Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind - Hardcover

Devlin, Keith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471142166 ISBN 13: 9780471142164

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 1997

Synopsis

"[Goodbye, Descartes] is certain to attract attention and controversy..a fascinating journey to the edges of logical thinking and beyond." -Publishers Weekly Critical Acclaim for Keith Devlin's Previous Book Mathematics: The Science of Patterns "A book such as this belongs in the personal library of everyone interested in learning about some of the most subtle and profound works of the human spirit." -American Scientist "Devlin's very attractive book is a well-written attempt to explain mathematics to educated nonmathematicians . the basic ideas are presented in a clear, concise, and easily understood manner. Highly recommended." -Choice "[Devlin] has found an interesting way of exhibiting how mathematics is unified . the author's presentation is a tour de force." -Mathematical Reviews A Selection of the Newbridge Library of Science and Reader's Subscription

About this title

About the Author

KEITH DEVLIN, Ph.D., is Senior Researcher at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Communication. His previous books include Mathematics: The New Golden Age and Mathematics: The Science of Patterns. His television appearances include the BBC/Nova documentary "A Mathematical Mystery Tour." He lives in Moraga, California.

From the Back Cover

"[Goodbye, Descartes] is certain to attract attention and controversy. . . . a fascinating journey to the edges of logical thinking and beyond." -- Publishers Weekly (P)

Critical acclaim for Keith Devlin's previous book Mathematics: The Science of Patterns

"A book such as this belongs in the personal library of everyone interested in learning about some of the most subtle and profound works of the human spirit." -- American Scientist

"Devlin's very attractive book is a well-written attempt to explain mathematics to educated nonmathematicians . . . the basic ideas are presented in a clear, concise, and easily understood manner. Highly recommended." -- Choice

"[Devlin] has found an interesting way of exhibiting how mathematics is unified . . . the author's presentation is a tour de force." -- Mathematical Reviews

What are the laws of thought that allow human beings to reason and communicate so effectively? Can rules of thought and language be written down and programmed into computers that will one day think and communicate as well as we do?

The twin abilities to reason and use language are defining features of our species. Within a few months of learning to talk, a child can produce sentences that baffle the most sophisticated computer language programs yet developed. Yet after more than 2,000 years of inquiry, we still cannot explain exactly how our minds perform these remarkable feats.

In a lively and stimulating narrative, acclaimed author Keith Devlin chronicles scientists' centuries-old quest to discover the laws of thought, from the astonishingly adept efforts of the ancient Greeks, to the invention of the first primitive "thinking machine" in the late nineteenth century, to radical findings that are challenging the very notion that the mind follows logical rules.

In this marvelous intellectual adventure story, Devlin traces the first attempts to devise thinking rules to the ancient Greek logicians. They delighted in brainteasing puzzles, such as Zeno of Elea's famous paradox of the arrow of time, and Socrates' nimble dialogues in which he put forth such seemingly irrefutable propositions as "if the just man is expert at guarding money, he is also expert in stealing it." Devlin shows how these first efforts fostered the now entrenched belief--argued so famously by Rene Descartes--that we have an abstract, rational mind, separate from our bodies and ruled by the laws of logic.

Driven by the belief that rational thought is a supremely logical process--a mental calculation following precise, even mathematical, rules--a remarkable succession of towering intellects joined the quest to write down a formal language of the mind. Devlin introduces each of these figures and their ingenious contributions: from Gottfried Leibniz, co-inventor of the Calculus, to George Boole, who invented an "algebra of thought," to Alan Turing, who invented the logic of computing and first described the mind as a computer, and Noam Chomsky, who proposed that all human languages are essentially logical and follow universal rules.

But if our thought and language are so logical, Devlin asks, why have all efforts to re-create them fallen short? The most advanced artificial intelligence and natural language programs do not begin to approximate actual human abilities. Computing machines, of any kind, cannot and probably never will think like us. It is time, he argues, to come to terms with the fact that logic simply can't capture the real processes of human thought. He introduces a host of new findings showing that many ways of thinking that are perfectly rational are at the same time entirely illogical, and that the exquisite verbal tango of human communication has little to do with logical processing. We must begin to appreciate, Devlin argues, that our minds are intimately intertwined with the world around us, and that our feelings and perceptions, even our social norms, play crucial roles in the marvelously complex dance of human cognition.

Goodbye, Descartes is a fascinating history of ideas and the evolution of discovery, probing one of the most intriguing topics in science today, and delving deep into our fundamental understanding of who we are.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0471142166
• ISBN 13: 9780471142164
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320