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This Week’s Book Giveaway

May 14, 2012 by

Alan Turing’s Systems of Logic: The Princeton Thesis
Edited and introduced by Andrew W. Appel

Between inventing the concept of a universal computer in 1936 and breaking the German Enigma code during World War II, Alan Turing (1912-1954), the British founder of computer science and artificial intelligence, came to Princeton University to study mathematical logic. Some of the greatest logicians in the world—including Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödel, John von Neumann, and Stephen Kleene—were at Princeton in the 1930s, and they were working on ideas that would lay the groundwork for what would become known as computer science. Though less well known than his other work, Turing’s 1938 Princeton PhD thesis, “Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals,” which includes his notion of an oracle machine, has had a lasting influence on computer science and mathematics. This book presents a facsimile of the original typescript of the thesis along with essays by Andrew Appel and Solomon Feferman that explain its still-unfolding significance.

A work of philosophy as well as mathematics, Turing’s thesis envisions a practical goal—a logical system to formalize mathematical proofs so they can be checked mechanically. If every step of a theorem could be verified mechanically, the burden on intuition would be limited to the axioms. Turing’s point, as Appel writes, is that “mathematical reasoning can be done, and should be done, in mechanizable formal logic.” Turing’s vision of “constructive systems of logic for practical use” has become reality: in the twenty-first century, automated “formal methods” are now routine.

Presented here in its original form, this fascinating thesis is one of the key documents in the history of mathematics and computer science.

A slight change this week—the random draw for this book with be Thursday 5/17 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to like us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

Filed Under: Book Giveaway, Cognitive Science, history of science, Mathematics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science

Alan Turing biographer Andrew Hodges discusses the enigmatic mathematician with IEEE Spectrum’s Techwise Conversations

May 7, 2012 by

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of renowned mathematician–and World War II hero–Alan Turing, his biographer Andrew Hodges conducted a podcast with IEEE Spectrum’s Steven Cherry for their Techwise Converstaions. To hear a lively and entertaining discussion on the man, click below. To learn more about the fascinating yet tragic life of Alan Turing, check out Andrew Hodges’s new Centenary Edition of his classic work ALAN TURING: The Enigma.

Filed Under: Biography, history of science, In the News, Mathematics, Twitter

This Week’s Book Giveaway

March 12, 2012 by

On Wednesday, March 14 we’re celebrating Albert Einstein’s birthday and Pi Day—two very big events in Princeton! Einstein lived in Princeton for over 20 years, so to honor his big day we’re giving away a copy of a book of his quotations:

The Ultimate Quotable Einstein
Collected and edited by Alice Calaprice
With a foreword by Freeman Dyson

Here is the definitive new edition of the hugely popular collection of Einstein quotations that has sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide and been translated into twenty-five languages.

The Ultimate Quotable Einstein features 400 additional quotes, bringing the total to roughly 1,600 in all. This ultimate edition includes new sections—”On and to Children,” “On Race and Prejudice,” and “Einstein’s Verses: A Small Selection”—as well as a chronology of Einstein’s life and accomplishments, Freeman Dyson’s authoritative foreword, and new commentary by Alice Calaprice.

In The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, readers will also find quotes by others about Einstein along with quotes attributed to him. Every quotation in this informative and entertaining collection is fully documented, and Calaprice has carefully selected new photographs and cartoons to introduce each section.

-Features 400 additional quotations

-Contains roughly 1,600 quotations in all

-Includes new sections on children, race and prejudice, and Einstein’s poetry

-Provides new commentary

-Beautifully illustrated

-The most comprehensive collection of Einstein quotes ever published

Praise for previous editions: “All of us who lack Einstein’s intellectual and spiritual gifts owe a debt of gratitude to Princeton University Press for having humanized him in this innovative way.”—Timothy Ferris, New York Times Book Review

We invite you to read Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9268.pdf

The random draw for this book with be Friday 3/16 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to like us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

Filed Under: Book Giveaway, History, history of science, Jewish Studies, Mathematics, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Pi Day, Princeton, Reference

BOOK FACT FRIDAY

February 3, 2012 by

FACT: “In 1975, the National Society for Autistic Children (NSAC, later the Autism Society of America,) lobbied to include autism as one of the developmental disabilities covered under the Education for All Handicapped Act. They succeeded. The bill, later revised and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, entitled children with autism and other developmental disabilities to a ‘free, appropriate, public education.’ The NSAC also demanded autism’s inclusion in the Developmental Disabilities Act, a bill authorizing services and support. . . .”

Understanding Autism: Parents, Doctors, and the History of a Disorder
by Chloe Silverman

Autism has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, thanks to dramatically increasing rates of diagnosis, extensive organizational mobilization, journalistic coverage, biomedical research, and clinical innovation. Understanding Autism, a social history of the expanding diagnostic category of this contested illness, takes a close look at the role of emotion—specifically, of parental love—in the intense and passionate work of biomedical communities investigating autism.

Chloe Silverman tracks developments in autism theory and practice over the past half-century and shows how an understanding of autism has been constituted and stabilized through vital efforts of schools, gene banks, professional associations, government committees, parent networks, and treatment conferences. She examines the love and labor of parents, who play a role in developing—in conjunction with medical experts—new forms of treatment and therapy for their children. While biomedical knowledge is dispersed through an emotionally neutral, technical language that separates experts from laypeople, parental advocacy and activism call these distinctions into question. Silverman reveals how parental care has been a constant driver in the volatile field of autism research and treatment, and has served as an inspiration for scientific change.

Recognizing the importance of parental knowledge and observations in treating autism, this book reveals that effective responses to the disorder demonstrate the mutual interdependence of love and science.

“Autism remains a contested condition, and given the steep rise in research, diagnosis rates and media coverage, the debate is set to run and run. Science historian Chloe Silverman gives a balanced, sensitive social history of autism that unflinchingly covers many controversial byways. She explores the theory and biomedical advances, and how gene banks, schools and autism organizations have enriched understanding—augmented by parents of children with autism, whose experiences have informed and inspired much research.”—Nature

We invite you to read the Introduction here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i9611.pdf

Filed Under: Anthropology, Biological Sciences, Book Fact Friday, history of science, Philosophy of Science

BOOK FACT FRIDAY

January 13, 2012 by

FACT: “A flying bee expends energy at a rate of about 500 watts per kilogram (250 watts per pound), whereas the maximum power output of an Olympic rowing crew is only about 20 watts per kilogram (10 watts per pound). At any moment, however, only a small portion of the clustered bees will be shivering with maximum intensity, so the total heat output by the approximately two kilograms (four pounds) of bees in a winter cluster isn’t 1,000 watts, but is only about 40 watts, a rate of heat production like that of a small incandescent light bulb.”

Honeybee Democracy
by Thomas D. Seeley

Honeybees make decisions collectively—and democratically. Every year, faced with the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. In fact, as world-renowned animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals, these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making. A remarkable and richly illustrated account of scientific discovery, Honeybee Democracy brings together, for the first time, decades of Seeley’s pioneering research to tell the amazing story of house hunting and democratic debate among the honeybees.

“Dr. Seeley is an engaging guide. His enthusiasm and admiration for honeybees is infectious. His accumulated research seems truly masterly, doing for bees what E.O. Wilson did for ants.”—Katherine Bouton, New York Times

We invite you to read Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9267.pdf

 

Also available as part of our Princeton Shorts collection:
The Five Habits of Highly Effective Honeybees (and What We Can Learn from Them)
by Thomas D. Seeley

Studies of animal behavior have often been invoked to help explain and even guide human behavior. Think of Pavlov and his dogs or Goodall and her chimps. But, as these examples indicate, the tendency has been to focus on “higher,” more cognitively developed, and thus, it is thought, more intelligent creatures than mindless, robotic insects. Not so! Learn here how honeybees work together to form a collective intelligence and even how they make decisions democratically. The wizzzzdom of crowds indeed! Here are five habits of effective groups that we can learn from these clever honeybees.

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Birds and Natural History, Book Fact Friday, Cognitive Science, history of science, Sociology

This Week’s Book Giveaway

January 3, 2012 by

Happy New Year! We’re kicking off 2012 with a great giveaway—In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation by William J. Cook.

What is the shortest possible route for a traveling salesman seeking to visit each city on a list exactly once and return to his city of origin? It sounds simple enough, yet the traveling salesman problem is one of the most intensely studied puzzles in applied mathematics—and it has defied solution to this day. In this book, William Cook takes readers on a mathematical excursion, picking up the salesman’s trail in the 1800s when Irish mathematician W. R. Hamilton first defined the problem, and venturing to the furthest limits of today’s state-of-the-art attempts to solve it.

Cook examines the origins and history of the salesman problem and explores its many important applications, from genome sequencing and designing computer processors to arranging music and hunting for planets. He looks at how computers stack up against the traveling salesman problem on a grand scale, and discusses how humans, unaided by computers, go about trying to solve the puzzle. Cook traces the salesman problem to the realms of neuroscience, psychology, and art, and he also challenges readers to tackle the problem themselves. The traveling salesman problem is—literally—a $1 million question. That’s the prize the Clay Mathematics Institute is offering to anyone who can solve the problem or prove that it can’t be done.

In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman travels to the very threshold of our understanding about the nature of complexity, and challenges you yourself to discover the solution to this captivating mathematical problem.

“A gripping insider’s account of one of the great mathematical problems. This book shows how deep mathematical insights can arise from apparently simple questions, and how the results can be applied to that most human of objectives: to achieve a desired outcome in the best possible way. In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman deserves to become an instant classic.”—Ian Stewart, author of Professor Stewart’s Hoard of Mathematical Treasures

The random draw for this book with be Friday 1/6 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to “Like” us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

Filed Under: Book Giveaway, history of science, Mathematics, Philosophy of Science

@Google Presents Michael Nielsen: Reinventing Discovery

November 30, 2011 by

If you can’t join us today at the Princeton Public Library for Michael Nielsen’s TEDx talk, I hope you enjoy this great talk for Authors@Google.

If you would like details on the PPL event tonight, click here: http://tedxsalonopensourcing.eventbrite.com/

You can also read a free excerpt from Michael’s new book Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9517.pdf

Filed Under: Applied Science and Engineering, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Health and Medicine, history of science, Mathematics, Physics, Twitter

Nicholas Humphrey discusses consciousness and performance in the San Francisco Chronicle

October 4, 2011 by

Nicholas Humphrey, author of Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness, spoke to journalist Kenneth Baker about his original view on consciousness: Humphrey claims that vivid consciousness makes us happy to be alive. This perspective is a result of Humphrey’s specific approach to the “consciousness problem”:

I’ve tried to understand the function of consciousness. Let’s not think about it as a cognitive skill but as a kind of theater, something we lay on in our own heads about who we are and the world in which we’re living. Let’s ask how does consciousness as we experience it affect people’s attitudes toward life… I say that consciousness is a performance we put on, and philosophers who have disparaged the so-called Cartesian theater of the mind have misunderstood the nature of theater. I think the world we make is in no way a simulacrum of the world.

Humphrey also explains the role of natural selection in human consciousness, arguing that vivid consciousness must have effects that lead to reproductive success, but that these effects cannot necessarily be “seen” or quantified:

Conscious awareness gives animals a pleasure in affirming their existence in ways that are life-enhancing. In getting more out of it, you prolong your life. You engage with the world, fall in love with it. The great success of our species has been that creative relation with the world that we have produced from out of our own consciousness. We find the world engaging partly because it’s singing our song, because its qualities are those we’ve imbued it with. In humans, what really changed is that we began to engage in reflection.

Read the rest of the article, including Humphrey’s views on suffering, here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/16/RVA71KMU2Q.DTL#ixzz1Zk5UgnIn

Filed Under: Cognitive Science, history of science, Philosophy of Science, Psychology, Twitter

BOOK FACT FRIDAY

September 23, 2011 by

FACT: “The use of large-scale testing grew exponentially in the United States after World War I, when it was demonstrated that a mass-administered version of what was essentially an IQ test (what was then called ‘Army Alpha’) improved the accuracy and efficiency of the placement of recruits into the various military training programs. The precursors of what would eventually become the SAT were modeled on Army Alpha.”

Uneducated Guesses: Using Evidence to Uncover Misguided Education Policies
by Howard Wainer

Uneducated Guesses challenges everything our policymakers thought they knew about education and education reform, from how to close the achievement gap in public schools to admission standards for top universities. In this explosive book, Howard Wainer uses statistical evidence to show why some of the most widely held beliefs in education today—and the policies that have resulted—are wrong. He shows why colleges that make the SAT optional for applicants end up with underperforming students and inflated national rankings, and why the push to substitute achievement tests for aptitude tests makes no sense. Wainer challenges the thinking behind the enormous rise of advanced placement courses in high schools, and demonstrates why assessing teachers based on how well their students perform on tests—a central pillar of recent education reforms—is woefully misguided. He explains why college rankings are often lacking in hard evidence, why essay questions on tests disadvantage women, why the most grievous errors in education testing are not made by testing organizations—and much more.

No one concerned about seeing our children achieve their full potential can afford to ignore this book. With forceful storytelling, wry insight, and a wealth of real-world examples, Uneducated Guesses exposes today’s educational policies to the light of empirical evidence, and offers solutions for fairer and more viable future policies.

“[T]hought-provoking. . . . He questions the anecdotal and statistical evidence that underpins many of today’s education policies and reform efforts.”—Library Journal

“Uneducated Guesses is an insider’s look at using test scores to make high stakes decisions in education. In this rigorous, refreshing rebuttal of conventional thinking, Wainer argues that in the world of education policy, we all would be better served by examining the evidence that demonstrates that our ideas will improve the systems we’re trying to transform.”—Dennis Van Roekel, president, National Education Association

We invite you to read the Introduction here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i9529.pdf

Filed Under: Book Fact Friday, Education, history of science, Mathematics, Philosophy of Science

An Eye on the Sky

September 21, 2011 by

With NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) plummeting to earth on Friday, September 23rd (U.S. date), you’re probably going to be watching the sky. It could be quite the light show depending on where you are and where it falls. Not to worry, NASA says the public safety risk is extremely small. The satellite will break up into pieces during re-entry, but not all of it will burn up as it re-enters earth’s atmosphere adding to the excitement of watching the sky. NASA is posting UARS updates to their website and you can follow it here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/uars/index.html .

Around the world, armchair astronomers will also be keeping a close eye on the sky. Did you know back in the 1950′s thousands of ordinary people across the globe seized the opportunity to participate in the start of the Space Age? Known as the “Moonwatchers,” these largely forgotten citizen-scientists helped professional astronomers by providing critical and otherwise unavailable information about the first satellites. In Keep Watching the Skies!, Patrick McCray tells the story of this network of pioneers who, fueled by civic pride and exhilarated by space exploration, took part in the twentieth century’s biggest scientific endeavor. You can read chapter one at:
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i8645.html

Moonwatchers witnessed firsthand the astonishing beginning of the Space Age. In the process, these amateur scientists organized themselves into a worldwide network of satellite spotters that still exists today. Drawing on previously unexamined letters, photos, scrapbooks, and interviews, Keep Watching the Skies! recreates a pivotal event from a perspective never before examined–that of ordinary people who leaped at a chance to take part in the excitement of space exploration.

Keep Watching the Skies!
The Story of Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age
by W. Patrick McCray

Filed Under: American History, Astronomy and Cosmology, history of science, Twitter

This Week’s Book Giveaway

September 12, 2011 by

This week’s book giveaway is Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography: The Art of Avoiding Errors by Laurie Dahlberg.

This lavishly illustrated book establishes the towering influence of the scientist Victor Regnault (1810-1878) in the earliest decades of photography, a period of experimentation ripe with artistic, commercial, and scientific possibility. Regnault has a double significance to the early history of photography, as the first leader of the Société Française de Photographie (S.F.P.) and as the maker of more than two hundred calotype (paper negative) portraits and landscapes. His photographic and scientific careers intersected a third field with his appointment in 1852 as director of the Sèvres porcelain works.

Readers are treated to Regnault’s own beguiling pastoral, garden, and forest scenes; striking portraits of the scientists and artists in his circle of friends; quirky images of acoustic experiments; and an insider’s view of the Sèvres porcelain works. Regnault’s richly varied photographs also encompass perhaps the most extensive group of family portraits in early photography, and his romanticized landscapes reflect a moment when the rural outskirts of Paris were being aggressively suburbanized and industrialized.

Occupying a unique and powerful position in the overlapping spheres of photography, science, industry, and art, Regnault was elected president of the newly formed S.F.P. in 1855. By examining his intertwined activities against the backdrop of French photography’s nascent pursuit of institutional legitimacy, this book illuminates an important and overlooked body of images and the irregular cultural terrain of early photography.

“In Laurie Dahlberg’s Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography, you will find much to satisfy both curiosity about photography’s early technology and pleasure in his subjects. . . . A fascinating book, it combines stunning images with a thoughtful biography.”—Maggie McDonald, New Scientist

The random draw for this book with be Friday 9/16 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to “Like” us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

Filed Under: Art and Architecture, Book Giveaway, history of science, Philosophy of Science

Jacob Schiach is almost as excited as we are about Reinventing Discovery

August 24, 2011 by

Even though the cover is reversed, that galley is easily recognizable as Reinventing Discovery by Michael Nielsen. We expect finished books in October, but so far most of the reactions have been, well, you can see for yourself…

Via our friends at Citizen Science Quarterly.

Filed Under: Astronomy and Cosmology, Astrophysics, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, history of science, Physics, Technology & Media
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