Madison
Chaos and Complex Systems Seminar
Fall 2012 Seminars
All seminars are Tuesday at 12:05 pm in 4274 Chamberlin except as
noted. Refreshments will be served.
Short List
- Sep 4, 2012 - Moe Hirsch, Mathematics
- Sep 11, 2012 - Jin-Yi Cai, Computer Sciences
- Sep 18, 2012 - Luigi Puglielli, Medicine
- Sep 25, 2012 -
- Oct 2, 2012 -
- Oct 9, 2012 -
- Oct 16, 2012 -
- Oct 23, 2012 -
- Oct 30, 2012 -
- Nov 6, 2012 - Jed Colquhoun, Horticulture
- Nov 13, 2012 -
- Nov 20, 2012 -
- Nov 27, 2012 -
- Dec 4, 2012 -
- Dec 11, 2012 -
Abstracts
September 4, 2012
Myths of mathematics
Moe Hirsch, UW Department of Mathematics
I will give my informal and rather half-baked views on what math
"is" and how it is used ---mostly > provocative quotations from
well known scientists and philosophers, some of which even make
sense.
September 11, 2012
Computational complexity theory --- The world of P and NP
Jin-Yi Cai, UW Department of Computer Sciences
Date TBD
The linguistic structure of REM dreams
Art Schmaltz, Prairie State College
Sixty years of neurological search into the structure and function
of REM dreaming reveals a process of enormous complexity. The
discovery that dreaming is such a complex system presents a
challenge for a theory of dreaming. A proposed unified theory of
dreaming postulates that dreaming is structured like language.
- Outline the main structural features of natural human
languages, focusing on grammar.
- Outline the main structural features of REM dreaming from a
proposed linguistic perspective.
- A comparative linguistic analysis between English and West
Greenlandic Inuit reveals how the proto-linguistic features of
dreaming can be obvious or obscured in any given natural
language.
The final argument is made that it is easier to grasp the linguistic
structures of dreaming in some languages as opposed to others. The
degree of correspondence between the grammar of dreaming to the
grammar of the native tongue varies across the world's languages.