Analyzing the Logic of Sun Tzu in The Art of War Using Mind Maps Peter Van Emde Boas

The book you have just opened is probably unlike anything you have ever read so far. It offers you a path to direct contact with “The Art of War”, the masterpiece of Sun Tzu, a classical theorist of warfare in Ancient China. This book examines an ancient Chinese work on strategy and warfare: Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”, from the perspectives of logic, mathematics, and computer science. Sun Tzu’s book has been studied and translated many times before, with viewpoints from historians, military- and business strategists, philosophers, and in the context of modern computer strategy games. This book takes a new approach to study this 2500-year-old text. It uses modern mind mapping techniques to show a new dimension that uncovers meaning and structure not easily seen before. Mind maps are semantic diagrams of related concepts: they are used in this book in a restricted form, defined as Text Tree Mind Maps. A chapter covering the theoretical side of diagramming ancient text, explains the making of the mind maps used in this book and why showing old text in this way is so useful.