Philosophy
The modern world runs on computers, and the idea of modern computers owes its birth particularly to Alan Turing, a British polymath (philosopher, mathematician, computer science visionary, mathematical biologist, marathon runner, etc.) whose ideas would revolutionize virtually every discipline he thought about.
During World War II, for instance, the Nazi's were basically kicking some major British butt, until that is, Alan Turing decided to get involved and crack the code of the Nazi Enigma cipher machine and even the score. It wouldn't be long until the tide would turn and the krauts found themselves on the receiving end...
Turing's ability to crack the German code was related to his work on computational theory. Instead of creating a domain-specific computer to perform a very limited set of functions, part of Turing's genius consisted in realizing (and proving) that a universal machine (now known as a Turing machine) could compute any string of operations that could be expressed in symbolic form, no matter how complex. This eventually gave rise to the idea of artificial intelligence, whose daddy, as you might already be able to guess, is Alan Turing. Here is a very short introduction to this man's genius.
To learn about his incredibly interesting work on mathematical biology (specifically his ideas related to the chemistry basis of morphogenesis), check out Jim Al-Khalili's documentary The Secret Life of Chaos.
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- Turing's Biographer's Dilemma: How Much Are You Required To Tell When You Are Required To Tell It?
Continuing our Turing Week theme, here's a post originally up in 2006: I'm writing on Descartes for a series of biographies of famous mathematicians designed for the middle and high school reader. Before I accepted the assignment, I was given...
- Comedy And The Turing Test
Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists everywhere, This week, good brother 71 sent me a link to this article, "Computers Crack Jokes in Unusual Artificial Intelligence Test." Alan Turing used as a sufficient condition for artificial intelligence...
- Turing's Biographer's Dilemma: How Much Are You Required To Tell When You Are Required To Tell It?
I'm writing on Descartes for a series of biographies of famous mathematicians designed for the high school reader. Before I accepted the assignment, I was given a list of figures still needing authors and one that piqued my interest was Alan Turning....
- Turing Test - Important Questions
Turing test brings up many questions crucial to philosophy of mind. It was designed by a British logician Alan Turing and remains a challenge both to artificial intelligence creators and philosophers. Turing test, despite rumours, still has not been passed...
- Breaking The Code - The Biography Of Alan Turing
Computers don't grow on trees, and even though they are ubiquitous today, that wasn't always the case. In fact, they've only been around for less than a hundred years, and although there are certain folks to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude...
Philosophy
Happy birthday, Alan Turing
The modern world runs on computers, and the idea of modern computers owes its birth particularly to Alan Turing, a British polymath (philosopher, mathematician, computer science visionary, mathematical biologist, marathon runner, etc.) whose ideas would revolutionize virtually every discipline he thought about.During World War II, for instance, the Nazi's were basically kicking some major British butt, until that is, Alan Turing decided to get involved and crack the code of the Nazi Enigma cipher machine and even the score. It wouldn't be long until the tide would turn and the krauts found themselves on the receiving end...
Turing's ability to crack the German code was related to his work on computational theory. Instead of creating a domain-specific computer to perform a very limited set of functions, part of Turing's genius consisted in realizing (and proving) that a universal machine (now known as a Turing machine) could compute any string of operations that could be expressed in symbolic form, no matter how complex. This eventually gave rise to the idea of artificial intelligence, whose daddy, as you might already be able to guess, is Alan Turing. Here is a very short introduction to this man's genius.
To learn about his incredibly interesting work on mathematical biology (specifically his ideas related to the chemistry basis of morphogenesis), check out Jim Al-Khalili's documentary The Secret Life of Chaos.
.
- Turing's Biographer's Dilemma: How Much Are You Required To Tell When You Are Required To Tell It?
Continuing our Turing Week theme, here's a post originally up in 2006: I'm writing on Descartes for a series of biographies of famous mathematicians designed for the middle and high school reader. Before I accepted the assignment, I was given...
- Comedy And The Turing Test
Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists everywhere, This week, good brother 71 sent me a link to this article, "Computers Crack Jokes in Unusual Artificial Intelligence Test." Alan Turing used as a sufficient condition for artificial intelligence...
- Turing's Biographer's Dilemma: How Much Are You Required To Tell When You Are Required To Tell It?
I'm writing on Descartes for a series of biographies of famous mathematicians designed for the high school reader. Before I accepted the assignment, I was given a list of figures still needing authors and one that piqued my interest was Alan Turning....
- Turing Test - Important Questions
Turing test brings up many questions crucial to philosophy of mind. It was designed by a British logician Alan Turing and remains a challenge both to artificial intelligence creators and philosophers. Turing test, despite rumours, still has not been passed...
- Breaking The Code - The Biography Of Alan Turing
Computers don't grow on trees, and even though they are ubiquitous today, that wasn't always the case. In fact, they've only been around for less than a hundred years, and although there are certain folks to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude...