Peter Smith's Blog, page 55
July 3, 2020
The Pavel Haas Quartet at Litomyšl
The Pavel Haas Quartet last night played their first concert to a live audience for three or more months at the Smetana Festival at Litomyšl (the composer’s birthplace) — appropriately enough performing the first Smetana quartet.
This was a characteristically terrific performance — and it was good to see that the violist last night was their founder member, Pavel Nikl. You can find a video here, with PHQ beginning just after 1hr 19 mins in.
(You will, however, probably need to point your VPN to a Czech server to be allowed to watch.)
The post The Pavel Haas Quartet at Litomyšl appeared first on Logic Matters.
June 25, 2020
Publication day!
With thanks to the estimable Tom Gauld
You can get IFL2 from CUP directly: or, even better, support your local friendly indie bookshop!
The post Publication day! appeared first on Logic Matters.
June 24, 2020
The philosophy of what’s what – and acting Shakespeare too
Here is a very nicely done piece about Hugh Mellor written by Tim Crane ten years ago.
As Tim mentions, one of Hugh’s great passions was the theatre (going to plays with friends of course, but also doing stirling work to secure the future of the ADC theatre, and not least, acting himself). Here he writes something about acting, Role-playing on Stage.
The post The philosophy of what’s what – and acting Shakespeare too appeared first on Logic Matters.
June 21, 2020
Hugh Mellor, 1938-2020
Sad news that Hugh Mellor, the kindest and most loyal of friends, died this morning. I knew that he’d been having treatment for a lymphoma — but even so, this was unexpected. Somehow I thought Hugh would always be with us. Argumentative to the last (only a couple of weeks ago he was trying to get me to see the light about conditionals), he was the very model of a straight-talking, clear-thinking philosopher, who always did his readers and disputants the courtesy of making his positions and his arguments absolutely plain. And he had much more of a hinterland than most of us, with a particular love for the theatre (he was still acting until just three or four years ago). I’ll miss him a great deal.
The post Hugh Mellor, 1938-2020 appeared first on Logic Matters.
June 20, 2020
From a small corner of Cambridge, 8
The wider world beyond our small corner is in no great shape: weeks upon weeks upon weeks of alarming news rather grinds you down, no?
Keeping on keeping on. But some small steps back towards normality for us. It has been good to have been able to go further afield recently. The two nearby National Trust houses — at Wimpole and at Anglesey Abbey — have opened up their grounds again to visitors. We have been walking too at Wandlebury just outside Cambridge, through the woods and out along the Roman Road beyond. So that’s been a delight.
On the last four walks we have seen red kites overhead (one circling very low at Wandlebury). Once upon a time they were so very rare. The British population was just a dozen or so breeding pairs left in the remote mid-Wales hills. And when we lived outside Aberystwyth, we’d sometimes see one or two very slowly flying down the Ystwyth valley as we drove into town, as they went to scavenge on the town rubbish tip by the sea. They were always a magnificent sight. And even now, seeing a kite remains magical.
This week’s lockdown recommendation? It has to be the series of live lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall that have been going since the beginning of the month. You can catch up with the streamed performances here. Two that I’ve particularly enjoyed not only hearing but watching again were the concerts by Lucy Crowe and Paul Lewis. So different in their style! Lucy Crowe conjuring up her widely scattered audience and projecting all her usual vivacity, charm and engagement (stunning singing, it goes without saying). Paul Lewis very inward, as if playing for himself (but again it goes without saying, wonderful Schubert in particular). Do watch, if you missed them!
The post From a small corner of Cambridge, 8 appeared first on Logic Matters.
June 17, 2020
Hellman and Shapiro on Mathematical Structuralism
CUP are publishing a series of short books (about 100 pages) under the title Cambridge Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics. The blurb says that the series “provides an extensive overview of the philosophy of mathematics in its many and varied forms. Distinguished authors will provide an up-to-date summary of the results of current research in their fields and give their own take on what they believe are the most significant debates influencing research, drawing original conclusions.” Which sounds ambitious. So far, though, just two Elements have been published, Mathematical Stucturalism (2018) by Geoffrey Hellman and Stewart Shapiro, and A Concise History of Mathematics for Philosophers (2019) by John Stillwell. No further books are yet announced on the web-page for the series.
The hyper-active Stillwell has already written a well-known and accessible Mathematics and Its History (3rd edn, 2010) as well as a number of other non-specialist books (alongside his hard-core maths texts). It seems a bit of a failure of imagination for the series editors to ask him to write another history; and to me, the result looks pretty unexciting.
Again, getting Hellman and Shapiro to write on structuralism is hardly adventurous! But I have now read their book. It’s not clear, really, who the intended readership is. The series blurb — “up-to-date summary”, “current research”, “original conclusions” — might suggest a book aimed at e.g. graduate students. But little of the book reaches that sort of level. (One odd feature: we aren’t told who wrote what, even though some of the passages are in the first person and are characteristic of just one of the authors.)
There is a short Introduction giving initial characterizations of some forms of mathematical structuralism, and setting out some questions that we’d want any structuralism to address. Chapter 2 gives Historical Background. This is over twice the length of the next longest chapter; it is nicely done, with a good selection of quotations, and it will provide very helpful reading for undergraduates. Chapter 3 is then on Set-Theoretic Structuralism, the view that “structures are isomorphism types (or representatives thereof) within the set-theoretic hierarchy”. Of course, this won’t in itself give us structuralism for mathematics across the board: the status of set theory itself is left up for grabs. Indeed, on the obvious story “the foundational theory [set theory] is an exception to the theme of structuralism. But, the argument continues, every other branch of mathematics is to be understood in eliminative structuralist terms.” The authors don’t do much, however, to explain why set theory should get this foundational role, or illuminate how this reductionist story squares with the familiar fact that most working mathematicians can get by in cheerful ignorance of set theory, etc. A student could be better pointed to e.g. some of Maddy’s work for a more nuanced account of the role of set theory in mathematics.
Chapter 4 is on Category Theory as a Framework for Mathematical Structuralism. But who is this short chapter addressed to? The philosophy of maths student (at any level) should have some initial grasp on what set theory is about. But most won’t have much clue about what Category Theory might be, and these brisk arm-waving pages are unlikely to help at all. On the other hand, the few who are in the game will be familiar with the usual suggestions from Awodey and others which are gestured to here: for them, there will be no news, certainly no “original conclusions”.
Chapter 5 and 6 discusses Structures as Sui Generis Structuralism (Shapiro-style) and The Modal-Structural Perspective (Hellman-style). Both views have been around well over twenty years, and we are not going to expect any exciting new insights, criticisms or developments — and in under a dozen printed pages for each chapter, we don’t get them. The final Chapter 7 is on Modal Set-Theoretic Structuralism, in particular as developed by Øystein Linnebo. This topic is at least relatively novel and is significantly interesting; but since the authors are nowhere near as good at explaining Linnebo’s approach as that particularly lucid author is, the sufficiently equipped student reader would do a lot better to go to the original paper “The Potential Hierarchy of Sets,” Review of Symbolic Logic (2013).
Which all sounds rather carping. But overall I found this a very disappointing book.
The post Hellman and Shapiro on Mathematical Structuralism appeared first on Logic Matters.
June 11, 2020
New proof theory blog
A new Proof Theory Blog has started up. “The purpose … is to give proof theorists a venue to communicate ideas, works-in-progress, gems, or simply observations that may be relevant to the proof theory community. The hope is that it can eventually evolve into a vibrant forum for proof theoretic discussions and collaboration.” Looks promising.
The post New proof theory blog appeared first on Logic Matters.
June 10, 2020
At last, it’s here …!
It’s arrived. Publication date June 25th. Hardback, paperback, PDF version all available. You’ll want all three, of course. Hurry, hurry, while stocks last.
(I’m really pleased with how it looks: so I’ll cut myself some slack and leave fretting about the contents for another day …)
The post At last, it’s here …! appeared first on Logic Matters.
June 8, 2020
Reflections on a pandemic
Click on the banner to explore reflections from CUP authors from various disciplines. They are a mixed bunch indeed, but there are some very interesting and thought provoking ones.
The post Reflections on a pandemic appeared first on Logic Matters.
June 2, 2020
IFL2 update … and online lectures?
IFL2 should be published this month. You can admire the cover and “look inside” at an excerpt here, courtesy of CUP (though the first chapter is not particularly representative). There’s more info at the book’s homepage here. I’m gradually populating the page of worked answers to the end-of-chapter exercises. And hey ho, there’s already a corrections page of typos …
I’ve been turning over in my mind the idea of putting online some series of 30 minute lectures associated with the book. At the moment I’m rather minded to provide these as “voice-over-slide-show” videos, probably with some very short talking-head interludes (so the lectures aren’t just coming from a disembodied oracle!). Since you can grow proofs in real time in a video in a way in which you can’t in a printed book, a supplementary series of videos on propositional natural deduction might indeed be quite helpful to students: so that’s where I’d start.
However, delving online for guidance about how best to do this, I’m getting lost! There is a lot of “how to/how not to” advice out there, and it is difficult to know where to start. So if anyone has any recommendations for guidance for similar projects which they have found useful, do please let me know here! [I’d be creating the videos on a Mac, using Beamer for the slides.]
The post IFL2 update … and online lectures? appeared first on Logic Matters.
