Foundation, Part 4: Second Foundation

This is part four of an ongoing series about Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation series.  I cover the first two books with varying degrees of detail here and here, provide a bit of an intro to this blog series here, and have an essay that I am quite proud of posted on tor.com here.
I don't want to retread too much ground here that I have already covered.  But I will warn that the tor.com piece is about Enlightenment philosophy and encyclopedias, and it is likely that I am going to return to these topics.

The first couple of novels plot out the downfall of the vast Galactic Empire as predicted by Hari Seldon and the science of psychohistory.  Seldon sets up an institution called the Foundation that is meant to serve as a chronicler of the collected knowledge of mankind, but covertly works as a bulwark against the Empire's fall.  This is all meant to shorten a dark age in the power vacuum that would have lasted for 30,000 years, but can be gotten over with in 1,000, thanks to Seldon's psychohistory.  This is a lot to get through, but the broad strokes don't matter too much right now.
Second Foundation opens with the Mule, the villain from Foundation and Empire, seeking out a legendary Second Foundation that is believed to exist as a plan B to the Foundation.  There is some notion that Seldon built the Second Foundation on the opposite side of the galaxy as Foundation in order to safeguard it.  This novel covers the fall of the Mule.  This character initially comes to power because he is a mutant who can control the emotions of others.  This helps him to force and keep loyalty in anyone he meets and, it is intimated, he is able to use emotion to counter and win out against science.  The Second Foundation beats the Mule and the original Foundation comes back to power.  There is a bit of a confusing power struggle wherein the Second Foundation remains hidden and the Foundation begins to suspect that the Second Foundation, also built around emotion, is trying to overtake it.  Again, these are just broad strokes intended to get to some more interesting parts.

I was first interested in the idea of the tension between emotion and science, or reason.  It seems an odd tension for Asimov to build into this series because these are not really counters at all, but complements.  What is it about emotional control that should be a threat to science in the first place?  There is also nothing necessary in the Second Foundation being any different from the first Foundation.  They could, and it seems logical that they would, be built upon the same principles.

I also found it interesting that Asimov plays more with the mythical rendering of Seldon's Plan.  In the earlier books, the characters had readier access to Seldon's ideas and plans but, by this point hundreds of years later, they have begun to regard the Plan itself as an agent.  This abstraction from the Plan actually works with the science of psychohistory as defined by Asimov because the knowledge of psychohistory disrupts its working.

One of the best parts of the series so far is the way that the whole science of psychohistory plays with the "great man" theory of history, both confirming and challenging it.
On one hand, Seldon continues to influence.  People still puzzle over his plan and the second foundation.  They also worry that the Mule was not predicted and unpredictable, so ruined the plan.
On the other hand, psychohistory is concerned with masses, billions of people.  Individual efforts don't matter.  Only mass, civilization-scale, activities have influence.  Except for Seldon, of course.