Alan Turing Hodges, Andrew; Hodges, Andrew
2012., 2012-05-27
eBook
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay ...liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This classic biography of the founder of computer science, reissued on the centenary of his birth with a substantial new preface by the author, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life. A gripping story of mathematics, computers, cryptography, and homosexual persecution, Andrew Hodges's acclaimed book captures both the inner and outer drama of Turing's life. Hodges tells how Turing's revolutionary idea of 1936--the concept of a universal machine--laid the foundation for the modern computer and how Turing brought the idea to practical realization in 1945 with his electronic design. The book also tells how this work was directly related to Turing's leading role in breaking the German Enigma ciphers during World War II, a scientific triumph that was critical to Allied victory in the Atlantic. At the same time, this is the tragic story of a man who, despite his wartime service, was eventually arrested, stripped of his security clearance, and forced to undergo a humiliating treatment program--all for trying to live honestly in a society that defined homosexuality as a crime.
Alan Turing Hodges, Andrew; Hofstadter, Douglas
2014., 2015-01-01
eBook
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954) saved the Allies from the Nazis, invented the computer and artificial intelligence, and anticipated gay ...liberation by decades--all before his suicide at age forty-one. This acclaimed biography of the founder of computer science, with a new preface by the author that addresses Turing's royal pardon in 2013, is the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life. Capturing both the inner and outer drama of Turing's life, Andrew Hodges tells how Turing's revolutionary idea of 1936--the concept of a universal machine--laid the foundation for the modern computer and how Turing brought the idea to practical realization in 1945 with his electronic design. The book also tells how this work was directly related to Turing's leading role in breaking the German Enigma ciphers during World War II, a scientific triumph that was critical to Allied victory in the Atlantic. At the same time, this is the tragic account of a man who, despite his wartime service, was eventually arrested, stripped of his security clearance, and forced to undergo a humiliating treatment program--all for trying to live honestly in a society that defined homosexuality as a crime. The inspiration for a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, Alan Turing: The Enigma is a gripping story of mathematics, computers, cryptography, and homosexual persecution.
We propose a computational model of human scientific discovery and perception of the world. As a prerequisite for such a model, we simulate dynamic microworlds in which physical events take place, as ...well as an observer that visually perceives and makes interpretations of events in the microworld. Moreover, we give the observer the ability to actively conduct experiments in order to gain evidence about natural regularities in the world. We have broken up the description of our project into two pieces. The first piece deals with the interpreter constructing relatively simple visual descriptions of objects and collisions within a context. The second phase deals with the interpreter positing relationships among the entities, winding up with elaborated construals and conjectures of mathematical laws governing the world. This paper focuses only on the second phase. As is the case with most human scientific observation, observations are subject to interpretation, and the discoveries are influenced by these interpretations.
Virtual Music Cope, David
2004, 20040130, 2001
eBook
Virtual Music is about artificial creativity. Focusing on the author's Experiments in Musical Intelligence computer music composing program, the author and a distinguished group of experts discuss ...many of the issues surrounding the program, including artificial intelligence, music cognition, and aesthetics.The book is divided into four parts. The first part provides a historical background to Experiments in Musical Intelligence, including examples of historical antecedents, followed by an overview of the program by Douglas Hofstadter. The second part follows the composition of an Experiments in Musical Intelligence work, from the creation of a database to the completion of a new work in the style of Mozart. It includes, in sophisticated lay terms, relatively detailed explanations of how each step in the process contributes to the final composition. The third part consists of perspectives and analyses by Jonathan Berger, Daniel Dennett, Bernard Greenberg, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Steve Larson, and Eleanor Selfridge-Field. The fourth part presents the author's responses to these commentaries, as well as his thoughts on the implications of artificial creativity.The book (and corresponding Web site) includes an appendix providing extended musical examples referred to and discussed in the book, including composers such as Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Debussy, Bartók, and others. It is also accompanied by a CD containing performances of the music in the text.
Godel's Proof Nagel, Ernest; Newman, James R; Hofstadter, Douglas R
10/2001
eBook
In 1931 Kurt Gödel published his fundamental paper, "On Formally Undecidable Propositions ofPrincipia Mathematicaand Related Systems." This revolutionary paper challenged certain basic assumptions ...underlying much research in mathematics and logic. Gödel received public recognition of his work in 1951 when he was awarded the first Albert Einstein Award for achievement in the natural sciences-perhaps the highest award of its kind in the United States. The award committee described his work in mathematical logic as "one of the greatest contributions to the sciences in recent times."
However, few mathematicians of the time were equipped to understand the young scholar's complex proof. Ernest Nagel and James Newman provide a readable and accessible explanation to both scholars and non-specialists of the main ideas and broad implications of Gödel's discovery. It offers every educated person with a taste for logic and philosophy the chance to understand a previously difficult and inaccessible subject.
New York University Press is proud to publish this special edition of one of its bestselling books. With a new introduction by Douglas R. Hofstadter, this book will appeal students, scholars, and professionals in the fields of mathematics, computer science, logic and philosophy, and science.
We propose the foundations of a computer model of scientific discovery that takes into account certain psychological aspects of human observation of the world. To this end, we simulate two main ...components of such a system. The first is a dynamic microworld in which physical events take place, and the second is an observer that visually perceives entities and events in the microworld. For reason of space, this paper focuses only on the starting phase of discovery, which is the relatively simple visual inputs of objects and collisions.
This paper presents a broad overview of the Metacat project, an extension of the Copycat computer model of fluid concepts, high-level perception, and analogy-making. Copycat models the complex, ...subconscious interplay between concepts and perception that gives rise to the flexible human ability to perceive apparently-dissimilar situations as being “the same”. A key feature of the architecture is the emergence of statistically-robust, high-level behavior from the interactions of many small, low-level, nondeterministic processing agents. All processing occurs through the collective actions of many agents working in parallel on different aspects of an analogy problem, without any higher-level executive process controlling the course of events. Current work on Metacat is focused on extending the Copycat model in a way that permits it to create much richer representations of the analogies it makes. This involves incorporating a long-term memory into the architecture, along with a “self-watching” ability, so that the program can recognize, remember, and recall important patterns that occur in its own processing as it solves analogy problems. Using this higher-order “meta-level” information, analogies can be compared and contrasted in an insightful way, allowing Metacat to understand and explain its answers in a way that Copycat cannot. Metacat's relation-ship to other work in AI and cognitive science is also examined, in particular work on case-based reasoning and derivational analogy.
Argues that there is a sense of mystery that lies at the core of science. Recounts some experiences that reinforce this view and points out that science does not need a "sugar coating" for students ...to appreciate the subject. (DDR)
High-level perception-the process of making sense of complex data at an abstract, conceptual level-is fundamental to human cognition. Through high-level perception, chaotic environmental stimuli are ...organized into mental representations that are used throughout cognitive processing. Much work in traditional artificial intelligence has ignored the process of high-level perception, by starting with hand-coded representations. In this paper, we argue that this dismissal of perceptual processes leads to distorted models of human cognition. We examine some existing artificial-intelligence models-notably BACON, a model of scientific discovery, and the Structure-Mapping Engine, a model of analogical thought--and argue that these are flawed precisely because they downplay the role of high-level perception. Further, we argue that perceptual processes cannot be separated from other cognitive processes even in principle,and therefore that traditional artificial-intelligence models cannot be defended by supposing the existence of a 'representation module' that supplies representations ready-made. Finally, we describe a model of high-level perception and analogical thought in which perceptual processing is integrated with analogical mapping, leading to the flexible build-up of representations appropriate to a given context.
