subset of Machines, a subset of Physics, a subset of Science.
It can be readily seen that if someone has the books on Internal Combustion Engines, they as a society will derive – eventually – all they need to know about Automotive Design. We could also say that if they had the book on “Machines” in general, with but a passing reference to Internal Combustion Engines, that they could (though it would take longer) derive Automotive Design.
Taking it to the extreme, though, if they only had the books on the Scientific Method, with but a sentence’s worth of description for each marvel that Science could produce (“Rigorous application of mechanical principles is what led to the ability to mass produce automobiles.”) we can see that while it puts them on the road to it, that the destination is far too far away to be of much use.
So it is important to think about which are the key branching points. You don’t want to have to store 10,000 or even 100,000 twigs. But you don’t just want one tree stump book of “The Scientific Method” and call it good, either.
Another thing that must be taken into account is the populace. A civilization re-boot implies a massive disaster. It’s not actually a disaster on a civilization wrecking scale unless a thing that is called a “die back” takes place, wherein the population exceeds the capacity of the resources at hand to feed them, and thus dies off until a new equilibrium is reached at a drastically reduced level.
In other words, there won’t be 6.5 billion people when civilization collapses, and the biggest loss in population of all will be from the industrialized technology-dependent nations. You know, where we all know that meat comes from the back of the store and vegetables are off to one side in the store. Unlike places on Earth where they still farm for a living, the United States has less than 3 percent of its population familiar with that. And they depend on half a million dollar combines and plentiful fuel.
It might be said, “But if there’s a billion people left, and they have the books, so what?”
Well, it gets into the field of what’s called the “Diffusion of Innovations”. There is a good Wikipedia article on the subject. But in short, the billion aren’t all standing around the library waiting for the new idea.
How an idea spreads, and thus “reboots” civilization depends on who discovers the new idea – a tribal outcast or the Chief’s son? It depends on how fast communications are. Do they have heliographs and fast horse riders and are part of a network of communities? Or is their tribe of 1,000 survivors in a world of a scattered billion completely cut off?
Will they accept the idea, to the extent that they as a social organization will work towards using it? Can they even afford to? One man cannot build a car, even with a book and tools. And nor can the community afford to help, not when they work 12 hours a day in the fields.
There is a concept in this of “relative advantage” that is important. If the machines are rusted out hulks, or radioactive slag, and a farming community of 1,000 comes across the books, what will it do for them?
As they are back to horse drawn carts, we might imagine that they are eager for a book on Automotive Design. But we’re sorry to say that they would not be. They are 1,000 people scratching a living at farming, they don’t have enough workers to mine the metal to make a single part of that car! But they’d sure be interested in seeing an article about how you can make buggy rides less bumpy with the appropriate wooden suspension system that can be carved out by the elderly non-farmers in a week.
This is why the Encyclopedia Foundation wants a “reboot”, but only to early 20th century levels. At least sophisticated horse drawn carriages are possible for primitives to make. And if they benefit by that idea, they’ll be more likely to preserve those plates and make such use of them as they can later. From time to time. The more they use it to make incremental advances, the more time they’ll have to make use of the next one. We must regard them as third worlders. We wish to give them planes, but they really need a good pot to boil soup in. One is more glamorous, the other more useful. A society of pot and pan owners, with the machine culture that implies, will get to the plane making. But a plane won’t get them to pots and pans. Nor do they have any motivation at all for wishing a plane.
But the more such small advances as pots and pans help them thrive and grow, the more population they will have – and that’s important. It’s important because the more people you have, the more geniuses you have. Geniuses, by loose standards, make up 2% of the population. By stricter standards then is found on “Free IQ Tests” online, they make up less than one percent of the population. Let us say 1% even, but know that is too high.
In the world as it is, 6.5 billion people have the benefit of 65 million geniuses creating, discovering and inventing for them. If a die back occurs, and there are only 1 billion people left, then you only have 10,000,000. And sad to say, many of the geniuses (Like wheelchair bound Stephen Hawking) may be more likely to die in a disaster than Billy Bubba who has a truck farm and junkyard and Elijah Amishman who never noticed the collapse.
And even if all ten million lived, they are scattered. The hypothetical farming community of 1,000 could only be said to have 10 geniuses tops. And the other bad thing? Geniuses are specialized. The 10 that fate hands you are likely to be – as elsewhere – musicologists, computer science gurus, experts on baseball stats, and a million other “useless” fields. They are not, contrary to movies, types that can just look at equations and say, “Ahh, so, ve haff the makings uff civilization here!” (Nor do they really all speak “movie German”!)
Inventions come from one genius having an idea, and even mapping out the broad strokes. Then our mighty industrial civilization, driven by a billion people’s desire for more toys and a million people’s desire for more money and more status in making those toys, has armies of lesser lights fill in the gaps of the idea. Making it practical. Then we’ve the larger armies of those who get it produced one part at a time all over Earth. It’s a collective effort, and we are at the point where we do it effortlessly. You’d think that when a guy invents intermittent wipers that it’s him who is installing them on your car after making it in his garage personally. Not a chance. It is a million man effort each time – but we have not only the 65,000,000 geniuses, but the 6,435,000,000 workers to carry the idea to completion!
In other words, there is not a chance for a post-collapse civilization to find those books and – BAM – reboot to monorails, supersonic transports and orbiting comsats.
Thus the Encyclopedia Foundation regards 1911 as the “trunk and branches” needful to let humanity rediscover all else. It is the highest level of tech that is of remotely possible interest to an uneducated and impoverished community.
Given that, our choice of the 13th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica makes more sense to people. It has remarkable benefits and in only 32 volumes! It has articles on plenty of tech of the fancy kind most think of – planes, trains and automobiles – but it also has all the practical arts that would help give ideas and aid to those living at the level the Amish do.
It is both the “trunk and branches” with the start of some of the smaller branches. Just the start. But if they get back to the level of 1911, then obviously it will take them only 100 years to get to where we are. As before they can get back to that level, the population will have had to grow. With the books, you might not need the geniuses as much, but you sure need the workers for mass production so as to make stuff affordable, and thus be able to “diffuse” throughout the world.
Besides those 32 volumes, what other books to help “reboot”? You would need children’s educational books, Kindergarten through 12th grade, so that they could make sense of what they read in the Britannica. McGuffey’s Readers were the standard for that time period, and there were six of them. Add in some high school text books on Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology. Let us say that instructional texts, including McGuffey’s, works out to 20 volumes. That puts us up to 52 volumes.
You aren’t going to make them have to refigure out every measurement, are you? Include the Machinist’s Handbook. The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. The Handbook of Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry. That’s three more, or 55 total.
What about medicine? The Encyclopedia Foundation cannot emphasize enough how important a large population is for there to be any innovations. You will want a copy of Gray’s Anatomy. Still the standard. “Obstetrics and Gynecology” by Beckman. “Where there is no Doctor” by David Werner and “Where there is no Dentist” by Murray Dickson. “Diseases of Women”, “Pediatrics”. Those are medical texts. You can often find them in used stores. We’re up to 61 volumes now, but the more children are born and grow up the better. More minds. More hands.
“Five Acres and Independence” and the “Foxfire Series” (12 volumes) This brings us up to 74 volumes now, but the survivors must know how to be independent 19th century level farmers without fuel powered machinery.
The Encyclopedia Foundation expresses no preference as to what specific titles, but would wish for texts on Carpentry, Masonry and Bricklaying, Blacksmithing, Plumbing, Sewer Systems, and Electricity. Also texts on Basic Mathematics, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and Trigonometry. Now we’re at 85.
Have a general book on Medical Theory. A general overview about how Anatomy, Anesthesia and Antisepsis are the basis of modern surgery. And the germ theory of disease is the basis of modern medicine. Have a book on Surgical procedures, such as a doctor would have. For in case anyone has an appendicitis. And find a book on making Ether. That’s three more volumes.
Have a book or books on all aspects of guns. And ammo making and gunpowder making. We make no judgments, but know that any who survive will need to stay alive to benefit from the books. In this unpleasant “section” a book on explosives would be appropriate. The U.S. Army has some manuals on surviving in hostile territory and improvised explosives. We believe this section can be done in five volumes. That’s 93 total.
You will also need “The Prince” by Machiavelli, “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “On War” by von Clausewitz, “Guerrilla Warfare” by Mao Tse-Tung. If you don’t know why, or don’t agree, then you don’t understand what a collapse of civilization means, or that a “reboot” will not be conducted peaceably. Civilizations are formed by persuading, usually forcibly, a diverse group of people to come under the authority of one agency. Having done so, they may work and create in relative peace within the protected territory, being peaceably “robbed” a little by their leaders so as to not be utterly destroyed by looters elsewhere.
“Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. “The Rights of Man” by Thomas Paine. This will help those “leaders” know that the easier they are on their people, the more taxes they can get from them. 90% of a peasant’s income is nothing compared to 20% of an American worker’s income. And the freer the peoples, the less chance of having to put down a revolt.
Finally, the KJV Bible. (King James Version) There are practical reasons for this book, as detailed in another article. The proverbs alone make it worthwhile. And as a civilizing influence on leaders and subjects alike, it is without peer, regardless as to popular historical revisionism.
We hear you. That’s 100, but it’s not enough! What about refrigeration and electronics and computers and history and, and, and…we agree. And blueprints for machines and tool and die making and so on. This is just if you had to do it in 100 books. It’s the trunk and a few thick branches, not the whole tree. It would grow, though.
Now, from this you can see that if you were to shoot for 1,000 books, you could greatly expand this. Besides adding many more subjects, you could expand on the currently listed subjects. And you could add the Harvard Classics, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, other religious holy books, history books, Greek and Roman writings, Euclid, Aristotle and so on.
Frankly, you could call out names all day, call out subjects all night, suggest idea after idea, and after we put them all in, we’d still be under a thousand.
We suggest then that for any civilization re-booting project that the 100 books listed above be acquired and preserved first. Then add to that. With the 100 as a base, the more you add the better, but if you run out of funds or will power, then what you have will serve the future well.
The books should have two copies of each of them. One for the public to access now, and one sealed up to be preserved for later. Books of paper store best at 65 degrees Fahrenheit, 40% humidity, no light, and a non-oxygen atmosphere. In other words, shut them into a nitrogen filled vault, weld that shut and store it under your basement with a good concrete casing to keep water away from it.
Or put them on metal plates like we’re going to. Because that list above is the stuff we were planning on having on the other metal plates. The first metal plate will have the 13th Edition, the Harvard Classics, the children’s texts, Shakespeare and the KJV Bible. Then the others, one at a time, as much as we can fit on each plate, as appropriate.
The first plate first. We believe that alone could be a viable “civilization re-boot”. It would certainly be better than nothing. But after we have that one plate as our base, we will expand to the rest of those 100 books mentioned, that will be Plate Two. (Perhaps more if we end up not fitting as many volumes per plate as we are picturing) And after we have those two to five plates as our new base, we will shoot for that 1,000.
We have time.
The Harvard Classics
The Encyclopedia Foundation chose the Harvard Five Foot Shelf of
Knowledge (or The Harvard Classics) as the most appropriate companion
set to the 13th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
This set was published in 1910, one year before the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published. Historically, the same time.
The stated purpose caught our eye. The compiler, Dr. Charles Eliot, was President of Harvard University, back when it had the highest of standards. That is, folks like Conan O’Brien (funny as he can be) weren’t giving commencement speeches back then, and honorary degrees weren’t being awarded to generously donating dictators.
Dr. Eliot claimed that a person could have the equivalent of a liberal arts degree from Harvard if they would just read 15 minutes a day from a series of books that could fit on a five foot shelf. He later described, and had published, 51 volumes that were representative of Western literary, historical, cultural, scientific, and religious thought.
It was masterful, it was a wild success, and it’s popularity is undiminished 101 years later! (Sets may be found on ebay anywhere from $100 to $300.)
There have been some that have tried to imitate this. Or “update” it. “Great Books of the Western World” is a notable example. However, the problems with other sets were several. Often times, bias would be present, political correctness would creep in, ideological agendas would overwhelm…it kept any reasonably good set from being created.
Another problem was that the original set has a certain panache. It was published before World War One, same time as the Britannica set so famous, and represented – as did the Britannica – the end of an era. After the “Great War”, the world lost a lot of its optimism.
From a historical standpoint, these two sets (Harvard and Britannica) are THE sets for being the recording of all knowledge and culture up until the turn of the 20th century. Those two sets “are” that era.
The Britannica has the how to. But the Harvard Classics has the why. How to live. And why we live. Truth. And beauty.
The Harvard Classics have 51 volumes of about 500 pages each. The 13th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has 32 volumes of about 1,000 pages each. So in under 60,000 pages, in under 100 books, one could be educated completely by early 20th century standards. And more than “educated completely”, the most rudimentary grasp of those would render you a savant!
This set was published in 1910, one year before the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published. Historically, the same time.
The stated purpose caught our eye. The compiler, Dr. Charles Eliot, was President of Harvard University, back when it had the highest of standards. That is, folks like Conan O’Brien (funny as he can be) weren’t giving commencement speeches back then, and honorary degrees weren’t being awarded to generously donating dictators.
Dr. Eliot claimed that a person could have the equivalent of a liberal arts degree from Harvard if they would just read 15 minutes a day from a series of books that could fit on a five foot shelf. He later described, and had published, 51 volumes that were representative of Western literary, historical, cultural, scientific, and religious thought.
It was masterful, it was a wild success, and it’s popularity is undiminished 101 years later! (Sets may be found on ebay anywhere from $100 to $300.)
There have been some that have tried to imitate this. Or “update” it. “Great Books of the Western World” is a notable example. However, the problems with other sets were several. Often times, bias would be present, political correctness would creep in, ideological agendas would overwhelm…it kept any reasonably good set from being created.
Another problem was that the original set has a certain panache. It was published before World War One, same time as the Britannica set so famous, and represented – as did the Britannica – the end of an era. After the “Great War”, the world lost a lot of its optimism.
From a historical standpoint, these two sets (Harvard and Britannica) are THE sets for being the recording of all knowledge and culture up until the turn of the 20th century. Those two sets “are” that era.
The Britannica has the how to. But the Harvard Classics has the why. How to live. And why we live. Truth. And beauty.
The Harvard Classics have 51 volumes of about 500 pages each. The 13th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has 32 volumes of about 1,000 pages each. So in under 60,000 pages, in under 100 books, one could be educated completely by early 20th century standards. And more than “educated completely”, the most rudimentary grasp of those would render you a savant!
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