Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 53 posts

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#11

Post by nathias »

Banana699 wrote: post #7
nathias wrote: post #3

Leibniz invented the modern world as a side project. Computer science, relativity, nuclear physics can all be traced to him.

>relativity, nuclear physics Are those just there because of calculus? that's doubly unfair if so. Unfair beacuse there is a huge amount of work that went into those besides simply calculus, and unfair for all those who contributed to calculus before him. Frankly, I wouldn't even attribute CS to him, he did have a mechanistic view of logic, but that alone doesn't strike me as revolutionary, it was the age of mechanic…

Everything you assume is false. I'm refering to the fact he came up with the modern concept now known as energy, which he called vis viva. Why are you making things up, he didn't have a mechanistic view of logic, he invented the concept of possible worlds, but for CS what is important is his side project of charachteristica universalis and his introduction of binary formalization.

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#12

Post by yawboakye »

Banana699 wrote: post #8
brundolf wrote: post #6

I kept assembling points I wanted to make in the comments, and then the article would cover them itself, so I'll just quote it: > He imagined that this machine, which he called “the great instrument of reason,” would be able to answer all questions and resolve all intellectual debate. “When there are disputes among persons,” he wrote, “we can simply say, ‘Let us calculate,’ and without further ado, see who is right.”…

> flawed mechanical system I don't like what "mechanical" is implying here, it gives the impression that humans have weird magic in their head that makes them understand language or search for truth (whatever approximate version they like anyway). It's just a flawed system, period. Your brain circuits are a flawed system, and the artifacts produced by the data science craze are flawed. They are not flawed equally, bu…

> Your brain circuits are a flawed system

What a roundabout way to admit limitation both in knowledge and tools to investigate them. Except this one is more sinister because it almost closes the curtain on approaching this natural order (of brain circuitry) with both humility and curiosity.

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#13

Post by lordleft »

> Leibniz’s central argument was that all human thoughts, no matter how complex, are combinations of basic and fundamental concepts, in much the same way that sentences are combinations of words, and words combinations of letters. He believed that if he could find a way to symbolically represent these fundamental concepts and develop a method by which to combine them logically, then he would be able to generate new thoughts on demand.

To what extent did Leibniz impact Frege and the other architects of analytic philosophy? Isn't Begriffsschrift a similar project?

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#14

Post by inafewwords »

Banana699 wrote: post #8
brundolf wrote: post #6

I kept assembling points I wanted to make in the comments, and then the article would cover them itself, so I'll just quote it: > He imagined that this machine, which he called “the great instrument of reason,” would be able to answer all questions and resolve all intellectual debate. “When there are disputes among persons,” he wrote, “we can simply say, ‘Let us calculate,’ and without further ado, see who is right.”…

> flawed mechanical system I don't like what "mechanical" is implying here, it gives the impression that humans have weird magic in their head that makes them understand language or search for truth (whatever approximate version they like anyway). It's just a flawed system, period. Your brain circuits are a flawed system, and the artifacts produced by the data science craze are flawed. They are not flawed equally, bu…

Humans have a bit of irrationality that is based on their different POVs and experience. So the magic system is just that we have dynamic value systems. Shared culture through interconnected internet is making this less of a problem as the dynamic range is getting smaller or narrow enough to categorize

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#15

Post by yawboakye »

lostmsu wrote: post #9
Banana699 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>relativity, nuclear physics Are those just there because of calculus? that's doubly unfair if so. Unfair beacuse there is a huge amount of work that went into those besides simply calculus, and unfair for all those who contributed to calculus before him. Frankly, I wouldn't even attribute CS to him, he did have a mechanistic view of logic, but that alone doesn't strike me as revolutionary, it was the age of mechanic…

The mathematics side of CS would be Gödel probably.

The mathematics of CS is mainly logic, for which Gödel isn't essentially the leading light. Very important theories he contributed, but they don't necessarily define logic. I'd be more inclined to attribute to Russell or any of his influencers (like Frege).

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#16

Post by mdp2021 »

brundolf wrote: post #6

I kept assembling points I wanted to make in the comments, and then the article would cover them itself, so I'll just quote it: > He imagined that this machine, which he called “the great instrument of reason,” would be able to answer all questions and resolve all intellectual debate. “When there are disputes among persons,” he wrote, “we can simply say, ‘Let us calculate,’ and without further ado, see who is right.”…

> Having the naivete

Regulative ideals do not constitute a claim of achieved solution. Approximation of an ideal result is already an achievement.

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#17

Post by zosima »

Banana699 wrote: post #7
nathias wrote: post #3

Leibniz invented the modern world as a side project. Computer science, relativity, nuclear physics can all be traced to him.

>relativity, nuclear physics Are those just there because of calculus? that's doubly unfair if so. Unfair beacuse there is a huge amount of work that went into those besides simply calculus, and unfair for all those who contributed to calculus before him. Frankly, I wouldn't even attribute CS to him, he did have a mechanistic view of logic, but that alone doesn't strike me as revolutionary, it was the age of mechanic…

Leibniz was born one and a half century before Babbage and nearly two and a half century before Russel and Turing.

To compare them is immensely unfair to Leibniz and completely ignores how visionary and far ahead of his time he actually was.

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#18

Post by nathias »

whatshisface wrote: post #4
nathias wrote: post #3

Leibniz invented the modern world as a side project. Computer science, relativity, nuclear physics can all be traced to him.

You can say that about almost any mathematician in history.

You really can't.

Re: In the 17th century, Leibniz dreamed of a machine that could calculate ideas

#19

Post by Banana699 »

nathias wrote: post #11
Banana699 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>relativity, nuclear physics Are those just there because of calculus? that's doubly unfair if so. Unfair beacuse there is a huge amount of work that went into those besides simply calculus, and unfair for all those who contributed to calculus before him. Frankly, I wouldn't even attribute CS to him, he did have a mechanistic view of logic, but that alone doesn't strike me as revolutionary, it was the age of mechanic…

Everything you assume is false. I'm refering to the fact he came up with the modern concept now known as energy, which he called vis viva. Why are you making things up, he didn't have a mechanistic view of logic, he invented the concept of possible worlds, but for CS what is important is his side project of charachteristica universalis and his introduction of binary formalization.

>he came up with the modern concept now known as energy, which he called vis viva

I forgot that, but crediting relativity and nuclear physics to Conservation Of Energy still feels like a big stretch to me. Maybe Thermodynamics.

>he didn't have a mechanistic view of logic, he invented the concept of possible worlds

I'm not sure I understand why those two things contradict each other. He envisioned a machine doing reasoning, that's a "mechanistic view of logic" in my book. How is possible worlds related to that and why are they in tension in your opinion ?

>charachteristica universalis and his introduction of binary formalization

Fair enough, those two things are fairly radical for his time and very CSy. But neither is original to him, his charachteristica universalis is based on a misunderstanding of chinese ideographs, and there were people contemporary to him like John Wilkins who worked on very similar things ('philosophical languages'), the idea was in the air at the time.

The binary numerals were also inspired by certain chinese texts, and some claim[1] that he plagiarised them outright from contemporaries. All said and done though, I don't think binary numbers are that important or fundamental to computers, only the idea that numbers (and abstract ideas in general) can be operated on purely syntactically without the slightest clue as to their meaning, and still yield useful results; This is an idea much older than Leibniz. Also Babbage managed to design a perfectly good computer on base-10, and binary was just one system among many in the 1940s.

[1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314485403_Who_Disco...

Post reply on HN