Leo Depuydt

Leo Depuydt, Professor of Egyptology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.

Rational human intelligence has preoccupied the author since the late 1990s, when he became acquainted with G. Boole’s Laws of Thought. But for a long while, it was not clear to him what he was doing: Cognitive Science? Linguistics? Logic? Philosophy? G. Boole seems to have thought that he was doing mathematics. Then, in late 2012, it became evident that the theory of rational human intelligence is a theory of physics with its own mathematics. Much is owed to J. C. Maxwell in reaching this conclusion. Later, in the summer of 2014, it became apparent that all of rational human intelligence developed in the brain by exploitation of a single physical principle. J.-L. Lagrange likewise derives all of the physics of mass and motion from a single principle. Meanwhile, the author’s study of rational human intelligence had branched out into mathematics. When SCIRP proposed to publish the resulting mathematical articles together as a book, it seemed opportune to take stock of where the whole effort is at by describing the developments of 2012 and 2014 in the book’s front matter and outline the five digitalities making up rational human intelligence: Contrast Digitality, Selection Digitality, Nexus Digitality, Certification Digitality, and Supplement Digitality. Rational human intelligence is the common platform on which all rational minds meet. When one walks up to another human being speaking the same language, one expects to be understood. And that in spite of all kinds of differences in terms of other types of intelligence, such as emotional intelligence, kinetic intelligence, musical intelligence, and so on. And also in spite of differences in terms of knowledge. Rational human intelligence is the same in all people. That is why it is mathematical. It is a kind of operating system. It is now generally assumed that G. Boole tried to explain how we think rationally and failed. The position taken here differs radically. He took us much of the way there. His theory would have been worth not one, but two, Nobel prizes in physics. Just as I. Newton described the motions of celestial bodies in the universe, G. Boole described the motions of rational-thought-and-language in the brain, the most complex structure in the universe.