Goals and Scope

Our institutional objectives and the scope of our work.

• Our scientific mission is to integrate a theory of sense and motility with other theories of nature.

• Our engineering mission is to identify and develop technologies based upon successful theories.

• Our institutional goal is to establish a world-class international institute of scholarship, science and engineering focused on our missions.

§6 The scope of our scientific mission rests at the Foundations of Logic and Apprehension, with the creation of theoretical models, the challenge of their rigorous and systematic formalization, and the verification of these models by observation in biophysics and practice.

§8 Pragmatically, the goal of our research is to explain the presence of experience in nature, and to do so with such fidelity that it becomes possible to provide a detailed account of the biophysical evolution and mechanics of sense and motility. This will enable us to also consider machines that experience. A product of our mission is a necessary new mechanics.

§10 This is a broad mandate with three natural levels of complementary research. Its scope spans the development of physical theory, the first principles of biophysical engineering, and the study of behavior in species. Success in these areas will provide contributions to the foundations of logic and mathematics, and inform the natural sciences and medicine.

§11 The three levels of our research are:

1. Our inquiry into the Foundations of Logic and Apprehension¹ deals with the operation of sentient individuals, how individuals like you and I work. As a practical matter of direct concern we ask how we can effectively formalize the biophysical basis of sensory and motile processes.

2. Our physical investigation asks how such individuals come to be in the world. We formalize explanatory physical theories that include sense and motility.

3. Our inquiry must also include reasoning about these individuals in groups. We explore the wider implications of our work by building rigorous and systematic methods of reasoning about behavior in social networks.

§13 Our objectives do not fit within the mandate of any single discipline today, covering the ground from logic to biophysics. We focus upon the development of formalized existential theory founded upon a strict adherence to the fallible scientific method of verification. Our work is driven by new empirical discoveries in biophysics, and a requirement to provide an explanatory engineering of sense and motility that goes beyond mere functional description.

§14 Our success will enable a new generation of technology, one able to construct machines that experience, and identify fundamental limits in current approaches. A successful effort will solve long standing technology problems related to recognition that have proven intractable today. Our success has broad strategic implications for our future.

Current Research

§15 Current research is focused upon building the foundations of our long term effort. The following projects have our attention.

Foundations of Logic and Apprehension

Foundational issues in logic and mathematics.

§16 In order to formalize the role of experience in the world it is necessary to have a mathematics capable of expressing the physical structures that characterize any particular sense and the associated motile behavior. Since this is equivalent to identifying the physical structures that are the basis of logical entities it requires ultimately a unification of geometry and logic. A successful calculus will inform the natural sciences and medicine about sensory and motile function. It will also enable new technologies for recognition, sensors, and motile behavior.

Physical Theory

Explaining how sentient motile entities come to be in the world.

§17 Physical theory is in crisis^[1]. The language of contemporary physics does not permit an explanation of our experience of the world^2[2][3]. We investigate some of the fundamental assumptions in mathematical physics (including dimensionality/orthogonality and probability).

Apprehending Difficult Ideas

How we can refine our ideas and enable you to understand them.

§19 We face a not uncommon challenge for scholars and researchers. How do we effectively develop and enable the apprehension of difficult ideas? To solve this problem, at least for our own needs, we research and develop XML based technologies that may assist us.

Reasoning About Behavior in Social Networks

What happens in groups.

§20 Given a natural explanation of individual sentient entities, we are exploring effective methods for reasoning about their behavior in groups. This work may ultimately have application in the social sciences such as economics.

Board of Directors

§21 Bob Krysiak is Corporate Vice President of STMicroelectronics, President and General Manager of STMicroelectronics Great China.

§22 Suresh Jagannathan is Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University.

§23 Steven Ericsson-Zenith is a scholar with extensive research and development experience in pure and applied semeiotic, mathematical logic, computer architecture, parallel computing, programming language design and implementation, and human factors.

Working with the Institute

How Researchers, Scholars and Industry can work with us.

§24 IASE collaborates with other research groups and industry in cases that promise to validate our models or provide empirical results not accessible otherwise.

Research Collaboration

§25 Our research collaboration interests are limited to behavioral and biophysical studies of organisms and machine architecture.

Industry Partners

§26 Relationships with industry partners must either enable validation of our work or promise empirical results not accessible otherwise.

Associate Scholars

§27 We are not a teaching institution but we will consider associate relationships with scholars writing in the field.

Giving to the Institute

§28 We plan a significant effort. We seek funds to enable an endowment to meet our long term goals. These goals include the establishment of a faculty run research establishment, a program of international research collaboration, and a continuing public education program. IASE is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization registered in California. Donations are tax-deductible in the USA to the full extent provided by the law.

§29 Your support is appreciated: Send a check, payable to Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering, to:

Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering

323 Beemer Avenue,

Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA

§30 We appreciate your review and encourage you to contact us for more information.

§31 Sincerely and with respect,.

Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith.

Founder and Chairman

Sunnyvale, California. USA.

September 2009

♦

End Notes

¹ A broad inquiry into the Foundations of Logic and Apprehension is called “Semeiotic,” after Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). The work of Peirce is greatly complemented by the work of the Logical Positivists, notably Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970). Logic, for Peirce, is “the science of the general necessary laws of Signs.” . The physical mechanics of Signs is a necessary subject of biophysics today for which our traditional methods are unprepared.

² That the language of contemporary mathematical physics does not permit an explanation of our experience of the world is the central premise in a series of publications since 1989 by the English physicist Roger Penrose.

Concepts

Apprehension: Apprehension is the process of acquiring a Sign (an individuated experience). It involves the physical transduction of sense that leads to cognition and response..

engineering mission: The application of scientific theory to practice.

experience: Here we refer to the common and most familiar basis of all senses.

institutional goal: The establishment of a sustainable academy of study focused upon our scientific and engineering missions.

motility: The apparently spontaneous action of biophysical structures.

scientific mission: The development of a rigorous and systematic logical construction of the world that approximates the way things are with increasing degrees of accuracy and completeness. To permit logical reduction within the framework of this construction that facilitates consistent and verifiable predictions. The failure of such reductions to necessarily lead to reconsideration and ultimate refinement of the construction, and not to supernatural conclusions. To be founded upon inductive empirical results and intelligent creative inspiration.

sense: We refer to the entire nature of sense, including “thought,” and perceptions unknown to our species (such as electroception).

References

Lee Smolin. The Trouble with Physics. Houghton-Mifflin (2006). ^[1]

Penrose, Roger. The Emperor's New Mind. Oxford University Press (1989). ISBN:0140145346. ^[2]

Penrose, Roger. The Road to Reality. Vintage - Random House (2004). ISBN:0679776311. ^[3]