Literate Scientist

This is my second Rosen’s book and I started reading on 1st of September, 2008, a year after I read “Life Itself”. Essays were written after the latter book and were intended to clarify it. Therefore if you are about to start reading Rosen’s works it is probably better to read essays first. I’m almost halfway through it and particularly like the discussion about mimesis, its roots and history. This is highly recommended book to read and if you were trained in chemistry, physics and computer science like myself you would find revelations on every page and would never look at modern science with the same eyes again.

Essays on Life Itself

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Just finished reading it. In summary: Everything is Nothing as their complexity measure is the same. Interesting short and small book to read if you have never heard of computationalism, many world interpretation of quantum mechanics, anthropic principle, self sampling assumption and quantum immortality. Discusses everything briefly and provides bibliography. However I think I should have read David Deutsch’s “The Fabric of Reality” book first which I bought recently and put on my reading list. The number of new concepts introduced was too overwhelming so I consider to read “Theory of Nothing” second time after finishing some other related books. 

Theory of Nothing

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

This one finished reading yesterday. I don’t want to repeat my review you can find here:

Review of Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Just want to add that I carried it in my pocket during flight that evening and perhaps avoided black swans. Knowledge-driven superstition…

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Just finished reading this book written by Steven Sloman. Very readable explanation about a causal modeling framework involving probability distributions and causal graphs, explanation of counterfactuals, logic of intervention, Markov equivalence, explanation discounting, causal structures and language, reasoning and decision making, the difference between observation and action. I became interested in causality from software troubleshooting and debugging perspective where we need to diagnose causes (defects) from symptoms (failures) and this book was a good introduction to me.

Causal Models: How People Think about the World and Its Alternatives

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

After reading Rosen’s book “Life Itself” I became very interested in non-reductionist thinking and found the book from Alwyn C. Scott. It is an excellent overview and the last 30 page chapter “Reductionism in Life” is worth the whole book:

• Newton’s Legacy
  • The Reductive Program
  • Supervenience and Physicalism
  • Practical Considerations
• Objections to Reductionism
  • Googols of Possibilities
  • Convoluted Causality
  • Nonlinear Causality
  • Time’s Arrow
  • Downward Causation
  • Open Systems
  • Closed Causal Loops and Open Networks
• Theories of Life
  • Artificial Life vs. Autopoiesis
  • Relational Biology
  • Mechanisms
  • Complex Systems and Chaotic Emergence
  • What Is Life?

The Nonlinear Universe: Chaos, Emergence, Life (The Frontiers Collection)

Highly recommended especially if you were trained as a physicist or a chemist like myself.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -