Book details of 'The Cambridge Quintet: A Work of Scientific Speculation'

Title	The Cambridge Quintet: A Work of Scientific Speculation
Author(s)	John L. Casti
ISBN	0201328283
Language	English
Published	January 1998
Publisher	Perseus Publishing

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'The Cambridge Quintet: A Work of Scientific Speculation':

Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
Santa Fe Institute mathematician John Casti calls The Cambridge Quintet "scientific fiction," a work whose goal "is to present a lively and comprehensible exposition of the intellectual and emotional uncertainties involved in shaping the future of human knowledge." Casti sets the way-back machine for 1949, and imagines that C.P. Snow (pundit, civil servant, and physicist) hosts a dinner party in his rooms at Cambridge University to discuss the possibility that a machine could be made to think. The guests: philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, mathematician and computer demigod Alan Turing, physicist Erwin Schrödinger, and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane. Not surprisingly, the party comes to no single conclusion, but Casti's format provides a comprehensible, entertaining introduction to an important question, and to the ideas and personalities of some of the 20th century's most influential (and eccentric) thinkers.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
This book is a work of fiction attempting to teach fact. The quintet of characters all existed, but did not all have a connection with Cambridge, did not all know each other, and did not have the dinner party described herein. The premise is this: the British Foreign Office, interested in the possibilities being claimed for computing machinery, asks C. P. Snow, physicist, novelist, and (probably most important) civil servant, for an assessment of the real expectation of producing a "thinking" machine. Snow sets up a dinner party to discuss the issue and invites J. B. S. Haldane, geneticist and science popularizer; Alan Turing, mathematician and cryptographer; Erwin Schrodinger, physicist and quantum cat threatener; and Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher of mathematics and language. To this august group he poses the question: can machines be made to actually think? An immediate objection is that the FO wouldn't care. The question of what we can get computers to do that might be of use to us is vastly different from the more philosophical speculation about whether what we can get computers to do constitutes thought. Therefore, this dinner, and book, really serves as a kind of general metaphysical primer on the various positions regarding the issue of artificial intelligence. As well, and in many ways more interestingly, the debate serves as a pseudobiography of the characteristics and thought of the guests. Turing, of course, is used to champion the cause of AI. He presents his famous test, and sides firmly with the behaviorists: if it talks like a mind, and answers like a mind, then it is a mind. Wittgenstein is the almost religious opposition: machines can't think because they can't. The arguments presented are rather religious as well: thought transcends analysis and always will, even if symbols can be processed they still can't mean anything, and universal ideas do not exist. Even the most realistic point, that people learn language from social interactions with other people, could be immediately rebutted by pointing out that computers, like children, would be programmed by language using people. (That this argument is not raised in the book is odd, but perhaps no odder than the fact that Turing is allowed to assert that computers would be able to manipulate language with no requirement being made about the how.) Schrodinger is a witty dilettante, not really caring about the outcome but happy to add to or refine the ideas as they are put forth. Haldane is used to represent the pedantic and conservative view, vaguely affronted by the idea of machine thought and not really understanding the issues. Haldane's greatest moment seems to come when he proposes that an entity that can't get around much isn't much for thinking, either. (Stephen Hawking might have a few comments on that.) Snow is simply used as a moderator, to interrupt discussions to announce the serving of the next course, and to restate positions and send them off in different directions. The specific concepts that are presented (and, as Casti points out, many, including the "Chinese Room" and social Darwinism, postdate the dinner by some years) are not tendered in depth. The presentation is a kind of "computing Lite," giving a possibility of recognition, but nowhere near enough material for full understanding. I realize that this is an objection made frequently in regard to "popular" works on scientific topics, but in this case I really feel that a very slight increase in length could have increased tutorial utility many times. There is, for example, only one illustration of the Turing machine, where two or three cases might have given a better idea of the general nature of the device. In other places, the characters "then [go] on to explain" such and such, without the explanation ever actually being given. The book is easily readable, and quite entertaining at times. The material that is presented will hold no surprises for those who have dealt even peripherally with artificial intelligence, but for those completely outside, it does present some interesting discussion starters for the theoretical background. For our modern fat-free aesthetes, the dinner is apt to kill you. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998
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