Neoglycoconjugates, Part B: Biomedical Applications, Volume 247 (Methods in Enzymology)

Book Description

Neoglycoconjugates are not only useful for the basic understanding of protein-carbohydrate interactions, but they have many practical applications as well. They are powerful reagents in many cell biology studies and excellent tools for the isolation and characterization of animal and plant lectins, separation of cells, as well as for the targeting of drugs, artificial vaccines, and diagnostic reagents. Volume 247 and its companion Volume 242 contain many practical methods on how to prepare and use neoglycoconjugates. Volume 242 deals with synthesis and 247 with biomedical applications.

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Some love it, some hate it, but The Emperor's New Mind, physicist Roger Penrose's 1989 treatise attacking the foundations of strong artificial intelligence, is crucial for anyone interested in the history of thinking about AI and consciousness. Part survey of modern physics, part exploration of the philosophy of mind, the book is not for casual readers--though it's not overly technical, it rarely pauses to let the reader catch a breath. The overview of relativity and quantum theory, written by a master, is priceless and uncontroversial. The exploration of consciousness and AI, though, is generally considered as resting on shakier ground.

Penrose claims that there is an intimate, perhaps unknowable relation between quantum effects and our thinking, and ultimately derives his anti-AI stance from his proposition that some, if not all, of our thinking is non-algorithmic. Of course, these days we believe that there are other avenues to AI than traditional algorithmic programming; while he has been accused of setting up straw robots to knock down, this accusation is unfair. Little was then known about the power of neural networks and behavior-based robotics to simulate (and, some would say, produce) intelligent problem-solving behavior. Whether these tools will lead to strong AI is ultimately a question of belief, not proof, and The Emperor's New Mind offers powerful arguments useful to believer and nonbeliever alike. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

For many decades, the proponents of `artificial intelligence' have maintained that computers will soon be able to do everything that a human can do. In his bestselling work of popular science, Sir Roger Penrose takes us on a fascinating roller-coaster ride through the basic principles of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy to show that human thinking can never be emulated by a machine.

Customer Reviews:

A great, great book........2007-09-12

I was compelled to write as I came by on the way to buying Dr. Penrose's more recent book ("Road to Reality") and was appalled that Amazon features 2 out of 3 negative views on the first page, including one which dismisses the "Emperor's new mind" as "rubbish". Surely the book is controversial in certain quarters, but the vehemence of much of the criticism can only make me wonder why some people are so defensive about it.

I have to admit I have not reread this book since my original reading around 1990, so take my remarks at some discount on that basis. But I will tell you that this book remains influential in my choice of what I read and how I evaluate things even to this day. It has indeed changed my life.

Dr. Penrose's premise is that a computer simulation of a brain will not achieve the equivalent of human consciousness. I don't wish to enter the fray of arguing points. Dr. Penrose is a mathematical and scientific genius, a deep thinker on the nature of reality, and he can do his own counterpoint. Read this book with an open mind, and even if you disagree with some of his arguments, you will take much away with you.

Here's my take. "Consciousness" is pretty central to the whole enterprise of scientific endeavor, as well as how each of us understands our place in the world. Consciousness, as modeled by psychological and AI researchers, has a lot to say about the biological/physical systems that underpin what is happening in our heads, but one has to wonder about claims that consciousness is now completely understood. To this end, Dr. Penrose takes us on a fascinating journey to the frontiers of scientific knowledge, at scales both large and small. This is entirely relevant to the central theme. Science can only talk about what we can measure, and there are limits to what we can now measure. Our current picture of reality is not as complete as some people would have us believe.

So read Penrose. Read Stephen Jay Gould. Read Raymond Smullyan. Read about the Banach-Tarski theorem. Read about Fermat's last theorem. Read great literature. Keep an open mind. Peace!

A mess.......2007-09-07

This book is a real mess, and although I am giving it five stars, I don't really recommend anyone read anything like all of it. In fact, most of it isn't about the problems with strong AI at all. Mostly, it's a general, populist book about modern physics and mathematics. That can be an interesting read too, but probably Penrose isn't the person to be writing such a thing. He uses way too many exclamation points and I suspect he also tends to think he knows more than he really does. For example, it is clear by his one use of the word "ergodic" that he thinks it means something like "single orbits of a measurable set spread out and fill the whole space". That's mixing, not ergodicity. Lots of ergodic transformations do nothing of the kind, like for example irrational rotations of the circle. I only know this because I'm an ergodic theorist; I do tend to wonder how many other things I would catch Penrose speaking as if he knew more about them than he does, if only I knew more about them than I do.

So why does this book get five stars? Mostly because it has no good competitors. Daniel Dennett, for example, wrote a book called "Consciousness Explained." In it, he didn't even try to explain consciousness. Which is not to say he didn't write a terrific book. He did. It's wonderful. But when it comes to consciousness, Dennett just punts and doesn't seem to realize this is what he is doing (hence the ludicrously inappropriate title). This is why Searle thinks cognitive scientists come out, on analysis, "too stupid for words" (Dennett's phrase, speculating on what Searle thinks--if you haven't read these two guys' reviews of each others books, you really are missing some top-flight entertainment). As scientists, that's not really fair, but as philosophers of consciousness, it's probably pretty apt. Unfortunately Searle, marvelously adept at diagnosing the deficiencies of others, is ill-equipped to give a positive account. Penrose on the other hand at least gives us an inkling of what a positive account might look like. He does this mostly in the last chapter of the book, which is all I think anybody really needs to read (read the chapter on quantum theory too, if you don't know any).

Is Penrose right? I think, in broad outline, probably so. I do think consciousness has some power to choose at quantum branching points. I think this because I believe in the causal closure of the physical, I believe in the efficacy of consciousness, I don't believe that consciousness is physical, and I don't believe in overdetermination. You can only rectify these beliefs (as far as I can tell), by booting causal closure upstairs into the many-worlds arena and letting consciousness slide around in this ultra-high-dimensional plane with some measure of latitude. It's also the only way I can imagine that consciousness could have evolved in the first place (given that the strong AI premise that consciousness is automatically, miraculously generated by the execution of an algorithm really is too stupid for words).

I'm sure I'm one of hundreds of people who took quantum mechanics as an undergraduate and immediately formed these opinions; I am happy to defer to Penrose as to the details of how it might work. Are these details worked out in full, or even correctable in principle? Probably not. But almost surely it's not for being too crazy; the truth of the matter about consciousness is probably much, much crazier than even Penrose can imagine. Indeed, probably too crazy to be of any practical use to congnitive science now (maybe ever). So you're still going to have good reason to read your Daniel Dennett.

Oh, right. Penrose thinks the quagmire of consciousness has a lot to do with computability, tilings, entropy and Godel incompleteness. It doesn't. Those are just things Penrose knows a lot about, and paranoids think that all the things they know about are related.

Do yourself a favor and read this book!.......2007-03-19

Jeez, twelve bucks and one hell of a good read! Stick your neck out and find out for YOURSELF if the book is any good. I'm suspicious that Penrose is being persecuted for theist tendencies.

Walking past one another..........2006-11-21

I skimmed over the equations, and still found the exposition clear enough, with one significant exception. At one point, Penrose describes how an event in the Andromeda galaxy would already have occurred for a person on Earth walking toward the galaxy and not for another at the same spot walking away. the implication is that information would arrive at the same place at significantly different times for people walking in different directions. Penrose is assuming simultaneity of the events on our planet and in the Andromeda galaxy -- after several pages of discussion of how relativity excludes it!

Penrose soon returns to form though, stating that neither person would perceive the event until information about it arrived at the speed of light, millions of years later. Even if people could live that long, they would have to keep walking away from one another to perceive the event at very different times. That would be not be possible on our little round planet.

This is the one place where Penrose's discussion of modern physics lost me for a little while. Otherwise, I found it compelling. In particular, his explanation that Newtonian physics is deterministic stuck with me.

The discussion of mind at the end of the book is inconclusive and speculative, as it must yet be. The mechanical structure of living beings reflects Newtonian physics -- for example, the leg must be strong enough to support the body. Digestion can be explained in terms of chemistry, the nervous system uses electrical conduction, the reception of light by the eye is a quantum phenomenon. But then, there is the mind. Though the uncertainty in quantum physics allows of free will, it does not explain that, or consciousness. Evolution takes advantage of physical phenomena not yet understood -- after all, none were understood until very recently. The question of consciousness and that of the structure of the universe converge. Thought-provoking, indeed!

Will you answer "no" to this question ?.......2006-04-19

For those people who didn't make it through the book, here is a (perhaps oversimplified) summary.

Assumption 1 : Machines function algorithmically. The human brain functions at least partly non-algorithmically

Assumption 2 : There are some mathematical problems that can not be solved by algorithms f.i. proving the correctness of a self-referring statement.

Conclusion from 1 and 2 : Humans are able to solve problems that machines will never be able to solve.

Assumption 3 : Intelligence means being able to solve every possible problem.

Conclusion : Humans are intelligent, machines will never be intelligent.

My thoughts on this :

assumption 1 : Non-algorithmically ? There is not a shred of evidence of non-algorithmic thinking in humans. There are on the other hand plenty of mechanisms taking place in the brain that are clearly algorithmic (like vision, pattern recognition etc.)

assumption 2 : Apparently Penrose believes that humans are able to solve these problems. I am not so sure. I challenge you to answer the next question correctly : Will you answer "no" to this question ? It cannot be answered correctly. It is in the nature of the problem itself. The problems Penrose mentions are of the same nature.

assumption 3 : We don't know the nature of consciousness. We have no understanding of what intelligence implies. Penrose believes it implies that an intelligent creature is able to solve EVERY problem. Therefore, if there is one problem a machine can not solve, the machine is not intelligent.
So the only thing Penrose has to do to prove his point is ask a question that has no correct answers : ask the machine to overcome the incompleteness theorem of G?del, or to answer the above question correctly. (and ignore the fact that people cannot answer it correctly either).

I have enjoyed the book in a way ... while seeking arguments to demolish Penrose's theory.

The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

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A highly original book by a mathematical visionary........1998-07-31

Describe Yams to the English - "they're like potatoes", only they're not. You realise that when you first taste them, feel cheated by the description others have offered you, then find yourself using it yourself, for want of a better. So it is with books on modern physics, or modern mathematics. These are subjects in which the inmates are in charge of the asylums. It doesn't have to be so, but looks like being so for the forseeable future, for organisational and economic reasons. Who can exorcise, in six hundred pages, the terror of fifteen years of incompetent teaching, half-baked syllabuses, and horrifying examinations? Most attempts merely repeat that trauma. This book is quite the best account of modern physics and mathematics that I have ever come across. It's written by a visionary who has the deep respect of both physicists and mathematicians, and, to me at least, seems to represent a popularisation of the merging of pure mathematics with the mathematic! s of physics, which has been going on since the time of Dirac and Eddington. Penrose makes you believe that it's reasonable to cross the corridors of academe from Quantum Mechanics to Algebraic Topology, and back via Logic and Machine theory without being conscious of barriers; and, that it's reasonable that the people who pay for these games with their taxes might be initiated into them. A beautiful, brilliant book, by a master mathematician at the height of his powers. How do we relate to a subject? In my view, through inspirational journalism. We all "know" that mathematics is a game for young men; because elderly, elegant, Hardy told us so, despite being an obvious counterexample. Just about every distinguished mathematician is rushing into print with their own impenetrable view of the world. In a situation in which the unreadable "Brief History of Time" is an international best seller, you'd suspect that no-one could come up with an account of mat! hematics which is accurate but which also captures the shee! r joy of being involved in it. If anyone has managed that, it is Penrose, with this incredible book.

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Book Description

This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years - from `The Remains of the Day' to `White Teeth'. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question.

Customer Reviews:

Ellis Deserves Better.......2004-08-24

American Psycho is one of the few books I have read more than once. I realized upon initially reading it that there was much going on beneath the surface that I was probably missing due not only to the extreme violence but also to the relentless focus on the superficial details that the main character, Patrick Bateman, describes. An excellent essay by Elizabeth Young in the book Shopping in Space allowed me to better appreciate the book the second time around. I was therefore excited when I saw the instant reader's guide by Murphet. Unfortunately, it was a letdown.

There are a couple of bright spots. Murphet does a fair job (but no better) of placing the book into the historical and social context in which Bateman existed. Murphet also does a good job of demonstrating that many events that are described in the book are probably occurring only within Bateman's head. Particularly noteworthy is pointing out that the real estate agent at Paul Owens' apartment, after Bateman allegedly killed him, was named Mrs. Wolfe. This is a reference to Tom Wolfe, the author of the realistic novel Bonfire of the Vanities, and provides a clue that that particular episode is "real." Combined with other clues, this calls into question the accuracy of Bateman's description of the murder itself.

Unfortunately, this reader's guide usually disappoints. As an initial matter, it is written in the pretentious language all too typical of literary criticism from people trying to show how smart they are. Such high-falutin' language does not impress me and others should not hesitate to say that the emperor has no clothes.

Murphet also strikes out frequently, as when a minor character mistakes Bateman for someone else and proceeds to describe Bateman in unflattering terms. Murphet believes this is noteworthy as it is inconsistent with the perception the reader has formed of Bateman. This is incorrect. Even a casual reader will recognize well before this episode that Bateman's inner view of himself is not matched by others' objective view of him. Check out what a fool Bateman makes of himself at McDonalds immediately after his attack on the homeless guy Al.

Murphet does little better when analyzing social critics of the novel. Bateman attacks both men and women in the novel, which Murphet acknowledges. Yet in discussing allegations of anti-woman sexism, Murphet focuses on whether this is attributable to the character Bateman or the author Ellis. How could anyone miss a softball like this? The better analysis is that the novel's violence may not be anti-woman, but critiques along such lines speak volumes about the callousness of such critics towards men. Further, Murphet's discussion questions regarding consumerism would be laughable if one could keep one's eyes from rolling at, again, the pretentiousness.

Ellis has written an important book skewering a noteable segment of our society. I have given the current reader's guide two stars, rather than only one, because of the paucity of literary criticisms of the novel and because a fan may get something out of it (though I would recommend Elizabeth Young's aforementioned essay over this). American Psycho deserves intelligent analysis. It deserves better than this.

American Pyscho: Uncovered.......2003-04-23

We have been in need of a series like Continuum Contemporaries for a long time. Unlike the watered-down reader's guides produced by York Notes (and in the US `Cliff's Notes') these little books tackle text's which have gained something of a cult status in the late twentieth century, and do so from a perspective which is at once approachable enough for the recreational reader, and rigorous enough for the advanced student. It is therefore fitting that a text so widely, and wildly, misunderstood as Bret Easton Ellis's `American Psycho'. should be included amongst the Continuum survey.

Julian Murphet is one of the foremost critics of Ellis's work, and what you get here are all the benefits of the breadth and depth of his knowledge, boiled down into a slim and precise volume. He provides us with a short biography of the author; an exploration of the narrative voice at work within the text; a discussion of the themes of alienation and reification and a survey of critical responses. He is, however, at his most engaging in his discussion of violence and politics, the real heart of the novel itself.

He tackles the central, consuming question of whether the protagonist Patrick Bateman ever actually commits the murders so graphically rendered in the text's pages, in a manner that is exploratory and revelatory without ever being proscriptive. Thus we see an argument develop from the tentative suggestion that `everything could well be contained to the level of fantasy,' to the final assertion that the violence within `American Psycho' is `an act of language' and never really happens at all. He ties this argument in very neatly with an understanding of the text in its political context, seeing Bateman as a `pin-up boy for the establishment Right' during the Reagan era, and reading the real `murder' within the novel, not as that projected by Bateman, but rather as the `murder of the real' the erasure of all social difference and threat - what he terms `the gentrification of the city.'

Murphet rounds this off with a great critique of the film version of the novel, his genuine academic appreciation of cinema in general, making this more than just a fan's opinion.

No reader of `American Psycho' will ever wholly agree with any one theory, and indeed it is the paradoxical beauty of the novel that is never really gives you a definitive answer either way. Murphet's argument is one reading, but it is a very convincing one, and this text is a must for anyone who remains challenged by, and curious about, this work.

EXTRA CREDIT.......2003-02-24

Having read American Psycho several times since it's release, I'm surprised that it's taken somebody this long to put together something that delves deeper into this book. This reader's guide is broken down into 5 sections (the novelist; the novel; the novel's reception; the novel's adaptation; and further reading and discussion questions) and is followed by brief notes and bibliography pages. Like Anthony Magistrale's The Shining Reader and David Sexton's The Strange World Of Thomas Harris, this book allows me to further explore one of my favorite books and it's author. A little extra credit for the fans and a little insight for those who are not.

Ellis is a sicko, but it is great.......2002-06-17

Brett Easton Ellis shows a very dark character in the book American Psycho. The movie did not even begin to scratch the surface of Patrick Bateman's "odd" personality. After reading this book, the movie adaptation is unbelieveable. You understand the pain that Bateman is going through when asking for reservations. He is so deeply disturbed that he onoly lives for outward apperances. If you only read one book this summer, and you really want to be shocked, pick up American Psycho

Opinion on Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide.......2002-06-10

Very good analysis of Ellis' work American Psycho. Particularly interesting is the way the author, Julian Murphet, focuses on the historical and social conditions of American Psycho. The author puts it back in a class context, Bateman being representative of a yuppie class, issued from the Reagan's era: republican, racist, classist, hating the working class victim of Reagan's measures in the frame of the application of an extreme neoliberal economic program. In this study, the reader will find a very good interpretation of the symbolism used by Ellis, particularly in the scene confronting two entities of the capital's representatives as rivals: The world of Finance and the one of Real Estate, both serving the same objective: accumulating surplus-value, one through Wall Street and the Stock-exchange and the other one, through an exacerbated valorization of real estate. In this time of history, consequences of a time of severe crisis of mass production, both fields are becoming the core of a renewed form of accumulation of capital. As a matter of fact, we will witness in the 1990's the crushing negative impact of financial globalization on low and middle classes, that is identical to premeditated human slaughter, together with the strengthening of the pitiless real estate's power, ready to chase people from their home to use the premises as grounds for speculation.
Bateman's robot-like attitude, his behavior directed by clichés and brands that are indispensable criteria to his meaningless and dead boring life are typical of those emerging classes, products of a world without transcendental ideal, reduced to obey the imperatives of money and of a consumerist society, where killing becomes one of the favorite leisure and gives the one that assassinates the feeling of "acting", "being someone", token of sick societies enslaved by the pursuing of money.
This kind of critical analysis published by Continuum Contemporary is indispensable to anyone who wants to heighten one's level of reading and pass from passive to active reading, i.e. not only getting to know the story in itself as a pastime, but also the author, his motivations and the social and political context that determined the writing of the book.

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