Bart Kosko

What I liked about this was the way Kosko's thinking blurs traditional boundaries - its as much a book of applied philosophy as anything. Certainly clarified for me where Western philosophy started to go wrong (with Aristotle and the excluded middle). Also interesting for comparison of western and eastern cultures - why is Fuzzy Logic so much more popular in the east and derided in the west?

Oh my god, what crap.

A portmanteau book like this is always a risk. The author takes the word "noise" as a unifying theme, and tries to discuss noise as seen by engineers, as seen by lawyers, and as seen by physicists. This could be fascinating, which was why I picked up the book, but it falls horribly flat.

The engineering discussions are messy and confused, and the physics discussions incomprehensible. I still have no idea if the concept of stochastic resonance corresponds to anything show more more than dithering; and for heavens sake, as simple a concept as dithering is rendered impenetrable after Kosko is done with it. show less

Some decent ideas in this book, but they get overshadowed by the author's Promethean comparison of how his colleagues and he brought the fire of fuzzy logic to the temples of Aristotelean logic. there it was not welcome, but in Asian countries who follow The Buddha it was welcomed. Now America faces a great challenge that only the long-suffering author can set to rights.

Slow on dealing the knowledge, and long in the persecution. This is more memoir than edifying.

Interesting book, but as noted in one other review here review, not particularly well written. I found myself skimming the later chapters just to read the quotes Kosko included. Short summaries (dumping the math) could be "It depends" or "there is no black and white" or to use his own statement "everything is a matter of degree". I had this on my shelf and picked it up while reading Michael Shermer's "How We Believe" to follow up on a reference Shermer made. While not a fuzzy activist, I show more recognized while reading that long ago I adopted mostly fuzzy thinking, meaning all things are relative. show less