Saturday, 13 June 2009, Guilford, CT
Topic: Life, the Universe, and Everything
The meeting was a tribute to
Vince Gulisano, because he suggested
both of the books that we will be reading and for many other reasons.
Readings
Video
Saturday 04 October 2008, Guilford, CT
Topic: Collapse of Civilization
Readings
Video
Saturday 26 April 26 2008, 6PM, Fairfield, CT
Topic: Systems Biology
Main reading:
Video:
17 November 2007, Madison, CT
Theme: Again with the Recursion!
Readings:
Suggested readings include:
- Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch.
The Faculty of Language:
What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did it Evolve? Science, 22 November 2002, Vol.
298, no. 5598, pp. 1569-1579.
- Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff (2005).
The Faculty of Language: What's Special
about it? Cognition, 95(2), 201-236.
- W. Tecumseh Fitch, Marc D. Hauser and Noam Chomsky. (2005).
The evolution of the
language faculty: Clarifications and implications. Cognition, 97, 179-210.
- An additional unpublished appendix : N. Chomsky, M. D. Hauser and W. T. Fitch.
Appendix: The Minimalist Program
Other possibilities include
- A recent paper by Michael Corballis,
The Uniqueness of
Human Recursive Thinking (subscription required), American Scientist, Volume 95, No. 3, May-June 2007, 240-248.
- A draft manuscript by Simon Levy on modeling recursion in cognitive neuroscience.
Please contact Simon if you'd like a copy.
Supplementary Readings:
Mark Tiede suggested taking a look at
The Unfolding of Language
by Guy Deutscher.
Video:
Tears of the Black Tiger and
Hot Fuzz.
Food:
Pizza
Theme: The Pirahã Controversy
Main Readings:
Everett, D.L. (2005).
Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in
Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language. Current Anthropology, August-October, 2005.
Nevins, A., D. Pesetsky and C. Rodrigues (2007).
Piraha Exceptionality: a Reassessment. lingBuzz.
Everett, D.L. (2007).
Cultural Constraints on Grammar in Pirahã: A Reply to Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues. lingBuzz.
Supplemental Readings:
The Pirahã Language. Wikipedia.
Language Log:
Parataxis in Pirahã
RECURSION AND HUMAN THOUGHT:
WHY THE PIRAHÃ DON'T HAVE NUMBERS
A Talk With Daniel L. Everett (TheEdge.org)
Colapinto, J. (2007)
The Interpreter:
Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?
New Yorker magazine, 16 April 2007.
Levy. S.D. (2007)
Becoming Recursive.
Presented at the
Recursion in Human
Languages Conference (RECHUL)
, Illinois State University, 27 April 2007.
Fiction Reading:
Ian Watson,
The Embedding. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1973).
Video:
Masters of Horror: Imprint, by
Takashi Miike
Food:
Pizza from Bar Night Club
14 Apr 2007, Home of Philip Rubin, Fairfield, CT
Theme: Power Laws
Non-fiction main readings:
M. E. J. Newman.
Power laws, Pareto distributions, and Zip's law.
Contemporary Physics, 46, 323-351 (2005).
Cosma Shalizi.
Power Law Distributions, 1/F Noise, Long-Memory
Time Series. Sep. 12, 2006.
Michel L. Goldstein, Steven A. Morris, and Gary G. Yen.
Problems with Fitting to the Power-law Distribution. EPJ manuscript.
Supplemental non-fiction readings:
Deborah J. Aks.
1/F Dynamic in Complex Visual Search: Evidence for Self-Organized Criticality in Human Perception. In M. A. Riley and G. C. Van Orden, eds.,
Tutorials in Contemporary Methods for the Behavioral Sciences
Van Orden, G. C., Holden, J. G., & Turvey, M. T. (2003).
Self-organization of Cognitive Performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 331-350.
Researchers Map the Sexual Network of an Entire High School (article)
Network Diagram
Fiction reading:
Will Self,
The Book of Dave. Bloomsbury USA (2006)
Video:
Idiocracy (2006)
06 Aug 2006, Home of Mark Tiede, Madison, CT
Theme: The Physics of Society
Non-fiction:
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, by Philip Ball
Fiction:
Rainbows End, by Verner Vinge
21 Dec 2005, Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT
Theme: Our Surveillance Society
Non-fiction:
No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of our Emerging Surveillance
Society, by Robert O'Harrow
Selections from Beyond Fear and Crypto-Gram,
by Bruce Schneier
10 Jun 2005, Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT
Theme: Religion and its Discontents
Non-fiction:
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by John Krakauer
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason,
by Sam Harris
How to Defend Society Against Science, by Paul Feyerabend
Fiction:
"A Study in Scarlet", by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
18 Dec 2004, Home of Philip Rubin, Fairfield, CT
Theme: The Fates of Human Societies
Non-fiction:
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond
23 Nov 2003, Home of Mark Tiede, Madison, CT
Theme: Metropoles
Non-fiction:
Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, by Joel Garreau
The Death and Life and Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
City: Urbanism and its End, by Douglas Rae
Fiction:
Transmetropolitan: Vol 1-3, by Warren Ellis
Film:
Cannibal: The Musical, Trey Parker
13 Dec 2001, Home of Mark Tiede, Madison, CT
Theme: More Philosophy of Science
Non-fiction:
For and Against Method: Including Lakatos's Lectures on Scientific Method
and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence, by
Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn
Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of
a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, by
David Edmonds and John Eidinow
09 Nov 2001, Home of Mark Tiede, Madison, CT
Theme: Philosophy of Math and Science
Non-fiction:
Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery, by
Imre Lakatos
Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerband, by
Paul Feyerabend
13 Jul 2001, Home of Mark Tiede, Madison, CT
Theme: Digital Security
Non-fiction:
Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World, by
Bruce Schneier
Quantum Computing with Molecules, by Neil Gershenfeld and Isaac L. Chuang
A Simple Quantum Computer, by Isaac L. Chuang and Yoshihisa Yamamoto
David Touretzky's DECSS site
Fiction:
Written in Blood, by Chris Lawson
15 Mar 2001, Home of Simon Levy, Waltham, MA
Theme: Combinatorial Grammar
Non-fiction:
The Syntactic Process, by Mark Steedman
Surface Structure and Interpretation, by Mark Steedman
Film:
The Cell, Tarsem Singh