Suggested Reading: Les sciences de l’imprécis

Abraham A. Moles — Les sciences de l’imprécis — Seuil, 1990, 310 pp. ISBN 2-02-011620-0

(out of print?)

“Thinking about the vague is not vague thinking” would quite succinctly and accurately describe Moles’ thesis. The terminology used will be a bit disconcerting to the computer scientist as the vocabulary comes from the social sciences rather than the “hard” sciences. At times we feel that analogies drawn between the author’s ideas and information theory (and computer science) are almost stretched but we can quite forgive this since it nevertheless remains a very clear exposition of his thesis, that is, imprecision is not to be frown upon and is quite necessary to science and as such should be mastered rather than feared.

The text is almost grand public as it contains essential no maths.