Lewis Pirenne

Readers of Dr. Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy" concerning the establishment of the Encyclopedia Foundation on the planet Terminus will vaguely recall Lewis Pirenne. He was the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Encyclopedia Foundation Number One.

He was also the man who didn't want to militarize Terminus, or do anything to prevent it from being subdued by foreign powers. Mayor Salvor Hardin is regarded as a hero, and one of his claims to fame was subverting the power of Lewis Pirenne and the Board. He was upheld in his actions by Hari Seldon, at the time of the opening of the Time Vault.

But was Lewis the bad guy? I would suggest that he was not. As Chairman he had certain responsibilities, and he took them seriously. He placed the needs of the Encyclopedia Foundation first, last and always. Nothing, even a threat of war, could deter him from his single minded dedication to the collection and preservation of the Galaxy's knowledge.

What else would you actually wish from the Chairman of the Board of Trustees? No one has any problem with Mayor Hardin having pulled the stunts he pulled to preserve Terminus and it's peoples. That was his purpose, his monomania. And I'm sure no one would have any problem with the janitor of the Time Vault - unnamed and unsung! - focusing his efforts on keeping the place clean!

Each had their task, and for either to have performed it less well than they could would have been wrong. Mayor Hardin needed to keep Terminus free, which also helped preserve the Encyclopedia Foundation. But Chairman Pirenne - stuffed shirt though he may have came across - needed to be just as firm in keeping the scholars on track. So that there'd be more point to Terminus than it just being another planet in the Periphery.

Sure, it can be said that Hari Seldon himself said, "The Encyclopedia Foundation is a fraud, and always has been!" But he simply meant that there was more to it than publishing an encyclopedia. That he wished knowledge not to simply be collected and preserved, but to expand. His comment about not caring whether it was ever published, I take as hyperbole, and apparently the people of Terminus did, too.

For they continued to work on and publish the Encyclopedia Galactica. And a good thing - where would the Foundation scientists have learned their science in the first place, if the knowledge hadn't been preserved? How far would the Foundation have got in restoring civilization to the Galaxy if their scientists had to re-discover 20,000 plus years of science each generation?

I claim then that while the Foundation rightly enshrined Salvor Hardin and later Hober Mallow as right up there with Hari Seldon, that some reflection be given to one of the unsung heroes of the Foundation - Lewis Pirenne.