Publication is planned for March 2004 | Paperback
| 419 pages
10 line diagrams 16 half-tones | ISBN: 0-521-60272-6
Quantum field theory is a powerful language
for the description
of the subatomic constituents of the physical
world and the laws
and principles that govern them. This book
contains up-to-date in-depth
analyses, by a group of eminent physicists
and philosophers of
science, of our present understanding of
its conceptual
foundations, of the reasons why this understanding
has to be
revised so that the theory can go further,
and of possible
directions in which revisions may be promising
and productive.
These analyses will be of interest to graduate
students and
research workers in physics who want to know
about the
foundational problems of their subject. The
book will also be of
interest to professional philosophers, historians
and
sociologists of science, because it contains
much material for
metaphysical and methodological reflections,
for historical and
cultural analyses, and for sociological analyses
of the way in
which various factors contribute to the way
the foundations are
revised.
Contents
Introduction: Conceptual issues in quantum
field theory; Part I.
Philosophers’ Interests in Quantum Field
Theory: 1. Why are we
philosophers interested in quantum field
theory; 2. Quantum field
theory and the philosopher; Part II. Three
Approaches to the
Foundations of Quantum Field Theory: 3. The
usefulness of a
general theory of quantized fields; 4. Effective
field theory in
condensed matter physics; 5. The triumph
and limitations of
quantum field theory; 6. Comments; Discussions;
Part III. Does
Quantum Field Theory Need a Foundation: 7.
Does quantum field
theory need a foundation?; Part IV. Mathematics,
Statistical
Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory: 8. Renormalization
group
theory: its basis and formulation in statistical
physics; 9.
Where does quantum field theory fit into
the big picture?; 10.
The unreasonable effectiveness of quantum
field theory; 11.
Comment: the quantum field theory of physics
and of mathematics;
Part V. Quantum Field Theory and Spacetime:
Introduction; 12.
Quantum field theory and spacetime: formalism
and reality; 13.
Quantum field theory of geometry; 14. ‘Localization’
in
quantum field theory: how much of QFT is
compatible with what we
know about spacetime; 15. Comments; VI. 16.
What is quantum field
theory and what did we think it was?; 17.
Comments; Discussions;
Part VII.Renormalization Group: 18. What
is fundamental physics?
A renormalization group perspective; 19.
Renormalization group:
an interesting yet puzzling idea; Part VIII.
Non-Abelian Gauge
Theory: 20. Gauge fields, gravity and Bohm’s
theory; 21. Is the
Aharonov-Bohm effect local?; Discussions;
Part IX. The Ontology
of Particles or Fields: 22. The ineliminable
classical face of
quantum field theory; 23. The logic of quanta;
24. Do Feynman
diagrams endorse a particle ontology?; 25.
On the ontology of
QFT; Part X. Panel Discussion.
Publication is planned for March 2004 | Paperback
| 210 pages
| ISBN: 0-521-60274-2
This book discusses the connection between
two areas of
semantics, namely the semantics of databases
and the semantics of
natural language, and links them via a common
view of the
semantics of time. It is argued that a coherent
theory of the
semantics of time is an essential ingredient
for the success of
efforts to incorporate more ‘real world’
semantics into
database models. This idea is a relatively
recent concern of
database research but it is receiving growing
interest. The book
begins with a discussion of database querying
which motivates the
use of the paradigm of Montague Semantics
and discusses the
details of the intensional logic ILs. This
is followed by a
description of the author’s own model, the
Historical
Relational Data Model (HRDM) which extends
the RDM to include a
temporal dimension. Finally the database
querying language QEHIII
is defined and examples illustrate its use.
A formal model for
the interpretation of questions is presented
in this work which
will form the basis for much further research.
Contents
1. Introduction; 2. Montague semantics; 3.
The HRDM model; 4.
Intensional logic and historical databases;
5. Overview of
English query language QE-III; 6. Formal
definition of QE-III; 7.
Examples from the QE-III fragment; 8. Summary
and conclusions
Publication is planned for March 2004 | Paperback
| 254 pages
| ISBN: 0-521-60277-7
Axiomatic categorical domain theory is crucial
for understanding
the meaning of programs and reasoning about
them. This book is
the first systematic account of the subject
and studies
mathematical structures suitable for modelling
functional
programming languages in an axiomatic (i.e.
abstract) setting. In
particular, the author develops theories
of partiality and
recursive types and applies them to the study
of the metalanguage
FPC; for example, enriched categorical models
of the FPC are
defined. Furthermore, FPC is considered as
a programming language
with a call-by-value operational semantics
and a denotational
semantics defined on top of a categorical
model. To conclude, for
an axiomatisation of absolute non-trivial
domain-theoretic models
of FPC, operational and denotational semantics
are related by
means of computational soundness and adequacy
results. To make
the book reasonably self-contained, the author
includes an
introduction to enriched category theory.
Reviews
‘ … the author succeeds in the difficult
task of finding the
right level of abstraction. Moreover, the
exposition is very
precise and technically outstanding.’ Daniele
Turi, Science of
Computer Programming (1998)
Contents
1. Introduction; 2. Categorical preliminaries;
3. Partiality; 4.
Order-enriched categories of partial maps;
5. Data types; 6.
Recursive types; 7. Recursive types in Cpo-categories;
8. FPC; 9.
Computational soundness and adequacy; 10.
Summary and future
research; Appendices; References; Indices.
Publication is planned for March 2004 | Paperback
| 197 pages
| ISBN: 0-521-60279-3
In 1989, Michael Rabin proposed a fundamentally
new approach to
the problems of fault-tolerant routing and
memory management in
parallel computation, based on the idea of
information dispersal.
Yuh-Dauh Lyuu developed this idea in a number
of new and exciting
ways in his PhD thesis. Further work has
led to extensions of
these methods to other applications such
as shared memory
emulations. This volume presents an extended
and updated printing
of Lyuu’s thesis. It gives a detailed treatment
of the
information dispersal approach to the problems
of fault-tolerance
and distributed representations of information
which have
resisted rigorous analysis by previous methods.
Contents
1. Introduction; 2. Information dispersal;
3. Interconnection
networks; 4. Fault-tolerant parallel routing
Part I; 5. Fault-tolerant
parallel routing Part II; 6. Node-disjoint
paths in graph theory;
7. Simulation of PRAM; 8. Asynchronism and
sensitivity; 9. On-line
maintenance; 10. A fault-tolerant parallel
computer;
Bibliography; Index.