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know what they were saying and thinking because language is generally used obscurely. So what we needed was something that would unobscure the language and leave everything clear. Well, this I didn't believe, so I made it mathematical and my analogy was, of course, to the kinetic theory of gases, where the individual molecules in the gas remain as unpredictable as ever, but the average action is completely predictable, so that what we needed were two things, a lot of people, which the galactic empire supplied, and secondly, people not knowing what the conclusions were as to the future so that they could continue to act randomly. And that's the way it worked out. Now, when Wollheim says that it was what Marxism pretended to be, well when Wollheim was young he was very interested in Marxism and undoubtedly read a lot about it. I've never read anything about it, you see, so it's a case of his reading his bent into me. For me, it was the kinetic theory of gases and that was secondarily imposed and it was John Campbell who really started it with symbolic logic.
Gunn: At that time you may not have been aware of H.G. Wells' talk to the Sociological Society in which he said that a true science of sociology was impossible because there aren't enough people involved to make accurate prediction possible.
A.: No, this is the first I heard of it.
Gunn: You weren't aware of it?
A.: No, not until now I haven't been aware of it. (Laughter)
Gunn: There is a kind of parallel in that obviously I say obviously, it is obvious now obviously in the Foundation stories you supplied enough people so that the laws of physics can be applied to those numbers. H.G. Wells said there wasn't enough people to apply these kinds of laws to, so he suggested that sociology really ought to be concerned with a kind of setting down of utopian visions of the future and sociologists would then criticize them and judge whether they would work. As a matter of fact there is another parallel your autobiography brings out: Wells wrote in his autobiography that he was very much at home in biology because he took his first year at the Normal School of Science under T.H. Huxley. It was a shaping experience for him. His second year I believe was in chemistry, and it was OK, but he didn't have as good a teacher and his studies went downhill. His third year was in geology and was a total loss, and physics he knew nothing at all about, and of course he was great at history as you are. And almost the same kinds of parallels, it seems to me, were evident in your own interests in your college educational career. You have indicated that

 
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