scholarly journals Turing's Influence on Programming

10.29007/n93n ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edgar G. Daylight
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Central Question ◽  
John Von Neumann ◽  
Von Neumann ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Martin Davis ◽  
Turing Award

Turing's involvement with computer building was popularized in the 1970s and later. Most notable are the books by Brian Randell (1973), Andrew Hodges (1983), and Martin Davis (2000). A central question is whether John von Neumann was influenced by Turing's 1936 paper when he helped build the EDVAC machine, even though he never cited Turing's work. This question remains unsettled up till this day. As remarked by Charles Petzold, one standard history barely mentions Turing, while the other, written by a logician, makes Turing a key player.Contrast these observations then with the fact that Turing's 1936 paper was cited and heavily discussed in 1959 among computer programmers. In 1966, the first Turing award was given to a programmer, not a computer builder, as were several subsequent Turing awards. An historical investigation of Turing's influence on computing, presented here, shows that Turing's 1936 notion of universality became increasingly relevant among programmers during the 1950s. The central thesis of this paper states that Turing's influence was felt more in programming after his death than in computer building during the 1940s.

scholarly journals Introducing formalism in economics: The growth model of John von Neumann

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandye Gloria-Palermo
Keyword(s):  
Growth Model ◽  
John Von Neumann ◽  
Von Neumann ◽  
David Hilbert ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Pragmatic Turn ◽  
The Impact

The objective is to interpret John von Neumann's growth model as a decisive step of the forthcoming formalist revolution of the 1950s in economics. This model gave rise to an impressive variety of comments about its classical or neoclassical underpinnings. We go beyond this traditional criterion and interpret rather this model as the manifestation of von Neumann's involvement in the formalist programme of mathematician David Hilbert. We discuss the impact of Kurt G?del's discoveries on this programme. We show that the growth model reflects the pragmatic turn of the formalist programme after G?del and proposes the extension of modern axiomatisation to economics.

Solution or Imitation?

2019 ◽  
pp. 147-173
Author(s):  
Johannes Lenhard
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Computer Model ◽  
Numerical Solutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
John Von Neumann ◽  
Von Neumann ◽  
Norbert Wiener ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter distinguishes two fundamental but opposing conceptions of simulation. The first conception conceives simulations as numerical solutions of equations. The second approach does not involve the concept of solution, but takes simulation as the imitation of the behavior of a complex system by a computer model. This chapter claims that simulation modeling combines both conceptions. Large parts of the sciences involve a compromise (in one way or another) between two diverging forces. Theoretical understanding and epistemic quality stand on the one side; applicability and tractability on the other. What is interesting about simulation is the way in which a balance is achieved—that is, how the conflicting types are combined. The chapter analyzes the relationship between the simulation pioneers John von Neumann, who advocated the solution, and Norbert Wiener, who advocated the imitation concept.

The Universal Constructor

2010 ◽  
pp. 362-378
Author(s):  
Eleonora Bilotta ◽  
Pietro Pantano
Keyword(s):  
John Von Neumann ◽  
Von Neumann ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Biological Organisms

At the beginning of the 1950s, John von Neumann (1966) asked himself whether it is possible to design a machine with the ability to create exact copies of itself which would themselves have the ability to produce new copies. Such a machine would have reproductive capabilities comparable to those we find in biological organisms. In this setting, von Neumann’s goal was to design a Universal.Constructor capable of reading the instructions for, and assembling, any machine the designer might seek to build. If the instructions specified a Universal Constructor, the machine would have the ability to build a copy of itself. In other words, it would be able to reproduce. If we wanted the copies of the machine to share this ability, all we would have to do would be to copy the instructions and incorporate them in the new machines.

Introduction: Game Theory and Business Ethics

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Vanderschraaf
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Mathematical Theory ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
John Von Neumann ◽  
Von Neumann ◽  
Telephone Conversation ◽  
Inaugural Lecture

In 1954, Richard Braithwaite chose as the topic of his inaugural lecture at Cambridge The Theory of Games as a Tool for the Moral Philosopher. Braithwaite argued that by using the recently developed mathematical theory of games, philosophers could resolve certain problems in moral philosophy previously considered unsolvable. Formal game theory is a product of the twentieth century. John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern established game theory as an important new branch of social science with the publication of their 1944 treatise Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. However, the basic idea that motivates game theory has much older intellectual roots in the work of philosophers such as Hobbes (1651) and Hume (1740). This basic idea can be expressed in the following way: How agents behave in a given social interaction depends crucially upon their reciprocal expectations. To give an example adapted from Braithwaite’s lecture, if you and I wish to have a telephone conversation, then exactly one of us must call. I should wait for your call precisely when I expect you to call, which you should do when you expect me to wait. Even in an example this simple, issues of fairness can come into play. We both want to coordinate our behavior and have our telephone chat. But each of us may prefer to call, so as to avoid having the other pay for the call. Braithwaite used game theory to model this example, and to propose a method for assigning the roles of caller and receiver equitably. He conjectured that this method could be applied in general to problems of distributive justice.

Ruler Visibility and Popular Belonging in the Ottoman Empire, 1808-1908

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darin Stephanov
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Group Consciousness ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Point Model ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
National Movements ◽  
Tanzimat Reforms ◽  
The One

‘What do we really speak of when we speak of the modern ethno-national mindset and where shall we search for its roots?’ This is the central question of a book arguing that the periodic ceremonial intrusion into the everyday lives of people across the Ottoman Empire, which the annual royal birthday and accession-day celebrations constituted, had multiple, far-reaching, and largely unexplored consequences. On the one hand, it brought ordinary subjects into symbolic contact with the monarch and forged lasting vertical ties of loyalty to him, irrespective of language, location, creed or class. On the other hand, the rounds of royal celebration played a key role in the creation of new types of horizontal ties and ethnic group consciousness that crystallized into national movements, and, after the empire’s demise, national monarchies. The book discusses the themes of public space/sphere, the Tanzimat reforms, millet, modernity, nationalism, governmentality, and the modern state, among others. It offers a new, thirteen-point model of modern belonging based on the concept of ruler visibility.

John von Neumann

2004 ◽  
Vol 174 (12) ◽  
pp. 1371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikhail I. Monastyrskii
Keyword(s):  
John Von Neumann ◽  
Von Neumann

Alive Still

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Curtis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Severe Form ◽  
The Other ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Village Voice

In 1942, at age twenty, after a vision-impaired and rebellious childhood in Richmond, Virginia, Nell Blaine decamped for New York. Operations had corrected her eyesight, and she was newly aware of modern art, so different from the literal style of her youthful drawings. In Manhattan, she met rising young artists and poets. Her life was hectic, with raucous parties in her loft, lovers of both sexes, and freelance design jobs, including a stint at the Village Voice. Initially drawn to the rigorous formalism of Piet Mondrian, she received critical praise for her jazzy abstractions. During the 1950s, she began to paint interiors and landscapes. By 1959, when the Whitney Museum purchased one of her paintings, her career was firmly established. That year, she contracted a severe form of polio on a trip to Greece; suddenly, she was a paraplegic. Undaunted, she taught herself to paint in oil with her left hand, reserving her right hand for watercolors. In her postpolio work, she achieved a freer style, expressive of the joy she found in flowers and landscapes. Living half the year in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and the other half in New York, she took special delight in painting the views from her windows and from her country garden. Critics found her new style irresistible, and she had a loyal circle of collectors; still, she struggled to earn enough money to pay the aides who made her life possible. At her side for her final twenty-nine years was her lover, painter Carolyn Harris.

Informed Consent: Ezenwa–Ohaeto between Past and Future Uses of Pidgin

Matatu ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Zabus
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
First Language ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wole Soyinka ◽  
The West ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The One

The essay shows how Ezenwa–Ohaeto's poetry in pidgin, particularly in his collection (1988), emblematizes a linguistic interface between, on the one hand, the pseudo-pidgin of Onitsha Market pamphleteers of the 1950s and 1960s (including in its gendered guise as in Cyprian Ekwensi) and, on the other, its quasicreolized form in contemporary news and television and radio dramas as well as a potential first language. While locating Nigerian Pidgin or EnPi in the wider context of the emergence of pidgins on the West African Coast, the essay also draws on examples from Joyce Cary, Frank Aig–Imoukhuede, Ogali A. Ogali, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka, and Tunde Fatunde among others. It is not by default but out of choice and with their 'informed consent' that EnPi writers such as Ezenwa–Ohaeto contributed to the unfinished plot of the pidgin–creole continuum.

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