IS Group update

The most recent meeting of the IS Group took place on Nov. 17, 2007, at the home of Mark Tiede. The topic was recursion and was a continuation of earlier IS Group discussions of recursion and language. The readings can be found in the "Again with the Recursion" entry from October 11. Following our discussion, we ended up watching Hot Fuzz. The next meeting, which has not yet been scheduled, will be on Systems Biology. The main reading for this will be:

Uri Alon, An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits. Chapman & Hall, 2006.

Supplementary reading may include:

Martin A. Nowak, Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the equations of life. Harvard University Press, 2006.

We may end up devoting a future meeting to the Nowak book, depending on how our next meeting goes. We will also spend a little time at the next meeting discussing a draft manuscript by Simon Levy on modeling recursion in cognitive neuroscience. We are open to suggestions for the featured video, cuisine, and preferred location. If you have any ideas, contact Philip Rubin.

Again with the Recursion!

IS Group meeting

The next IS Group meeting with take place on Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007, at the home of Mark Tiede in Madison, Connecticut. We will gather at 6:00 pm for a pre-meeting dinner.

Theme: Again with the Recursion!

Many issues went unexplored at the last IS group meeting and Elliot Saltzman felt that it would be useful to go over certain of these in greater detail. An example is recursion. Thus, our next meeting will be a more detailed discussion of 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? (PDF file). Cognition, 95(2), 201-236.
  
  
• W. Tecumseh Fitch, Marc D. Hauser and Noam Chomsky. (2005). The evolution of the language faculty: Clarifications and implications. (PDF file). Cognition, 97, 179-210.
  
  
• An additional unpublished appendix : N. Chomsky, M. D. Hauser and W. T. Fitch. Appendix: The Minimalist Program. (PDF file).
  

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:

This is up to you. Mark Tiede has suggested taking a look at The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher.

Video:

Simon has suggested Tears of the Black Tiger. Mark has suggested Hot Fuzz.

Food:

Pizza