B70-5 Theories of Abstract Automata

• Authors: C. De Renna e Souza
• Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers
• Year: 1970

Scientific writing has long been adversely affected by the common misconception that "objective" and "dull" must be synonyms. That this is not the case Professor Arbib has once more proven by producing a sound and scientifically precise book that is also a pleasure to read. It will elicit more than just an occasional chuckle from its readers, and may even send some of them scurrying for their dictionaries with Greek polysyllables as "prolegomenon," "idiosyncratic," "palindrome," "polycephalic," and others; their search is doomed to failure with "possibilistic," for the author has apparently coined this one himself. Sometimes it is difficult to separate his wit from misprints and misspellings as in "... partial recursive with respect to one radix, they are partial recursive with respect to all radishes," granted, even, that "radish" comes from the same Latin word for "root," "radix." The flavor of the book is certainly unique. Can the reader think of any other book on automata theory closing with a phrase even remotely resembling "That is why both nature and nurture are important"?