This is an extraordinary and challenging synthesis of ideas uniting Quantum Theory, and the theories of Computation, Knowledge and Evolution. Deutsch's extraordinary book explores the deep connections between these strands which reveal the fabric of reality in which human actions and ideas play essential roles.

In our search for truth, how far have we advanced? This uniquely human quest for good explanations has driven amazing improvements in everything from scientific understanding and technology to politics, moral values and human welfare. But will progress end, either in catastrophe or completion - or will it continue indefinitely? In this profound and seminal book, David Deutsch explores the furthest reaches of our current understanding, taking in the Infinity Hotel, supernovae and the nature of optimism, to instill in all of us a wonder at what we have achieved - and the fact that this is only the beginning of humanity's infinite possibility.

The conceptual history of cognitive science remains for the most part unwritten. In this groundbreaking book, Jean-Pierre Dupuy--one of the principal architects of cognitive science in France--provides an important chapter: the legacy of cybernetics. Contrary to popular belief, Dupuy argues, cybernetics represented not the anthropomorphization of the machine but the mechanization of the human. The founding fathers of cybernetics--some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts--intended to construct a materialist and mechanistic science of mental behavior that would make it possible at last to resolve the ancient philosophical problem of mind and matter. The importance of cybernetics to cognitive science, Dupuy argues, lies not in its daring conception of the human mind in terms of the functioning of a machine but in the way the strengths and weaknesses of the cybernetics approach can illuminate controversies that rage today--between cognitivists and connectionists, eliminative materialists and Wittgensteinians, functionalists and anti-reductionists. Dupuy brings to life the intellectual excitement that attended the birth of cognitive science sixty years ago. He separates the promise of cybernetic ideas from the disappointment that followed as cybernetics was rejected and consigned to intellectual oblivion. The mechanization of the mind has reemerged today as an all-encompassing paradigm in the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. The tensions, contradictions, paradoxes, and confusions Dupuy discerns in cybernetics offer a cautionary tale for future developments in cognitive science.

"A remarkable book that influenced the scientific thought of an entire generation."--Dictionary of Scientific Biography
A major statement of the language, method, and concepts of the physical sciences, this 1892 volume traces not only the history of experimental investigation but also the efforts of philosophic minds to state and organize their findings intelligently. A classic in the philosophy of science, its author is the founder of modern statistics. Karl Pearson was among the most influential university teachers of his era, and he possessed a remarkable ability to captivate both students and casual listeners. In The Grammar of Science, his most widely read book, he introduced the concept of a general methodology underlying all science, and thus made one of the great contributions to modern thought. 1957 ed.

Manfred D. Laubichler, Science
[A] brilliant biography, one can hardly imagine a better summary of Karl Pearson's fascinating life and complicated persona. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
John Aldrich American Scientist : Exceeds all expectations in recreating the intellectual worlds in which Pearson tried to find a home.
Manfred D. Laubichler Science : [A] brilliant biography, one can hardly imagine a better summary of Karl Pearson's fascinating life and complicated persona.
Peter J. Bowler Nature : Highlights the complex route by which [Pearson's] quest for emotional and intellectual satisfaction led him towards . . . modern statistics.
Jenny Marie Journal of the History of Biology : This book is a remarkable achievement.
Richard J. Cleary The American Statistician : Very effectively conveys . . . that . . . [statistics allows students] to see the world in a new and beautiful way.
Ramachandran Bharath MAA Reviews : Theodore Porter's Karl Pearson explores the fullness and richness of Pearson's intellectual and emotional life.

Another title in the reissued Oxford Classic Texts in the Physical Sciences series, Jeffrey's Theory of Probability, first published in 1939, was the first to develop a fundamental theory of scientific inference based on the ideas of Bayesian statistics. His ideas were way ahead of their time and it is only in the past ten years that the subject of Bayes' factors has been significantly developed and extended. Until recently the two schools of statistics (Bayesian and Frequentist) were distinctly different and set apart. Recent work (aided by increased computer power and availability) has changed all that and today's graduate students and researchers all require an understanding of Bayesian ideas. This book is their starting point.

Proofs and Refutations is essential reading for all those interested in the methodology, the philosophy and the history of mathematics. Much of the book takes the form of a discussion between a teacher and his students. They propose various solutions to some mathematical problems and investigate the strengths and weaknesses of these solutions. Their discussion (which mirrors certain real developments in the history of mathematics) raises some philosophical problems and some problems about the nature of mathematical discovery or creativity. Imre Lakatos is concerned throughout to combat the classical picture of mathematical development as a steady accumulation of established truths. He shows that mathematics grows instead through a richer, more dramatic process of the successive improvement of creative hypotheses by attempts to 'prove' them and by criticism of these attempts: the logic of proofs and refutations.

This is a new translation of and commentary on Pico della Mirandola's most famous work, the Oration on the Dignity of Man. It is the first English edition to provide readers with substantial notes on the text, essays that address the work's historical, philosophical and theological context, and a survey of its reception. Often called the 'Manifesto of the Renaissance', this brief but complex text was originally composed in 1486 as the inaugural speech for an assembly of intellectuals, which could have produced one of the most exhaustive metaphysical, theological and psychological debates in history, had Pope Innocent VIII not forbidden it. This edition of the Oration reflects the spirit of the original text in bringing together experts in different fields. Not unlike the debate Pico optimistically anticipated, the resulting work is superior to the sum of its parts.

By examining in detail the material life of pre-industrial people around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject. Volume I describes food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and the growth of towns.

"The standard work in the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, indispensable both to the advanced student and to the mature research worker, who will always find it a fresh source of knowledge and stimulation." --Nature
"This is the classic text on quantum mechanics. No graduate student of quantum theory should leave it unread"--W.C Schieve, University of Texas