Divided into three parts, this book's purpose, as given in the introduction, is to consider whether or not man is descended from a pre-existing form, his manner ...

Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence deals with the history of temporal logic as well as the crucial systematic questions within the field. The book studies the rich contributions from ancient and medieval philosophy up to the downfall of temporal logic in the Renaissance. The modern rediscovery of the subject, which is especially due to the work of A. N. Prior, is described, leading into a thorough discussion of the use of temporal logic in computer science and the (...) understanding of natural language. Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence thus interweaves linguistic, philosophical and computational aspects into an informative and inspiring whole. (shrink)

A profoundly arresting integration of the faculties of the mind - of how we think, speak, and see the world. Written with an informality that belies the originality of its insights and the radical nature of its conclusions this is the author's most important book since his groundbreaking Foundations of Language in 2002.

An examination of logical systems in which distinctions in tense are taken seriously. The problem of the formulation of a tense-logic not committed to determinism is discussed. There is appended an interesting study of the problem of tense in the history of logic, showing the decline of interest in tense distinctions in post-medieval thought. This is a provocative book about a much neglected subject.--C. L.