Author Archives: Jon Awbrey

A Meno Acid

What answers to the Meno Paradox Comes in the moment of realizing — Gathering together the building blocks Is just the beginning of the building.

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Education, Inquiry, Learning, Meno, Philosophy, Plato, Teaching, Verse | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Indicator Functions • 1

Re: R.J. Lipton and K.W. Regan • Who Invented Boolean Functions? One of the things it helps to understand about 19th Century mathematicians, and those who built the bridge to the 20th, is that they were capable of high abstraction … Continue reading

Posted in Abstraction, Boole, Boolean Functions, C.S. Peirce, Category Theory, Characteristic Functions, Euler, Indicator Functions, John Venn, Logic, Mathematics, Peirce, Propositional Calculus, Set Theory, Venn Diagrams, Visualization | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Riffs and Rotes • 2

Re: Peter Cameron • Addition and Multiplication of Natural Numbers The interaction between addition and multiplication in the natural numbers has long been an interest of mine, leading to broader questions about the relationship between algebra and combinatorics.  My gropings … Continue reading

Posted in Arithmetic, Combinatorics, Graph Theory, Group Theory, Logic, Mathematics, Number Theory, Riffs and Rotes | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Oracles

Computing, in its way, and science, in its broader way, both involve the relation between what appears limited and what appears not. Whether you believe in divinity or not, and whether you believe that humanity contains a spark of divinity … Continue reading

Posted in Communication, Computability, Computing, Inquiry, Oracles, Relative Computability, Science, Universals | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Quotiens?

How many times do I repeat the same experience? Before I come to see it as the same experience?

Posted in Algorithms, Anamnesis, Arithmetic, Deja Vu, Education, Epistemology, Eternal Return, Inquiry, Learning, Meno, Music, Pattern Recognition, Plato, Poetry, Recursion, Repetition, Rhythm, Teaching | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Poems and Programs

Words that do … A trendy misunderstanding has reared its head as to what the discipline of computing, indeed the logic of science, are all about.  I blame Penrose, of course, but he is only the most recent promulgator of … Continue reading

Posted in Aesthetics, Artistic Differences, Computability, Effective Description, Ethics, Existential Choice, Finitude, Form, Imagination, Information, Inquiry, Limitation, Logic of Science, Matter, Mortality, Poetry, Programming, Volition | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I Wonder, Wonder Who

Re: R.J. Lipton and K.W. Regan • Who Invented Boolean Functions? The question recalls recent discussions of discovery and invention in the mathematical field, bringing back to mind questions I’ve wondered about for as long as I can remember. Speaking … Continue reading

Posted in Anamnesis, Aristotle, Boole, Boolean Functions, C.S. Peirce, Discovery, Invention, Learning, Logic, Mathematics, Meno, Model Theory, Peirce, Plato, Propositional Calculus, Recollection, Semiotics, Socrates, Teaching | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Notes On Categories • 1

Continued from “Notes On Categories” (14 Jul 2003) • Inquiry List • Ontology List NB.  This page is a work in progress.  I will have to dig up some still older notes from the days of pen and paper before … Continue reading

Posted in Abstraction, Category Theory, Computing, Graph Theory, Logic, Mathematics, Relation Theory, Type Theory | Tagged , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Theme One • A Program Of Inquiry 4

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 … Continue reading

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, C.S. Peirce, Cognition, Computation, Constraint Satisfaction Problems, Cybernetics, Formal Languages, Inquiry, Inquiry Driven Systems, Intelligent Systems, Learning Theory, Logic, Peirce, Semiotics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Château Descartes

But if we are to select those dimensions which will be of the greatest assistance to our imagination, we should never attend to more than one or two of them as depicted in our imagination, even though we are well … Continue reading

Posted in Analytic Geometry, Cartesian Coordinate System, Cartesian Philosophy, Cartesian Product, Descartes, Dualism, Dyadicism, Inquiry, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, Reductionism, Relation Theory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments