Astrolinguistics

Alexander Ollongren began his career as a mathematical astronomer at the Dept. of Astronomy at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he obtained his PhD. He then left the university and worked almost two years in Celestial Mechanics at Yale University in the US. Ollongren returned to Holland and became director of the newly established computer center of Leiden University. He spent a sabbatical leave as a visiting scientist at the IBM Laboratory in Vienna and was later appointed full professor of theoretical computer science at the Dept. of Computer Science of Leiden University. He was a guest professor in the same science for about a year at Linkoping University in Sweden. After retirement he became a member of the Permanent Study Group Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (PSGSETI) of the International Astronautical Academy. He has written books and articles on the semantics of programming languages.

Preface.- Preliminaries.- History.- Part I: Calculus of Constructions.- Chapter 1.1: Types and declarations.- Chapter 1.2: Functions and induction.- Chapter 1.3: Hypotheses.- Chapter 1.4: Higher orders and inductive structures.- Part II: Facts.- Chapter 2.1: Simple Facts.- Chapter 2.2: Compounds.- Chapter 2.3: Aristotelian Theatre.- Chapter 2.4: Wittgenstein's Theatre.- Part III: Annotations in LINCOS.- Chapter 3.1: Logical contents of texts.- Chapter 3.2: An astrolinguistic experiment.- Chapter 3.3: Aspects of truth.- Chapter 3.4: Human altruism.- Part IV: Interpretation of LINCOS.- Chapter 4.1: Self-interpretation.- Chapter 4.2: Pictorial representation.- Chapter 4.3: Representation of music.- Chapter 4.4: Signature of LINCOS.- Part V: Processes of LINCOS.- Chapter 5.1: Representing processes.- Chapter 5.2: Cooperating sequential processes.- Chapter 5.3: Hamlet in LINCOS.- Part VI: Symbolic Computation.- Chapter 6.1: Basics.- Chapter 6.2: Relativistic particle motion.- Chapter 6.3: Two-body motion.- Part VII: (Un) Certainty.- Chapter 7.1: Certain existence.- Chapter 7.2: The uncertain alien.- Appendix.- Postscriptum.- Summary in Russian.- Declaration of Principles.- Curriculum Vitae.- Index.