The Foundation Trilogy: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation

"When the Galatic Empire began to die, when the ends of the Galaxy reverted to barbarism and dropped away, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists planted a colony- the Foundation- to incubate art, science and technology, and form the nucleus of the Second Empire. The course of the Foundation's growth was plotted according the science of psychohistory- conditions were arranged to bring about a series of crises forcing humanity to move rapidly along the route to future Empire and shorten the Dark Age..."--