Arjen Sevenster - Böcker

This book treats modal logic as a theory, with several subtheories, such as completeness theory, correspondence theory, duality theory and transfer theory and is intended as a course in modal logic for students who have had prior contact with modal logic and who wish to study it more deeply. It presupposes training in mathematical or logic. Very little specific knowledge is presupposed, most results which are needed are proved in this book.

The book, suitable as both an introductory reference and as a text book in the rapidly growing field of topological graph theory, models both maps (as in map-coloring problems) and groups by means of graph imbeddings on sufaces. Automorphism groups of both graphs and maps are studied. In addition connections are made to other areas of mathematics, such as hypergraphs, block designs, finite geometries, and finite fields. There are chapters on the emerging subfields of enumerative topological graph theory and random topological graph theory, as well as a chapter on the composition of English church-bell music. The latter is facilitated by imbedding the right graph of the right group on an appropriate surface, with suitable symmetries. Throughout the emphasis is on Cayley maps: imbeddings of Cayley graphs for finite groups as (possibly branched) covering projections of surface imbeddings of loop graphs with one vertex. This is not as restrictive as it might sound; many developments in topological graph theory involve such imbeddings.

The approach aims to make all this interconnected material readily accessible to a beginning graduate (or an advanced undergraduate) student, while at the same time providing the research mathematician with a useful reference book in topological graph theory. The focus will be on beautiful connections, both elementary and deep, within mathematics that can best be described by the intuitively pleasing device of imbedding graphs of groups on surfaces.

The aim of the present work is two-fold. Firstly it aims at a giving an account of many existing algorithms for calculating with finite-dimensional Lie algebras. Secondly, the book provides an introduction into the theory of finite-dimensional Lie algebras. These two subject areas are intimately related. First of all, the algorithmic perspective often invites a different approach to the theoretical material than the one taken in various other monographs (e.g., [42], [48], [77], [86]). Indeed, on various occasions the knowledge of certain algorithms allows us to obtain a straightforward proof of theoretical results (we mention the proof of the Poincaré-Birkhoff-Witt theorem and the proof of Iwasawa's theorem as examples). Also proofs that contain algorithmic constructions are explicitly formulated as algorithms (an example is the isomorphism theorem for semisimple Lie algebras that constructs an isomorphism in case it exists). Secondly, the algorithms can be used to arrive at a better understanding of the theory. Performing the algorithms in concrete examples, calculating with the concepts involved, really brings the theory of life.

This is a comprehensive introduction into the method of inverse spectra - a powerful method successfully employed in various branches of topology.

The notion of an inverse sequence and its limits, first appeared in the well-known memoir by Alexandrov where a special case of inverse spectra - the so-called projective spectra - were considered. The concept of an inverse spectrum in its present form was first introduced by Lefschetz. Meanwhile, Freudental, had introduced the notion of a morphism of inverse spectra. The foundations of the entire method of inverse spectra were laid down in these basic works.

Subsequently, inverse spectra began to be widely studied and applied, not only in the various major branches of topology, but also in functional analysis and algebra. This is not surprising considering the categorical nature of inverse spectra and the extraordinary power of the related techniques.

Updated surveys (including proofs of several statements) of the Hilbert cube and Hilbert space manifold theories are included in the book. Recent developments of the Menger and Nöbeling manifold theories are also presented.

This work significantly extends and updates the author's previously published book and has been completely rewritten in order to incorporate new developments in the field.

Making Sense of Inner Sense'Terra cognita' is terra incognita. It is difficult to find someone not taken abackand fascinated by the incomprehensible but indisputable fact: there are material systems which are aware of themselves. Consciousness is self-cognizing code. During homo sapiens's relentness and often frustrated search for self-understanding various theories of consciousness have been and continue to be proposed. However, it remains unclear whether and at what level the problems of consciousness and intelligent thought can be resolved. Science's greatest challenge is to answer the fundamental question: what precisely does a cognitive state amount to in physical terms?Albert Einstein insisted that the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple and can be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. When one thinks about the complexities which present themselves in modern physics and even more so in the physics of life, one may wonder whether Einstein really meant what he said. Are we to consider the fundamental problem of the mind, whose understanding seems to lie outside the limits of the mind, to be essentially simple too? Knowledge is neither automatic nor universally deductive. Great new ideas are typically counterintuitive and outrageous, and connecting them by simple logical steps to existing knowledge is often a hard undertaking. The notion of a tensor was needed to provide the general theory of relativity; the notion of entropy had to be developed before we could get full insight into the laws of thermodynamics; the notice of information bit is crucial for communication theory, just as the concept of a Turing machine is instrumental in the deep understanding of a computer. To understand something, consciousness must reach an adequate intellectual level, even more so in order to understand itself. Reality is full of unending mysteries, the true explanation of which requires very technical knowledge, often involving notions not given directly to intuition. Even though the entire content and the results of this study are contained in the eight pages of the mathematical abstract, it would be unrealistic and impractical to suggest that anyone can gain full insight into the theory that presented here after just reading abstract.In our quest for knowledge we are exploring the remotest areas of the macrocosm and probing the invisible particles of the microcosm, from tiny neutrinos and strange quarks to black holes and the Big Bang. But the greatest mystery is very close to home: the greatest mystery is human consciousness. The question before us is whether the logical brain has evolved to a conceptual level where it is able to understand itself.