Discussion of the Method: Conducting the Engineer's Approach to Problem Solving (Engineering & Technology) Review

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Discussion of the Method: Conducting the Engineer's Approach to Problem Solving (Engineering & Technology) ReviewThis book came recommended to me by a professional engineer. As I started turning the pages during a first skim read, it struck me that Koen has brought together a huge amount of experience on engineering with a deep understanding of philosophy (to his credit, both Western and Eastern) plus a range subjects from classical literature, world religion and the vagarities of world languages and forged them into a brilliant synthesis of remarkable clarity and originality.
His central thesis is "All is heuristic" (All is rule of thumb). He has surrounded this argument with a phalynx of other heuristics (59 in total)that range from the practical (e.g., at some point in the project, freeze the design) to the metaphysical (e.g., sincerity of belief and the inability to disbelieve are poor justifications for claiming that a belief is true) to the paradoxical (e.g., if a concept produces paradoxes, unexplained complexities or unexpected departures from expected results, better consider it a heuristic)
In writing this book, Koen has both mastered and melded a number of seemingly imiscable disciplines - philosophy, linguistics, theology - with his own professional field of engineering (he is professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Texas at Austin and a fellow of the American Nuclear Society). It is reminiscent of the way that Thomas Acquinas reconciled Christianity with Philosophy.
This is no mean feat, and Koen's book, unpretentiously entitled "a discussion", is an intellectual tour of the first order. Of course, his many references mean so much more if you are familiar with them. If you haven't, be sure to look them up - your life will be immeasurably enriched. In any event, Koen illuminates a path to greater understanding. His prose is very engaging and the book is well suited for general audiences. It is one of those books that begs to be read and re-read.
One can only wonder if Koen's book had been available earlier (it was published in 2003), would we have been faced with such disasters as Challenger and Columbia, as the Ford Explorer, Chevy Corvair, Ford Pinto, Bhopal, etc. A little more humility with the inherent uncertainties of engineering life might have made a positive difference. This book strives hard - and I believe succeeds - at doing just that. Bravo, Professor Koen for shedding new light on old problems. It comes as no surprise that Koen has won high awards for teaching excellence (W. Leighton Collins and Centennial Medallion) - both from the American Society of Engineering Education.Discussion of the Method: Conducting the Engineer's Approach to Problem Solving (Engineering & Technology) Overview

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The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems Review

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The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems ReviewThe difference between a mechanistic and a holistic view of the Universe is even greater than the difference between a flat and a round Earth. The problem is, the vast majority of us are still stuck with a perception of the world that is based on fundamentally flawed theories passed down to us by Newton and Descartes. In other words, everything you know is wrong.
We do not so much live in a universe of space filled with objects as our senses imply or as the classical physicists postulated, as we are all part of an interconnected and self-organizing universe of changing patterns and flowing energy.
This holistic worldview recognizes the connections and interdependencies in the world rather than merely separating the world into parts and attempting to reconstruct it like a child playing with blocks. By trying to understand the world merely in terms of its parts we obscure the properties that emerge from the interplay between the parts. The Universe is indeed greater than the sum of its parts.
Capra's outstanding achievement in "The Web of Life" is to communicate so plainly, effectively and compellingly the outline of the holistic paradigm and the impending shift. "The Web of Life" is THE primer for the dynamical systems theory that you will need to compete (and to integrate) in the 21st Century.
Deep Ecology, Gaia Theory, and an incredible new theory of cognition are among the many ideas explored in the book as well as feedback loops, complexity and chaos theory, dissipative structures and autopoietic, or self-organizing, systems.
This is a moving and transforming book that will inform and inspire. I refer to it constantly and give it the highest recommendation.The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems Overview

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Meaning Of Meaning Review

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Meaning Of Meaning ReviewI first encountered reference to this book when reading about the semantic web. The key innovation was the "semiotic triangle" where we are encouraged to think of things, thoughts and symbols in separate and distinct domains. I now use the "semantic triangle" (a more approachable name) in many of my semantic web training classes. The key concept to get across to students is that when computers need to communicate, there are many limitations when using symbols alone, which can have many different meaning within different contexts. For example the word "run" has over 50 different meanings according to WordNet. A more robust way to exchange information between computers is to associate data elements with concepts. This books was one of the first books to build these models of communication.Meaning Of Meaning Overview

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Consciousness Explained Review

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Consciousness Explained ReviewI believe it was Thomas Wolfe who once remarked with pride that he was a generous literary putter-inner, while minimalists like Ernest Hemingway were stingy leaver-outers. No one who finishes "Consciousness Explained" will doubt that Dennett belongs among the putter-inners. For example, on reaching page 280 the reader is casually told, "I have been coy about consciousness up to now." If only we had known, Daniel, that you've been toying with us through half the book...
Dennett does make a coherent case, but the theme is buried in so many asides and diversions that one needs a conceptual GPS to stay oriented. Since he has the whole map in his head, the author naturally tends to forget that others on the tour bus may have lost their bearings two or three turns ago. On the plus side, Dennett's pleasantly conversational tone, clever analogies and colorful terminology (Stalinesque, Multiple Drafts, Witness Protection Program) help to sustain our interest and clarify difficult concepts.
The big picture (I think) is that investigations of consciousness have traditionally been hindered by reliance on the concept of a "Cartesian Theater" in the mind where a homunculus (the audience) makes conscious observations. As long as the nature of the theater and the homunculus remain elusive, the whole approach merely begs the questions of what consciousness is and how it happens. Dennett proposes that neither the theater nor the audience exists (i.e. the analogies are empty) and that a massively parallel process he calls Multiple Drafts is more descriptive of what happens in a conscious brain. The thrust of his argument is that understanding consciousness requires no ultimate appeal to mind/brain dualities, souls, spirits, quantum weirdness or other trappings of the "it can't be straightforward" school. This has led disappointed devotees of the ineffable to make dismissive remarks like "Dennett explains everything under the sun EXCEPT consciousness." Don't believe it.
Dennett's background in philosophy serves him well in addressing the subtleties of cognition, but the resulting terminology may wear a bit on the reader. Sometimes I thought that if I saw the 22-letter monster "heterophenomenological" one more time, I would scream. On the other hand, Dennett's tale of the imaginary deity Feenoman, based on the root of this word, manages to be both hilarious and instructive. The book is an excellent choice for those who are not merely inclined, but also steadfastly determined, to learn more about the machinery of consciousness.Consciousness Explained Overview

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General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (Revised Edition) Review

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General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (Revised Edition) ReviewI've looked high and low for a text summarizing systems theory and I write this review in near shock having just finished this book. I say "shock" because I just can't believe how remarkably undated this book is after nearly 40 years (first edition 1969). I've read books by Checkland, Lazlo, Weinberg and many others but nothing summarizes the systems world view better than this classic. You've gotta love a scientist/philosopher who quotes Aldous Huxley liberally. I'd give it six stars if I could.General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (Revised Edition) Overview

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Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology: Expanded Second Edition Review

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Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology: Expanded Second Edition ReviewThis book is precisely what the title states. It is an "introduction" and as such is the gateway to Rand's theory of knowledge by way of her theory of concepts. Human knowledge is conceptual knowledge and Rand validates the objectivity of concepts by explaining, from the ground up, the method by which they are formed in the mind. The points she makes which seem misguided and arbitrary are cleared up in subsequent re-readings as long as the reader keeps in mind that once she defines a term, she does not deviate from its meaning. For most of us who are generally unsure about specific definitions of terms and rely on our feelings to give meaning to the words we read, discipline is required. For those who start with an axe to grind based on their disagreements with Rand's political philosophy, deliberate mis-interpretations of terms generally abound (as can be seen in most of the on-line reviews.) One such example is the damning of Rand over her claim to have solved the problem of "universals". In this context, this problem refers to the issue of the relationship between concepts and their perceptual referents; the HISTORICAL problem of universals. It is unfortunately too common to find those who are willing to drop this necessary context and argue against the Objectivist claim based on various meanings of the term universal, few of which are relevant to the issue at hand.
It is amusing to read disagreements of the Objectivist theory of concepts which are addressed and cleared up in the appendix. The appendix of the second edition of I to OE really is amazing. It is simply transcripts of round table discussions of professors who had read the original text presenting their questions and objections on finer points of epistemology. Rand was, apparently, at her intellectual pinnacle at this point, and any potentially hazy points are clarified beyond question.
The criticism that this is not presented in as scholarly a way as an epistemological monograph should be has its merits. The preface clearly states that main work is a reprint of a series of articles in which Rand presented her theory of concept formation. I certainly would have preferred a more scholastic presentation and a deeper exploration of the background of certain ideas, but this was Rand's style. She did not "write down" to her readers and her writing requires objective truth seekers to do their own research. I have, on multiple occasions, encountered the criticism that a reader was left wondering what Bertrand Russell was attempting to "perpetrate" in his theory of numbers. After encountering this passage I went to a philosophy text and read a passage describing Russell's theory of numbers as an attempt to create a purely logical language which would allow one to understand numbers without relating them to their perceptual referents. Since Rand demonstrates that concepts are valid within the context of the totality of human consciousness, and that abstractions must be derived primarily from their perceptual referents (numbers, specifically, are covered) which form their fundamental context, the dismissal of Russell stands.
For those who are familiar with Rand only from Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, this is a fascinating opportunity to understand the underlying support of a novelist's reasoning process, rarely made this explicit.Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology: Expanded Second Edition Overview

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