this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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For me, the "grounded in science" ship had already sailed by the end of the original trilogy, when
book spoilers
the Second Foundation was revealed to be a shadowy group of mind-manipulating telepaths.I partly agree with your comment about the books. But there's a curious historical element to consider: at that time telepathy was really discussed in the mainstream scientific literature as a scientific possibility. Not in a crackpot way, but in a scientific way: theories were developed, tests and experiments made, and then it was concluded that it doesn't exist, with explanations about why.
Since it was a scientific possibility at that time, or at least it wasn't seen as crackpottery, it was obviously used in science-based sci-fi books (not only Asimov's).
It's a little like they do in today's sci-fi with "parallel universes" or "quantum theory & consciousness" and similar stuff, which is discussed in today's scientific literature. Maybe (or very probably, in my opinion) in 50 or 100 years they'll laugh their arses off looking at our "science-based" sci-fi of today.