The Cambridge Quintet: A Work Of Scientific Speculation

by John L. Casti

In this narrative tour de force, gifted scientist and author John L. Casti contemplates an imaginary evening of intellectual inquiry—a sort of “My Dinner with” not Andre, but five of the most brilliant thinkers of the twentieth century.Imagine, if you will, one stormy summer evening in 1949, as novelist and scientist C. P. Snow, Britain’s distinguished wartime science advisor and author of The Two Cultures, invites four singular guests to a sumptuous seven-course dinner at his alma mater, Christ’s College, Cambridge, to discuss one of the emerging scientific issues of the day: Can we build a machine that could duplicate human cognitive processes? The distinguished guest list for Snow’s dinner consists of physicist Erwin Schrodinger, inventor of wave mechanics; Ludwig Wittgenstein, the famous twentieth-century philosopher of language, who posited two completely contradictory theories of human thought in his lifetime; population geneticist/science popularizer J.B.S. Haldane; and Alan Turing, the mathematician/codebreaker who formulated the computing scheme that foreshadowed the logical structure of all modern computers. Capturing not only their unique personalities but also their particular stands on this fascinating issue, Casti dramatically shows what each of these great men might have argued about artificial intelligence, had they actually gathered for dinner that midsummer evening.With Snow acting as referee, a lively intellectual debate unfolds. Philosopher Wittgenstein argues that in order to become conscious, a machine would have to have life experiences similar to those of human beings—such as pain, joy, grief, or pleasure. Biologist Haldane offers the idea that mind is a separate entity from matter, so that regardless of how sophisticated the machine, only flesh can bond with that mysterious force called intelligence. Both physicist Schrodinger and, of course, computer pioneer Turing maintain that it is not the substance, but rather the organization of that substance, that makes a mind conscious.With great verve and skill, Casti recreates a unique and thrilling moment of time in the grand history of scientific ideas. Even readers who have already formed an opinion on artificial intelligence will be forced to reopen their minds on the subject upon reading this absorbing narrative. After almost four decades, the solutions to the epic scientific and philosophical problems posed over this meal in C. P. Snow’s old rooms at Christ’s College remains tantalizingly just out of reach, making this adventure into scientific speculation as valid today as it was in 1949.

Genres: Science, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Physics, History, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

John L. Casti (born 1943) is an author, mathematician, and entrepreneur.

As a mathematician and researcher, Casti received his Ph.D. under Richard Bellman at the University of Southern California. He worked at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA, and served on the faculties of the University of Arizona, New York University and Princeton University, before moving to Vienna in 1973 to become one of the first members of the research staff at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. In 1986, he left IIASA to take up a position as a Professor of Operations Research and System Theory at the Technical University of Vienna. He also served as a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, from 1992-2002, where he worked extensively on the application of biological metaphors to the mathematical modeling of problems in economics, finance and road-traffic networks, as well as on large-scale computer simulations for the study of such networks.

His primary research interests have shifted somewhat in recent years from the natural sciences to the exploration of questions in the social and behavioral realm. One thread has been exploration of the relationship between the social "mood" of a population its biasing effect on actions and behaviors. In this direction, his 2010 book, Mood Matters: From Rising Skirt Lengths to the Collapse of World Powers, published by Copernicus Books, NY, addresses the directions and patterns of social causation and their implications for future trends and collective social events, such as styles in popular culture, the outcome of political processes, and even the rise and fall of civilizations. His most recent book is X-EVENTS: The Collapse of Everything, which addresses the underlying cause of extreme events generated by human inattention, misunderstanding, error, stupidity and/or malevolent intent. The English original edition was published in June 2012 by HarperCollins/Morrow, New York. The book now exists in 15 foreign editions, as well, including German, Japanese, Russian, Dutch, Korean and Portuguese.

As an entrepreneur, Casti formed two companies in Santa Fe and London in 2000, Qforma, Inc. and SimWorld, Ltd, respectively, devoted to the employment of tools and concepts from modern system theory for the solution of problems in business and finance, as well as health care. Qforma merged with SkilaMederi in June 2013. In early 2005 he returned to Vienna where he co-founded The Kenos Circle, a professional society that aims to make use of complexity science in order to gain a deeper insight into the future than that offered by more conventional statistical tools.

For several years, Professor Casti was a Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, where he created an initiative for the study on Extreme Events in Human Society. In January 2012 he left IIASA to form a new research institute in Vienna, The X-Center, devoted to the study of human-caused extreme events. The X-Center has now expanded to a network of affiliated X-Centers in Helsinki, Tokyo, Seoul, New York and Singapore. Since early 2013, Dr. Casti has been serving as a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Complex Systems and Enterprises at the Stevens Institute of Technology in the USA.

As an author, Casti has written more than 120 scientific articles and seven technical monographs and textbooks on mathematical modeling. In addition, he was formerly editor of the journals Applied Mathematics & Computation (Elsevier, New York) and Complexity (Wiley, New York). In 1989 his text/reference works Alternate Realities: Mathematical Models of Nature and Man (Wiley, 1989) was awarded a prize by the Association of American Publishers in a competition among all scholarly books published in mathematics and the natural sciences. In 1992, he also published Reality Rules (Wiley, New York), a t

Reviews

[Milt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would like to have read it when I was smart enough, rather than now when I'm old enough.

[Griffin Strain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting read if you like philosophy and/or computational theory. Blends the styles of Platonic discourse with 20th century scientific ideology for an interesting discussion about the plausibility and implications of AI from the perspective of early AI philosophers and scientists.

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Billed as a work of "scientific speculation", The Cambridge Quintet presents the fictional account of a coversation between five real-life intellectual greats: Alan Turing (the mathematician who developped the first electronic computer), C.P. Snow (civil servant and physicist), J.B.S. Haldane (geneticist), Erwin Schrödinger (physicist), and Ludwig Wittgenstein (philosopher). The premise is that these minds met in 1949 to discuss the feasibility of making machines that can think.

This was a fascinating read. As intended, it's like sitting in on fascinating conversations and intellectual debates.

[Susan Mock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not light reading. It takes me 5 minutes to read 3 pages because I need to understand what the scientists are talking about. There are 5 scientists having a make believe dinner and talking about AI. Can a computer think, is the topic. There is Turing, Schrodinger, Snow, Haldane and Wittgenstein. Love the premise. I am also reading Mary Poppins Returns which I can do about 20 pages in the same 5 minutes. I am about half way through and enjoying it AND it is good for me.

It is thought provoking and what is interesting is what advances have been made since this book was published.

[Mishehu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick and thought provoking read. Nothing new for readers already familiar with the issue in question (machine intelligence). But for anyone just beginning to dip in, provides an entertaining and edifying place to start. I'm in the former category but consider it a 5 star read for persons in the latter.

[Kurt Ronn · Rating 3 out of 5]

More interesting for the personalities at the dinner than the science. Too bad Alan Turing lived in a time when homosexuality was criminal in the UK. Imagine the work he might have completed if he lived another 40 years.

[Michał Brzozowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it would be better in the form of the normal pop science book. The dialogue here is atificial and very info dumpy. The presented knowledge is rather introductory.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now more than ever, THE CAMBRIDGE QUINTET. The AI takeover of everything, including book reviews, has lent new meaning and urgency to this fictional debate between a philosopher, Wittgenstein, physicist, Schrodinger, mathematician, Turing, biologist, J.B.S. Haldane and know-it all C.P. Snow on the question of human consciousness, machines and just how different are we, really, from the computers and robots. John L. Casti imagines a free-for-all- between Ludwig Wittgenstein, defending the claim that all language is social and not reducible to grammar, or bytes, and Alan Turing, forerunner of the bold thesis,"if machines can be programmed so can humans, and vice versa". Yes, there really was a time when intellectuals grew livid over such questions, and if you do too, this is the debate for you.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

An sich eine hübsche und mutige Idee. Ein Dinner mit Wittgenstein, Snow, Turing, Schrödinger und Haldane. Über künstliche Intelligenz. Etwas bieder geschrieben, aber durchaus nicht unamüsant. Und auch frei von groben Fehlern. Chinese Room wird abgewandelt anachronistisch bemüht, aber das ist okay. Wittgenstein etwas arg ins Karrikaturhafte verdreht. Hätte ich nicht besser machen können. Darum aber noch lange nicht sehr gut.

[Vinu Harihar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought provoking read about the nature of intelligence. While the story often doesn't quite flow like a novel, it reads entertainingly enough to keep you interested. Particularly interesting is its introduction to the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein concerning language as emerging from shared social and worldly experiences between members of a group. I found it accessible and detailed enough to leave me thinking.

[Francisco M. Juárez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deliciosa presentación e introducción a las principales corrientes de pensamiento sobre la inteligencia artifical durante el siglo XX.

Utilizando para ello una narrativa ficcionada, este libro es la definición perfecta de lo que en español debería llamarse ficción científica (que no es ciencia ficción desde luego).

Súper recomendado.

[Arturo Serrano-Solis · Rating 2 out of 5]

La idea es muy bonita. Poder atestiguar como 5 mentes brillantes discuten sobre el posible futuro de una tecnología. Desafortunadamente, el estilo del autor, convirtió su maravillosa idea en algo muy tedioso de leer

[Dr_Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's too late for me to be able to enjoy this book, not saying that the book is not excellent.

[Rafael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging, but rewarding. Can machines match human intelligence (viewed from the late 40’s)? What is intelligence in the first place? Why would we want machines similar to us? Why not different?

[Ellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This didn’t work for me. Style was too stilted.

[Ushan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine that in 1949 novelist and scientific administrator C. P. Snow of "The Two Cultures" fame had invited physicist Erwin Schrödinger, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, computer scientist Alan Turing and geneticist J. B. S. Haldane for a dinner and a conversation about artificial intelligence. Imagine that the invited scientists had been anachronistically familiar with Chomskyan linguistics and John Searle's Chinese Room experiment. What would they say?

Well, perhaps they would say that they would like to be anachronistically familiar with many more things. Does the intelligence of the Chinese Room reside in the compiler of the rulebook? What if the rulebook were compiled by a genetic algorithm? Genetic algorithms had not yet been invented in 1949. A Chinese-speaking child learns Chinese by absorbing the speech of the adults and other children around him or her and speaking to them; I don't have a proof but it seems obvious to be that the number of possible conversations a Chinese speaker can have is exponential in the number of words he or she has heard and spoken so far. The rulebook has to be exponentially large - but the brain of the living Chinese speaker of course isn't. Therefore, the intelligence of the Chinese speaker, compared to that of the thought-experiment rulebook, lies in the exponential compression of information. Neither computational complexity nor descriptive complexity had yet been studied in 1949.

[Michael Sump · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Cambridge Quintet: This is a novel that is centered on an imagined dinner conversation in 1948 between Alan Turing, Erwin Schroedinger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J.B.S. Haldane, and C.P. Snow. The meeting is called by Snow to explore the possibility of science creating a “thinking machine” over an exceptional post-war dinner. It's an awesome read and an awesome meal. By the time brandy and cigars (Cuban, of course) are served, I was firmly in Turing's camp as he argues that if a computer can make us believe that it's thinking --then it is thinking. The others all agree to some extent, each adding their own points-of-view--except for Wittgenstein--who passionately argues from soup to departure that there is something unique in the mind of a human that is beyond the ability of any machine, current or in the future. Well, he's convincing also. It's a terrific read and a tour de force that is sure to get and keep you thinking about the ideas of the book.

[Mario Incandenza · Rating 2 out of 5]

Potr�� mai un computer arrivare a pensare?

L'intelligenza artificiale ��, a mio avviso, la branca pi�� nobile dell'informatica essa incarna il tentativo da parte del genere umano di conferire ad un ammasso di silicio la possibili�� di affrontare problematiche fino ad oggi lasciate in appannaggio all'essere umano.

In questa fiction scentifica Casti riunisce allo stesso "tavolo" cinque mostri sacri della scienza del secolo scorso: Turing, Wittgenstein, Schr��dinger, Snow e Haldane per dibattere sulla questione posta all'inizio. Scendono in campo non solo le loro reali filosofie ma anche le loro spigolature caratteriali.

E' un libro in cui �� facile perdersi, richiede un minimo background culturale, interesse per i singoli personaggi e per l'argomento.

Non l'ho trovato pienamente soddisfacente sono curioso di leggere Douglas Hofstadter.

[T Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful thought experiment and one of my new favorite works of alternate history. It's mostly done in the Socratic style, so the thoughts are the stars of the show, but the historical "characters" seem to me accurately rendered, with attention paid to such things as style of speech. I felt a special pang when the book went into the cancer that Wittgenstein would have been suffering at the time, and the notion that this imagined meeting might have been among his last chances to be heard by his fellows. I'd love to read more "debates" like this.

[Mitch]

Starting this now, will see if it's as good as it looks. A fictional dinner party thrown by C.P. Snow, with guests Alan Turing, Erwin Schroedinger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, & J.B.S. Haldane. Turing vs. Wittgenstein with the others discussing thinking machines and if they can replicate or approach human cognition.

In the introduction Casti goes to great length to point out that he is writing 'scientific fiction' not 'science fiction' - (a) get over yourself (b) you aren't slumming it by writing science fiction (which you are - maybe "historical science fiction").

[Breana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was honestly surprised when I picked up this book for my class. I loved it. It was interesting and kept moving. All of the characters had consistent personalities and opinions that were presented in a way that was fun to read and easy to understand. The topic of discussion is very intriguing. This book will leave readers trying to sort out their own ideas and opinions about artificial intelligence following their completion of the book.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Casti's evening of imaginary conversation is a wide-ranging discussion of scientific topics, much of which I actually understood.

I am reminded, just briefly, of an old favorite - Van Loon's Lives - wherein Hendrick Van Loon invites historical characters to a series of dinners and takes the opportunity of discussing their lives and works.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

the premise was great, but I think that the dinner guest got off topic a bit. The conversation about "what is thought", "what is human", was more than I was expecting in the book. I was hoping for more about the idea of the machine vs man discussion. But it is still a very interesting read.

[Bryan]

It's not science fiction, it's science/fiction. This book looks fascinating, but I'm a bit reluctant after how much I hated The Age of Entanglement. Hopefully it doesn't fall into the same pattern.

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really awesome overview of the whole AI discussion.
Made up in a really readable way.

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Moderately interesting concept, but mediocre execution and nothing here that hadn't been said better elsewhere.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book