Re: Next Polymath Project • What, When, Where?

Here’s a bit of data on the Theme One Program I worked on all through the 1980s.  My aim was to develop fundamental algorithms and data structures to support an integrated learning and reasoning interface.  I wrote up a pilot version of the program well enough to get a Master’s degree out of it but still haven’t gotten around to writing up the complete documentation.  Below is a link to what I’ve put on the web so far.

• Theme One Program • Overview

I see this project as being related to Tim Gowers’ Proposal on the Mathematics of the Origin of Life, since one of the reasons for doing this work was to get information about the threshold of systems-theoretic complexity necessary to support a capacity for inquiry.

By the end of the 80s, and especially as I returned to grad school in systems engineering during the 90s, my work on this program gradually morphed into a broader study of what I began calling “Inquiry Driven Systems”.  The conceptual background for this study is outlined in the following proposal.

• Prospects for Inquiry Driven Systems

More discussion to follow as I get time …

Inquiry Project Papers

• Prospects for Inquiry Driven Systems
• Introduction to Inquiry Driven Systems
• Inquiry Driven Systems • Inquiry Into Inquiry
• Theme One Program • Overview