Good book recommendations, I will investigate as well.
Thanks, Owen- Tory
On Jul 2, 2009, at 10:00 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
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
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============================================================
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
