3 ms·

Interestingly, Plankalkuel was predated by Ada Lovelace's notes on calculating Bernoulli numbers. Then for Lovelace, lets go back even further. Mathematics it

by tomlock 10y ago

Interestingly, Plankalkuel was predated by Ada Lovelace's notes on calculating Bernoulli numbers. Then for Lovelace, lets go back even further. Mathematics itself already contains the base principles that enable the formalisms of lambda calculus. Additionally, the Antikythera mechanism was predated by many admittedly more crude but still important calculating mechanisms like the abacus. So its wrong to say that those automata would have existed independently. Its almost as if everyone's work is built upon the work of those before them and wouldn't be possible otherwise. Does that invalidate their achievement?

x1798DE 10y ago
> Its almost as if everyone's work is built upon the work of those before them and wouldn't be possible otherwise. Does that invalidate their achievement? I think that "x wouldn't have happened without y" statements in questions of scientific discovery are almost always false, at least partially for this reason. In some ways it does invalidate their achievement, to the extent that they are portrayed as being the sole agent of radical change when, in all likelihood, they are just the person who got there first (and often by a slim margin, as the history of scientific priority disputes shows).
- lorenzfx 10y ago
  On the other hand, the competition makes their achievement even more valuable because they were in a race and got there first.
- deepnet 10y ago
  Primacy of publication, unfairly in many cases, is histories yardstick. Sometimes so great a leap is made that the 'great thinker' model applies. It is generally highly useful to examine the context surrounding groundbreaking ideas for neglected valuable insights.
mafribe 10y ago
Of course science evolves in small increments. The point of my original post was to be an antidote to the extreme hyperbole of "3 women who radically ...", and to set the recored straight.
- tomlock 10y ago
  Strange that you use the word antidote. Did this article seem particularly poisonous? I'm not seeing it.

by tomlock 10y ago

x1798DE 10y ago

> Its almost as if everyone's work is built upon the work of those before them and wouldn't be possible otherwise. Does that invalidate their achievement? I think that "x wouldn't have happened without y" statements in questions of scientific discovery are almost always false, at least partially for this reason. In some ways it does invalidate their achievement, to the extent that they are portrayed as being the sole agent of radical change when, in all likelihood, they are just the person who got there first (and often by a slim margin, as the history of scientific priority disputes shows).

lorenzfx 10y ago
On the other hand, the competition makes their achievement even more valuable because they were in a race and got there first.
deepnet 10y ago
Primacy of publication, unfairly in many cases, is histories yardstick. Sometimes so great a leap is made that the 'great thinker' model applies. It is generally highly useful to examine the context surrounding groundbreaking ideas for neglected valuable insights.

mafribe 10y ago

Of course science evolves in small increments. The point of my original post was to be an antidote to the extreme hyperbole of "3 women who radically ...", and to set the recored straight.

tomlock 10y ago
Strange that you use the word antidote. Did this article seem particularly poisonous? I'm not seeing it.