Literate Scientist

I admit Semiotics is the big gap in my education which mostly lies in natural and computer sciences. I know less about social sciences and try to fill various gaps. The reason why I came upon this discipline is that I’m interested in signs and their interpretations, especially their relation to various structures. I started reading this book in September and almost read 1/3rd of it during my flight to Russia via Zurich.

Semiotics: The Basics

As a by-product of reading I was able to provide a kind of theoretical explanation for the phenomenon of bugtations:

Bugtations: a semiotic approach

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This is encyclopedic work I bought a few months ago in a local book shop and just started reading. Highly recommended for education and another view on human history.

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The second encyclopedic book seems was written before the previous one but looks like the logical sequel to it. I start reading it as soon as I finish “Ideas”.

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

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I’ve just finished reading this book and despite some bad reviews on Amazon I wasn’t disappointed. The author’s writing style is a bit unusual with some unknown words that you need a dictionary but after a chapter I became used to it and it wasn’t a problem anymore. If you heard about Gödel theorems before but cannot repeat precisely what they are about then this book is for you and you will find detail-free sketch of the proof very clear. I really liked the author’s attack on positivism and postmodernism especially in the light of previously read Fashionable Nonsense. I also liked the conclusion at the end of the book that the life of Gödel was “incomplete” too. The book discusses Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein, relationship between Einstein and Gödel and even some political issues in the Institute for Advanced Study related to Gödel’s life (this is why I included this book under Politics category too). One remark about bad review from the professor who participated in publishing edited works of Kurt Gödel: I can publish works of Aristotle nowadays without much efforts. Will it give me the right to judge other works and proclaim without sound justification that they don’t know philosophy?

Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel (Great Discoveries)

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When mapping one science domain to another and borrowing terminology even metaphorically one rule to follow is to provide justification. This is very important otherwise people will laugh once they recognize that terminology was just thrown without any explanation or connection. For me this book was very important reading because I also mapped some computer science and engineering technology terminology to the domain of project management. However I provided some sort of justification to my relief.

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science

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Very good book to learn about mathematical logic, distinction between syntax and semantics, different interpretations of formal languages and how this leads to various different non-classical logics. It will deepen your understanding of mathematics if you studied or encountered only classical propositional and predicate logic and want to learn more about fuzzy logic, for example, among many others. All necessary prerequisites are covered in the first 230 pages of this 500 page book including informal set theory and topology. I read most of this book couple of years ago and want to re-read it soon.

Classical and Nonclassical Logics: An Introduction to the Mathematics of Propositions

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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…

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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

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