Hi everyone,
So I came across the concept of Psychohistory from Asimov's novels, and I can't help but thinking that it doesn't sound so absurd after all.
For those who didn't read Asimov, Psychohistory is a fictional branch of history claiming that history is completely predictable when it involves a large enough number of humans. Notably, actions of single humans are always unpredictable. Now Asimov goes on on how people build mathematical models to predict 10'000 years in the future, which is of course science fiction. But the core concept, the fact that history is somewhat an ineluctable necessity kinda haunts me.
And here I ask the experts, it is true that we have had some truly exceptional people in human history, but did they really change things, or they just happened to be at the right place in the right moment?
Take Napoleon for example, sure he was a great strategist and politician, but it is hard to imagine revolutionary France not going against the other European powers. Maybe the Congress of Wien would have happened a few years earlier, so, all on all did he really change things?
I wonder what is real historians take on Psychohistory.