Called forth to stand trial on Trantor for allegations of treason ( for foreshadowing the decline of the Galactic Empire ), Seldon explains that his science of Psychohistory foresees many alternatives, all of which result in the Galactic Empire eventually falling.

Seldon eventually finds Stettin Palver, another telepath who becomes Wanda's husband and the pair are eventually instrumental in creating the Second Foundation.

Portrayed as a shrewd, manipulating politician, Hardin eventually realizes the true intentions of Hari Seldon in forming the Foundation, but his beliefs and subsequent claims are derided by the members of the Board of Trustees, who attempt to remove him from his new position of power.

Using these techniques, Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting thirty thousand years before a second great empire arises.

His prediction of the eventual fall of the Galactic Empire is the reason behind his nickname " Raven " Seldon.

Through the use of psychohistory, a future science hypothesized by Asimov, a scientist on Trantor named Hari Seldon in about 12, 000 Galactic Era predicts the fall of the empire, and institutes the two foundations.

In the novel, Terminus is settled by a colony of scientists and professionals, the Encyclopedic Foundation, working on compiling human knowledge into a compendium called the Encyclopedia Galactica, a project that hides the true meaning of the colony, which is meant by its founder Hari Seldon to outlast the inevitable fall of the Galactic Empire and preserve the sciences through the dark age that must follow.

While Cleon was content to use Seldon as a source of self-fulfilling prophecies — a tool to prevent unrest — Demerzel had come to believe that the Empire itself was dying, and that only an honest investigation could prevent its fall or at least minimize that fall's effects.

The main character, Hari Seldon, uses mass action to foresee the imminent fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting thirty thousand years before a second great empire arises.

His career comes to an end when Cleon I is assassinated by his gardener ( a random event Seldon could not have predicted ) and the seizure of power by a military junta.

Five hundred years after the establishment of the Foundation, the Mayor of Terminus, Harla Branno, is basking in a political glow, her policies having been vindicated by the recent successful resolution of a Seldon Crisis.

On Trantor, Stor Gendibal, a rising intellect in the Second Foundation hierarchy, discovers a secret he reveals to Quindor Shandess, the current First Speaker — that the Seldon Plan, which the Second Foundation diligently protects and furthers along, is being manipulated by some unknown group, one possibly more powerful than the Second Foundation, and whose reasons for so doing are not known.

( This group is dubbed the " Anti-Mules " by Shandess, as they seem to possess powers similar to the Mule but to be using them not to destroy the Seldon Plan, as the Mule did, but to preserve it.

His logic being that Terminus ( at the time of Hari Seldon ) was the last planet to be inhabited ( one end of the metaphorical galaxy ) and, by definition, Earth was the first ( the other end of the metaphorical galaxy ).

It kept the best for itself ; the food eaten by Seldon in Mycogen was the best he had ever had.

The focus of the series is on the First Foundation and its attempts to overcome various obstacles during the formation and installation of the Second Empire, all the while being silently guided by the unknown specifics of The Seldon Plan.

Seldon is hounded by the Emperor and various employed thugs who are working surreptitiously which forces him into exile.

Over the course of the book, Seldon and Dors Venabili, a female companion, are taken from location to location by an aide, Chetter Hummin, who introduces them to various walks of life in his attempts to keep Seldon hidden from the Emperor.

by Anthony Seldon ( Routledge, London, 2004 ) ISBN 0-415-31281-7

Seldon is the subject of a biography by Gaal Dornick.

Using psychohistory, Seldon determines the right time and place to set up a new society, one that would replace the collapsing Galactic Empire by sheer force of social pressure, but over only a thousand-year time span, rather than the ten-to-thirty-thousand-year time span that would normally have been required.

Seldon becomes involved in politics when Eto Demerzel becomes a target for a smear campaign conducted by Laskin Joranum.

The third side of the Quad is occupied by the Taylor Music School, usually referred to as the ' Seldon ' after the name of the performance hall in its centre.

Thousands of years later this would be developed into practical application by Hari Seldon.

Seldon is tried by the Committee and defends his beliefs, explaining his theories and predictions, including his belief that the Empire will collapse in 500 years and enter a 30, 000-year dark age, to the Committee's members.

Hardin is proven correct again upon his return to Terminus City by another Seldon recording, set to play at this date.

It is also confirmed by Hari Seldon that the Foundation's immediate neighbors, the Four Kingdoms, will now be virtually powerless and incapable of resisting Scientism's advance.

Those who have assigned this mission to Mallow, Foreign Secretary Publius Manlio and the Mayor's secretary, Jorane Sutt, believe that a " Seldon Crisis " is underway ; they fear that domestic tensions caused by the great autonomy given to Traders and shaky foreign relations may give rise to a nuclear conflict involving the Foundation.

The Second Foundation was founded by Hari Seldon as a budding colony of mentalics, people with telepathic abilities, located at " Star's End ", an intentionally obscure term used by Seldon, which is later revealed to refer to the planet Trantor.

However, they seem to have a much more subtle, and complex, understanding of the final nature of the Seldon Plan.

The fact that Seldon established a Second Foundation of mental-science adepts to oversee his Seldon Plan might suggest that even Seldon himself had doubts about the ultimate ability of a purely mathematical approach to predicting historical processes, and that he recognized that the development of psychic skills, such as those used by the Mule, had the ability to invalidate the assumptions underlying his models, though he did not ( and could not ) predict the appearance of the Mule himself.

Using this technique, Seldon deduced that it was certain the Galactic Empire was about to collapse, and usher in 30, 000 years of barbarism.

The music in Dreamweb ( by Matthew Seldon ) is highly regarded, helping to bring about the atmosphere which made the game admired by many at the time, which even included a bonus audio track in the Dos only CD version.

Sir Keith Joseph, Education Secretary from 1981 to 1986, admired Barnett's work about the anti-business culture in education and in an interview with Anthony Seldon he proclaimed: " I'm a Correlli Barnett supporter ".

It later gained fame for housing Hari Seldon and his " Seldon Psychohistory Project.

As a fictional portrayal of a far-future Professor of Psychohistory, Hari Seldon is presented at the beginning of " Foundation "

There is a third underlying axiom of Psychohistory, which is trivial and thus not stated by Seldon in his Plan:

At the 67th science-fiction world convention in Montreal, Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate in Economics, mentioned Hari Seldon, a central character in Foundation who was a psychohistorian, as his inspiration to study Economics since it's the closest thing to Psychohistory, according to P. Krugman.

The Mule operated completely outside the Seldon Plan because Psychohistory operated only with probabilities and known human statistics, but the Mule was a mutant, and thus his birth was not predicted by Seldon, nor were his startling mental abilities.

One of the central tenets of Psychohistory was the belief in standard human reaction to outside stimuli, which the Mule negated, and the practice of dealing with masses of people, not individuals ; an individual capable of altering the Seldon Plan could not be calculated.

However, an agent of the Junta inside Seldon's team, having deduced that Dors is a robot, builds a device that ultimately kills her, leaving Seldon heartbroken.