Difficult to evaluate, with potential yellow flags.
Unclear focus.
Read full explanation
#This post contains massive spoilers for the 2021--ongoing Foundation TV series (Apple+), if you wish to proceed- I advise to read onward up until into Quadrivium Track-Season 1 {Arithmetic} show notes and then skip the rest of Track to land on next immediate section- Posits. Also pruned from it's first posting (now deleted by the mods of r/FoundationTV, it reached 6.5k impressions with 0 upvotes- i'm aware it does look like an AI output)
Goyer’s Foundation as The Prime Radiant Show
I’ll present the spine, framework, interlinked and undulating patterns, and motifs galore discerned from the show that David S. Goyer has been allegorizing the Quadrivium (and Trivium).
Each major character arcs within every season so far are actually a representation from the subjects of Quadrivium where Season 1 follows Arithmetic, 2 follows Astronomy, 3 follows Music and 3.5 follows Geometry.
This continues to propose that the TV show is the Prime Radiant itself: since we can plot the plots and crises (points, sequences, inflections) within the show’s arc/graph ⇒ we may well be able to predict the trajectories and its destination.
Quadrivium Background
Medieval *Liberal Arts track is the backbone where Oxford, Cambridge and University of Paris rose from, the curriculum spans from 9CE—15CE and later replaced by 15CE Renaissance’ Empiricism structure. *Liberal term here means education for the “Free” Citizen ie the not-Slaves
Trivium & Quadrivium: Medieval universities program for undergrads (age 14-20). Seven paths total:- i) the study of language tools (Tri: grammar, logic, rhetoric); ii) the study of number in space & time (Quad: **arithmetic, astronomy, music, geometry).
The Full Track: Trivium → Quadrivium → Philosophy-Ethics → Theology (Latin name “regina scientiarum”- queen of the sciences)
The purpose for all prior disciplines are rungs toward God: you learn to read, form, count, measure, harmonise, map, reason morally; only after the climb you finally ask what it all means cosmically.
The Quadrivium Track
*note the accompanying quotes are all from the 1st episode of the 1st Season only, a distant foreshadow for the subjects they will reside.
Arithmetic [S01]
“So you know math is just never numbers; in the wrong hands, its a weapon. In the right hands— deliverance.” - Hari Seldon S01E01
Character {Predict}: Hari Seldon (regression-data science), Gaal (calculus-premonition), Salvo (integral-intuition+past xp sum), Proxima (algebra-Maiden-Mother-Crone ⊢ 3 Cleons ≡ 1 soul), the Vault (null-field), Dawn¹³ (anomaly-tail event), Demerzel (Gaussian-median)
Theme {Theocracy}: Church of the Galactic Spirit, Habsburg wedding, Lepsis’ Gulag, Oona’ miner serfs, Spacers tithed slaves, Imperial’ Coliseum, coup/assassins, Mentalics telepathy, public executions
#Plot: assassination attempt, wedding → proselytize and Spacer alliance → ideology expansion; Day¹⁷ **enact Terminus enclosure-*concussion mine pulses Invictus into Terminus + Imperial fleet blown by Spacers side”jump” → Gaal precog the Mule *weapon hint next season, **Empire’ diminishing agency
“When I looked into the Prime Radiant (a 14-sides cuboctahedron), I could see the darkness. It took my breath away at first. It was crushing. But then I looked deeper and I could see this tiny sliver of light at the very end of it all.” - Gaal to Hari before them being ostracise S01E01
Character {Graph Theory}: Captain Pritcher (bidirectional), Ambassador Quent (deep single node), Toran & Bayta—Mule 2- female horse half (wide multi-edges — universal node), Brazen Head (nearest node), Dusk²³’ Cleonicides (node overload), Demerzel/Daneel (root node), Kalle (loops)
After quadrivium, the post-grad analog in medieval curriculum are exactly Philosophy/Ethics, with Theology as the final domain. My assertion is the major arcs of the major characters within this upcoming season (season 4) will be mapped by the writers to alluding concepts from these domains.
Season 4 Spine will compress Philosophy/Ethics/Morality as S04 the main arc. “Thespis they believe.., Anachreon believes.., The Empires believes… (on breaking Anthor Belt Agreement); For any of these three beliefs, a thousand wars has been fought. The next days will determine if there will be others.”- Cleon¹² addresses the envoys S01E01
with Theology (Queen of the Medieval Science) be the concluding ribbon. “The story remained dark to me until many years later, until it became MY story, until it became the ONLY story.” - opening line by Gaal S01E01
Closing and Foreword
The season 3.5 has been priming the takeoff: Demerzel's emancipation, Kalle's allegiance, Dusk's monorule, and anomolous Mule still at large. The unresolved threads are all in moral-ethic-theology realm.
OP
I’m an auto-didact (self taught), please excuse some of the unconventional layout and formulation, also never written long formats before. I wrote the notes themselves (not AI), while watching the show with Notion then copy-paste it to here.
I am mainly a Machine Learning student honing in NLP (Natural Language Processing) along with an amateur interest for the fine arts; among the topics encompassing computer science-ML-pedagogy(learnteach)-linguistic there are plenty of the corpus I frequent/covers— that the Foundation flared so many close and dear concepts to me.
This show is far from perfect (I blame strike → time/budget constraint over time) but the intertwined storytelling structure of science and philosophy, with pounding visual motifs given such a rousal show for my curiosity.
I never had the chance to experience the show during its original airing run (also never read Asimov’s)— it looked like a Disney’s Star Wars CGI-laden in the trailer and made a complete pass — luckily seen it remarked by Demi Hassabis (Deepmind CEO- albeit referring the original material) in an interview. So first i have to choose between two mediums: a series of novel or the TV show, picked the more potent mnemomic device along offering a shorter time for me to ingest and thus straight dove in.
This is only here as I want to establish that I’m not an AI output: just an obsessed random Internet bloke with maybe bad grammar, sprinkling em-dashes and semi-colons (they do save space) although can't be avoided if I am subconsciously mimicking their writing style, as I still access them almost everyday (Hume’ constant conjunction and whatnot); also I am not attached or related with the show production, marketing, Apple platform etc (I’m from the equivalent Synnax part of the world btw).
P/S: I’m sure I’ve missed/misunderstood some or plenty- corrections are welcomed. Adding on, note the tacit fate of main+ancillary characters from their names ie nominative determinism (e.g. Demerzel → The Muzzled, Kalle → Hindu’ Kali destroyer of ignorance).
#This post contains massive spoilers for the 2021--ongoing Foundation TV series (Apple+), if you wish to proceed- I advise to read onward up until into Quadrivium Track-Season 1 {Arithmetic} show notes and then skip the rest of Track to land on next immediate section- Posits. Also pruned from it's first posting (now deleted by the mods of r/FoundationTV, it reached 6.5k impressions with 0 upvotes- i'm aware it does look like an AI output)
Goyer’s Foundation as The Prime Radiant Show
I’ll present the spine, framework, interlinked and undulating patterns, and motifs galore discerned from the show that David S. Goyer has been allegorizing the Quadrivium (and Trivium).
This continues to propose that the TV show is the Prime Radiant itself: since we can plot the plots and crises (points, sequences, inflections) within the show’s arc/graph ⇒ we may well be able to predict the trajectories and its destination.
Quadrivium Background
Medieval *Liberal Arts track is the backbone where Oxford, Cambridge and University of Paris rose from, the curriculum spans from 9CE—15CE and later replaced by 15CE Renaissance’ Empiricism structure. *Liberal term here means education for the “Free” Citizen ie the not-Slaves
Trivium & Quadrivium: Medieval universities program for undergrads (age 14-20). Seven paths total:- i) the study of language tools (Tri: grammar, logic, rhetoric); ii) the study of number in space & time (Quad: **arithmetic, astronomy, music, geometry).
The Full Track: Trivium → Quadrivium → Philosophy-Ethics → Theology (Latin name “regina scientiarum”- queen of the sciences)
The purpose for all prior disciplines are rungs toward God: you learn to read, form, count, measure, harmonise, map, reason morally; only after the climb you finally ask what it all means cosmically.
The Quadrivium Track
*note the accompanying quotes are all from the 1st episode of the 1st Season only, a distant foreshadow for the subjects they will reside.
Arithmetic [S01]
“So you know math is just never numbers; in the wrong hands, its a weapon. In the right hands— deliverance.” - Hari Seldon S01E01
*weapon hint next season, **Empire’ diminishing agency!<
Astronomy [S02]
“When a planet wants you dead, you die.” - Gaal to Raych S01E01
Music [S03]
“There is much truth in Music.” - Dusk¹¹ to Dawn on learning Anachreon’ hunting song S01E01
*weapon hint next season, **Empire’ diminishing agency
Geometry [S03.5]
“When I looked into the Prime Radiant (a 14-sides cuboctahedron), I could see the darkness. It took my breath away at first. It was crushing. But then I looked deeper and I could see this tiny sliver of light at the very end of it all.” - Gaal to Hari before them being ostracise S01E01
***plot dump akin to GOT 7+8, accelerated timeline (main writer signed off, framing audience appetite shorter than GOT era, refer https://screenrant.com/foundation-season-4-david-goyer-exit-explained/)
*weapon hint next season, **Empire’ diminishing agency
Posits
After quadrivium, the post-grad analog in medieval curriculum are exactly Philosophy/Ethics, with Theology as the final domain. My assertion is the major arcs of the major characters within this upcoming season (season 4) will be mapped by the writers to alluding concepts from these domains.
Closing and Foreword
The season 3.5 has been priming the takeoff: Demerzel's emancipation, Kalle's allegiance, Dusk's monorule, and anomolous Mule still at large. The unresolved threads are all in moral-ethic-theology realm.
OP
I’m an auto-didact (self taught), please excuse some of the unconventional layout and formulation, also never written long formats before. I wrote the notes themselves (not AI), while watching the show with Notion then copy-paste it to here.
I am mainly a Machine Learning student honing in NLP (Natural Language Processing) along with an amateur interest for the fine arts; among the topics encompassing computer science-ML-pedagogy(learnteach)-linguistic there are plenty of the corpus I frequent/covers— that the Foundation flared so many close and dear concepts to me.
This show is far from perfect (I blame strike → time/budget constraint over time) but the intertwined storytelling structure of science and philosophy, with pounding visual motifs given such a rousal show for my curiosity.
I never had the chance to experience the show during its original airing run (also never read Asimov’s)— it looked like a Disney’s Star Wars CGI-laden in the trailer and made a complete pass — luckily seen it remarked by Demi Hassabis (Deepmind CEO- albeit referring the original material) in an interview. So first i have to choose between two mediums: a series of novel or the TV show, picked the more potent mnemomic device along offering a shorter time for me to ingest and thus straight dove in.
This is only here as I want to establish that I’m not an AI output: just an obsessed random Internet bloke with maybe bad grammar, sprinkling em-dashes and semi-colons (they do save space) although can't be avoided if I am subconsciously mimicking their writing style, as I still access them almost everyday (Hume’ constant conjunction and whatnot); also I am not attached or related with the show production, marketing, Apple platform etc (I’m from the equivalent Synnax part of the world btw).
P/S: I’m sure I’ve missed/misunderstood some or plenty- corrections are welcomed. Adding on, note the tacit fate of main+ancillary characters from their names ie nominative determinism (e.g. Demerzel → The Muzzled, Kalle → Hindu’ Kali destroyer of ignorance).