Promise Theory

Promise Theory PDF Author: Jan A Bergstra
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781696578554
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Promise Theory bridges the worlds of semantics and dynamics to describe scalable interactions between autonomous agents that form clusters and groups. It provides a broadly developed and semi-formal language, which builds on the mathematics of sets and graphs, and models intent and outcome in an impartial manner. The result is a theory that expresses a `chemistry' of cooperative behaviours for a wide range of systems, emphasizing how each new scale of cooperation leads to new phenomena and new promises.This book is aimed at scientists, philosophers, and engineers. It introduces readers to the key concepts in a practical manner, building on the foundation of voluntary cooperation as a ground state for all interacting systems. The book draws on many examples from the real world, with a particular emphasis on human-computer systems. `Promise Theory offers a methodology for generating certainty on top of uncertain foundations. This book presents the formal foundations of Promise Theory. It lays out the formalisms in a clear, concise, understandable way that makes them accessible to non-mathematicians. If you want to fully understand the conceptual mechanisms that underlie the distributed systems that make up today's "cloud services", you should start with this book.' -- Jeff Sussna, Author of Designing Delivery `[The authors] bring the rigor of theoretical physics to the science of cooperation. The application of this kind of rigor to the social sciences is a tremendous leap forward. [The] pioneering work on developing an algebra of cooperation is an idea whose time has come. A promise is not a guarantee. That said: I promise you that examining this book will stimulate your thinking about cooperation and collaboration at scale. This book covers a lot of ground: promises, impositions, invitations, games, and the peculiar dynamics of authority and authorization. Those looking for a book that applies the lessons of distributed computing to the new and emerging science of cooperation will find what they are looking for here.' -- Daniel Mezick, Author of The Culture Game and Inviting Leadership

Promise Theory

Promise Theory PDF Author: Jan A Bergstra
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781696578554
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
Promise Theory bridges the worlds of semantics and dynamics to describe scalable interactions between autonomous agents that form clusters and groups. It provides a broadly developed and semi-formal language, which builds on the mathematics of sets and graphs, and models intent and outcome in an impartial manner. The result is a theory that expresses a `chemistry' of cooperative behaviours for a wide range of systems, emphasizing how each new scale of cooperation leads to new phenomena and new promises.This book is aimed at scientists, philosophers, and engineers. It introduces readers to the key concepts in a practical manner, building on the foundation of voluntary cooperation as a ground state for all interacting systems. The book draws on many examples from the real world, with a particular emphasis on human-computer systems. `Promise Theory offers a methodology for generating certainty on top of uncertain foundations. This book presents the formal foundations of Promise Theory. It lays out the formalisms in a clear, concise, understandable way that makes them accessible to non-mathematicians. If you want to fully understand the conceptual mechanisms that underlie the distributed systems that make up today's "cloud services", you should start with this book.' -- Jeff Sussna, Author of Designing Delivery `[The authors] bring the rigor of theoretical physics to the science of cooperation. The application of this kind of rigor to the social sciences is a tremendous leap forward. [The] pioneering work on developing an algebra of cooperation is an idea whose time has come. A promise is not a guarantee. That said: I promise you that examining this book will stimulate your thinking about cooperation and collaboration at scale. This book covers a lot of ground: promises, impositions, invitations, games, and the peculiar dynamics of authority and authorization. Those looking for a book that applies the lessons of distributed computing to the new and emerging science of cooperation will find what they are looking for here.' -- Daniel Mezick, Author of The Culture Game and Inviting Leadership

Thinking in Promises

Thinking in Promises PDF Author: Mark Burgess
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491918497
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Imagine a set of simple principles that could help you to understand how parts combine to become a whole, and how each part sees the whole from its own perspective. If such principles were any good, it shouldn’t matter whether we’re talking about humans on a team, birds in a flock, computers in a datacenter, or cogs in a Swiss watch. A theory of cooperation ought to be pretty universal, so we should be able to apply it both to technology and to the workplace. Such principles are the subject of Promise Theory, and the focus of this insightful book. The goal of Promise Theory is to reveal the behavior of a whole from the sum of its parts, taking the viewpoint of the parts rather than the whole. In other words, it is a bottom-up, constructionist view of the world. Start Thinking in Promises and find out why this discipline works for documenting system behaviors from the bottom-up.

Contract as Promise

Contract as Promise PDF Author: Charles Fried
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190240180
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Contract as Promise is a study of the philosophical foundations of contract law in which Professor Fried effectively answers some of the most common assumptions about contract law and strongly proposes a moral basis for it while defending the classical theory of contract. This book provides two purposes regarding the complex legal institution of the contract. The first is the theoretical purpose to demonstrate how contract law can be traced to and is determined by a small number of basic moral principles. At the theory level the author shows that contract law does have an underlying, and unifying structure. The second is a pedagogic purpose to provide for students the underlying structure of contract law. At this level of doctrinal exposition the author shows that structure can be referred to moral principles. Together the two purposes support each other in an effective and comprehensive study of contract law. This second edition retains the original text, and includes a new Preface. It also includes a substantial new essay entitled Contract as Promise in the Light of Subsequent Scholarship--Especially Law and Economics which serves as a retrospective of the work accomplished in the last thirty years, while responding to present and future work in the field.

The Mathematical Imagination

The Mathematical Imagination PDF Author: Matthew Handelman
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823283852
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book offers an archeology of the undeveloped potential of mathematics for critical theory. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno first conceived of the critical project in the 1930s, critical theory steadfastly opposed the mathematization of thought. Mathematics flattened thought into a dangerous positivism that led reason to the barbarism of World War II. The Mathematical Imagination challenges this narrative, showing how for other German-Jewish thinkers, such as Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, and Siegfried Kracauer, mathematics offered metaphors to negotiate the crises of modernity during the Weimar Republic. Influential theories of poetry, messianism, and cultural critique, Handelman shows, borrowed from the philosophy of mathematics, infinitesimal calculus, and geometry in order to refashion cultural and aesthetic discourse. Drawn to the austerity and muteness of mathematics, these friends and forerunners of the Frankfurt School found in mathematical approaches to negativity strategies to capture the marginalized experiences and perspectives of Jews in Germany. Their vocabulary, in which theory could be both mathematical and critical, is missing from the intellectual history of critical theory, whether in the work of second generation critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas or in contemporary critiques of technology. The Mathematical Imagination shows how Scholem, Rosenzweig, and Kracauer’s engagement with mathematics uncovers a more capacious vision of the critical project, one with tools that can help us intervene in our digital and increasingly mathematical present.

Illusion of Order

Illusion of Order PDF Author: Bernard E. Harcourt
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674038318
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
This is the first book to challenge the broken-windows theory of crime, which argues that permitting minor misdemeanors, such as loitering and vagrancy, to go unpunished only encourages more serious crime. The theory has revolutionized policing in the United States and abroad, with its emphasis on policies that crack down on disorderly conduct and aggressively enforce misdemeanor laws. The problem, argues Bernard Harcourt, is that although the broken-windows theory has been around for nearly thirty years, it has never been empirically verified. Indeed, existing data suggest that it is false. Conceptually, it rests on unexamined categories of law abiders and disorderly people and of order and disorder, which have no intrinsic reality, independent of the techniques of punishment that we implement in our society. How did the new order-maintenance approach to criminal justice--a theory without solid empirical support, a theory that is conceptually flawed and results in aggressive detentions of tens of thousands of our fellow citizens--come to be one of the leading criminal justice theories embraced by progressive reformers, policymakers, and academics throughout the world? This book explores the reasons why. It also presents a new, more thoughtful vision of criminal justice.

The Promise of Salvation

The Promise of Salvation PDF Author: Martin Riesebrodt
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226713946
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Why has religion persisted across the course of human history? Secularists have predicted the end of faith for a long time, but religions continue to attract followers. Meanwhile, scholars of religion have expanded their field to such an extent that we lack a basic framework for making sense of the chaos of religious phenomena. To remedy this state of affairs, Martin Riesebrodt here undertakes a task that is at once simple and monumental: to define, understand, and explain religion as a universal concept. Instead of propounding abstract theories, Riesebrodt concentrates on the concrete realities of worship, examining religious holidays, conversion stories, prophetic visions, and life-cycle events. In analyzing these practices, his scope is appropriately broad, taking into consideration traditions in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, and Shinto. Ultimately, Riesebrodt argues, all religions promise to avert misfortune, help their followers manage crises, and bring both temporary blessings and eternal salvation. And, as The Promise of Salvation makes clear through abundant empirical evidence, religion will not disappear as long as these promises continue to help people cope with life.

Eros and Power

Eros and Power PDF Author: Haunani-Kay Trask
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
A careful synthesis of the leading radical feminist critics presented from an original point of view that makes their thought readily available to a general audience.

The Fleeting Promise of Art

The Fleeting Promise of Art PDF Author: Peter Uwe Hohendahl
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801469279
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A discussion of Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory is bound to look significantly different today than it would have looked when the book was first published in 1970, or when it first appeared in English translation in the 1980s. In The Fleeting Promise of Art, Peter Uwe Hohendahl reexamines Aesthetic Theory along with Adorno’s other writings on aesthetics in light of the unexpected return of the aesthetic to today’s cultural debates. Is Adorno’s aesthetic theory still relevant today? Hohendahl answers this question with an emphatic yes. As he shows, a careful reading of the work exposes different questions and arguments today than it did in the past. Over the years Adorno’s concern over the fate of art in a late capitalist society has met with everything from suspicion to indifference. In part this could be explained by relative unfamiliarity with the German dialectical tradition in North America. Today’s debate is better informed, more multifaceted, and further removed from the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and of the shadow of postmodernism. Adorno’s insistence on the radical autonomy of the artwork has much to offer contemporary discussions of art and the aesthetic in search of new responses to the pervasive effects of a neoliberal art market and culture industry. Focusing specifically on Adorno’s engagement with literary works, Hohendahl shows how radically transformative Adorno’s ideas have been and how thoroughly they have shaped current discussions in aesthetics. Among the topics he considers are the role of art in modernism and postmodernism, the truth claims of artworks, the function of the ugly in modern artworks, the precarious value of the literary tradition, and the surprising significance of realism for Adorno.

The Moral Commonwealth

The Moral Commonwealth PDF Author: Philip Selznick
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520089341
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
Establishes the intellectual foundations of a new movement in American thought: communitarianism. Emerging in part as a response to the excesses of American individualism, communitarianism seeks to restore the balance between individual rights and social responsibilities.

The Promise of Cinema

The Promise of Cinema PDF Author: Anton Kaes
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520962435
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 704

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Book Description
Rich in implications for our present era of media change, The Promise of Cinema offers a compelling new vision of film theory. The volume conceives of “theory” not as a fixed body of canonical texts, but as a dynamic set of reflections on the very idea of cinema and the possibilities once associated with it. Unearthing more than 275 early-twentieth-century German texts, this ground-breaking documentation leads readers into a world that was striving to assimilate modernity’s most powerful new medium. We encounter lesser-known essays by Béla Balázs, Walter Benjamin, and Siegfried Kracauer alongside interventions from the realms of aesthetics, education, industry, politics, science, and technology. The book also features programmatic writings from the Weimar avant-garde and from directors such as Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. Nearly all documents appear in English for the first time; each is meticulously introduced and annotated. The most comprehensive collection of German writings on film published to date, The Promise of Cinema is an essential resource for students and scholars of film and media, critical theory, and European culture and history.