Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind

In a wide-ranging exploration of the limits of scientific and mathematical thought, Devlin (Mathematics: The Science of Patterns), a mathematician and senior researcher at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Communication, is certain to attract attention--and controversy--with his claim that scientific logic, as exemplified by the philosophy of Descartes, will never enable us to understand the human mind. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bound to fail, he asserts, for its goal of machine intelligence is an impossible one. Furthermore, he argues, Noam Chomsky's field of Cartesian linguistics is similarly flawed. Though the structure of a human language, like a computer language, can be analyzed in terms of syntactic rules, understanding human communication requires ""four key features... that were explicitly ignored in Chomsky's logic-inspired analysis of language: meaning, context, cultural knowledge, [and] the structure of conversation."" Given his perceived failure of AI and Chomsky's linguistics, Devlin asks, ""what are the possibilities of a science of mind and language, and what kind of a theory should we be looking for?"" The answer, he claims, is a ""soft mathematics"" that does not yet exist but will emerge as an established branch of the field. Readers must grapple with the text and be prepared to argue with the author with Talmudic fervor. AI experts will dispute Devlin's definition of their field and its objectives. Scientists or mathematicians will fill the margins with questions and comments. In the end, whether or not readers have joined Devlin in saying, ""Goodbye, Descartes,"" they will have experienced a fascinating journey to the edges of logical thinking and beyond. (Jan.)