Talk:G. Spencer-Brown

Untitled
Philip Meguire, 22.10.05: I cleaned up this entry as part of my rewrite of Laws of Form, adding some links that may address some of the questions and concerns raised below. George Spencer-Brown is an amateur philosopher and mathematician, who has made embarrassing claims in print. Some who have interacted with him tell me that his prickly character leaves something to be desired. Charles Peirce anticipated much of what is valid in Laws of Form, but these writings of Peirce's have also been largely ignored by the intellectual establishment. Nevertheless, it remains the case that LoF shows a way of making elementary logic and Boolean algebra a lot easier to learn than they are at present.

G. or George
Why isn't this at George Spencer-Brown? Or is he more commonly known as "G"? RickK 22:56, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

He is more commonly known as G. and that is his pen-name. SamuelWantman

G. Spencer-Brown is primarily know for Laws of Form, which he published under the name G. and not George. This is similar to wikipedia entries for G. Gordon Liddy, H. Rap Brown, J. Edgar Hoover, etc... If you feel this is incorrect, please discuss your reasons before moving the page again. Thank --Samuel Wantman 10:18, 25 May 2004 (UTC)


 * His surname is Spencer-Brown and his personal name is George. You cite cases of people who go by a second personal name.  Is there a reliable source that says that he commonly goes by the personal name "G."?  If not, then move to George Spencer-Brown Zarboublian (talk) 05:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

VfD?
I'm half-tempted to nominate this at WP:VFD. He published one (possibly crank) book, and came up with a wrong proof of the four color theorem. He doesn't seem notable to me. Dbenbenn 07:23, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Does that mean that someone who comes accross his name or book shouldn't know anything about him? Why?  --Samuel Wantman 10:01, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * That, and even if his laws of form are crank, they are one of the building blocks for one of the more influential sociological theories of the last decades. -- till we &#9788; &#9789; | Talk 10:35, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Looks like a clearcut "kook" to me, except for his having held positions at reputable universities. Do we have some references to verify those? -- Danny Yee 04:19, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I believe everything in this article is accurate. Check out the Laws of form website.  He had a bit of a following in the 70's which continues still.  I don't see any reason to delete.  There is no reason why the "less notable" cannot have articles about them.  He may be eccentric, but he is not a "kook". -- Samuel Wantman 10:29, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * No, there is no reason to delete this article (nor is there any reason to delete L. Ron Hubbard). Howver, it is extaordinarily POV (not to say hagiographical nonsense). A large number of mathemticians and logicans consider him a crank. This is not POV. It is a fact thta a large number of mathemtaicians an logicians conisdre hima crank. I will get the sources and try to balance out this matter.--Lacatosias 07:52, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

JA: Coming up with an incorrect proof of a difficult theorem does not qualify one as a crank or a kook in mathematics, else few would scape a whipping. The use of ad hominem arguments instead of proofs might, however, count as an early symptom. Jon Awbrey 14:06, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * It is not fair to accuse me of ad hominem, since I was not talking about Spencer Brown but rather the lack of balance in the article. Here is one example of contrary opinion to that which is exemplified in the article(the only thing I can find on short notice but I will certainly work on finding more):

I wrote Martin Gardner, he replied 30-Nov-79: "I once planned a column about Spencer-Brown, but Donald Knuth talked me out of it on the grounds that it would give valuable publicity to a charlatan! But I have some paragraphs about Brown and his flawed four-color proof, and his Laws of Form, coming up in my Feb column. Conway once described the book as beautifully written but "content free." I describe it as a "construction of the propositional calculus in eccentric notation." But it has a big cult following, and even a periodical devoted to it."

--Lacatosias 15:31, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Look, here's a quotation from the Laws of Form web site itself:


 *  The work is powerful and has established a passionate following as well as harsh critics.


 * All I'm asking is why isn't this "harsh criticism" represneted in the article as well. Leaving it out gives an extremely misleading impression that there is a universal consensus about the value of LOF. It's just that simple.--Lacatosias 15:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

JA: I was commenting on the entire collection of comments on this page. The use of terms like crank and kook is ad hom, no matter how you look at it, just as an appeal to Gardner's appeal to Knuth is an appeal to authority, neither of which contribute to mathematical argument proper. Any acquaintance with the history of science tells us that people with all sorts of kooky ideas can now and then have a doozy of a good one, witness Descartes and Newton, to mention just a couple. Jon Awbrey 15:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Fine, leaving out appeal to authority and "crank", I'm appealing to Wikipedia policy of NPOV. You still have not responded to the following fundamental point:


 *  The work is powerful and has established a passionate following as well as harsh critics.


 * All I'm asking is why isn't this "harsh criticism" represneted in the article as well. Leaving it out gives an extremely misleading impression that there is a universal consensus about the value of LOF. It's just that simple.--Lacatosias 15:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)--Lacatosias 16:03, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

JA: As I understand it, the procedure is to add whatever you see fit, so long as you source it with a reliable source. I am personally less interested in opinion in a matter like this, but maybe some people are. Jon Awbrey 16:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

James Keys
He also wrote poems (23 Degrees of Paradise) and a (to my mind rather annoying) half-poem/half-prose piece about his views on the sexes called Only two can play at this game, both under the name James Keys. And there is also a document floating around (possibly never formally published? I'm not sure) in which several people (some of them, I believe, connected to Co-Evolution Quarterly, now Whole Earth Review) spent a few days with him in a Q&A about some of his ideas that sit weirdly at the boundaries between math and mysticism. I've seen it, but I don't have a copy any more. I believe that somewhere in there, though, is one lovely quote: "A mystic is not someone to whom everything is mysterious; a mystic is someone to whom everything is perfectly clear." Anyway, I'm not particularly interested in putting in time on this one, but this may provide some useful leads for those who are.

In any event, I think Laws of Form has enough of a cult status to merit an article on him even if he is a bit of a crackpot. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:51, 16 April 2006 (UTC) He is a patron of the Telesio-Galilei Institute, where he is described as being a genius. However, the TGI is a notorious collection of kooks. The fact that many of its members hold, or have held, academic posts and are holders of scientific qualifications means nothing. One can spot a crackpot by how he behaves (oh, and by the lack of independently verifiable evidence). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.170.138.68 (talk) 08:23, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann was a vastly prestigious Professor of Sociology in Germany - died 1998 - and has dozens of books in prints and about 20 translated into English - he cites GSB very frequently and respectfully, and regarded GSB's work as foundational in his own. This was my stimulus for looking up Spencer Bown, and I think it is vital that Wikipedia has a listing, indeed probably a more detailed listing than this one.

But the section: "...he studied at Trinity College Cambridge, earning Honours in Philosophy (1950) and Psychology (1951), and where he met Bertrand Russell. From 1952 to 1958, he taught philosophy at Christ Church College, Oxford, earning M.A. degrees in 1954 from both Oxford and Cambridge" must be a bit confused.

The MA is the only undergraduate degree from Oxford and Cambridge, but (I think this is correct) graduates initially receive a BA, which can then be automatically upgraded to MA after 3 years on payment of a small fee. The following is a guess - and I don't know where to check the facts. Probably GSB received an BA from Cambridge in 1951 (the 'tripos' degree having two parts, after 2 years and after 3 years, each awarded a separate title - in this case the Philosophy and Psychology names). This BA Cantab may have been automatically upgraded to MA after 3 years - in 1954. The Oxford MA of the same year was probably honorary (there was no time to complete a further course of study) - I would guess - since Oxford staff are/ were awarded an Oxford MA for the rather obscure reason that other universities degrees are not recognized for certain internal procedural purposes (membership of some committees, voting in certain elections etc). Therefore, the Oxford MA was probably not an extra degree in its own right, but just a matter of formality.

Comment: It is unusual, but GSB did receive 2 degrees, one from Cambridge and the other from Oxford. Having obtained his Phil-Psych degree from Cambridge, he found he enjoyed the university life and wanted to prolong it as much as he could. One way of doing this was a PGCE which he took. Oxford was the only place at the time he could explore his then interest in Psychical Research, hence his enrollment on a second degree course. He later joined the faculty there, as per the biog info. Leon Conrad - London, UK - --5.80.66.95 (talk) 12:15, 13 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Oxford MA will have been by incorporation. But "earning" is too strong, "taking" is better. Zarboublian (talk) 05:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think, that Spencer-Brown is a "charlatan". That Knuth called him so, says more about Knuth's conservatism than it says about Spencer-Brown. The Laws of Form are not a trivial re-iteration of two-valued logic. The key figure in the book is the concept of re-entry. It introduces a third value, called the imaginary state, which is closely related to the imaginary unit in complex number theory.

For Niklas Luhmann the problem is, how an operationally closed system can construct the notion of an environment. The answer to this is, that the system is in an imaginary state. It can switch autonomously between the marked state an the unmarked state. A computer cannot switch between 1 and 0 autonomously unless it is out of order. A sense processing system can switch the distinction it uses an is not bounded to a two-valued calculus. This is a great advantage, but nevertheless humans are often characterized as defect computers (eg. "errare humanum est").

Luhmann identifies two such sense processing system, that is the human consciousness and the human communication. The autonomy of the system which results from the oscillator function is compensated by the memory function. Oscillator and memory function can be derived from the re-entry, as Spencer-Brown shows. The memory function enforces structural consistency in the system an reduces the possibilities of the oscillator function. This sense processing reduces the complexity in the system an improves the "Anschlussfähigkeit" (connectivity) of further operations. --FrankRw1 (talk) 20:59, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

horse feathers
G S-Brown is not a controversial figure. His writings do not merit controversy. Boolean (or propositional logic) is a Complete system; we have no open questions about it, calculations are made in a straight-forward way, they are guaranteed to terminate, etc.

Brown reintroduced a dead subject using a notation he had picked up from switching engineers. Where he does try to be original, he withdraws into the most abject and obtuse hand-waving, making no sense whatsoever.

There is no theorem due to GS Brown. At all. Anywhere.

Betrand Russell was ninety FIVE when he supposedly endorsed Brown's book. Nuff said. CeilingCrash 17:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Would it be correct to infer that your implication is that Russell was senile, and therefore Spencer-Brown was able to put one over on him? Think you need to go back and read Russell's autobiography (which, by the way, was written during his ninth decade).


 * As for originality, you are correct. S-B said nothing new in the early chapters of LOF, he "merely" re-derived Boolean algebra from first principles.  But by your logic, Russell himself should be disregarded on the same grounds, I believe.


 * On the other hand, I agree with you that his attempt to bring self-reference explicitly into his system, was disappointing. It is (to me) clearly something that needs doing, but no one has yet succeeded in doing it. — SWWrightTalk 20:13, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I think it's clear where S-Brown claims to be talking about self-referential (-negating and affirming), he is really discussing the vibrating flip-flops from electrical circuitry.

I believe Godel is the first to truly break thru to self-referential statements such as G, where the godel-numbering allows theorems to talk about other theorems and finally about THIS theorem ... CeilingCrash208.49.146.130 18:54, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Certainly that is so. Spencer-Brown was employed for awhile as an electrical engineer, if I recall.  I believe he recounted some embarrassment in using certain techniques (that preceded the work done in LOF) when doing sequential circuit design, because he could not justify those techniques mathematically; they were empirical.  But are you asserting that, since he was talking about flipflops instead of something unique and previously unknown, that his work is not valid?


 * Goedel's work (sorry about the "e", my keyboard does not have an umlauted "o") is definitely groundbreaking. But I am ultimately not satisfied with it, for this reason: Goedel introduced self-reference in an indirect way, by switching back and forth between interpretations of strings as natural numbers and as propositions.  In one sense, this is very nice, because the propositions can thus be generated automatically and mindlessly ("formally" in the strict sense of that word).  But it would be better, to my way of thinking, to have self-reference explicitly and formally introduced (that is, self-referential forms are included in the calculus directly, rather than by switching to a different interpretation of some formulae in the calculus).  This is what Spencer-Brown attempted.  That he was not successful, is not surprising; nor has anyone else, to my knowledge, that has attempted the feat. — SWWrightTalk 21:16, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Life
Is a reliable source for his life? It appears to be a website run by someone else. Zarboublian (talk) 05:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * He´s still alive. He could edit (e.g. by a friend) this article. --(brookelynn77@ymail.com)--91.4.206.119 (talk) 16:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Family Links
This Wikipedia article on GSB should be cross-linked to the Wikipedia article on his father, John Brown (Contract Bridge expert and author): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(bridge) Leon Conrad - London, UK --5.80.65.5 (talk) 09:30, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

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