On growing old(er)

March 15, 2014

OK: I’m no spring chicken, as my late stepmother would have put it.

But as I get older, on the blacker days, I’m left wondering whether the body will go, leaving me a mind that can still think, but a body that can’t do much else, or the mind will depart, leaving a body that’s able enough, but unable to do anything useful because the mind that energised it has gone. Or, of course, both.

On Wednesday, I went to the Neuroscience day at Edinburgh, which was good, if depressing (was I the oldest person there? No, but certainly in the last decile of the age spectrum – mostly it was bright young PhD students, and young post-docs, working on many aspects of neural degeneration: aye there’s money in that, timor mortis conturbat me). There was a good talk on the nature of neurodegeneration in dementia (Dr Tara Spires-Jones, Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems), but there was precious little in it about prevention or treatment: though, of course, understanding mechanism is ventral to developing treatments.

So what can an old Prof do? Drink is one possibility, a form of Lethe both available and legal, but the pubs here are depressing (or perhaps it’s just me this evening). I’m still working, writing, researching spectrotemporal Gabor filters for classifying sounds, for example, plus the odd bit of Neuroinformatics. But for how long? Are there plaques forming in my brain as I write this? Are there cancer cells in my prostate happily and indefinitely multiplying? Neither is a cheerful thought. Still, I’ve got some decent  malt whisky in the cupboard (if only I could remember which cupboard, or what a cupboard is, or what malt whisky is for, or … not funny) … Talisker and Lindt Chocolate: a wonderful mix. Feeling better already.

Nonetheless, I think I’d better go and sleep now. Morning’s usually seem better: if only because one has survived another night.

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The day the internet went down…

February 26, 2014

At about 12 noon  today, the connection from my University to the internet went down. Not only that, but the telephone connection went down as well. The University was cut off from electronic communication (except, of course, for using mobile phones, but even these don’t exactly work well inside the buildings). It’s stayed out all afternoon, and it’s still down (it’s 7.30 pm as I write this, at home, using my home internet connection).

Of course, I’ve been an academic long enough to remember the days before the web (though not before the internet itself: I’m not that old!). Some things are much easier with the web – looking up references, particularly citation indexes (remember the days of the ISI 9 point printed citation indexes, that could use up a whole afternoon tracking down who had referenced some particular important paper?), but some things are actually easier without the web. Actually doing research, that’s to say writing (in my case) some MATLAB software for identifying the natural statistics of sound, without getting sidetracked. And instead of looking on the web, looking back at what I had been doing in this area in 2004, for the Gordon Conference on Sensory Coding and the Natural Environment, and rediscovering the relevance of that work, after almost ten years.

My researcher started off by telling me how wonderful it was not to have external email coming in. But by the end of the afternoon, he’d changed his mind, and was missing the ability to quickly and easily find out things from the web. I had a good afternoon, writing code, and leaving some independent component analysis software running overnight on my desktop machine. But if it’s still not up tomorrow, I too will be missing it! It’s ages since I made any meeting arrangements except by email (and I’m meant to be going to Edinburgh, and to Derry/Londonderry, and I’m waiting to hear something from the Medical Research Council, and so on…

So even this old Luddite will be missing it if it’s still down in the morning!

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Deutsch B2

February 21, 2014

For a few years now, I’ve been attending German class at the Glasgow Goethe Institute. I had sat the B1 exam (and passed it too) in June 2012, and I sat the B2 exam a few weeks ago. I found it difficult. I’m much more used to being on the other side of the table, to setting and marking exams, rather than sitting them. Yesterday I found out that I had passers with a “Satisfactory” (Befriedigend) pass grade. I know that I’m not a linguist, but this matters to me: my good wife is German, but speaks effortlessly in perfect English, but her relatives and friends in Germany are happier to speak in German. And I was always embarrassed at being monoglot: I learned Latin at school, but rarely get the chance to speak that language. So I’ve been working at the German, which I find challenging, particularly the grammar (they have six words for “the”, and three genders for nouns, for example). Of course I realise that English presents its own difficulties, particularly in spelling, but also in word order. But the work is paying off – I can spend an evening chatting in German (not effortlessly, but I do understand more or less all that’s being said), and can read reasonably straightforward German novels, without too much difficulty. 

I didn’t need the exam for anything. But I’m more motivated by having something to strive for, like most people. And now? I think I’ll not try for the C1 exam, at least in the immediate future. But i will keep reading the novels, and talking to German colleagues in German whenever they’ll let me. Keep a blog in German? Vielleicht wäre das eine gute Idee!

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Professor Colin Ingram, died December 2013

January 5, 2014

I have been working with Colin for the best part of ten years, primarily on the CARMEN project. In November we went together to the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, and manned a stall about CARMEN in the Convention Centre there together. In January he was to come to visit me to discuss how we might take the CARMEN project forward. It was a shock to hear of his untimely death in mid December, aged only 53. He was a very good scientist, and a friend as well: we’d shared quite a number of beers, as well as worked on the project from writing the proposal together in a small windowless office in Newcastle, to being interviewed by the Research Councils, to making it actually work, and getting a second round of funding for it. He was a major figure in the UK in Neuroinformatics – quite apart from being co-dirctor of the Institute of Neuroscience in Newcastle University. I can’t quite believe he’s gone, and my heart goes out  both to his wife and children, and to the people that he worked closely with in Newcastle.

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St Andrew’s Night, Dunblane

December 1, 2013

Yesterday was St Andrew’s Day: 30 November. St Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland (and many other places too), though there’s no major official celebration of it as such. After the helicopter accident in Glasgow, celebrations in the main square there, George Square were cancelled. But we’re 35 miles away, and we had been asked to play a session of (mainly) Scottish music in a local bar, the Dunblane Hotel. Now, there’s a wee crowd of us who play every Tuesday night, fiddlers, whistles, guitars and a singer or two, and myself accompanying (mostly) on my electric piano – and there’s some of the pub’s clientele who seem to enjoy it. And we’d been asked to play on the Saturday, for St Andrew’s Night. So we did, and a good night was had by all. Lots of Burns songs, lots of fiddle tunes, plus the occasional more modern song and tune as well. Good crack, and even some (excellent!) singing by a gentleman visiting from Kingston, London.

Perhaps I drank a little more than I’m used to (by the feel of my head this morning, I’m sure I did), but I really was celebrating. Not only had my University finally put the awful and bloated research excellence framework (REF) to bed, but I also officially stood down as Head of Computing Science and Mathematics at Stirling University. Not that I’m retiring yet, but now I’m just plain Professor. I’ve moved to a smaller office (and thrown out more than 100 Kilos of paper and many books), and I think I feel lighter overall. As my earlier blog post says, I need to think what I want to do now. And in the process of moving, I found several sets of paperwork for projects started, but never completed – perhaps one paper had been written on the area, but then the work dropped due to pressure of the management task, or a proposal started but never submitted. So I’m a bit spoilt for choice about where to start. Decisions, decisions…but for today I’ll keep equivocating about what to really work on first in  my nice new office…

And today? I think tea (lots of it) is about right, sand an eschewing of alcohol. My wife wondered if St Andrew’s Day might be a public holiday in an independent Scotland: I’d say yes,  but I’d make the holiday last from sunset to sunset, starting on the 30th, to permit sore heads to be nursed at home!

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San Diego: SfN 2013 and Mariza!

November 10, 2013

In San Diego for the annual event of the Society for Neuroscience, SfN 2013, at the Convention Center here: the meeting really only started this afternoon, and doesn’t really get going till tomorrow, but tonight I had a ball! I’m staying in 7th avenue, a little bit out of the downtown area, and on my way back here (after taking in the afternoon poster session), I released that I was just around the corner from the Symphony Hall. So I wandered in, to see what might be on this week. And tonight was Mariza (whom I’d not heard of), singing Fado (which I had heard of, but not heard much of).

And oh, can she sing! Fado is really a genre for singing in a bar or a club, rather than a concert hall, but Mariza made the hall feel like a music club. I don’t know much about Fado, but the vocal style seems to me influenced by North Africa, and perhaps Sephardic music as well: the guitar, Portuguese guitar, and (semi-acoustic) bass guitar were wonderful accompaniments,  added to by a drum kit. The players are all themselves very accomplished musicians, but the start of the show was still Mariza. She had the audience in the palm of her outstretched hand. And the style, the style of this tall lithe girl with such expressive arms and hands, and the singing. The range, the ornamentation, and the silences, yes the silences, stretched almost to breaking point – to the point if the audience were wondering if it was the end, or… and the then the sining again. At one point she and the band went acoustic, but her voice was just as strong – stronger perhaps, if not as loud, stronger because of the immediacy of the unmediated sound. The audience gave her two standing ovations: what more can I say?

But one thing to add. A few weeks ago I was in Portugal, in a resort on the south coast, at a (different) conference. I didn’t really hear any Portuguese music there: I had to go 6,000 miles to San Diego to hear it! But it was worth it!

Tomorrow, it’s back to the conference!

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On standing down from heading an (academic) Department.

October 26, 2013

At the end of November 2013, I stand down from heading up a Department, a job I’ve been doing for the last five and a half years. I’m not retiring, just becoming plain “Prof”, and no longer “Prof and Head of Department”. There’s about 20 academics in the Department, plus quite a few others, secretaries, technicians (well, half a technician), computer support staff, so heading them up has been quite a big job. Not that I’ve stopped doing research or teaching, but they have had to take second place often to the requirements of the Headship quite a lot of the time. It feels like something of a wrench, even if it is certainly time to stand down.

In fact, it really feels as though I’m taking up a new job. I like my successor, and I’m sure he’ll do well, and the next month will be spent doing some sort of handover. Then I’ll have to get rid of a great deal of paper from my office (and, of course, I’ll be moving office too: not exactly sure where to, but not too far).  And then?

Now I have the chance to pursue what I want to do a academically. I have a semester of research leave booked from February next year, but I really need to plan. But what is it that I want to do? I know the three areas of research that I work on, three areas I publish in from time to time: but I fear that without the limitation of continuous disturbance (“Can I just speak to you for a minute…”), I’ll flit from one to the other to the other without achieving anything. I’m very conscious that limitation has always helped me forward: can I now show the maturity (I’m surely old enough!) to work in a disciplined way without the external pressures to force me to?

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Additional thoughts on Zalamea’s book, and Pythagoreanism

August 18, 2013

Does Zalamea’s book offer us a new Pythagorean perspective? The mixture of his eidal, quiddital and archeal perspectives suggests to me a centrality of Mathematics that harks back to a Pythagorean viewpoint. Such a viewpoint is interesting to me, partly because it proffers a God with explicatory capabilities (the Universe is as it is because it conforms to Mathematics – or perhaps Mathematics is as it is because that’s how the Universe is): but, unless one can find a way to include ethics within Mathematics, it’s not at all clear that such a new Pythagorean perspective says anything about ethics. Indeed, perhaps it doesn’t say anything more than that the Universe is inextricably tied to Mathematics. And that is not really anything novel.

Yet the move away from a philosophy of Mathematics that makes Mathematics (in some sense) a tautology means that Mathematics and its philosophy is something more than just a human construction.

And perhaps there is still more: If I think of Zalamea’s quiddital Mathematics, I see the handiwork of God, whether in biology, or physics, or any other branch of science. But if I look at eidal or archeal Mathematics, I see possibilities that might or might not be in the actual Universe. I see connections between the possible workings of the Universe: perhaps we see into the mind of this Pythagorean God.

A Pythagorean God is not a deity that helps us directly to live our lives. It’s not a God in the usual sense in Abrahamic religions. A Pythagorean God is more in the background, more about the unity of the Universe, more about the underlying structure.

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Zalamea and the Philosophy of Mathematics.

August 17, 2013

My holiday reading was F. Zalamea’s Synthetic philosophy of contemporary Mathematics, a recent (2012) translation of Zalamea’s 2009 “Filosofía sintética de las matemáticas contemporáneas”, translated by Zachary L. Fraser. I have to admire the translation first: my only other language is German, and I cannot imagine understanding the subtleties of this philosophical  book in anything except my native tongue. It’s readable, though it takes commitment, and some background in Mathematics (I have a degree in it, dating from 1973, but though I am an academic in Computing I really haven’t  studied Mathematics since then). I note that Tzuchien Tho describes the book as “dense bomb of a book” in his Almagestum Contemporarium.

I wish I had read this book earlier. Indeed, I wish it had been translated earlier. Why?

I’ve spent some time trying to understand Category Theory in the last few years, particularly as part of the INBIOSA project, which produced a book. The largest single element in that book  is the INBIOSA white paper, entitled  Stepping Beyond the Newtonian Paradigm in Biology: Towards an Integrable Model of Life: Accelerating Discovery in the Biological Foundations of Science. In this paper we (there’s 17 authors) discuss new ideas that attempt to move understanding of the foundations of biology towards something that might help to bring some mathematical  approach to the functioning of biological systems, towards something that might help explain living material in terms that aren’t just the biochemical equations, diffusion etc. As part of that we were looking for an approach that transcended the logical mathematics, used in what we were aware of the mathematical philosophy. One of our number, Ehresmann, was pointing us towards Category Theory, and certainly I , and presumably others too tried to understand what it was that Category Theory was really bringing to the area.

Now I’ve read Zalamea’s book I have a much better idea, not of the basics of category theory, but of why it was so important. It is a way of expressing how Mathematics works, of how Mathematics can be about Mathematics. Zalamea lights a way towards a new philosophy of Mathematics that brings together the constructive imagination of what he calls eidal Mathematics with the Physically based quiddital Mathematics, and the idea of Mathematics of mathematics in  archeal Mathematics (the italicised terms are Zaladea’s). He sees the recent mathematics of Grothendieck and (many) others as a revolution as important as Einstein’s in Physics, and sees this as requiring a related revolution in Mathematical Philosophy (or perhaps he sees this revolution as actually starting first, as he sees it based in the works of Lautmann who died in 1944, when Grothendieck was only 16).

Be that as it may, I think (and here I am but seeing through a glass darkly) that this different view of Mathematics can underlie a different view of biology. This richer philosophy seems to me to suggest that Mathematics can do more than describe the physical Universe: it can be the engine of that Universe, explaining how it operates. This is nothing new in Physics, but it is something new in biology. Can such a philosophy underlie a change in biology as critical as that of Einstein in Physics? Can it take the reductionist understanding supplied by systems biology, and show how this actually drives the biology? Can it go further, can we use the mathematics of Mathematics to understand how a Universe can become aware of itself? Can such a construction really help us to understand our construction of reality?

I’m back from holiday now. I’m writing this before all the other work that running a University’ Department (well, Division) takes over from trying to think about what really matters. In reality, I’d like to spend a month re-reading Zalamea, and following up more of the references. Then talking to the other authors of the the INBIOSA white paper, and trying to integrate these ideas into it (one month seems rather conservative here). But rather than simply writing it in my notebook, I’m putting it on my blog, so I can try to discuss it openly.

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On LinkedIn

July 1, 2013

The Cabots are now connected to the Lodges, and the Lodges are now connected to God. (with apologies to John Collins Bossidy (1860-1928))

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