Talbot Michael: THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE (Harper, 1991)
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Tarski Alfred: LOGIC, SEMANTICS, METAMATHEMATICS (Clarendon, 1956)
A collection of the historical papers by Tarski, in particular "On the
concept of truth", which advanced the correspondence theory of truth:
a statement is true if it corresponds to reality.
Tarski's semantics has the goal of reducing all concepts to physical
concepts. All semantic concepts are defined in terms of truth, and truth
is defined in terms of satisfaction, and satisfaction is defined in terms
of physical concepts.
Tarski created the first model theory for quantified predicate logic.
Taylor Charles: THE EXPLANATION OF BEHAVIOR (Routledge & Kegan, 1964)
Behavior is a function of the state of the system and its environment; but
what brings behavior about is its being required to achieve the goals.
Thagard Paul: MIND (MIT Press, 1996)
A clear and well-organized textbook on cognitive science.
Thelen Esther & Smith Linda: A DYNAMIC SYSTEMS APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITION AND ACTION (MIT Press, 1994)
The book describes a theory of early human development (how organic form is
created, where does the information for the adult reside, etc)
that applies the theory of nonlinear dynamic systems to biology and constitutes
a landmark departure from cognitive theories.
The processes that govern human development are the same that act on the
simplest organisms (and even some nonliving systems). They are processes of
emergent order and complexity, of how structure arises from the interaction
of many independent units. They integrate organic ontogeny at every level,
from morphology to behavior.
Drawing from Edelman's neural darwinism,
Bertalanffy's and Laszlo's general systems theory,
Haken's synergetics,
and Waddington's organismic metaphor,
the authors prove that Piaget's theory fails, that Chomsky's model of
competence and performance is flawed, that nativism is implausible, that
cognition is continous across development, that Fodor's modules are illogical,
that Newell & Simon's information processing model is incomplete. Only
connectionism is salvaged, in virtue of its similarities with dynamic
systems (knowoledge as a pattern of activity, mental life as only processes
(not structures), but then discarded as naif and insufficient.
By using Robert Cairn's analogy (evolution is to biology what development
is to psychology, i.e. the process behind the structure), the authors
advance a theory of development that is as opportunistic as evolution.
Knowledge in the individual originates in opportunistic and context-specific
psychological processes. The emphasis is on processes of change, on
ever-active self-organizing processes of living systems
(analogous to selection algorithms).
Development appears to be orderly, incremental, directional (towards nutritional
independence and reproductive maturity). The authors' theory, though, is that
development is not driven by a grand design: it is driven by opportunistic, syncretic
and exploratory processes. At a closer look, in fact, development is modular
and heterochronic (different organs develop at different rates and different
times), although the organism progresses as a whole. Global regularities
(and simplicity) somehow arises from local variabilities (and complexities).
Development is not structured. Development is the outcome of the interplay
between action and perception within a system that, by its thermodynamic
nature, seeks stability. Performance emerges. Cognition is an emergent
structure, situated and embodied, just like any other skill.
Knowledge for thought and action emerges from the dynamics of pattern
formation in the context of neural group selection.
Perception, action and cognition are rooted in the same pattern formation
processes. Categories arise (self-roganize) spontaneously and reflect the
experiences of acting and perceiving, i.e. of interacting with the world.
More precisely, categories are created through the cross-relation of
multimodal (hearing, seeing, feeling, etc) experiences.
Unity of perception and action is evident in category formation.
The critical role of movement in development is emphasized over and over:
movement is a perceptual category.
Beeing in the world "selects" categories.
"Meaning is emergent in perceiving and acting in specific contexts and in a
history of perceiving and acting in contexts".
Development can be then viewed as the dymanic selection of categories.
Categories are but a specific case of pattern formation, but they also are
the foundation of cognitive development. Therefore, cognitive development
is a direct consequence of properties of nonlinear dynamic systems,
of self-configuring complex systems.
These features are shared by all organisms.
Thom Rene': SEMIOPHYSICS (Addison-Wesley, 1990)
The English translation of a book published in 1988 in France.
Semiophysics is the physics of meaning, of significant form.
Thom identifies the quantities that define what is relevant for meaning.
Thom rediscovers an ancient theory of Aristotle, which bases Mathematics on
the concept of continuum, rather than on the generative properties of
numbers, and shows that this approach better suits the biological domain.
Thom Rene': MATHEMATICAL MODELS OF MORPHOGENESIS (Horwood, 1983)
A collection of papers on catastrophe theory written between 1967 and 1981,
Thom was interested in including "A dynamic theory of morphogenesis", commonly
considered the birth of catastrophe theory. Thom was interested in
structural stability in topology (stability of topological form) and was
convinced of the
possibility of finding general laws of form evolution regardless of the
underlying substance of form, as already stated at the beginning of the century
by D'Arcy Thompson. Esistence is determined by essence.
Thom takes issue with general systems theory.
A system is the content of a region of space-time, but, topologically speaking,
this is not a set of objects.
Thom models the seat of the morphogenetic process into domains
of different attractors, separated by shock waves.
Shock wave surfaces are singularities called "catastrophes".
A catastrophe is a state beyond which the system is detroyed in an irreversible
manner.
In a 4-dimensional world there are 7 types of elementary catastrophes.
Elementary catastrophes include:
"fold", destruction of an attractor which is captured by a lesser
potential; "cusp", bufurcation of an attractor into two attractors; etc.
From these singularities, more and more complex catastrophes unfold, until
the final catastrophe.
Thom's immediate goal was embryology: he proves that the adult organism is a
product of the unfolding of the dynamics which is already in the egg.
All morphogenesis is due to a conflict between attractors. What catastrophe
theory does is to "geometrize" the concept of "conflict".
Incidentally, catastrophe theory provides a mathematical justification for
Waddington's "epigenetic landscape".
Applications to Physics, Linguistics and Biology are also reviewed.
Thom Rene': STRUCTURAL STABILITY AND MORPHOGENESIS (Benjamin, 1975)
Thom states his goal as to explain the "succession of form". Our universe
presents us with forms (that we can perceive and name), A form is defined,
first and foremost, by its stability: a form lasts in space and time.
Forms change. The history of the universe, insofar as we are concerned, is a
ceaseless creation, destruction and transformation of form. Life itself is,
ultimately, creation, growth and decaying of form.
Every physical form is represented by a mathematical quantity called "attractor"
in a space of internal variables. If the attractor satisfies the mathematical
property of being "structurally stable", thenthe physical form is the stable
form of an object. Changes in form, or morphogenesis, is due to the
capture of the attractors of the old form by the attractors of the new form.
This is the process called "catastrophe".
All morphogenesis is due to the conflict between attractors.
Thom's basic tenet is that any system is associated to a "catastrophe set",
a set of the values that would cause an irreversible change in its form, a
"morphogenesis". Thom's is a purely geometric theory of morphogenesis, His laws
are independent of the substance, structure and internal forces of the system.
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Elementary catastrophes are "local accidents". The form of an object is due
to the accumulation of many elementary catastrophes.
Local forms are defined by closed sets of points called attractors. Each
attractor defines a "basin".
Thom proves that in a 4-dimensional space there exist only 7 elementary
types of catastrophe.
The difference between static and metabolic form is due to the nature of the
attractor: static form is due to an attractor of the space of internal states.
Static form is a solid. Metabolic form is smoke.
Thom relates catastrophe theory to Physics and to Information Theory.
Then applies catastrophe theory to biological morphogenesis.
Thom thinks that the fundamental problem of biology is a topological problem:
how form is built. The biochemistry of life should therefore be explained
by morphogenesis, not the other way around. He goes on to propose a detailed
model of the global evolution of a cell (division, mitosis, meiosis, etc.)
Death is easily defined: the trasformation of a metabolic field into a
static field. But life would require an "infinite" number of local
transformations in order to achieve the anabolic transformation from static
to metabolic. Furthermore, once life occurs it is not clear why it stops
at all: the underlying processes are reversible, therefore life should continue
forever.
Thom Rene: APOLOGIE DU LOGOS (Hachette, 1990)
A huge collection of articles that span Thom's interests, from morphology to
catastrophe theory.
Thom is the founder of catastrophe theory. In 1973 he wrote the influential
paper on semiotics "De l'icone au symbole" in which showed that
human sign behavior has nothing special that can distinguish it from animal
sign behavior or even from inanimated matter.
Thompson D'Arcy: ON GROWTH AND FORM (Cambridge University Press, 1917)
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Tipler Frank: THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY (Doubleday, 1995)
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Samuel Todes: BODY AND WORLD (MIT Press, 2001)
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Tomasello, Michael: THE CULTURAL ORIGINS OF HUMAN COGNITION (Harvard University Press, 1999)
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Toffoli Tommaso & Margolus Norman: CELLULAR AUTOMATA MACHINES (MIT Press, 1987)
The book contains an introduction to cellular automata ("discrete dynamical
systems whose behavior is completely specified in terms of a local relation).
"Cellular automata are the computer scientist's counterpart to the physicist's
concept of field". Space is represented by a uniform grid and time advances
in discrete steps. Each cell of space contains bits of information. Laws of
nature express what operation must be performed on each cell's bits of
information, based on its neighbor's bits of information. Laws of nature
are local and uniform.
Many chapters detail applications of cellular automata, particularly to Physics.
Touretzky David: THE MATHEMATICS OF INHERITANCE SYSTEMS (Morgan Kaufman, 1986)
Touretzky's inheritance theory shows the similarities between logical proof
(which is a tree of formulas, with the theorem at the root and the axioms as
the leaves) and paths (sequences of nodes) that are explored during a
search within a network.
Touretzky argues that there is a natural partial ordering of defaults in
inheritance systems that is implicit in the hierarchical structure of the
inheritance graph: the inferential distance, which determines
subclass/superclass ordering (a class is a subclass of another class if there
is an inheritance path from the former to the latter). Touretzky claims that
default rules about subclasses should override default
rules about the superclasses that contain them. Subclasses override superclasses.
The best path in a network is the one that minimizes inferential distance
(as opposed to the shortest path method of traditional inheritance systems,
i.e., the shortest proof is not always the best proof).
Trefil, James S.: Are We Unique?; A Scientist Explores the Unparalleled Intelligence of the Human Mind (Wiley, 1997)
A popular science writer discusses the achievements of modern science while trying to prove the uniqueness of humans (versus animals and machines).
His overview of cognitive science and the likes is more a collection of articles on popular buzzwords than an organized overview. And it misses the majority of today's important research, while still recounting obsolete debates.
Trehub Arnold: THE COGNITIVE BRAIN (MIT Press, 1991)
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Trivers, Robert: SOCIAL EVOLUTION (Benjamin/Cummings, 1985)
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Tulving Endel & Craik Fergus: THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MEMORY (Oxford Univ Press, 2000)
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Tulving Endel: ORGANIZATION OF MEMORY (Academic Press, 1972)
A collection of articles on memory. Tulving distinguishes between
episodic memory (which receives and stores information about temporally
dated episodes and temporal-spatial relations among them) and semantic memory
(organized knowledge about the world). Episodic memory is a faithful
record of a person's experience.
In a subsequent paper Tulving proposed to distinguish different memory systems
based on the following characteristics: kinds of information they process,
operations that can be performed, neural substrates that are affected,
timing of appearance in phylogenetic and ontogenetic development, and
format of representation. A memory system can therefore be defined in terms
of its brain mechanisms, the information it processes and the principles of
its operation.
Tulving Endel: ELEMENTS OF EPISODIC MEMORY (Oxford Univ Press, 1983)
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Turbayne Colin Murray: THE MYTH OF METAPHOR (Yale Univ Press, 1962)
Turbayne treats metaphor not as a linguistc phenomenon, but as a philosophical
one.
Descartes and Newton founded modern science on the basis of a metaphysics of
mechanism. Turbayne presents a different metaphor: he treats events in nature
as if they compose a language, and the world as a universal language.
Turchin Valentin: PHENOMENON OF SCIENCE (Columbia Univ Press, 1977)
The Russian physicist Turchin works out an evolutionary model of the universe, heavily influenced by cybernetics.
The emergence of life and consciousness and culture are reduced to the formation of new systems out of more basic systems
within a hierarchy of levels of cybernetic control.
Turing Alan Mathison: MORPHOGENESIS (North-Holland, 1992)
A collection of historical papers by Turing. In "The chemical basis of
morphogenesis" (1952) he advanced the reaction-diffusion theory of pattern
formation, based on the bifurcation properties of the solutions of
differential equations.
Turing devised a model to generate stable patterns:
X catalyzes itself: X diffuses slowly
X catalyzes Y: Y diffuses quickly
Y inhibits X
Y may or may not catalyze or inhibit itself
Some reactions might be able to create ordered spatial schemes from
disordered schemes. The function of genes is purely catalytic: they catalyze
the production of new morphogenes, which will catalyze more morphogenes until
eventually form emerges.
Turing Alan: PURE MATHEMATICS (Elsevier Science, 1992)
A collection of historical papers by Turing.
In 1936 with his seminal paper "On computable numbers" Alan Turing defined
computation
as the formal manipulation of symbols by the application of formal rules.
A Turing machine is capable of performing all the operations that are needed
to perform logical calculus: read current symbols, process them, write new
symbols, examine new symbols. Depending on the symbol that it is reading and
on the state in which it is, the Turing machine decides whether it should
move on, backwards, write a symbol, change state or stop.
Turing's machine is an automatic formal system: a system to automatically
compute an alphabet of symbols according to a finite set of rules.
The universal machine is a
Turing's machine capable of simulating all possible Turing's machines.
It contains a sequence of symbols that describes the specific Turing machine
that must be simulated. For each computational procedure the universal
machine is capable of simulating a machine that performs that procedure.
The universal machine is therefore capable of computing any computational
function.
Turing Alan: MECHANICAL INTELLIGENCE (Elsevier Science, 1992)
A collection of historical papers by Turing.
In "Computing machinery and intelligence" (1950)
Turing proposed a famous test to verify whether a machine is intelligent or not:
ask the same questions of a machine and a human being, without being told which
one is which, and if you can't tell which one is which, then the machine is
intelligent.
Turner Raymond: LOGICS FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Ellis Horwood, 1985)
A short, but clear, introduction to non-standard logics:
modal logic, epistemic logic,
multi-valued logics, intuitionistic logic, theory of types, non-monotonic
reasoning, temporal logic and fuzzy logic.
Turner, Scott: THE EXTENDED ORGANISM (Harvard Univ Press, 2000)
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Turner Scott: THE CREATIVE PROCESS (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994)
A theory of creativity and a case-based computer prototype ("Minstrel") that
generates stories. Art is viewed as a problem solving activity, and an author
as a problem solver who employs knowledge encoded in cases. Creativity is
an integrated process of search and adaptation guided by creativity heuristics:
it is an extension of problem solving that is driven by the failure of
problem solving and creative alternatives are created by using old knowledge
in new ways.
The architecture employs for classes of goals: thematic goals (development of
the story theme, point, moral), concistency goals (plausibility constraints),
drama goals (artistic quality) and presentation goals (effective style).
Turvey Michael: PERCEIVING, ACTION AND KNOWING (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1977)
A psychological theory of how cognition and action interact.
An action can be performed in many different ways, i.e. the nervous system
has to deal with degrees of freedom. It solves the problem through a
hierarchical command structure. Every level of the hierarchy adds detail to
the overall goal of the action. Lower levels have a degree of autonomy,
higher levels exert control over lower units by tuning the parameters that
define the features of the lower units and by tuning the pathways connecting
them.
Tversky Amos, Kahnemann Daniel & Slovic Paul: JUDGMENT UNDER UNCERTAINTY (Cambridge University Press, 1982)
A collection of essays on heuristics and biases, as introduced by Tversky.
The fundamental assumption is that people rely on a limited set of heuristic
principles which greatly reduces the task of assessing probabilities:
representativeness (the degree to which an event is representative of a class
of events), availability (the degree to which past occurrences of an event can
be brought to mind) and adjustment (the degree to which the initial approximate
value must be changed). Representativeness can be viewed as "connotative"
distance, availability can be viewed as "associative" distance.
People employ heuristics to answer questions such as: what is the probability
that an object belongs to a given class? that an event originates from a given
event? that a process will generate a given event? Heuristics that affect
the decision include prior probabilities of outcome, sample size,
predictability; but they are not reflected in the theory of probability.
At the same time, deviations of subjective probability from objective
probability are systematic. Experiments show that people predict by similarity
(representativeness). Experiments also show that causal inferences have greater
efficacy than diagnostic inferences.
Tversky criticizes probabilistic reasoning as a way to describe human thinking
as it is subject to "framing effects". Tversky & Shafer offered a
"constructivist" theory of probabilities in which probabilities describe an
ideal situation that can still be related to the real situation.
Tye Michael: THE METAPHYSICS OF MIND (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
There are no mental events (beliefs or desires) and no mental objects (such
as pain or images). Drawing from Sellar's "adverbial" theory of sensing, Tye
develops his own "operator" theory in which sensory adverbs are analyzable
as predicate operators added to a standard predicate calculus.
Tye thinks that the phenomenal aspects of experience ("what it is like") are
unrelated to their representational contents.
Tye Michael: THE IMAGERY DEBATE (MIT Press, 1991)
After a sloppy survey of mental-imagery theories over the centuries,
Tye proposes a unified theory of mental imagery that embraces both the
the visual stance and the linguistic stance, that tries
to bridge Stephen Kosslyn's pictorialism and Zenon Pylyshyn's descriptionalism
(the two main opposite schools of thought on what kind of
representational structures images exactly are).
Tye believes that the experimental evidence supports a mixed theory of
pictorialism and descriptionalism.
The main flaw of the book (besides misrepresenting some of the ancient thinkers)
is that it neglects too much of modern experimental research and theoretical
approaches to the field for a book whose title is "the imagery debate".
Thus his attempt at unifying the two main schools ends up sounding a bit
amateurish.
Tye Michael: TEN PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS (MIT Press, 1995)
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