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From: lied@ihlts.UUCP (Bob Lied)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: Grammatical Man
Message-ID: <409@ihlts.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Apr-84 01:12:04 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlts.409
Posted: Sat Apr  7 01:12:04 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Apr-84 01:31:11 EST
References: <473@aecom.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 20

My praise for this book is not quite so high.  I agree
that Campbell does a good job of presenting a lot of
disparate ideas and tying them together with information
theory.  However, I think his explanation of information
theory is too populist.  He develops the intuitively
easy parts -- entropy, redundancy, information as a
product of probability -- but almost ignores the real
quantities of information theory: capacity, power,
bandwidth, bit error rate, and other boring EE terms.
I also think he pours on the praise for Shannon and
Chomsky a bit thick.

Still, the book is a good read, a mixture of philosophy,
history, and modern science.  With its emphasis on
genetics and natural language, I was reminded of
Hofstadter, though  the writing style is more akin to Lewis
Thomas.	  Overall, not a bad book, and certainly no
waste of time if you're interested in this sort of thing.

	Bob Lied	ihnp4!ihlts!lied