You make a good point. With sufficient knowledge of the mathematics they might be capable of exploiting it. It seems like it should be possible to expedite the results you want, but I don’t feel like that should make them a necessity.
spoilerI suspect we will see Demerzel in season 3 taking full advantage of this.
Do you remember what those prequels were called? I could have sworn there were some prequels written by Asimov himself. Specifically Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation.
