The Map and the TerritoryExploring the Foundations of Science, Thought and Reality
The Frontiers Collection
This volume presents essays by pioneering thinkers including Tyler Burge, Gregory Chaitin, Daniel Dennett, Barry Mazur, Nicholas Humphrey, John Searle and Ian Stewart. Together they illuminate the very foundations of science and the scientific enterprise. The authors examine, from various perspectives, the complex relations between reality per se and our human descriptions of the world, as deduced in the process of scientific discovery. Are we living in Plato’s Cave? If not, how far have we emerged from it? And what are the various layers of description we can apply to objects and phenomena? A simple apple, for example, can be analyzed from several viewpoints beginning with evolution and biology, all the way down its microscopic quantum mechanical components. Together, the cast of eminent scientists and philosophers shed light on how our various theories and constructs co-exist in a patchwork to produce a seemingly coherent reality. All aficionados of philosophy as well as budding researchers will find here much food for thought as well as new and stimulating perspectives.The book also includes a foreword by Sir Roger Penrose and an afterword by Dagfinn Follesdal
? Philosophy -- Philosophy of Abstraction. Ontological/Epistemological distinction. Thoughtvs Reality. Generalization vs Contextuality.? Theoretical Physics: Space, Time, Dimension, Force, Wave Functions, Operators, Fields,Strings etc., Are they real? Transition/Correspondence between theories and reality. Varioustangled loops and circular definitions at the foundations of Science.? Mathematics: Magnitude -- Number, Sets, Classes, Functions, Abstract mathematicalstructures/objects, Platonism and various schools of thought.? Information Theory/ Computing/Logic: Information is everything. Aspects of computabilityand undecidability in our very map (Theories and Constructs) and how far they leak into theterritory (reality).? Biology/Cognitive Science: Perception -- how our map of the territory and thereby the veryterritory itself is fenced by the evolution. Brain/Mind and the extent they let us patch thereality with percepts. Map and Territory, an illusion? From a cognitive viewpoint.List of authors who have accepted: (* = tentative) · Ian Stewart, University of Warwick, England. · William G Unruh, University of British Columbia, Canada. · Gregory Chaitin, IBM and his wife Virginia Chaitin. · Simon Saunders (*), Oxford University, Oxford. · Simon Kochen(*), Princeton University. · Marcelo Gleiser, Professor of physics at Dartmouth. · José Acacio de Barros, Associate professor at San Francisco State. · Tian Yu Cao, Boston University. · David Wolpert, Santa Fe Institute. · Vlatko Vedral, University of Oxford. · Edward Slowik, Winona State University, USA. < · Steven Weinstein, University of Waterloo. · Eors Szathmary, Munich and Eötvös University. · Barry Dainton, University of Liverpool. · John Searle (*), University of California.
Shyam Wuppuluri is working as a research associate for R. N. Podar institute. A computer science graduate, he has a long-standing interest in various areas of philosophy, theoretical physics, mathematics and cognitive science. Prior to this, he edited the volume “Space, time and limits of human understanding, foreword by John Stachel, afterword by Noam Chomsky”, which was published in Springer's Frontiers Collection, 2016. E-mail: email@example.com Francisco Antonio Doria is a Brazilian physicist. Doria is a Professor Emeritus at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he currently teaches on the foundations of economic theory at the graduate School of Engineering (UFRJ COPPE). Doria has a B. Sc. in chemical engineering and a PhD in mathematical physics (under the guidance of Leopoldo Nachbin). He has made contributions to the gauge field copy problem in quantum field theory and proved with Newton da Costa several incompleteness theorems in mathematics, physics and mathematical economics, including the undecidability of chaos theory. Doria is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy, was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University, 1989-1990, and a visiting researcher at the mathematics department, University of Rochester, 1979-1981. He thinks of himself as a philosopher and literary scholar with a humanist education, and has had as students Marcelo Gleiser and José Acacio de Barros, among other noted researchers. He likes to trace his interdisciplinary interests to a 17th century relative, the noted Portuguese writer Father Antonio Vieira (1608-1697). Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
The Map/Territory distinction is a foundational part of the scientific method and, in fact, underlies all of thought, and even reality itself. This fascinating and fundamental topic is addressed here by some of the world’s leading thinkers and intellectual giants, whose accessible essays cover six and more fields of endeavor.It is imperative to distinguish the Map from the Territory when analyzing any subject, yet we often mistake the map for the territory; the meaning for the reference; a computational tool for what it computes. Representations are so handy and tempting that we often end up committing the category error of over-associating the representation with the thing it represents, so much so that the distinction between them is lost. This error, whose roots frequently lie in pedagogy, generates a plethora of paradoxes/confusions which hinder a proper understanding of the subject. What are wave functions? Fields? Forces? Numbers? Sets? Classes? Operators? Functions? Alphabets and Sentences? Are they a part of our map (theory/representation)? Or do they actually belong to the territory (reality)? A researcher, like a cartographer, clothes (or creates?) the reality by stitching together numerous co-existing maps. Is there a reality out there apart from these maps? How do these various maps interact or combine with each other to produce a coherent reality that we interact with? Or do they not?Does our brain use its own internal maps to facilitate the “physicist/mathematician” in us to construct, in turn, the maps about the external realm? If so, what is the nature of these internal maps? Are there meta-maps? Evolution definitely fences in our perception and thereby our ability to construct maps, revealing to us only those aspects beneficial for our survival. But to what extent? Is there a way out of this metaphorical Plato’s cave erected around us by the nature? Alfred Korzybski once remarked “The Map is not the Territory”: Join us in this journey to explore the many questions, concepts and interpretations that this claim engenders.
With a foreword by Sir Roger Penrose and an afterword by Dagfinn FollesdalAsks deep questions and provides many stimulating answersProvides complimentary viewpoints of an eminent cast of authors from different disciplinesAppeals to all academics and laypersons with an interest in philosophical foundationsIncludes commentary on classic works in the field
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