This is six months late. But I still want to blog about it. Greg Gore, the publisher of Raymond Smullyan’s “Rambles Through My Library” wrote to me in August 2009 for permission to post my blog review excerpt of Smullyan’s book on the Praxis website.

I was of course more than happy to have the privilege of helping to promote Raymond Smullyan’s books. Hence, my short review appeared here.

Other than reading his books, this was the closest encounter I’ve come to being in contact with Raymond Smullyan.

In my excitement, I wrote a long rambling email to Greg:

How wonderful to hear from a publisher of one of my favourite writers! Your email made my day for two reasons. First, I’m always pleased to receive email from people who chance upon my blog and second, I would love to promote Raymond’s works.

So, yes, please post an excerpt of my review with a link back to my blog on your website. I love Raymond’s works and wish they would be more widely read and I would be very happy to promote his writings in any way. In fact, I love his works so much, I try to collect all his books, including his puzzle books, which unfortunately, I can’t read like his normal books since much more time is required. His puzzle books are perpetually on my “to read when I have a lot of time” list.

I’ve already bought “A Spiritual Journey” and am reading parts of it. I’ve been meaning to write to Raymond for many years but I don’t have his email address to tell him how much I enjoy his books and his humour. He mentioned in “A Spiritual Journey” that he felt complimented when his mother told him Bertrand Russell’s writings reminded her of Raymond. One of my close friends said that Raymond’s works remind him of me due to a certain mischievousness in his writings. I was very pleased to hear that although I know full well I’m no where near the brilliance of Raymond.

Could I please trouble you to convey my great enjoyment of Raymond’s works to him? His mischievous humour often makes me laugh out aloud when reading his books.

Could you tell him he has a fan in Singapore, someone who was a former philosophy student. I know that at least one of the National University of Singapore’s former philosopher faculty staff also reads Raymond Smullyan. This same staff also used an article by Arthur Smullyan (not sure if there is any relationship between the two) in a philosophy of language course that I attended many years ago.

…

Many thanks again for your email and the privilege to promote Raymond’s books. If and when Raymond publishes another book it would be a great joy for me to be among the first to know (I know he has another book that will be out in Feb next year).

p.s. If you are interested, you can find other entries about Raymond on my blog if you search for “Raymond Smullyan”, however these entries probably refer to works published by other publishers.

Thanks to a loan from YY several months back, I am currently reading Gaisi Takeuti’s “Memoirs of a Proof Theorist“. This is a compilation of English-translated articles on Godel originally written by Takeuti in Japanese. Unfortunately, the book suffers from some awkward English sentences. The grammar of some sentences could also be further improved. I hope that some editors will improve on this book in future.

I do not have any “genuine understanding” (to use Takeuti’s term) of logic and many of the technical areas discussed in the book are beyond me. Nonetheless, I’ve always had an interest in mathematical logic (which has a history of close association with the treatment of philosophical paradoxes) since my university days and I enjoy reading about famous logicians and their weird and interesting results.

In Takeuti’s book, I enjoyed reading anecdotes and memories of Godel. It was very clear to me that one of the main reasons for this book was for Takeuti to set the record right about the general and mistaken impression of Godel as an “eccentric” or “misanthrope” in view of his social reticence, which Takeuti attributes to Godel’s weak health. It is well known that Godel refused medical treatment in his last days, but the following incident concerning Godel is not well known (See pages 110 and 111) :

In 1970, an acquaintance of his introduced him to a famous doctor in New York and he received treatment. This doctor administered narcotics without informing him, which profoundly upset him, because he believed that narcotics damage the brain. This treatment was an extremely unpleasant experience and I imagine he was afraid more than anything else that it might be repeated.

In an Appendix called “On Godel’s Continuum Hypothesis”, Takeuti also revealed:

Godel sent a five page memo to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. It was hand written, with nonsensical definitions and style, and it gives an impression of doodle. The reason why this happened is that Godel came under the care of a famous medical doctor in New York, who prescribed narcotics without informing him. Under the influence of narcotics, Godel believed he had obtained a beautiful solution of a longstanding question, which he wrote out and submitted.

In Takeuti’s writing, it was also clear to me Takeuti is a frank and humble person, compared to say Gregory Chaitin. His frankness is is some times funny. For example, in article recounting his reading of “Godel Remembered”, he writes of Kreisel as follows:

The last article is “Godel’s excursions into intuitionistic logic” by Georg Kreisel. This is a big article occupying 122 pages of a booklet of 186 pages. It has played a substantial role in giving the booklet the style of a book. Typically for Kreisel, it contains too much information in various forms. It is a bit dense to read through, even for me, whose specialty is close to his. Therefore, I read here and there, looking for parts of interest to me. One is Godel’s view of Gentzen, in which can be read: He often called Gentzen a better logician than himself.

Here are some passages that I found amusing (the first is found on page 3 and typical of conversations by mathematicians):

Now, returning to my fundamental conjecture, Godel appeared to think that, if its proof were to be extremely impredicative, then there would be a counter-example and the state of things similar to the Incompleteness Theorem would hold. In fact, what is interesting about my fundamental conjecture is that, if one admitted an extremely impredicative demonstration, then it would become trivial. When I told his to Godel, he was very surprised and he seemed to become more interested in the problem. Godel asked me if I had published that fact, and I replied that I had not because it was trivial. He then said: “Publish it by all means.! Many people will change their views on your conjecture.” As a result, I published a trivial article against my will.

Here is a funny anecdote about Raymond Smullyan on page 4:

Thanks to Godel, during the two years of my stay at the Institute, many logicians such as Bernays, Schutte, and Feferman were there. Smullyan and Putnam were at the University as well. They held a logic seminear every week, and the logic group was very lively. In particular, there were two proof-theorists in the rare Gentzen style together (Schutte and Takeuti), and so we were were high-spirited. Smullyan would make me laugh by referring to us in a joking manner: “Is your name TakeSchutte?”. It is my sense that the energy and morale of logicians in Princeton was due to Godel’s kindness, cheerfulness and warmth.

Here is another amusing passage on Page 108:

The last article is “Godel’s impression on students of logic in the 1930s by Stephen C. Kleene. His writing is very typical of Kleene.

Unless there is some fault of the translation, this seems to me to be an absolutely “trivial” observation.

Last night, I finished reading Raymond Smullyan’s “Rambles Through My Library”. I was absolutely sure I would have enjoyed the book even more if I was in a more idle mood.

In the rambling and distracted style of the book, I will share some passages from the book and my reactions to these passages. Smullyan’s book is largely a commentary and reaction to book passages he enjoyed. Well, this post is largely a commentary and response to Smullyan’s commentary and reaction to book passages he enjoyed. I will quote three passages. Except for the first passage, which reminded me of something not so delightful, all of the other 2 passages I’ve quoted were absolutely delightful.

First this passage (page 75), which was mentioned in passing, in a discussion about John Burrough’s Journal that reminded me of “Underground” by Haruki Murakami:

…I read some time ago a review of a Buddhist movie (called, I believe, Dream Life), which unfortunately I have never been able to catch. I read that when the Buddhist girl came from India to America and saw all these crazy cult religions going around, she shook her and said: “When people no longer believe in anything, they are ready to believe anything!”

In his book containing interviews of victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack Murakami had also included interviews with the Aum Shinrikyo members. I recalled that it was eerie seeing myself in some of the words of those being interviewed, words that reflected disillusionment with a soulless materialist society and the desire to seek something more spiritually fulfilling. It was also eerie also to read about the amount of energy and self-sacrifice spent on misguided endeavors, such as ignoring and replacing one’s conscience with rationalisations to justifying doing harm to others. Such tragedies arose out of a certain steely mental determination to progress on the path and a firm misguided belief that certain actions lead to spiritual progress and liberation and that one must perform those actions, no matter difficult they were. Implicit was also that the degree of difficulty of the endeavor and the corresponding struggle reflected one’s own spiritual inadequacy and was something to be overcome. When overcome, it leads one to spiritual liberation. How perverse! Good intentions lead to bad outcomes when one abdicates one’s own independent judgement. Instead of the self-mastery that leads to spiritual progress, the effort is expended on overcoming one’s conscience. Fearsome indeed!

Next, this passage is from A. Edward Newton, an obscure book collector now largely forgotten (page 79) that I like a lot because it gives me a wonderful excuse to buy more books than I have time to read:

I do not much use any library except my own. I early formed the habit of buying books, and, thank God, I have never lost it. Authors living and dead – dead for the most part – afford me my greatest enjoyment, and it is my pleasure to buy more books than I can read. Who was it who said, “I hold the buying of more books than one can peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul’s reaching towards infinity?”.

Now, no one (myself included) should stop my soul from reaching towards infinity!

I’m not as good as the idler I aspire to be so I only have time for one more passage that I read in Smullyan’s book. It encapsulates my life philosophy and is from a poem by Po Yuchien (page 157):

I’m too lazy to read the Taoist classics, for Tao doesn’t reside in the books; Too lazy to look over the sutras, for they go no deeper in Tao than its looks; The essence of Tao consists in a void, clear, and cool, But what is this void except being the whole day like a fool? Too lazy am I to read poetry, for when I stop, the poetry will be gone; Too lazy to play on the ch’in, for music dies on the string where it’s born; Too lazy to drink wine, for beyond the drunkard’s dream there are rivers and lakes; Too lazy to play chess, for besides the pawns there are other stakes; Too lazy to look at the hills and streams, for there is a painting within my heart’s portals; Too lazy to face the wind and the moon, for within me is the Isle of the Immortals; Too lazy to attend to worldly affairs, for inside me are my hut and my possessions; Too lazy to watch the changing of the seasons, for within me are heavenly processions. Pine trees may decay and rocks may rot; but I shall always remain what I am. Is it not fitting that I call this the Hall of Idleness?

Some Rambles Inspired by Taoism and Zen:

Ah how wonderful to see Raymond Smullyan on youtube.

I wonder if we will get to see a video of his logic lectures.

Bach Organ Prelude and Fugue (Clip 2 of 7)

Bach Organ Prelude and Fugue (Clip 3 of 7)

I also wish to record some other events before the year ends.

This year is a year of reunion. Many friends I’ve not seen for years, such as my ex-neighbours from my teens, I finally got to meet a few months back. I also recently found an ex-classmate whom I’ve lost touch with since I was 16 on facebook. Amazing!

I bought the POD XT Live on the last day before the new Goods & Services tax was raised from 5% to 7%. It was an excellent buy. All thanks to Chris’ recommendation. Unfortunately, the POX X3 Live has just been released a few months back and I don’t use the POD XT Live as much since I’m learning jazz now and use mainly a clean tone.

I joined Jimmy Bruno’s online guitar institute. It was the best decision I’ve made so far on non-classical guitar instruction. If you have an interest in jazz guitar or would like to learn how to improvise and understand what to do on the guitar instead of just behaving like a parrot on the guitar and playing licks that you don’t know how to fit into other musicical contexts, please do yourself a favor and join Jimmy Bruno’s guitar institute. I found their vision to be an online guitar conservatory very attractive. Jimmy Bruno’s site is so good that I feel like I no longer need to buy any more guitar instructional materials given the clarity, concepts, guidance, method and syllabus that I’m getting from Jimmy Bruno. In fact, I know I’m being absolutely irrational and greedy whenever I give in to temptation to buy guitar instruction materials since Jimmy Bruno’s materials give me all that I need and takes so much time to digest. Incidentally, for the best classical guitar instruction in Singapore, please head on to Robert Luse’s website.

People talk about the Jimmy Bruno Guitar Institute

Jimmy Bruno Guitar Institute

I bought these books: Karen Armstong’s “A History of Jerusalem”, “A History of God”, “The Great Transformation”, “Muhammad”, Graham Priest’s “The Limits of Thought”, Raymond Smullyan’s “The Riddle of Scheherazade”, R.M Sainsbury’s “Paradoxes”, Derek Bailey’s “Improvisation”, two volumes of Rumi’s poems translated by Coleman Barks: “Rumi: The Book of Love” and “Rumi: Bridge to the Soul: Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart”, “Crucial Conversations” by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (which I read quickly about ten years ago), Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature”and some Vipassana meditation books.

I stopped before completing R.M. Bucke’s “Cosmic Consciousness” and Karen Armstong’s “A History of Jerusalem”.

I finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”. While reading the chapter on Kenna’s Dilemma, I found a strange link between Vipassana Meditation as taught by Goenka and its theory of sensations and Cheskin’s theory of sensation transference. See another link here on Cheskin. Both Goenka and Cheskin seem to believe that there are sensations in our bodies that we are unaware of. This causes us to be at their mercy when we react in habitual ways to such sensations. The main difference between the two is that Goenka teaches Vipassana meditation so that we can remain equanimous to such sensations after we learn to detect them while Cheskin uses such sensations to market and advertise products.

I got cheated of $100 by a hotel operator.

Sometime in Nov 07, I dreamt that I looked into a mirror and realised that I lost all my teeth. I saw this dream as a timely and mid-life reminder of my mortality, to do as much as I can before I die.

I attended a whirling dervishes performance by the Istanbul Historical Turkish Music Ensemble with Chloe on 21 Oct 07 at the Esplanade theatre.

TURKISH HISTORIC MUSIC

I went for field camp and failed my IPPT during my in-camp training.

Martin Gardner, the grand old man of recreational mathematics and puzzles, once wrote that Raymond Smullyan “is a unique set of personalities that includes a philosopher, logician, mathematician, musician, magician, humorist, writer, and maker of marvelous puzzles.”

In this delightful video, you can hear Smullyan playing Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Beethoven Sonatas, Scarlatti Sonatas and Schubert’s Moments Musicauxand. Smullyan tosses out logic puzzles, musical anecdotes and near the end of the video, he also reads out passages from his books “This Book Needs No Title” and “The Tao is Silent”. Be warned though, this video is almost an hour long!

Although the eminent pianist Gunnar Johansen once expected Smullyan to ” become one of our important artists”, Smullyan developed tendonitis and could not go on to become a professional pianist.

I shall use this post to quote a passage from his book “Some Interesting Memories: A Paradoxical Life” that made me laugh:

…a man …was in search of immortality and read all sorts of alchemy books, but could not find anything practical in them. Then, he heard of a great sage in the East who was a specialist in this area, and so he went on a pilgrimage to find him. After twelve years, he found the sage and asked him, “Is it really possible for one to live forever?” The sage replied, “Oh, quite easily, providing he does two things.” “And what are those two things?” the man asked eagerly. “The first thing is to always tell the truth, never make any false statement. That’s a small price to pay for immortality, isn’t it?” “Of course,” replied the man, “and what is the second thing?” “The second thing,” replied the sage, “is to say ‘I will repeat this sentence tomorrow.’ If you do those two things, I guarantee that you will live forever!” The man thought for a moment and said: “Oh, of course, if I do those two things I will live forever, because if I truthfully say that sentence today, then I will indeed repeat it tomorrow…and so forth. But your solution is not a practical one! How can I be sure of truthfully saying that I will repeat this sentence tomorrow if I can’t be sure of being alive tomorrow! Your solution is not a practical one!” “Oh,” replied the sage, “you wanted a practical solution! No, I don’t deal with practice; I deal only with theory.”

Here’s more funny and philosophical stuff from Smullyan: a dialogue between a mortal and God on freewill.

See also this unofficial myspace page created by a fan of Smullyan.

Philosophical discussion in Cambridge – Part 1

In video above, Wittgenstein lectures on the thought behind a word or a sentence like “This is a very pleasant pineapple.

Philosophical discussion in Cambridge – Part 2

In video above, a dialogue takes place between Wittgenstein, Russell and his wife (played by Tilda Swinton) about whether Wittgenstein should commit suicide because of a V-sign that has no philosophical meaning and apparently destroys Wittgenstein’s language theory.

This, for some reason reminded me of this passage from Raymond Smullyan’s Some Interesting Memories: A Paradoxical Life:

…a philosopher…went into a closet for 25 years to contemplate what life really was. After emerging, he met an old colleague in the street who asked him: “Good heavens, where have you been all these years?” “In a closet.” “Why?” “To find out what life really is.” “And did you find an answer?” “Yes.” “What answer did you find?” “Well, it can be best expressed by saying that life is like a bridge.” “That’s very interesting,” replied the colleague, “but can you be a little more explicit? Can you tell me just how life is like a bridge?” “Uh,” replied the philosopher, “maybe you are right. Maybe life is not like a bridge.”

Philosophical discussion in Cambridge – Part 3

In the video above, Wittgenstein explains his philosophical development from the ‘Tractatus’ to the ‘Philosophical Investigations’, in response to a question by J.M. Keynes, the famous british economist.

Got stumped again by another Smullyan puzzle in the same chapter of the book I mentioned earlier in this post. The said post contains the background necessary to solve this puzzle.

1. Given any two inhabitants, A and B, either A trusts B or he doesn’t.

2. Some of the inhabitants are teachers of other inhabitants. Each inhabitant has at least one teacher.

3. No inhabitant A is willing to be a teacher of an inhabitant B unless A believes that B trusts himself.

4. For any inhabitant A there is an inhabitant B who trusts all and only those inhabitants who have at least one teacher who is trusted by A. (In other words, for any inhabitant X, B trusts X if A trusts some teacher of X, and B doesn’t trust X unless A trusts some teacher of X.)

5. There is one inhabitant who trusts all the patients but does not trust any of the doctors.

Inspector Craid thought this over for a long time and was finally able to prove that either one of the patients was sane or one of the doctors was insane. Can you find the proof?

This is not the hardest puzzle in Raymond Smullyan’s “The Lady or The Tiger” but I still found it very tricky and could not get it right even though it’s the second time I’ve attempted it.

First some background.

Inspector Craig of Scotland Yard was called over to France to investigate eleven insane asylums where it was suspected that something was wrong. In each of these asylums, the only inhabitants were patients and doctors – the doctors constituted the entire staff. Each inhabitant of each asylum, patient or doctor, was either sane or insane. Moreover, the sane ones were totally sane and a hundred percent accurate in all their beliefs; all true propositions they knew to be true and all false propositions they knew to be false. The insane ones were totally inaccurate in their beliefs; all true propositions they believed to be false and all false propositions they believed to be true. It is to be assumed also that all the inhabitants were always honest – whatever they said, they really believed.

Now the puzzle of the fifth asylum.

Craig asked one of the inhabitants, “Are you a patient?” He replied, “I believe so.”

Is there anything necessarily wrong with this asylum?

[Note from recordmymind: i.e. given the reply by the inhabitant of the asylum, can you conclude that there are sane patients or insane doctors in the asylum?]

From Chapter 3 of Raymond Smullyan’s “The Lady or the Tiger”.

Answers will be provided in the comments section if requested.