艾萨克·阿西莫夫科幻小说中数字历史与意外事件关系之思

On the Relationship between Digital History and Accidents in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fictions

数字化是当代技术变革的一个重要内容,在普遍影响了人文学科传统研究方法的同时,更深刻地改变了人们对历史、社会、人性等问题的认知。数字人文的浪潮将历史学、社会学、文学等统统纳入数字思维的轨道,一切皆可计算,而随着数据和算法的日益完备,人类的未来似乎也能精准预测。作为美国科幻文学的代表人物,艾萨克·阿西莫夫在他的“银河帝国”系列小说中把对上述问题的思考浓缩在了“心理史学”这门虚构的学科上。“心理史学”一方面以数学计算的方式准确预测历史,另一方面又由于意外事件的干扰而失去效力。作者在这种矛盾中,传达出对数学方法应用于人文学科的深刻反思。

Digitalization is an important part of contemporary technological change.While it has generally affected the traditional research methods of humanities,it has also profoundly changed people’s understanding of history,society,human nature and other issues.The wave of digital humanity brings history,sociology,literature,etc.into the track of digital thinking,and everything can be calculated.With the increasingly complete data and algorithms,it seems that the future of mankind can also be accurately predicted.As a representative figure of American science fiction literature,Isaac Asimov concentrated his thinking on the above issues in his series of“Galactic Empire”novels on the fictitious subject of“psychohistory”.On the one hand,psychohistory accurately predicted history by mathematical calculation,on the other hand,it lost its effectiveness due to the interference of unexpected events.In this contradiction,the author conveys a profound reflection on the application of mathematical methods to the humanities.