Emperor's New Mind [Paperback]

Penrose (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 1994

The proponents of artificial intelligence want to prove that it is only a matter of time before computers will be doing everything that a human mind can do. They take it for granted that pleasure and pain, the appreciation of beauty and humour, consciousness and free will are capacities that a computer will display once the appropriate programs of algorithms have been developed. Some disagree, because although electronic computers can calculate very rapidly, that does not make them understand what they are doing any more than, for example, an abacus does. The author puts forward his view that there is some facet of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. He shows the physical and mathematical ideas that are the background to his argument - from Turing machines, algorithms and the Chinese room, via quantum mechanics, cosmology and relativity to the structure of the brain, inspiration and consciousness itself.

Product Details

• Paperback: 602 pages
• Publisher: Random House UK (February 27, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099771705
• ISBN-13: 978-0099771708
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,744,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A highly original book by a mathematical visionary., July 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Emperors New Mind (Audio Cassette)

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.