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This book brings together young researchers from a variety of fields within mathematics, philosophy and logic. It discusses questions that arise in their work, as well as themes and reactions that appear to be similar in different contexts. The book shows that a fairly intensive activity in the philosophy of mathematics is underway, due on the one hand to the disillusionment with respect to traditional answers, on the other to exciting new features of present day mathematics. The book explains how the problem of applicability once again plays a central role in the development of mathematics. It examines how new languages different from the logical ones (mostly figural), are recognized as valid and experimented with and how unifying concepts (structure, category, set) are in competition for those who look at this form of unification. It further shows that traditional philosophies, such as constructivism, while still lively, are no longer only philosophies, but guidelines for research. Finally, the book demonstrates that the search for and validation of new axioms is analyzed with a blend of mathematical historical, philosophical, psychological considerations.
The book is a collection of papers written by a selection of eminent authors from around the world in honour of Gregory Chaitin''s 60th birthday. This is a unique volume including technical contributions, philosophical papers and essays. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: On Random and Hard-to-Describe Numbers (902 KB). Contents: On Random and Hard-to-Describe Numbers (C H Bennett); The Implications of a Cosmological Information Bound for Complexity, Quantum Information and the Nature of Physical Law (P C W Davies); What is a Computation? (M Davis); A Berry-Type Paradox (G Lolli); The Secret Number. An Exposition of Chaitin''s Theory (G Rozenberg & A Salomaa); Omega and the Time Evolution of the n-Body Problem (K Svozil); God''s Number: Where Can We Find the Secret of the Universe? In a Single Number! (M Chown); Omega Numbers (J-P Delahaye); Some Modern Perspectives on the Quest for Ultimate Knowledge (S Wolfram); An Enquiry Concerning Human (and Computer!) [Mathematical] Understanding (D Zeilberger); and other papers. Readership: Computer scientists and philosophers, both in academia and industry.
This volume is located in a cross-disciplinary ?eld bringing together mat- matics, logic, natural science and philosophy. Re?ection on the e?ectiveness of proof brings out a number of questions that have always been latent in the informal understanding of the subject. What makes a symbolic constr- tion signi?cant? What makes an assumption reasonable? What makes a proof reliable? G ̈ odel, Church and Turing, in di?erent ways, achieve a deep und- standing of the notion of e?ective calculability involved in the nature of proof. Turing’s work in particular provides a “precise and unquestionably adequate” de?nition of the general notion of a formal system in terms of a machine with a ?nite...
How do we get new knowledge? Following the maverick tradition in the philosophy of science, Carlo Cellucci gradually came to the conclusion that logic can only fulfill its role in mathematics, science and philosophy if it helps us to answer this question. He argues that mathematical logic is inadequate and that we need a new logic, framed in a naturalistic conception of knowledge and philosophy – the heuristic conception. This path from logic to a naturalistic conception of knowledge and philosophy explains the title, From a Heuristic Point of View, which recalls the celebrated collection of essays, From a Logical Point of View, by Willard Van Orman Quine, the father of modern naturalized epistemology. The word ‘heuristic’ points to Cellucci’s favorite theme and the main difference between him and Quine: the emphasis on discovery and building a ‘logic’ for generating new knowledge. This book is a collection of essays from leading figures in this field who discuss, criticize, or expand on the main topics in Cellucci’s work, dealing with some of the most challenging questions in logic, science and philosophy.
Imagine mathematics, imagine with the help of mathematics, imagine new worlds, new geometries, new forms. The new volume in the series “Imagine Math” is intended to contribute to grasping how much that is interesting and new is happening in the relationships between mathematics, imagination and culture. The present book begins with the connections between mathematics, numbers, poetry and music, with the latest opera by Italian composer Claudio Ambrosini. Literature and narrative also play an important role here. There is cinema too, with the “erotic” mathematics films by Edward Frenkel, and the new short “Arithmétique “ by Munari and Rovazzani. The section on applications of mathematics features a study of ants, as well as the refined forms and surfaces generated by algorithms used in the performances by Adrien Mondot and Claire Bardainne. Last but not least, in honour of the hundredth anniversary of his birth, a mathematical, literary and theatrical homage to Alan Turing, one of the outstanding figures of the twentieth century.
This book focuses on some of the major developments in the history of contemporary (19th and 20th century) mathematics as seen in the broader context of the development of science and culture. Avoiding technicalities, it displays the breadth of contrasting images of mathematics favoured by different countries, schools and historical movements, showing how the conception and practice of mathematics changed over time depending on the cultural and national context. Thus it provides an original perspective for embracing the richness and variety inherent in the development of mathematics. Attention is paid to the interaction of mathematics with themes whose proper treatment have been neglected by the traditional historiography of the discipline, such as the relationship between mathematics, statistics and medicine.
This fragile, fragile philosophy unexpectedly developed an enormous power of conviction and direction. It invented individual rights, it founded our way of thinking, it created science in the third century B.C. in Alexandria, it invented democracy. From what characteristics does all this power, the fragile philosophy, derive? These ancestors of ours, the classical philosophers, had postulated three things, then forgotten. a) The word is not the thing, the sentence is not the fact, the language is not the world. Not even an image of them. b) Our thinking is groundless, because the initial concepts, let’s say the axioms from which we start to think, are not based on anything, because they are precisely the first. c) Thought, rational discursive intellect, and language are the same, logos, one word indicates one and the other. Thought and language are the same thing.
Preliminary Material -- LIFE, DEATH, AND RESURRECTION OF THE HOMEOSTAT /Stefano Franchi -- THE ONTOLOGY OF THE ENEMY: NORBERT WIENER AND THE CYBERNETIC VISION /Peter Galison -- COMPUTERS AS MODELS OF THE MIND: ON SIMULATIONS, BRAINS, AND THE DESIGN OF COMPUTERS /Peter Asaro -- AT THE PERIPHERY OF THE RISING EMPIRE: THE CASE OF ITALY (1945-1968) /Claudio Pogliano -- PROCESSING CULTURES: “STRUCTURALISM” IN THE HISTORY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE /Patrice Maniglier -- ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH A NATIONAL FACE: AMERICAN AND SOVIET CULTURAL METAPHORS FOR THOUGHT /Slava Gerovitch -- THE CARTESIAN-LEIBNIZIAN TURING TEST /Francesco Bianchini -- TURING COMPUTABILITY AND LEIBNIZ COMPUTABILITY /Maurizio Matteuzzi -- LOGICAL INSTRUMENTS: REGULAR EXPRESSIONS, AI, AND THINKING ABOUT THINKING /Christopher M. Kelty -- GÖDEL, NAGEL, MINDS, AND MACHINES /Solomon Feferman -- ENTANGLING EFFECTIVE PROCEDURES: FROM LOGIC MACHINES TO QUANTUM AUTOMATA /Rossella Lupacchini -- TURING 1948 VS. GÖDEL 1972 /Giorgio Sandri -- WORKS CITED -- INDEX -- ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS -- VIBS.
This book contains the papers developing out the presentations given at the International Conference organized by the Torino Academy of Sciences and the Department of Mathematics Giuseppe Peano of the Torino University to celebrate the 150th anniversary of G. Peano's birth - one of the greatest figures in modern mathematics and logic and the most important mathematical logician in Italy - a century after the publication of Formulario Mathematico, a great attempt to systematise Mathematics in symbolic form.
Most aspects of our private and social lives—our safety, the integrity of the financial system, the functioning of utilities and other services, and national security—now depend on computing. But how can we know that this computing is trustworthy? In Mechanizing Proof, Donald MacKenzie addresses this key issue by investigating the interrelations of computing, risk, and mathematical proof over the last half century from the perspectives of history and sociology. His discussion draws on the technical literature of computer science and artificial intelligence and on extensive interviews with participants. MacKenzie argues that our culture now contains two ideals of proof: proof as tradition...