Re: Direct conversation - 1st vs 3rd person
Posted by
Steve Smith on
Jul 02, 2009; 4:00pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-Direct-conversation-tp3137870p3195910.html
Owen Densmore wrote:
Thank you Nick, good explanation. And Steve -- we
actually started down this road on the thermodynamic formulation of ABM
.. Guerin-Speak .. with some success.
Much more generally: There is a rift between the formal and philosophic
that I have a partial solution for. Both are VSI (Very Short
Introduction) books.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0192853619/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0192854119/
The first is the Mathematics VSI. It is written by Timothy Gowers and
really does get the reader into the mind of mathematics folks. Gowers
is a Fields Medalist -- the Nobel for math. And he is driven by a
Wittgenstein understanding of abstraction. Gowers' discussion of a 5th
dimensional cube is a wonderful example. He constantly comes back to
the type of abstraction he prefers: very clean and focused on the
properties under discussion.
The second is the Wittgenstein VSI, to bind Gowers' math with his
inspiration, Wittgenstein. I've not finished this one (I've got a
digital version and have just sent for the paper one) but there is hope
we might actually find a connection between the more philosophical
discussions and a formalism for them.
I'd be very interested in this endeavor.
Count me in... I'll go dust off my Witty Wittgenstein and take a
Gander at Gowers .
I am a *total* sucker for
formalisms about interesting things even
though all of my philosophy professors, and at least one (each) of my
math/physics professors beat me about the head and shoulder's with
Godel (and others) to try to break me of that bad habit.
Let's check back in after we (myself and anyone else) has done some
(more) homework...
- Sieve
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org