Karl Sigmund has a book on the Vienna Circle (to accompany the wonderful Vienna Circle exhibition this Fall for the University of Vienna's 650th anniversary). Sie nannten sich Der Wiener Kreis:Exaktes Denken am Rand des Untergangs is an accessible introduction to the history and context of the Vienna Circle.  You may not need such an … Continue reading Vote for Sigmund’s Vienna Circle Book

[The following remarks were delivered today by Andy Arana at the beginning of a joint Paris-Davis workshop on the philosophy of mathematics, and are posted here with his permission and that of Curtis Franks.  The photo above shows Aldo at a cook-off with Marco Panza at the last instalment of that workshop series in Davis, … Continue reading Remembering Aldo Antonelli

My Dear Lady Byron I have received your note and should have answered no further than that I was very glad to find my apprehension (of being a party to doing mischief if I assisted Lady Lovelace’s studies without any caution) is unfounded in the opinion of yourself and Lord Lovelace, who must be better … Continue reading De Morgan on Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace was born 200 years ago today.  Here's a roundup of articles: Meet Countess Ada Lovelace, The World’s First Computer Programmer (MTV) Remembering Ada Lovelace, computer-music prognosticator (Boston Globe) Die Zahlenzauberin (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, German)

This is cool: In today's Nature, Toby Cubitt, David Perez-Garcia, and Michael Wolf published a paper, "Undecidability of the spectral gap." A short writeup is in Nature News, and an extended paper is on arXiv. It shows a problem in quantum physics--the spectral gap problem--to be undecidable by reducing the halting problem to it. In … Continue reading An Undecidable Quantum Physics Problem