In creating Alice in the Land of Uncertainties, Bracarense offers more than a science book. He offers an intellectual journey that challenges the reader to reflect on uncertainties and on how the understanding of uncertainty (or misunderstanding — it depends on the observer) leads us to think about the greatest uncertainty of all: the human psyche.
In Alice in the Land of Uncertainties, the reader will encounter not merely a girl in crisis, but a “Strange Loop” worthy of Hofstadter.
What they will hold in their hands is a “metaphorical fugue” in which the voices of Celia (who acts as Alice’s Id), Elica (Alice’s Superego), and Licea (Alice’s Ego) compose a golden braid of impulses, rules, and mediations. It is the human mind operating as an incomplete formal system, trying to prove its own existence through theorems such as Bayes’ theorem and regressions toward pasts that, statistically speaking, may never have occurred.
Alice in the Land of Uncertainties confronts the fluidity of a world without certainties.
From the preface by Rogério Cid Bastos
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Illustrations by Lu-Otto
I looked in every direction and saw only shadows.
Nature, it seems, is not certain of anything either."
Blaise Pascal (free adaptation)
About the Author
Paulo Afonso Bracarense Costa is a retired Professor of Statistics at the Federal University of Paraná. Throughout his academic career, he devoted himself to the study of logic, an interest that dates back to his youth, when he first encountered Alice in Wonderland.
His academic background includes studies in philosophy at Colégio Estadual do Paraná and a degree in Statistics, culminating in a doctorate in the field now known as knowledge engineering. His dissertation focused on the application of fuzzy logic to intelligent expert systems, highlighting the dialogue between mathematical rigor and formal structures of thought.
From this convergence of literature and logic emerges the present work, organized in the form of short theatrical pieces in which
the author explores, with ingenuity and creativity, the
expressive possibilities of logical thinking in dialogue with
the fictional universe.
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