Peter Smith's Blog, page 69

Not so explosive …

There’s no doubt that Sue Prideaux’s I am Dynamite is a highly entertaining read, and rattles along wonderfully well as a late-night distraction. It has its jaw-dropping moments. Wagner comes across as a ludicrously bombastic figure (who could possibly have guessed that from the music?). And Nietszche cuts a sad figure, plagued with ill-health, fizzing with quarter-baked ideas, writing far too fast when he does, and never slowing, it seems, for the hard graft of actually working things through, and worrying little about contradicting himself. So he leaves us with cloudy and fragmentary mirrors in which all kinds of readers can and do glimpse what they want to find.

I’m quite grateful to Sue Prideaux. Reading some more Nietzsche was on my retirement list of cultural gaps perhaps to fill. She’s certainly inoculated me against that. (Her concluding pages of Nietzschean aphorisms which had particularly struck her obviously struck me very differently!). I might well, however,  be reading more Prideaux …

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IFL2: Three chapters on natural deduction (for propositional logic)

I won’t bore you by reviewing the crooked path by which we got here. But I’m steadily working on the draft second edition of my intro logic book, with a cheerier feeling about the project.

And I can now offer you — drumroll! — some excerpts from three chapters on a Fitch-style natural deduction system for propositional logic, covering the rules for conjunction, disjunction and negation (and outline soundness/completeness proofs). For copyright reasons, these are excerpts of a few pages here and there, rather in Google books style, so the text jumps forward a couple of times. But the pages should be enough for you to be able to tell if you are interested in seeing more!

If you would like to see these chapters in full, about forty reasonably polished pages, do please drop an email to the address on the top of the PDF. The understanding is that if you ask to see more, then you won’t put the chapters into general circulation, and you will try to give at least some minimal comments (and certainly let me know about any errors you spot). At this stage in the game, even an encouraging ‘looks pretty ok to me!’ is welcome and helpful.

The post IFL2: Three chapters on natural deduction (for propositional logic) appeared first on Logic Matters.

IFL2 — Three chapters on natural deduction (for propositional logic)

I won’t bore you by reviewing the crooked path by which we got here. But I’m steadily working on the draft second edition of my intro logic book, with a cheerier feeling about the project.

And I can now offer you — drumroll! — some excerpts from three chapters on a Fitch-style natural deduction system for propositional logic, covering the rules for conjunction, disjunction and negation (and outline soundness/completeness proofs). For copyright reasons, these are excerpts of a few pages here and there, rather in Google books style, so the text jumps forward a couple of times. But the pages should be enough for you to be able to tell if you are interested in seeing more!

If you would like to see these chapters in full, about forty reasonably polished pages, do please drop an email to the address on the top of the PDF. The understanding is that if you ask to see more, then you won’t put the chapters into general circulation, and you will try to give at least some minimal comments (and certainly let me know about any errors you spot). At this stage in the game, even an encouraging ‘looks pretty ok to me!’ is welcome and helpful.

The post IFL2 — Three chapters on natural deduction (for propositional logic) appeared first on Logic Matters.

Review: Ivana Gavrić at Kettle’s Yard.

Out on a bitter evening to Kettle’s Yard for a concert by the pianist — and one-time Cambridge student — Ivana Gavrić.

I’m not sure why, but I haven’t been to a concert there for a number of years. It is a delightfully intimate space; however, the acoustic is a bit challenging for piano music. Hard walls and a tiled floor make for harshness (would it help to have a carpet under the paino? or to keep the lid near closed?). This I think particularly affected the opening Haydn sonata (no. 38, H XVI:23) — partly because one’s ears hadn’t adjusted yet, and partly because Gavrić was already aiming, I think, for a bright transparency of tone suited to early Haydn. But in that unforgiving context, she could perhaps have softened and relaxed the rather lovely Adagio.

But her following Schubert D784 was terrific. I’ve recently heard Mitsuko Uchida in concert playing this in a way that struck me as having become far too  mannered and excessive in dramatic emphasis. Gavrić by contrast had the drama under such thought-through control, with some wonderful phrase-shaping, particularly in the weighty first movement.

After the interval, Gavrić played Janácek’s four pieces In the Mists. I first got to really know these, indeed, from her much admired CD. Heard live, I found the pieces in places rawer, more challenging, than I’d remembered, making me very much want to return and listen again to her recording with new ears.

Next, Four Lyric Pieces, short homages to Haydn, Schubert, Janácek and Grieg by Gavrić’s Cambridge contemporary Cheryl-Frances Hoad. I’m not sure I ‘got’ the Schubert in particular,  but these were pleasing enough pieces with a slight jazz inflection, and we could  draw breath after the intensity of the Janácek.

In one of her engaging short introductions, talking to the audience, Gavrić said that her final piece, Grieg’s Ballade, had rather fallen out of favour on the concert platform. And arguably it does rather seem to run out of interesting ideas before the end. But I did very much warm to  Gavrić’s performance of it (as it seems did the rest of her audience).

For me, though, the high point of the evening has to be the Schubert — but then that’s Schubert for you! And I do hope that one day Ivana Gavrić returns to record more of his music. Meanwhile, her D784 (again) on her first CD is very fine.

The post Review: Ivana Gavrić at Kettle’s Yard. appeared first on Logic Matters.

IFL2: Some propositional logic!

For whatever reasons, the writing of the later chapters for IFL2, the new edition of  Introduction to Formal Logic, has been going really slowly. But I am at last reasonably content at least with the first third or so of the book, having had some recent very useful comments. And so I would now like to  “sign off” these chapters for now and declare them … well, if not in an ideal state, at least more than good enough!

So: for your delight and delectation, here (just for a while) are Chapters 1 to 16 (c. 150 pages). The Table of Contents and the review at the beginning of the final Interlude will tell you what is in these chapters. [Link now removed — email me if you are interested in getting a copy!]

When I have previous posted excerpts like this, I have had some extremely useful comments, and even now I’d certainly be very happy to get more. Perhaps not comments that basically say that I’m writing the wrong book! But corrections of typos, indications of expressions that stump the reader for whom English is a second language, pointers to passages that stand out as more difficult to understand — not to mention corrections of downright mistakes and suggestions for improvement. All would be still most welcome.

(If, in particular you have students — or indeed, are a student — please do spread the word to anyone who might be interested in reading and commenting, even on just scattered chapters. For, at this stage, further student feedback could be invaluable.)

The post IFL2: Some propositional logic! appeared first on Logic Matters.

IFL2 — Some propositional logic!

For whatever reasons, the writing of the later chapters for IFL2, the new edition of  Introduction to Formal Logic, has been going really slowly. But I am at last reasonably content at least with the first third or so of the book, having had some recent very useful comments. And so I would now like to  “sign off” these chapters for now and declare them … well, if not in an ideal state, at least more than good enough!

So: for your delight and delectation, here (just for a while) are Chapters 1 to 16 (c. 150 pages). The Table of Contents and the review at the beginning of the final Interlude will tell you what is in these chapters.

When I have previous posted excerpts like this, I have had some extremely useful comments, and even now I’d certainly be very happy to get more. Perhaps not comments that basically say that I’m writing the wrong book! But corrections of typos, indications of expressions that stump the reader for whom English is a second language, pointers to passages that stand out as more difficult to understand — not to mention corrections of downright mistakes and suggestions for improvement. All would be still most welcome.

(If, in particular you have students — or indeed, are a student — please do spread the word to anyone who might be interested in reading and commenting, even on just scattered chapters. For, at this stage, further student feedback could be invaluable.)

The post IFL2 — Some propositional logic! appeared first on Logic Matters.

Duet display again

I’m relatively minimalist about techie stuff these days, and am mostly a late-adopter or never-adopter. But let me share a warm recommendation for something I have recently (re)-adopted, which actually does make work-life better. Yes, really! It will be no news at all to the more computer savvy: but this post is for the rest of us.

In fact, I first posted about using an iPad as an external monitor three years ago. However, I rather fell out of love with Duet Display when various changes with the Apple OS caused issues and when I also had a long undiagnosed cable/connection issue (I thought I had trouble with my MacBook ports, but as it happened it was two dodgy cables). But the developers have sorted the Mojave issues, I have sorted my cable issues, and Duet Display and my laptop are best friends again. So, by way of a public service announcement, let me spread the very good news once more (below the line, if you want to read on).

OK, the headlines are these, if you’ve not heard of Duet Display. If you have e.g. a MacBook of some description (or indeed a Windows machine), and an iPad of some kind, then Duet Display enables you to use the iPad as an additional display. It works over a USB cable (not wifi) and is nowadays extremely smooth indeed in operation: like the best Mac/iPad software, it just works, and seems generally regarded as best-in-class.

Once you’ve told Duet Display how you want to place your iPad and laptop relative to each other, you in effect acquire a small external monitor. The cursor travels seamlessly from screen to screen (and the current menubar moves with it), you can drag windows across, etc. It really does work a treat and is all now highly stable. And by the way, you can hit the home button on the iPad to navigate to other open apps in the usual way, and then return to Duet Display to pick up where you left off: very clever and very neat.

OK, this won’t magically increase your “productivity” but it assuredly reduces some of the irritations of window-juggling when working on a laptop screen, without having a big external monitor cluttering your desk.

For example, as pictured above, I can have the current source code for some LaTeX chapters in a tabbed TeXShop window on the left of the 15″ MBP screen, the PDF of the book on the right of the split screen — and then, off-loaded to a standard-sized iPad, there are the TexShop console and a BibDesk window. This is terrific as a TeXShop workspace. (Of course you could put something more distracting on the secondary screen!)

So, if you don’t know it, a very warmly recommended bargain on the iPad App Store.

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Happy New Year

Let’s start the year on a happy note! I’ve mentioned the terrific soprano Sabine Devieilhe here before. And for some sheer enjoyment, do try her new disc. She’s singing cantatas by the young Handel,  together with the mezzo Lea Desandre and  Emmanuelle Haïm’s band Le Concert de Astrée. Here’s a taster. The Gramophone review was rightly full of unqualified praise. I agree!

And here are two concert videos of Sabine Devieilhe — obviously having great fun singing Rameau, and a wonderful O zittre nicht from the Magic Flute.

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Resolutions and readings

The end of a year. Time to reflect. How did those beginning-of-year “must do better” plans work out? Not that I’m usually an enthusiast for them: but, for once, this last year I did make two fairly serious resolutions.

The first was relatively easy to keep — to lose quite a bit of weight. The secret? You just eat fewer carbs, exercise more. And keep going. Who could possibly have guessed? So, primed with this wonderful new insight, I’ll now have to write my sure-to-be-best-selling life-style-and-diet book. Move over Gwyneth. I expect to make a fortune.

The other resolution initially took significantly more will-power to put into practice. Keep off the internet from mid-evening. For a start, try to ignore Twitter, the newspapers, the political magazines, the political blogs, and the rest. Read novels and the like instead. In these days of Trump and Brexit and more, I really can’t recommend this enough for the sheer improvement to eudaimonia and well-being. Try it for a week (you can do it!), and then another week … You won’t regret it, trust me!

And I’ll add, don’t read the novels onscreen: there’s still something about sitting down with a real printed book that seems to engender a different level of engagement (and I don’t think that that’s just me).

I keep a list. I didn’t quite get to a book a week (unless I’m allowed to count the likes of Dombey and Son as more than one!). But I have read exactly twice as many novels and other books this year as the year before, and I feel I’m reconnecting to that much earlier self who seemed to have endless time for reading. The novels’ explorations of our  human world, the delights of encountering wonderful writing, the sheer fun of getting caught up in a story, have all given great pleasure.

There’s no plan to the reading, other than a rough intention to mix up classics and recent books, and first readings with re-readings. And sheer chance plays a large part: what turns up in a favourite haunt, the beautifully run Oxfam bookshop in Saffron Walden? Indeed, such serendipitous finds have been among the most enjoyable — Madeline Miller’s Circe, the collected poems of U.A. Fanthorpe, the novels of Helen Dunmore (I’m reading through an as-new set of the first ten, bought for a pound each …).

And what am I reading as the  year ends? Clive James’s long poem The River in the Sky (which isn’t entirely working for me, but has its magical moments); Sue Prideaux’s I am Dynamite (not that I am a Nietzsche fan, but it promises to be a rollicking read); and, not least, this winter’s Dickens, Our Mutual Friend. All more than good enough to keep me happily sticking to that resolution to avoid frittering time (and to avoid getting stressed!) on the internet.

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Three tweets wiser

I asked three different questions on twitter recently. Pity not to pass on what I learnt in a slightly more long-lasting form! In ascending order of likely  interest:

How do you pronounce “wff” in the classroom? Approximately woof seemed the majority view. Which is how I’ve always pronounced it. Some, oddly to my mind, prefer wiff. Some, apparently, spell it out w-f-f. Joel Hamkins wondered why we should use “wff” at all – why not just “formula”? Which is a very good question. The habit of a lifetime makes me a bit resistant to change, however!
What’s a neat example of a written sentence with different meanings in different sentences? — (approximate homophones are familiar, but I wanted a nice example that worked on the page). Thomas Brouwer offered the lovely “David Hume was slim”. Falsely saying in English that the bon viveur was svelte of figure, truly saying in Dutch that he was smart!
“How many books has J.K. Rowling sold?”, “How many books has J.K. Rowling written?”. We need the distinction between tokens and types to properly construe the likely questions here. And we all know that Peirce was responsible for the nowstandard terminology for this distinction. But surely the distinction is an old one: who first made it (whatever the terminology)? Surely the stoics or other Greek writers talking about words, sentences, lekta, etc. would have somewhere made a type/token distinction? Or what about the medieval writers on logic? My learned twitter friends had no specific pointers to give. Which was a real surprise. What were we missing?

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