Cybernetics: A mathematician of mind

The mind of the mathematician

It goes without saying that mathematicians have minds — my two universityeducated daughters may disagree with that, but of course we know better. So why write a book about the mind of mathematicians? Well the first point to note is that one of the authors, Ioan James, is a mathematician — naturally. He may be known to some as he is the editor of the Topology journal. The second author, Michael ...

A Mathematician Reads

New York University mathematical physicist Alan Sokal published in the postmodern humanities journal Social Text a parody entitled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” [1]. His point in doing so was to test whether the field of “cultural studies of science” was seriously lacking in “intellectual standards”. His article is nonsense from start to...

The mathematician as a formalist

Cybernetics: Cybernetics and the Theory of Knowledge

Jonathan Borwein: Experimental Mathematician

Jonathan M. Borwein unexpectedly died on 2 August 2016, in London, Ontario, Canada, where he had been visiting on leave from home institution, the University of Newcastle, Australia. Since his death, the present author and Nelson H. F. Beebe of the University of Utah have been collecting Borwein’s many published papers, books, reports and talks, as well as a number of articles written by others...