Joseph Goguen
Encyclopedia
Joseph Amadee Goguen was a computer science
professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego
, USA
, who helped develop the OBJ family of programming language
s. He was author of A Categorical Manifesto and founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Consciousness Studies
. Standard implication in product fuzzy logic is often called "Goguen implication".
Goguen received his Bachelor's degree
in mathematics
from Harvard University
in 1963, and his PhD
in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley
in 1968, where he was a student of the founder of fuzzy set theory Lotfi Zadeh. He taught at UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago
and University of California, Los Angeles
, where he was a full professor of computer science
. He held a Research Fellowship in the Mathematical Sciences at the IBM Watson Research Center, where he organized the "ADJ" group. He also visited the University of Edinburgh
in Scotland
on three Senior Visiting Fellowships.
From 1979 to 1988, Goguen worked at SRI International
in Menlo Park
, California
. From 1988 to 1996, he was a professor at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory
in England
and a Fellow
at St Anne's College, Oxford.
Goguen's research interests included category theory
(a branch of mathematics
), software engineering
, fuzzy logic
, algebraic semantics
, user interface
design, algebraic semiotics
, and the social
and ethical
aspects of science and technology. He also studied the philosophy
of computation and information, formal methods
(especially hidden algebra
and theorem proving), and relational
and functional programming
. With Rod Burstall he developed the theory of institution
s, a category-theoretic description of logical systems in computer science. He wrote a retrospective of his work, Tossing Algebraic Flowers Down the Great Divide.
Goguen was a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism
. Specifically, since the early 1970s he was a student of Chögyam Trungpa
and, after his death in 1986, of his son Sakyong Mipham. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was a faculty member of the science program at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado
.
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
, USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, who helped develop the OBJ family of programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
s. He was author of A Categorical Manifesto and founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Consciousness Studies
Journal of Consciousness Studies
The Journal of Consciousness Studies is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated entirely to the field of consciousness studies. It was previously edited by Joseph Goguen. It has been co-edited by the philosopher of mysticism, Robert K.C...
. Standard implication in product fuzzy logic is often called "Goguen implication".
Goguen received his Bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1963, and his PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
in 1968, where he was a student of the founder of fuzzy set theory Lotfi Zadeh. He taught at UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
and University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
, where he was a full professor of computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. He held a Research Fellowship in the Mathematical Sciences at the IBM Watson Research Center, where he organized the "ADJ" group. He also visited the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
on three Senior Visiting Fellowships.
From 1979 to 1988, Goguen worked at SRI International
SRI International
SRI International , founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in Menlo Park, California, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later...
in Menlo Park
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. From 1988 to 1996, he was a professor at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory
Oxford University Computing Laboratory
The Department of Computer Science, until 2011 named the Computing Laboratory , is a department of Oxford University in England...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and a Fellow
Fellow
A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...
at St Anne's College, Oxford.
Goguen's research interests included category theory
Category theory
Category theory is an area of study in mathematics that examines in an abstract way the properties of particular mathematical concepts, by formalising them as collections of objects and arrows , where these collections satisfy certain basic conditions...
(a branch of mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
), software engineering
Software engineering
Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...
, fuzzy logic
Fuzzy logic
Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic; it deals with reasoning that is approximate rather than fixed and exact. In contrast with traditional logic theory, where binary sets have two-valued logic: true or false, fuzzy logic variables may have a truth value that ranges in degree between 0 and 1...
, algebraic semantics
Algebraic semantics
An programming language theory, the algebraic semantics of a programming language is a form of axiomatic semantics based on algebraic laws for describing and reasoning about program semantics in a formal manner....
, user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
design, algebraic semiotics
Computational semiotics
Computational semiotics is an interdisciplinary field that applies, conducts, and draws on research in logic, mathematics, the theory and practice of computation, formal and natural language studies, the cognitive sciences generally, and semiotics proper...
, and the social
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and ethical
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
aspects of science and technology. He also studied the philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
of computation and information, formal methods
Formal methods
In computer science and software engineering, formal methods are a particular kind of mathematically-based techniques for the specification, development and verification of software and hardware systems...
(especially hidden algebra
Hidden algebra
Hidden algebra provides a formal semantics for use in the field of software engineering, especially for concurrent distributed object systems. It supports correctness proofs....
and theorem proving), and relational
Relation (mathematics)
In set theory and logic, a relation is a property that assigns truth values to k-tuples of individuals. Typically, the property describes a possible connection between the components of a k-tuple...
and functional programming
Functional programming
In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions, in contrast to the imperative programming style, which emphasizes changes in state...
. With Rod Burstall he developed the theory of institution
Institution (computer science)
The notion of institution has been created by Joseph Goguen and Rod Burstall in the late 1970sin order to deal with the "population explosion among the logical systems used incomputer science"...
s, a category-theoretic description of logical systems in computer science. He wrote a retrospective of his work, Tossing Algebraic Flowers Down the Great Divide.
Goguen was a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
. Specifically, since the early 1970s he was a student of Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Shambhala vision.Recognized...
and, after his death in 1986, of his son Sakyong Mipham. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was a faculty member of the science program at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
.
Works
- Goguen, J.A., "L-fuzzy sets". Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 18(1):145–174, 1967.
- Goguen, J.A., "The logic of inexact concepts". Synthese 19(3/4):325–373, 1969.
- Goguen, J.A., A Categorical Manifesto. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, 1(1):49–67, 1991.
- Goguen, J.A. (editor), Art and the Brain. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(6/7), June/July 1999.
External links
- Home page
- Biographical information
- Publications
- Algebra, Meaning, and Computation. A Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Goguen
- Reviews of the first issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies ...there is no other journal quite like it, and one day we shall, I think, look back to its appearance as a defining moment...
- Photograph
