Proofs and Refutations

Proofs and Refutations PDF

Author: Imre Lakatos

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1976

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9780521290388

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Proofs and Refutations is for those interested in the methodology, philosophy and history of mathematics.

Proofs of the Cantor-Bernstein Theorem

Proofs of the Cantor-Bernstein Theorem PDF

Author: Arie Hinkis

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-02-26

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 3034802242

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book offers an excursion through the developmental area of research mathematics. It presents some 40 papers, published between the 1870s and the 1970s, on proofs of the Cantor-Bernstein theorem and the related Bernstein division theorem. While the emphasis is placed on providing accurate proofs, similar to the originals, the discussion is broadened to include aspects that pertain to the methodology of the development of mathematics and to the philosophy of mathematics. Works of prominent mathematicians and logicians are reviewed, including Cantor, Dedekind, Schröder, Bernstein, Borel, Zermelo, Poincaré, Russell, Peano, the Königs, Hausdorff, Sierpinski, Tarski, Banach, Brouwer and several others mainly of the Polish and the Dutch schools. In its attempt to present a diachronic narrative of one mathematical topic, the book resembles Lakatos’ celebrated book Proofs and Refutations. Indeed, some of the observations made by Lakatos are corroborated herein. The analogy between the two books is clearly anything but superficial, as the present book also offers new theoretical insights into the methodology of the development of mathematics (proof-processing), with implications for the historiography of mathematics.

For and Against Method

For and Against Method PDF

Author: Imre Lakatos

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-05-27

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0226467031

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The work that helped to determine Paul Feyerabend's fame and notoriety, Against Method, stemmed from Imre Lakatos's challenge: "In 1970 Imre cornered me at a party. 'Paul,' he said, 'you have such strange ideas. Why don't you write them down? I shall write a reply, we publish the whole thing and I promise you—we shall have a lot of fun.' " Although Lakatos died before he could write his reply, For and Against Method reconstructs his original counter-arguments from lectures and correspondence previously unpublished in English, allowing us to enjoy the "fun" two of this century's most eminent philosophers had, matching their wits and ideas on the subject of the scientific method. For and Against Method opens with an imaginary dialogue between Lakatos and Feyerabend, which Matteo Motterlini has constructed, based on their published works, to synthesize their positions and arguments. Part one presents the transcripts of the last lectures on method that Lakatos delivered. Part two, Feyerabend's response, consists of a previously published essay on anarchism, which began the attack on Lakatos's position that Feyerabend later continued in Against Method. The third and longest section consists of the correspondence Lakatos and Feyerabend exchanged on method and many other issues and ideas, as well as the events of their daily lives, between 1968 and Lakatos's death in 1974. The delight Lakatos and Feyerabend took in philosophical debate, and the relish with which they sparred, come to life again in For and Against Method, making it essential and lively reading for anyone interested in these two fascinating and controversial thinkers and their immense contributions to philosophy of science. "The writings in this volume are of considerable intellectual importance, and will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the development of the philosophical views of Lakatos and Feyerabend, or indeed with the development of philosophy of science in general during this crucial period."—Donald Gillies, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (on the Italian edition) "A stimulating exchange of letters between two philosophical entertainers."—Tariq Ali, The Independent Imre Lakatos (1922-1974) was professor of logic at the London School of Economics. He was the author of Proofs and Refutations and the two-volume Philosophical Papers. Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was educated in Europe and held numerous teaching posts throughout his career. Among his books are Against Method; Science in a Free Society; Farewell to Reason; and Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend, the last published by the University of Chicago Press.

Proofs and Refutations

Proofs and Refutations PDF

Author: Imre Lakatos

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-10-15

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1107113466

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This influential book discusses the nature of mathematical discovery, development, methodology and practice, forming Imre Lakatos's theory of 'proofs and refutations'.

Machine Learning

Machine Learning PDF

Author: R.S. Michalski

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-04-17

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 366212405X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The ability to learn is one of the most fundamental attributes of intelligent behavior. Consequently, progress in the theory and computer modeling of learn ing processes is of great significance to fields concerned with understanding in telligence. Such fields include cognitive science, artificial intelligence, infor mation science, pattern recognition, psychology, education, epistemology, philosophy, and related disciplines. The recent observance of the silver anniversary of artificial intelligence has been heralded by a surge of interest in machine learning-both in building models of human learning and in understanding how machines might be endowed with the ability to learn. This renewed interest has spawned many new research projects and resulted in an increase in related scientific activities. In the summer of 1980, the First Machine Learning Workshop was held at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. In the same year, three consecutive issues of the Inter national Journal of Policy Analysis and Information Systems were specially devoted to machine learning (No. 2, 3 and 4, 1980). In the spring of 1981, a special issue of the SIGART Newsletter No. 76 reviewed current research projects in the field. . This book contains tutorial overviews and research papers representative of contemporary trends in the area of machine learning as viewed from an artificial intelligence perspective. As the first available text on this subject, it is intended to fulfill several needs.

Conjectures and Refutations

Conjectures and Refutations PDF

Author: Karl Raimund Popper

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 9780415285940

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Conjectures and Refutations is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work: not only our knowledge, but our aims and our standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error.

The Logic of Scientific Discovery

The Logic of Scientific Discovery PDF

Author: Karl Popper

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-11-04

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 1134470029

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Described by the philosopher A.J. Ayer as a work of 'great originality and power', this book revolutionized contemporary thinking on science and knowledge. Ideas such as the now legendary doctrine of 'falsificationism' electrified the scientific community, influencing even working scientists, as well as post-war philosophy. This astonishing work ranks alongside The Open Society and Its Enemies as one of Popper's most enduring books and contains insights and arguments that demand to be read to this day.

Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason

Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason PDF

Author: John Kadvany

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2001-04-09

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0822380447

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Hungarian émigré Imre Lakatos (1922–1974) earned a worldwide reputation through the influential philosophy of science debates involving Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Sir Karl Popper. In Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason John Kadvany shows that embedded in Lakatos’s English-language work is a remarkable historical philosophy rooted in his Hungarian past. Below the surface of his life as an Anglo-American philosopher of science and mathematics, Lakatos covertly introduced novel transformations of Hegelian and Marxist ideas about historiography, skepticism, criticism, and rationality. Lakatos escaped Hungary following the failed 1956 Revolution. Before then, he had been an influential Communist intellectual and was imprisoned for years by the Stalinist regime. He also wrote a lost doctoral thesis in the philosophy of science and participated in what was criminal behavior in all but a legal sense. Kadvany argues that this intellectual and political past animates Lakatos’s English-language philosophy, and that, whether intended or not, Lakatos integrated a penetrating vision of Hegelian ideas with rigorous analysis of mathematical proofs and controversial histories of science. Including new applications of Lakatos’s ideas to the histories of mathematical logic and economics and providing lucid exegesis of many of Hegel’s basic ideas, Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason is an exciting reconstruction of ideas and episodes from the history of philosophy, science, mathematics, and modern political history.

Logic for Computer Science

Logic for Computer Science PDF

Author: Jean H. Gallier

Publisher: Courier Dover Publications

Published: 2015-06-18

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 0486780821

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This advanced text for undergraduate and graduate students introduces mathematical logic with an emphasis on proof theory and procedures for algorithmic construction of formal proofs. The self-contained treatment is also useful for computer scientists and mathematically inclined readers interested in the formalization of proofs and basics of automatic theorem proving. Topics include propositional logic and its resolution, first-order logic, Gentzen's cut elimination theorem and applications, and Gentzen's sharpened Hauptsatz and Herbrand's theorem. Additional subjects include resolution in first-order logic; SLD-resolution, logic programming, and the foundations of PROLOG; and many-sorted first-order logic. Numerous problems appear throughout the book, and two Appendixes provide practical background information.

Truth Through Proof

Truth Through Proof PDF

Author: Alan Weir

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2010-10-14

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780199541492

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Truth Through Proof defends an anti-platonist philosophy of mathematics derived from game formalism. Alan Weir aims to develop a more satisfactory successor to game formalism utilising a widely accepted, broadly neo-Fregean framework, in which the proposition expressed by an utterance is a function of both sense and background circumstance.