Category Mistakes

Category mistakes by Dijkstra, Hoare, and others

Computability Unplugged?

Submitted by egdaylight on

Dated: 

16 September 2022

Scrutinizing the history of mathematics and computer science has led me to the following illustration & line of argumentation, followed by two typical responses and then a question which I pose to my readers. Perhaps the sequel contains a few insights for the reader too; alas, some sections are peppered with nonsense (most of which I have labelled accordingly).

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Cantor's diagonal argument & potential infinity do not mix

Submitted by egdaylight on

Dated: 

24 August 2022

Concerning Cantor's diagonal argument in connection with the natural and the real numbers, Georg Cantor essentially said: assume we have a bijection between the natural numbers (on the one hand) and the real numbers (on the other hand), we shall now derive a contradiction ...

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Turing Machine as Boundary Object

Submitted by egdaylight on

Here's an abstract, entitled: The Turing Machine as a Boundary Object: Sorting Out American Science and European Engineering, co-authored by Erhard Schüttpelz, featuring Marvin Minsky and Edsger Dijkstra in the late 1960s and early 1970s. To be presented this summer in London at the 11th British Wittgenstein Society Conference: Wittgenstein and AI. 

Update 2022-August-1:

Plato, Aristotle, and Programming

Submitted by egdaylight on

Here's a chapter in the making on two very different philosophical positions and computer programming. I engage with Linnebo and Shapiro in connection with classical logical and potential infinity. 

Discussions will be held at a Lille workshop in June 2022. A revised chapter will appear in the book What is a computer program? New perspectives, edited by PROGRAMme (i.e., by Liesbeth De Mol, Tomas Petricek, and the rest of the PROGRAMme community).

Lecture 3: "Turing's 1948 Bridge: from Logical to Practical Machinery"

Submitted by egdaylight on

Dated: 

28 January 2021

Many Turing scholars share a dualistic outlook on science and technology, distinguishing between non-causal (abstract) objects and causal objects. This outlook stands in stark contrast with Turing's monistic thinking and his answer to what a Turing machine meant to him in 1948. ......

... forthcoming ... in 2022 ...

[Last update: 22 November 2021]

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Chapter 1 of Turing Tales

Submitted by egdaylight on

The first chapter of my 2016 book Turing Tales is made available here. I explain my methodological stance on the history of computer science, and introduce the topic of "conflations," which I believe is key to understanding the history of science and technology.

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