Here are 100 books that Quantum Computing Since Democritus fans have personally recommended if you like
Quantum Computing Since Democritus.
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I am an academic researcher and an avid non-fiction reader. There are many popular books on science or music, but it’s much harder to find texts that manage to occupy the space between popular and professional writing. I’ve always been looking for this kind of book, whether on physics, music, AI, or math – even when I knew that as a non-pro, I wouldn’t be able to understand everything. In my new book I’ve been trying to accomplish something similar: A book that can intrigue readers who are not professional economic theorists, that they will find interesting even if they can’t follow everything.
In the ongoing debates over artificial general intelligence (AGI), Judea Pearl is taking a firm stand: He argues that an intelligent robot should be able to reason about causality and that the currently fashionable approaches to AI miss this aspect.
A celebrated AI researcher and a Turing Prize laureate, Pearl has developed an amazingly original approach to this problem. This book is a high-end popular exposition of his approach.
But it’s so much more than that. It’s a history of statistics and its conflicted attitude to causality. It’s a story of heroes (or villains?) in this history. And it’s a scientific autobiography that describes Pearl’s journey. Pearl likes picking fights with the AI community, statisticians, or economists. He’s boastful, provocative, extremely intelligent, and knows how to tell a story.
'Wonderful ... illuminating and fun to read' - Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow
'"Pearl's accomplishments over the last 30 years have provided the theoretical basis for progress in artificial intelligence and have redefined the term "thinking machine"' - Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google, Inc.
The influential book in how causality revolutionized science and the world, by the pioneer of artificial intelligence
'Correlation does not imply causation.' This mantra was invoked by scientists for decades in order to avoid taking positions as to whether one thing caused another, such as smoking…
I taught myself to code back in 1994 while working the graveyard shift as a geologist in the environmental industry. My job consisted of sitting in a chair during the dark hours of the night in a shopping center in Stockton, CA, watching another geologist take samples from wells in the parking lot. A friend of mine suggested I learn to code because I liked computers. I don’t mean to make this out to be a “it’s so simple anyone can do it!” You need to have a relentless drive to learn, which is why I wrote my book, The Imposter’s Handbook - as an active step to learning what I didn’t know I didn’t know.
This book makes me jealous as the author has an incredible ability to communicate the densest of topics (Cryptography) in an engaging, wonderful way.
It draws you in and you find yourself transported to battlefields and war rooms of the past. I’ve always taken cryptography for granted - I type httpsinto my browser and navigate to a site and all’s well. I know things are reasonably secure - but why?
It turns out that RSA, the algorithm that underpins things like SSL and SSH, is a landmark of human achievement and did something that millennia of mathematicians and scientists could not: provide secure, end-to-end encryption. A wonderful story.
In his first book since the bestselling Fermat's Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure, The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy.
Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations, and portraits of the remarkable…
I started learning cryptography in the early 2000s with books borrowed from my university’s library, and with information I could find online. Since then I’ve practiced cryptography for 15 years in a variety of contexts: as an academic researcher, while working on my PhD; as a cryptography engineer for software and hardware pay-TV systems; as a consultant for private and public sector clients; as a vulnerability researcher in my spare time; as a code auditor for cryptography projects; as a start-up founder in the domain of IoT security; and as CSO (chief security officer) of a fintech start-up. I live in Lausanne, Switzerland, and besides crypto I enjoy literature, rock climbing, and playing classical guitar.
If you want to compose or play music, you need to know some basic music theory: notes, scales, chords, and so on. Likewise, solid cryptography knowledge requires understanding its foundations: concepts such as one-way function, pseudorandom generators, computational hardness, secure encryption, and zero-knowledge proofs. Goldreich’s books are the best starting point for those who want to delve into cryptography theory.
Cryptography is concerned with the conceptualization, definition and construction of computing systems that address security concerns. The design of cryptographic systems must be based on firm foundations. This book presents a rigorous and systematic treatment of the foundational issues: defining cryptographic tasks and solving new cryptographic problems using existing tools. It focuses on the basic mathematical tools: computational difficulty (one-way functions), pseudorandomness and zero-knowledge proofs. The emphasis is on the clarification of fundamental concepts and on demonstrating the feasibility of solving cryptographic problems, rather than on describing ad-hoc approaches. The book is suitable for use in a graduate course on…
I’ve been playing with computers and electronics since childhood. I even supported the people in my village with their computer issues back then. During my studies in electrical engineering, I learned how to solve technical challenges with structured approaches. At this time, I became fascinated by topics like cryptography and embedded system security. The books on this list helped me understand important concepts and practical real-world obstacles. I hope they are also of value to you!
When I take this book off my shelf, the probability that I find the answer I'm looking for is very high. Yes, it's a big book, and I'm pretty sure I haven't read every single page yet, but because of its broad coverage of security engineering knowledge, from crypto to real-world processes, it is an invaluable reference for teaching and practical cyber security.
Now that there's software in everything, how can you make anything secure? Understand how to engineer dependable systems with this newly updated classic
In Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems, Third Edition Cambridge University professor Ross Anderson updates his classic textbook and teaches readers how to design, implement, and test systems to withstand both error and attack.
This book became a best-seller in 2001 and helped establish the discipline of security engineering. By the second edition in 2008, underground dark markets had let the bad guys specialize and scale up; attacks were increasingly on users rather than…
I started learning cryptography in the early 2000s with books borrowed from my university’s library, and with information I could find online. Since then I’ve practiced cryptography for 15 years in a variety of contexts: as an academic researcher, while working on my PhD; as a cryptography engineer for software and hardware pay-TV systems; as a consultant for private and public sector clients; as a vulnerability researcher in my spare time; as a code auditor for cryptography projects; as a start-up founder in the domain of IoT security; and as CSO (chief security officer) of a fintech start-up. I live in Lausanne, Switzerland, and besides crypto I enjoy literature, rock climbing, and playing classical guitar.
Although David is a friend, I only recommend his book because it’s great, both in terms of content and presentation. Real-World Cryptography is today’s reference book about cryptographic tools and applications: Modern schemes such as the SHA-3 hash function and the Noise protocol framework, end-to-end encryption protocols, cryptocurrencies’ cryptography mechanisms, as well as emerging techniques like fully-homomorphic encryption and multi-party computation; Wong’s book delivers a practice-oriented, accessible introduction, enriched by many visual illustrations (including original comics strips!), and exercises (with their solutions).
If you're browsing the web, using public APIs, making and receiving electronic payments, registering and logging in users, or experimenting with blockchain, you're relying on cryptography. And you're probably trusting a collection of tools, frameworks, and protocols to keep your data, users, and business safe. It's important to understand these tools so you can make the best decisions about how, where, and why to use them. Real-World Cryptography teaches you applied cryptographic techniques to understand and apply security at every level of your systems and applications. about the technologyCryptography is the foundation of information security. This simultaneously ancient and emerging…
Philosophy’s core questions have always obsessed me: What is real? What makes life worth living? Can knowledge be made secure? In graduate school at the University of Virginia I was drawn to mathematically formalized approaches to such questions, especially those of C. S. Peirce and Alain Badiou. More recently, alongside colleagues at Endicott College’s Center for Diagrammatic and Computational Philosophy and GCAS College Dublin I have explored applications of diagrammatic logic, category theory, game theory, and homotopy type theory to such problems as abductive inference and artificial intelligence. Philosophers committed to the perennial questions have much to gain today from studying the new methods and results of contemporary mathematics.
Zalamea’s book is the perfect introduction and survey if you want to understand how developments in contemporary mathematics are relevant to current philosophy.
Zalamea’s own approach follows closely in the steps of Peirce, Lautman, and Grothendieck, merging pragmatism, dialectics, and sheaf theory, but he also engages the work of dozens of other key mathematicians and philosophers coming from different points of view, sometimes cursorily, always tantalizingly.
No philosopher can read this book without a quickened heartbeat and eager plans to clear shelf space for some of the many volumes of mathematics and philosophy of mathematics canvassed here by Zalamea.
A panoramic survey of the vast spectrum of modern and contemporary mathematics and the new philosophical possibilities they suggest.
A panoramic survey of the vast spectrum of modern and contemporary mathematics and the new philosophical possibilities they suggest, this book gives the inquisitive non-specialist an insight into the conceptual transformations and intellectual orientations of modern and contemporary mathematics.
The predominant analytic approach, with its focus on the formal, the elementary and the foundational, has effectively divorced philosophy from the real practice of mathematics and the profound conceptual shifts in the discipline over the last century. The first part discusses the…
Philosophy’s core questions have always obsessed me: What is real? What makes life worth living? Can knowledge be made secure? In graduate school at the University of Virginia I was drawn to mathematically formalized approaches to such questions, especially those of C. S. Peirce and Alain Badiou. More recently, alongside colleagues at Endicott College’s Center for Diagrammatic and Computational Philosophy and GCAS College Dublin I have explored applications of diagrammatic logic, category theory, game theory, and homotopy type theory to such problems as abductive inference and artificial intelligence. Philosophers committed to the perennial questions have much to gain today from studying the new methods and results of contemporary mathematics.
From a strictly philosophical perspective, the emergence of category theory as a unifying paradigm rivaling set theory is probably the most important development in mathematics in the last half-century.
But for philosophers without a lot of mathematical background, learning even its rudiments can be daunting. Among many introductory texts (Lawvere and Schanuel, Awodey, Riehl, Spivak), Cheng’s book stands out as perhaps the friendliest and most accessible.
She does not forego rigor, but she isn’t afraid to put aside precise formalism when necessary for intuition and clearer understanding. Her book takes the reader from mathematical beginnings through category theory’s core constructions to glimpses of higher-order categories (one of Cheng’s areas of expertise).
A mathematically novice philosopher who wants to understand the basics of category theory couldn’t do better.
Mathematician and popular science author Eugenia Cheng is on a mission to show you that mathematics can be flexible, creative, and visual. This joyful journey through the world of abstract mathematics into category theory will demystify mathematical thought processes and help you develop your own thinking, with no formal mathematical background needed. The book brings abstract mathematical ideas down to earth using examples of social justice, current events, and everyday life - from privilege to COVID-19 to driving routes. The journey begins with the ideas and workings of abstract mathematics, after which you will gently climb toward more technical material,…
Philosophy’s core questions have always obsessed me: What is real? What makes life worth living? Can knowledge be made secure? In graduate school at the University of Virginia I was drawn to mathematically formalized approaches to such questions, especially those of C. S. Peirce and Alain Badiou. More recently, alongside colleagues at Endicott College’s Center for Diagrammatic and Computational Philosophy and GCAS College Dublin I have explored applications of diagrammatic logic, category theory, game theory, and homotopy type theory to such problems as abductive inference and artificial intelligence. Philosophers committed to the perennial questions have much to gain today from studying the new methods and results of contemporary mathematics.
Far too many math books are written in a style so terse and ungenerous that all but the most mathematically gifted readers hardly have a fair chance of understanding.
On the other hand, the discursive style of much philosophy of mathematics gains readability at the expense of formal rigor. Button and Walsh strike the perfect balance in this exceptionally rich introduction to model theory from a distinctively philosophical perspective.
There’s no getting around the fact that the mathematics of model theory is hard going. But this book works through all the relevant proofs in clear and detailed terms (no lazy “we leave this as an exercise for the reader”), and the authors are always careful to motivate each section with well-chosen philosophical concerns right up front.
Model theory is used in every theoretical branch of analytic philosophy: in philosophy of mathematics, in philosophy of science, in philosophy of language, in philosophical logic, and in metaphysics. But these wide-ranging uses of model theory have created a highly fragmented literature. On the one hand, many philosophically significant results are found only in mathematics textbooks: these are aimed squarely at mathematicians; they typically presuppose that the reader has a serious background in mathematics; and little clue is given as to their philosophical significance. On the other hand, the philosophical applications of these results are scattered across disconnected pockets of…
Philosophy’s core questions have always obsessed me: What is real? What makes life worth living? Can knowledge be made secure? In graduate school at the University of Virginia I was drawn to mathematically formalized approaches to such questions, especially those of C. S. Peirce and Alain Badiou. More recently, alongside colleagues at Endicott College’s Center for Diagrammatic and Computational Philosophy and GCAS College Dublin I have explored applications of diagrammatic logic, category theory, game theory, and homotopy type theory to such problems as abductive inference and artificial intelligence. Philosophers committed to the perennial questions have much to gain today from studying the new methods and results of contemporary mathematics.
The Univalent Foundations program in foundations of mathematics launched by Voevodsky and others in the past decade and a half has contributed to a promising new paradigm unifying computation, mathematics, logic, and proof theory.
Understanding the core elements of this research program, Homotopy Type Theory, is essential for contemporary philosophers who want to engage directly with current developments in mathematics and computer science.
Corfield is a well-established name in philosophy of mathematics, and this book is the best introduction to Homotopy Type Theory for philosophers.
Working within themes and problematics that will be familiar to philosophers with a basic background in logic, Corfield covers the elementary constructions of homotopy types from a logical point of view and provides plenty of provocative suggestions for how these formal tools might reinvigorate philosophical research today.
"The old logic put thought in fetters, while the new logic gives it wings."
For the past century, philosophers working in the tradition of Bertrand Russell - who promised to revolutionise philosophy by introducing the 'new logic' of Frege and Peano - have employed predicate logic as their formal language of choice. In this book, Dr David Corfield presents a comparable revolution with a newly emerging logic - modal homotopy type theory.
Homotopy type theory has recently been developed as a new foundational language for mathematics, with a strong philosophical pedigree. Modal Homotopy Type Theory: The Prospect of a New…
I am an academic researcher and an avid non-fiction reader. There are many popular books on science or music, but it’s much harder to find texts that manage to occupy the space between popular and professional writing. I’ve always been looking for this kind of book, whether on physics, music, AI, or math – even when I knew that as a non-pro, I wouldn’t be able to understand everything. In my new book I’ve been trying to accomplish something similar: A book that can intrigue readers who are not professional economic theorists, that they will find interesting even if they can’t follow everything.
This is actually not one book but a five-volume (!) series of books which contains some of the best writing on classical music I’ve ever come across.
Taruskin, who passed away recently, was a legendary musicologist. In his writings, he managed to combine analytic writing that addresses his colleagues with unbelievably sharp and insightful writing that I, as a classical music fan who is not a pro, enjoy tremendously.
Taruskin loved picking intellectual fights, and this sort of combative energy is gripping. In this series, there are major story arcs like the interplay between “oral” and “literate” traditions or the role of nationalism in 19th-century music. I liked how Tarsukin switches smoothly between a close analysis of a piece and a discussion of how it relates to the wider culture.
The Oxford History of Western Music is a magisterial survey of the traditions of Western music by one of the most prominent and provocative musicologists of our time. This text illuminates, through a representative sampling of masterworks, those themes, styles, and currents that give shape and direction to each musical age.
Taking a critical perspective, this text sets the details of music, the chronological sweep of figures, works, and musical ideas, within the larger context of world affairs and cultural history. Written by an authoritative, opinionated, and controversial figure in musicology, The Oxford History of Western Music provides a critical…
