On 03/01/2006, at 1:15 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
>
> Thanks for your vote of confidence Kim, but sadly I am not attempting
> to write a "laypersons" guide to the subject. Stephen Hawking did that
> for cosmology in "Brief History of Time", which in my opinion is a
> heroic failure. It is very well written, and avoids the use of
> terminology
> (eg maths) unfamiliar with laypeople, but - sadly as a consequence
> fails to educate anyone.
Well - if it's any consolation, I find "Theory of Nothing" way, way
easier to grasp than BHoT which I read hungrily when it first
appeared. A heroic failure indeed; I don't even find it very well
written. I was unable to locate anyone at the time who could
understand it either so gave up trying. Many authors have tackled the
same subject matter since with a much higher degree of readability
and explanatory power.
>
> Rather I'm trying put things together at a level that people on this
> list might understand, its a sort of least common denominator of the
> various disciplines involved - computer science, physics, maths,
> biology, cognitive science and dare I say philosophy. I picked for
> reference the sort of mathematical/scientific understanding I had
> achieved in year 11/12 of high school. This is not to say that your
> average year 11/12 student will be able to manage this, but I'm hoping
> that most of my intended audience can manage that level of logical
> thought, that is, that anyone interested in the topic can, with some
> effort perhaps, understand the material. Sad to say, I doubt that the
> general public will ever get it.
Of course - you simply cannot and should not try to simplify it
beyond a certain point. Otherwise it comes across as a bunch of hocus-
pocus. That's what I like about it - you have struck the hoped-for
balance between technical exposition and verbal summing-up (at least
for me).
>
> Perhaps this subject can get the Hawking BHoT treatment in due course,
> but we're probably at least a decade or two away from that.
If, as DD argues, quantum computation should be available in about a
decade, should we not try to accelerate the pace of public education
in this field so that the intellectual terrain is prepared a little
in advance, so to speak? Unless people generally have some grasp of
multiverse theory, q comp is going to appear like magic. We don't
want people turning this thing into a religion, do we?
>
> On your music point, have you read "Goedel, Escher, Bach" by
> Hofstadter? I've just finished reading it, and wondered why I didn't
> read this gem 2 decades ago. It is full of musical references, so you
> will appreciate it.
>
I mentioned this one to you a while back; I'm ready to re-read it now
that I understand better the impact of Goedel's Incompleteness
theorems (thanks mainly to the exploration of these by the very fine
writers on this list). One thing is for sure, Hofstadter does
approach my notion of a "musical object" spinning in its own space.
I simply ask - where is this space? Probably in my head. Without
necessarily talking about triangle land and blue mists of probability
over Platonia a la Barbour, I have always had the firmest impression
that musical statements are solid objects in some sense. That alone
prompts me to seek some discussion on this point. Is music a
description of a thing or is it the thing itself? Certainly no
musician is able to answer that point unaided speaking from the
standpoint of the "laws" of music alone - whence my bringing the
notion to the rather broader field of discussion that this list allows.
Probably this is simply too wayward a notion; I'm happy to be taken
apart and criticised by other thinkers (I already have been, roundly)
but I reject out of hand the supercilious verbal sneers about
"pseudomathematical nonsense".
cheers, Russ
email 1: kimjones.domain.name.hidden
email 2: kjones.domain.name.hidden
9327 9492 (w)
9389 4239 (h)
0431 994 736 (m)
Received on Mon Jan 02 2006 - 23:43:21 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0
: Fri Feb 16 2018 - 13:20:11 PST