Idiosyncrasies of Some Great Scientists

# 49

.... of course, much to our loss :)

Re: # 50

Thank you. -)

Gill Saheb

Most social science can be argued to be pseudo-science. What special difficulties do you see in scientifically studying religion?

Swarrier and Alephnull:

I read a review of Dennett’s book (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon) in New Yorker (April 3, 2006) by H. Allen Orr. It should be an interesting book but essentially of speculative kind. Dennett talks of the “science of religion” which to me seems a far-fetched idea. It has become respectable to dress old metaphysical ideas in the scientific garb.

Dennett uses Dawkins’ memes to build his theory (?). A meme is a kind of mental gene. He uses memes more or less the same way that genes are used in the theory of evolution.

According to Orr, “A meme, a term introduced by Richard Dawkins, is any idea or practice – any thought, song, or ritual – that can replicate from one brain to another. When you whistle a jingle from a commercial, it’s because the jingle meme has successfully replicated and now resides in a new brain, yours. According to Dennett, memes let us lift Darwinism from its historical base in biology to the realm of human culture.”

Orr doesn’t place much faith in Dennett’s theory of memes. He says,” Similarly, many evolutionary biologists dismiss memes and memetics as little more than pseudoscientific wordplay. For one thing, the analogy between genes and memes is notoriously weak. Genes mutate rarely; memes mutate rapidly…Nor has memetics produced any persuasive explanations of previously unexplained phenomena.”

I had published a book review of “The Meme Machine” by Susan Blackmore at chowk.com on December 25, 2003, in which some more information on memes can be found. I am personally not persuaded that religion can be ‘scientified’; more or less the same way that science can be Islamized.

Mohammad Gill

Re: # 46

Memes were analogous to Sheldrake`s morphological receptors, in my opinion. I`m afraid it`s been a long time since I read about these so I could be very wrong. I get very little time to read now.

Religion to me is a private matter. I prefer to keep science away from it. However it`s always good to see somebody else`s perspective on it.

I must go back and read your old articles on chowk. I used to visit this site once in a while but I interacted, till very recently.

Re: # 47

Sorry that should read ``did not interact till recently.``

swarrier #43

I actually first heard about both Hofstadter and Smullyan through Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Gardner devoted an entire column to GEB when it came out. Hofstadter in fact took over Gardner’s space for a couple of years – renaming it Metamagical Themas - when Gardner retired. The book of the same name was a result.

Smullyan has half a dozen books of logic puzzles – beginning with What is the Name of this Book? and ending with The Riddles of Scheherazade. Typically each book starts with a section of generic ‘lady or tiger/knights and knaves’ style puzzles but then goes on to puzzles that develop some of the ideas behind a specific subfield of logic (Godel’s Theorem, combinatory logic, set theory). Any one of them would be an excellent choice for bright children from 8 to 88. These books are only a fraction of Smullyan’s oeuvre.

Polya wrote several books on mathematical problem solving besides ‘How ToSolve It’.

Daniel Dennett is actually the link, in plain view, between Hofstadter and Dawkins. He shares Dawkins’ interest in explaining religions as natural phenomena.

Recent books on morphogenesis/evolutionary developmental biology that are not scientifically iffy are Goodwin’s How the Leopard Changed its Spots, Coen’s The Art of Genes, and Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful.

Finally, I think you meant Oliver Sacks.

Re: # 44

Yes I meant Sacks. Sorry. I have some of his books. Very interesting. my friend who is on the faculty at Mass General Hospital says his books are better than his lectures though.

Actually I mean to purchase Dennett`s latest book (Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon) in which he argues why evolution possibly makes it necessary for man to believe in a God. I shall do so this summer. It will be good reading.

S

Tahmad sahib,

(then there was Philosopher Nasah who was so absent minded that after coming home on a rainy day, he put his umbrella in his bed, and himself went to the umbrella stand and stood there all night. (this one is a joke).)

You will not believe this but this is apparently true. A 19th century Bengali scholar and social reformer, Iswarchandra Vidyasagar achieved such a feat. However it was not a rainy day but a night.

freethinker: life may be short, but it is not short enough not provide time to read the Scientific American. Subscribe to it, and you will become addicted to it. Guaranteed.

Alephnull:
Thanks for the books that you suggested. I`ll take time to pick and choose but now I know which ones to consider when I am choosing. My interests are very diversified.
I wish I knew more of everything. But one`s life is too short. Thanks for your input.
Mohammad Gill

freethinker #35, #38:

Almost anything by Douglas Hofstadter is worth reading – even his translation of ‘Eugene Onegin’. As far as Godel, Turing and company are concerned, an alternative for intelligent laymen is Martin Davis’ recent The Universal Computer. It traces the development of ideas of mathematical logic and computability from Leibniz through Boole, Frege, Cantor, Russell, Hilbert, Godel, and Turing. It has plenty of discussion of the mathematical ideas interspersed with historical and biographical material. Davis doesn’t display Hofstadter’s breadth of interests or his intellectual versatility, and his book had far fewer beautiful pictures than GEB. On the other hand, it’s a good deal shorter … Davis has also edited a collection of the seminal papers of Godel, Turing, Church, Post, etc, called The Undecidable – in case you’d like to have a single source where you can read them all.

Another well-known (and short) exposition of Godel’s best-known work is Nagel and Newman’s Godel’s Proof. The well-known mathematical logician Raymond Smullyan (another extremely interesting character in his own right) has written several books of logic puzzles that develop and explore the ideas that make the proof work.

For a fictionalised account (but based on real incidents and personalities) of Godel and his peers at Princeton, see John Casti’s The One True Platonic Heaven. Again a very compact book – about the same length as Hardy’s A Mathematician’s Apology. There are many other books at various levels for people who’re interested …

And re #17: really, you didn’t have to apologise. I’m not the sort to take offence, least of all at you.

swarrier:

I borrowed ``Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid`` today from a local library. I haven`t started reading it seriously but I skimmed through it. It also describes Ramanujan and his work. One of the anecdotes about Ramanujan that I had read in Hardy`s book is also described in it. I would like to share it with the readers here.

Hardy wrote,: I remember once going to see him when he (Ramanujan) was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number seemed to me rather dull one, and that I hoped it was not sn unfavourable omen. ``No,`` he replied, ``it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways.`` I asked him, naturally, whether he knew the answer to the corresponding problem for fourth powers; and he replied, after a moment`s thought, that he could see no obvious example, and thought that the first such numbers must be very large.

It turns out that the answer for fourth powers is:
635318657 = 134^4 + 133^4 = 158^4 + 59^4

The answer to the cubes is:

1729 = 9^3 + 10^3 = 1^3 + 12^3

Mohammad Gill

Re: # 38
Dr. Gill
I had forgotten that chapter on Ramanujan. I last read GEB in 1989 so it`s been some time. Digressing a bit from idiosyncracies and physics and mathematics , I have really liked books by Richard Dawkins, ``The selfish gene``, ``The blind watchmaker``, and more recently ``The Ancestors tale``. Morphogenetics by Rupert Sheldrake was interesting, though, scientifically a little iffy.

Another excellent writer on medicine is Dr. Roger Sachs. His book on Migraine and ``The man who mistook his wife for a hat`` (on memory and Alzheimers etc) are worth perusing.

Another intersting writer is Daniel Denett who teaches philosophy close by at Tufts University. He co-authored a book with Hofstadter called ``The Mind`s I``. I have a copy of that but I preferred Hofstadters other books. Maybe I was not quite ready for this one.

Alephnull:
It was reading Raymond Smullyan`s ``The Lady or the Tiger and other puzzles`` that led me to Hofstadter. Another book I have really liked is, ``How to Solve it`` by George Polya. You will have read that. In another couple of years I will get my son to try to read ``One two three infinity`` by George Gamow.

re:#31 by freethinker
I think Hollywood is making a movie on Ramanujam.
Sridhar

swarrier:

I have read Hodges book but not the other two. I have read another biography of Ramanujan. I first learned of Ramanujan in 1969. I was checking out a paper on ``Perturbation`` theory in a mathematical journal and the author quoted Ramanujan. My curiosity immediately led me to Hardy`s book on Ramanujan.

Incidentally, Einstein had many flings outside his marriage. I had written about it in my article ``Einstein`s Love Life`` at Chowk.com on July 20, 2005. Church Turing Tarski thesis to which you have alluded seems interesting. I`ll see if I can procure the book.

Mohammad Gill