Table of Contents
Preface ix
I Yang 1
1 Shadows on the Wall 3
1.1 Nerds 3
1.2 Artificial and Natural 7
1.3 Design and Discovery 10
1.4 Engineering and Science 16
2 Inventing Laws of Nature 27
2.1 The Unknown Knowns 27
2.2 Models of Nature 31
2.3 Models Are Wrong 41
3 Models of Models of Models of Models of Things 47
3.1 Technological Tapestries 47
3.2 Complexity Simplified 49
3.3 Transitivity of Models 53
3.4 Reductionism 58
4 Hardware Is Ephemeral 61
4.1 Hard and Soft 61
4.2 Semiconductors 63
4.3 Digital Switches 65
4.4 Logic Gates 66
4.5 Logic Diagrams 69
4.6 Digital Machines 71
5 Software Endures 75
5.1 Self-Scaffolding 75
5.2 Instruction Set Architectures 78
5.3 Programming Languages 81
5.4 Operating Systems 90
5.5 Libraries, Languages, and Dialects 91
5.6 The Cloud 96
6 Evolution and Revolution 101
6.1 Normal Engineering 101
6.2 Crisis and Failure 103
6.3 Crisis and Opportunity 113
6.4 Models in Crisis 115
II Yin 123
7 Information 125
7.1 Pessimism Becomes Optimism 125
7.2 Information-Processing Machines 127
7.3 Measuring Information 129
7.4 Continuous Information 134
8 The Limits of Software 143
8.1 Universal Machines? 143
8.2 Undecidability 147
8.3 Cardinality 155
8.4 Digital Physics? 161
9 Symbiosis 171
9.1 The Notion of a Continuum 171
9.2 The Impossible Becomes Possible 174
9.3 Digital Psyche? 178
9.4 Symbiotic Partnership 184
9.5 Incompleteness 186
10 Determinism 195
10.1 Laplace's Demon 195
10.2 The Butterfly Effect 203
10.3 Incompleteness of Determinism 208
10.4 The Hard and the Soft of Determinism 215
11 Probability and Possibility 219
11.1 The Bayesians and the Frequentists 219
11.2 Continuums, Again 229
11.3 Impossibility and Improbability 232
12 Final Thoughts 237
12.1 Dualism 237
12.2 Obstacles 240
12.3 Autonomy and Intelligence 247
Bibliography 251
Index 259