The Dream of Reality

Synopsis

The book begins with a foreword by Paul Watzlawick, a preface by the author, and an introduction which provides a synopsis of the book's content and structure. In chapter one, The Myth of Objectivity, Segal introduces the objectivity vs. constructivist epistemology debate, illustrated with examples of making sense of undifferentiated sensory input and eigenvalue puzzles, where the observer is necessary. In chapter two, The Difficulties of Language, the author describes what we can learn about epistemology from syllogisms, paradox, self-reference, and causality, finally focusing on the circular causality described in cybernetics. In the third chapter, Maturana and the Observer, Segal reviews Humberto Maturana's "observer-based science" where the object observed is not assumed to exist independent of the observer. The Nervous System is the next chapter, where Segal surveys the historical theories connecting perception and thought, including theories by Aristotle, Alkmaeon, Hippocrates, Galen, William Harvey, René Descartes, and Santiago Ramón y Cajal. In this chapter the author also looks at the evolution, structure, and function, of the nervous system and its relationship to the endocrine system. The fifth chapter, Computation, examines how computation happens in both computers and brains, using formal logic and trivial and non-trivial logical machines as conceptual tools to distinguish the two. Humans have capacity to "compute" in additional domains beyond mathematical-logical, including sensory and semantic domains. In chapter six, Biocomputation, Segal looks at how neural circuits work to calculate Boolean operations, and how these circuits fire in the presence of different but ignore sameness. In the final chapter, Closure, the author looks at closure across thermodynamics, mathematics, systems theory, and autopoesis. Segal goes on to examine the double closure of the nervous system along its sensorimotor and synapitc-endocrine dimensions. He returns to mathematics to examine recursion theory, cognition, and solipsism. The book ends with an interview with Heinz von Foerster conducted by media studies professor Carol Wilder.