Category Mistakes

Category mistakes by Dijkstra, Hoare, and others

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.

Hopcroft and Ullman

Submitted by egdaylight on

Dated: 

24 October 2017

Is the history of computer science solely a history of progress? I don't think so. Judge for yourself by reading the present post in which I scrutinize the famous textbooks of John E. Hopcroft and Jeffrey D. Ullman.

Quotes from 1969 and 2007

I start by comparing the following two quotes. The first quote comes from Hopcroft & Ullman, 1969:

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