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Embodied and dis-embodied meaning

I found a short paper today by Mark Andrews, Stefan Frank and Gabriella Vigliocco focused on reconciling two trends in the study of meaning in cognitive science. These two trends are represented by embodied cognition theories (which treat meaning as a simulation of perceptual and motor states) and by computational or distributional accounts of meaning […]

Infinities, Tolstoy, dreams and Nabokov

My interest in mathematics is more personal than it is academic. I learned what I know formally, in the usual sequence of undergraduate and graduate math courses. But it has penetrated my personal life, and I have come to see mathematics as deeply rooted in a fundamental human drive to live more, or to live […]

Daniel Tammet and imagination

I recently got a copy of Daniel Tammet’s latest book, Thinking in Numbers. As you may know, Daniel Tammet has been described as a high functioning autistic savant. He gained some notoriety in 2004, when he recited the decimal expansion of pi to 22,514 places in just over 5 hours. You can see him do […]

Mathematical life forms and really big numbers

I finally got hold of a copy of Gergory Chaitin’s latest book, Proving Darwin: Making Biology Mathematical. The thesis of the book is very appealing to me, since it equates mathematical creativity with biological creativity. And, I would say that Chaitin’s work is a captivating experiment. He is, as he says, “attempting to find the […]

Order, computation and creativity in biology

Current research into the neuroscience of our visual system tells us that what we see is constructed through the coordinated effect of cells sensitive to particular aspects of a visual scene. Attributes such as motion, form and color are processed in individually specialized areas, along paths that lead to the primary visual cortex, creating what […]

Bees, ants, space and algorithm

In 2011, Science Daily reported on a study done at Queen Mary University of London and published in Biology Letters. The study examined the foraging strategies of bumblebees and found that “after extensive training (80 foraging bouts and at least 640 flower visits), bees reduced their flight distances and prioritized shortest possible routes.” The bees […]

Pollock, fractal expressionism and a mathematical thought

In a blog back in January, I referenced a talk given by David Deutsch in which he made the argument that, while empiricism has been the basis of science, empiricism alone is inadequate because scientific theories explain the seen in terms of the unseen.

What we see, in all these cases, bears no resemblance to […]

Finger counting, finger gnosia and cerebral structures

In June The Guardian posted an interesting piece on finger counting and numbers. The main content of the article concerns the work of cognitive scientists Andrea Bender and Sieghard Beller which explores the cultural diversity in finger counting. It tells us that if asked to use you hands to count to 10, these variations will […]

Julian Barbour, from metaphysics to mathematics to us

Julian Barbour is a theoretical physicist with a clear interest in tackling foundational issues and the errors of judgment that can lead physics theories astray. One of these candidates for a mistaken judgment is time itself, and in 1999 Barbour authored the book The End of Time published by the Oxford University Press. He wrote […]

Dante, art, vision, and mathematics

We adopted a dog a couple of months ago, and there have been moments when I have watched a change in his attention or a change in his behavior, and wondered how his awareness might be structured. When we drive with him, he usually sits in front of the back seats of our Honda Element, […]