Crises by Design

The Foundation encounters a series of Seldon Crises — historical tipping points that Seldon predicted centuries in advance. Each crisis resolves through apparent inevitability: trade replacing war, economics replacing military conquest, knowledge replacing both.

Asimov's most radical claim is that historical forces outweigh individual will. Hari Seldon's psychohistory treats civilizations like gas molecules — unpredictable individually but statistically inevitable in aggregate.