The book is a collection of original papers, research and surveys, dedicated to the memory of the Romanian mathematician Solomon Marcus (1925-2016). Marcus published many papers and books in mathematical analysis, theoretical computer science, mathematical linguistics, poetics, theory of literature, semiotics, and several other fields less strongly connected to mathematics, like cultural anthropology, biology, history and philosophy of science, education. He exemplified an unimaginable richness of ideas.This volume intends to emphasize the mathematical fields in which Solomon Marcus worked, and demonstrate — as he also did — the interconnection between them. The authors who contribute to this volume are well-known experts in their fields. Most of them knew Solomon Marcus well, some even owed him for his decisive impulses for their careers and general development. With articles in so diverse areas, the volume will attract readers who would like to diversify their own knowledge or find unexpected connections with other topics.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Descriptional Complexity of Format Systems, DCFS 2020, which was supposed to take place in Vienna, Austria, in August 2020, but the conference was canceled due to the COVID-19 crisis. The 19 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 31 submissions. They deal with all aspects of descriptional complexity and costs of description of objects in various computational models, such as Turing machines, pushdown automata, finite automata, grammars, and others.

"These recent developments also open up new questions of debate, including: What is the role played by randomness? Are computers capable of handling the infinite through unconventional media of computation? How can one approximate efficiently the finite by the infinite, and conversely the infinite by the finite?" "Well-known authors from around the world, many of them architects of the mathematics and computer science for the new century, contribute to this volume. While mathematical in spirit, contributions have many connections with computer science, cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, physics, biology and semiotics."--Jacket.

The book is a collection of papers written by a selection of eminent authors from around the world in honour of Gregory Chaitin's 60th birthday. This is a unique volume including technical contributions, philosophical papers and essays.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

A comprehensive and rigorous introduction for graduate students and researchers, with applications in sequential decision-making problems.