Month: March 2002

Sieving Electrons – Classification with Emergent Patterns

Sieving Electrons ?
Classification, literally meaning fitering by pass / no-pass screening or sieving.
Even Pirsig (Lila) talks about classification in a strictly (classical) binary fashion, when a thought struck me. There is surely some parallel between emergent “quantum computing” QuBits being non-binary / dualist, and the wave / particle duality experienced when “sieving” (classifying) electrons through a diffraction slit. Non-binary Classification could be a key concept, or is it just a linguistic coincidence. You may have heard it here first ?

One of a million (well probably more like 200) thoughts fired-off whilst reading about 50 pages of Lila last night, before running into an unexpected quantity of sake at Magdelen. (At this rate I’ll have about 4 pages of notes per page of Lila, and it should take about 2 months just to read it – I may as well re-write the book in my own words – but could it be any improvement on the awesome original – could it really be even better than ZMM ? – beginning to look that way.)

Another thought.
Many a true word, spoken in jest – discuss.
Hardly surprising, in a world which is rationally pre-conditioned and politically correct, you cannot “seriously” say what really needs to be communicated, so you resort to black humour or say nothing. No wonder rhetoric, metaphor and the novel are important vehicles of communication. (And court jesters no doubt – research)

Reading Matter Update

Been Reading / Re-Reading ….
Still haven’t got my bibliography fully up and running, but have been reading, re-reading and annotating furiously recently, so I’m just capturing the books involved in the process. Spookily again – Pirsig’s Lila focussed in the early passages on the authors battle to capture many diverse thoughts in a card index system, when he didn’t really know what case / argument he was trying to construct – a flexible way of cataloguing and linking “thoughts” which are clearly linked by gut-feel relevance and importance, but no coherent thread. Exactly where I am now. I’m trying an XML database approach, for capturing Mind-Map / Fuzzy Cognitive Map content, rather than a pile of index cards, but who knows I may find the lo-tech solution the better option !

Don’t bother reading this entry – it’s just a brain dump in need of organisation.

Douglas Adams – re-reading everything, partcularly Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, together with his H2G2 web-site stuff and his commentaries on people and technology for the BBC.
John Z Delorean / J Patrick Wright – re-reading On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors.
T E Lawrence – re-reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom (for the 6th time ! – this time capturing annotation.)
Franz Kafka – recently read for the first time Metamorphosis and Aeroplanes at Brescia, and starting The Trial, The Judgement and The Penal Colony
Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spake Zarathustra recently part-read for the first time. After reading the superb contemporary notes by Anthony M Ludovici – Will go back to some of Nietzsche’s earlier works before attempting to complete – difficult biblical style, but nevertheless compelling thought.
Bart Kosko – Fuzzy Thinking – mentioned below.
Ian Stewart – Does God Play Dice – mentined below.
John Maddox – What Remains to be Discovered – re-reading
Richard Feynman – just finished The Pleasure of Finding Things Out and The Meaning of it All. Will probably have to read more and also Murray Gell-Mann.
Charles Handy – just re-read Inside Organisations and The Age of Unreason, looking at The Gods of Management and others. Dionysus keeps recurring – a bad penny like Poincarre – only joking perhaps. TRM must research / read more Poincarre.
Tom Peters – scan re-read ISOE and also Thriving on Chaos.
Frederick Bodmer – re-reading The Loom of Language.
Nils Brunsson – re-reading The Irrational Organisation.
Jostein Gaardner – Sophie’s World, re-reading, previously incomplete. Not a patch on Pirsig, but similar intent to couch history of philosophy in a novel. Just not as compelling or as driven by a clear objective (ie too objective “scientific” ! ?)
Eugene Herrigel – only part read Zen in the Art of Archery, must re-start and complete. Too literally about Zen (unlike ZATAOMM, so educational on that subject, but not my main thread I fear.) Presumably inspired Pirsig’s title though ?
Lao Tsu – part read Tao Te Ching. Obligatory background poem on Zen Tao (“the way” of Zen Buddhist philosophy).
Michael Talbot – re-reading Mysticism and the New Physics the first book I read that made explicit link between these subjects, apart from allegorical / fictional.
Dave Edmonds / John Eidenow – read Wittgenstein’s Poker. Excelllent biographical backround on Wittgenstein and Popper and other contemporaries, as well as introduction to philosophy and history of philosophy – source of many references to follow-up.
Jim Powell – Post-Modernism for Beginners – although communication is key, main threads are art, architecture and the media, and the need to seek meaning on multiple levels simultaneously – entertaining summary and history, and a source of more serious references on Modernists, Late Modernists and Post Modernists. (All French – nearly.)
Ilya Prigogine – The End of Certainty. – Disappointing, given the guy’s credentials and the title – seems mainly a packaging of Chaos and Complexity. Will need to re-read once I’ve followed some of the references further.
Graham Priest – Introduction to Non-Classical Logic – gets deep and mathematically formal and tough very quickly – but some good insight as to what is involved.
Werner Heisenberg – The Physical Principles of Quantum Theory. Everyone quotes his uncertainty principle, I thought I better read the original source stuff.
Martin Rees – Just Six Numbers
Hans Walser – The Golden Ratio
John Gribben / Kate Charlesworth – A Cartoon History of Time. Refreshes parts the other book cannot reach. Fun but informative.
Friedrich Durrenmatt – Die Physiker / The Physicists – reading the original German (now accompanied by English translation.)
And surprisingly, many more.

So many notes, so little order or organisation – Aaaaggghhh !!!

Where After Lila ?

Reading Lila by Robert Pirsig (unfinished)
Carries on where ZMM left off. Will review when finsihed.
“How It Will Be” from Native American Indian perspective
Spotted this poem on Robot Wisdom which is peculiarly apt and spooky wrt Lila.

Also from CounterPunch via RobotWisdom a piece on Western Arrogance, although specifically about Dubya, Afghanistan and the Mid-East in general.

Also via RW this piece from ZDNet on post-Napster stuff.
Relevant because of human peer-to-peer behaviour patterns I believe.

Collecting KM Links

Knowledge Management Links
A whole host of interesting KM theory and related links resulting from a Google search.
http://thegoldenmean.homestead.com/
Interesting essays, with similar synchronicity between geometry and east / west, subjective / objective knowledge views, plus the Golden Mean Dicussion Group.

http://www.brint.com/papers/kmebiz/kmebiz.html
e-Biz KM organisation founded by Yogesh Malhotra. Many citations from e-Biz Gurus, major Consultancies and Educational Institutions.

http://www.irit.fr/kr02/
A Knowledge Representation Conference in Toulouse, April 2002. Pepers requested.

http://www.asme.org/bog/coc/intro.ppt
A presentation by Andre Soto of ASME concering rational, subjective, transactional, process and cultural knowledge views. Background sought.

http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~kremer/courses/CG/CGlecture_notes.html
Some really formal stuff about knowledge representation using graph symbology for propositional and predicate calculus by Dr Dickson Lukose, Uni of New England.

http://www.dfki.de/~bauer/um-ws/Final-Versions/Kellogg/node1.html
1997 Paper on “Belief Update in Multi-Agent Systems” by Tad Kellogg and Piotr J. Gmytrasiewicz, Uni of Texas at Arlington. Involves some interesting stuff on Bayesian analysis.

http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/IJHCS/VH/
Using Explicit Ontologies in KBS Development, by G. van Heijst A.Th. Schreiber B.J. Wielinga, Uni of Amsterdam.

http://www.knowledgeage.com/
Remedial Genius by Derek Cabrera. Self promotional web-site focussing on “Knowledge Age Organisations”

http://www.muc.muohio.edu/~ais/index.htmlx
Quote : The Association for Integrative Studies serves as an organized voice and a national source of information on integrative and interdisciplinary approaches to the discovery, transmission and application of knowledge. Unquote. Some good links. Stangley hosted by the “Miami Unix Collective” !

http://www.km-forum.org/bib_ey.htm
1995 Bibliography of Knowledge in Organizations, By Laurence Prusak and Suzanne Connolly, Ernst & Young LLP. Hosted at Bo Newman’s “Knowledge Management Forum” – last updated in 2000.

http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue3/breen.html
Information Does Not Equal Knowledge: Theorizing the Political Economy of Virtuality, by Marcus Breen, Uni of North Carolina. Some interesting polical correctness aspects of why information does not equal knowledge.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/~is/publications/infbehav/prelims.html
1996 Information Behaviour : An Interdisciplinary Perspective.A report to the British Library Research & Innovation Centre on a review of the literature, by Professor Tom Wilson and Christina Walsh, of Sheffield Uni, UK.

http://www.philog.ruc.dk/halpern_abs.html
Abstract of Dimensions in Epistemic Logic : Substantive Rationality and Backward Induction by Joseph Halpern. Hosted by The Danish Network for Philosophical Logic and its Applications. Next conference Oct / Nov 2002.

http://www.seaca.org/
Rational Philosophy for the Spiritual Quest. Somewhat Jungian perspectives on the whacky web site of Andrew Stanworth. Includes paper on “The Fundamental Particles of Information Processing”. Query Quantum Computing. (Contact made and correspondence on this subject June 2002)

http://www.inet.co.th/cyberclub/sgould/SGould.htm
Personal web-site of Sean Gould, Engineer and Amateur Philosopher (like me!). Has published “New Model of Evolution” and is part of the Darwin Web Ring. Also has some interesting philosophical content.

http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~debatin/english/Books/Diss.htm
A precis of The Rationality of Metaphor: An Analysis Based on the Philosophy of Language and Communication Theory, by Bernhard Debatin. Ooh good ! now have an external link from model to “metaphor” too. (See metaphor, analogy, model, reality thread.)

http://www.devmts.demon.co.uk/pubs.htm
Learning and capability stuff and much more by Stan Lester. Private research consultant in Taunton, UK

http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/epistem/rbj005.htm
Broken Link ! Who is R B Jones ?

http://www.drury.edu/ess/Reason/reason1.html
Reason, Revolution, Relativism, and Reactionaries, by Dr. Charles Ess, Drury Uni. Overtly “religious”, but some key threads on excessive rationality in western dualism.

Physics, Fascism, Judaism and Zen ?

Physics, Fascism, Judaism and Zen ?
Articles and links from New York Review via RobotWisdom
Zen and the Art of Success by Frederick Crewes
Copenhagen Revisited by Michael Frayn
What Bohr Remembered by Thomas Powers
The Nils Bohr Archive
Interestingly East / West Philosophy and Particle / Quantum Physics bump up against Inter-war, WWII and Cold-war politics all over the place. Wittgenstein / Popper biographies and disagreements. Richard Feynman and the Los Alamos / Manhattan project, etc. The influence of Fascism and Judaism on the great minds of the 20th century was immensely significant. Must get the relevant bibliographical reviews published on-line soon.