5 ms·

Aristotle influenced the computer (2017)

39 points by conanxin 4y ago

haspoken 4y ago
https://archive.ph/QyBVJ https://archive.ph/QyBVJ
Joker_vD 4y ago
I've read half of the article, and of course, the title is sensationalizing: if anything, it was Leibniz with his "calculus ratiocinator" who influenced the computer, not Aristotle.
uwagar 4y ago
if u look at any popular science book on almost any topic, aristotle would have been the first to study that topic.
- pazimzadeh 4y ago
  Hard to believe. The first to write down his thoughts on it, maybe.
  - uwagar 4y ago
    another view is any further east beyond greece makes the origin of the said science eastern.
taylorlapeyre 4y ago
Confusing piece. By its logic, Aristotle also “influenced” quantum physics. We all of course stand on the shoulders of giants, but given the rate of development of computing in the last 100 years, claiming that its ideas originated 2,300 years ago doesn’t contribute much to understanding of what is going on.
- foysavas 4y ago
  Th article traces the development of computers back through the development of symbolic logic. It may seem silly to connect to such ancient history, but the path from then to now has left a large backlog for future technologists to resurface.
llaolleh 4y ago
What a bottom tier article. Writing is all over the place. Aristotle influenced the computer is like saying there is oxygen in the air.
ogogmad 4y ago
My understanding is that Aristotelian logic could only operate with statements of the form: - All x are y - Some x are y - Not all x are y - No x are y You could only substitute names for x and y, and there was no recursion. As a result, you couldn't express gometric and number-theoretic statements in this language. The method of argumentation was syllogism, which is not much more sophisticated than: All men are mortal. All philosophers are men. So all philosophers are mortal. This is limited compared to Natural Deduction. I thought it was Stoic logic that was a lot closer to modern propositional logic. There appear to be traces of predicate logic in the Aristotelian system - making it original in a different way from the Stoic system - but only slight ones because of the absence of recursion. I should say I haven't read the article. Busy.
- fedeb95 4y ago
  The article cites exactly the Aristotelian syllogism. I agree the title is a bit clickbaity, but I found it well written and explaining well how we got to computers since Greek times
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Stoic logic was much later than Aristotle. The article traces the development of symbolic logic since Aristotle, whose work is the oldest preserved in this domain, through the time, until George Boole and Gottlob Frege in the 19th century and Claude Shannon in the 20th century, when logical operations became mapped to electrical circuits with relays. So it is right for any history of logic to start with Aristotle. If there have been older treatises on logic, they have been lost. It is not surprising that the successors of Aristotle have made some improvements upon his theory, it is more surprising that the improvements were so few until the 19th century, despite the fact that logic has been all the time an important object of study for all cultivated people, being rightfully one of the 3 branches of the trivium. Of course a title about "How Aristotle has created the computer" is completely wrong, because the creation of the electronic computers had multiple equally important sources, and the implementation of logic operations with relay circuits was only one of those many sources. Those multiple sources had separate histories that merged only around WW2, and some of those histories had also stretched over several centuries. Of equal importance for the genesis of the electronic computers were the mechanical arithmetic calculating machines and the electronic counters (invented in 1931 to count the pulses produced by the detectors of cosmic rays or of nuclear radiation).
bandrami 4y ago
IIRC Ada Lovelace said about the difference engine that "the remnant may be construed as arithmetical or logical, depending as the supply is construed" which always struck me as a pretty succinct statement of the fundamental theorem of computer science
- bandrami 4y ago
  And for that matter Jacquard in some cases used the punch-holes as control commands for later wefts, which though he never articulated it is the same principle.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    So Jacquard was a PHP programmer or hacker just doing what had to be done to make the thing work, and Lovelace was a computer scientist. :)
thenerdhead 4y ago
Most philosophers were foundational to the idea of "computing". They all build upon each other's ideas. Aristotle definitely started the work on logic, but Descartes made the modern "computer" definition. This term has roots for an old occupation even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) You took equations and processed them. The reasoning that Descartes later reduced to the idea of "computation". Also known as Cartesian grammar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_linguistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_linguistics The idea being that if we can make our minds into purely computational machines, then we will achieve certainty in our beliefs, thus relieving the anxiety we are suffering. Hobbes later would try to define a new model of "cognition is computation".

39 points by conanxin 4y ago

https://archive.ph/QyBVJ https://archive.ph/QyBVJ

I've read half of the article, and of course, the title is sensationalizing: if anything, it was Leibniz with his "calculus ratiocinator" who influenced the computer, not Aristotle.

uwagar 4y ago

if u look at any popular science book on almost any topic, aristotle would have been the first to study that topic.

pazimzadeh 4y ago
Hard to believe. The first to write down his thoughts on it, maybe.
- uwagar 4y ago
  another view is any further east beyond greece makes the origin of the said science eastern.

taylorlapeyre 4y ago

Confusing piece. By its logic, Aristotle also “influenced” quantum physics. We all of course stand on the shoulders of giants, but given the rate of development of computing in the last 100 years, claiming that its ideas originated 2,300 years ago doesn’t contribute much to understanding of what is going on.

foysavas 4y ago
Th article traces the development of computers back through the development of symbolic logic. It may seem silly to connect to such ancient history, but the path from then to now has left a large backlog for future technologists to resurface.

llaolleh 4y ago

What a bottom tier article. Writing is all over the place. Aristotle influenced the computer is like saying there is oxygen in the air.

ogogmad 4y ago

My understanding is that Aristotelian logic could only operate with statements of the form: - All x are y - Some x are y - Not all x are y - No x are y You could only substitute names for x and y, and there was no recursion. As a result, you couldn't express gometric and number-theoretic statements in this language. The method of argumentation was syllogism, which is not much more sophisticated than: All men are mortal. All philosophers are men. So all philosophers are mortal. This is limited compared to Natural Deduction. I thought it was Stoic logic that was a lot closer to modern propositional logic. There appear to be traces of predicate logic in the Aristotelian system - making it original in a different way from the Stoic system - but only slight ones because of the absence of recursion. I should say I haven't read the article. Busy.

fedeb95 4y ago
The article cites exactly the Aristotelian syllogism. I agree the title is a bit clickbaity, but I found it well written and explaining well how we got to computers since Greek times
adrian_b 4y ago
Stoic logic was much later than Aristotle. The article traces the development of symbolic logic since Aristotle, whose work is the oldest preserved in this domain, through the time, until George Boole and Gottlob Frege in the 19th century and Claude Shannon in the 20th century, when logical operations became mapped to electrical circuits with relays. So it is right for any history of logic to start with Aristotle. If there have been older treatises on logic, they have been lost. It is not surprising that the successors of Aristotle have made some improvements upon his theory, it is more surprising that the improvements were so few until the 19th century, despite the fact that logic has been all the time an important object of study for all cultivated people, being rightfully one of the 3 branches of the trivium. Of course a title about "How Aristotle has created the computer" is completely wrong, because the creation of the electronic computers had multiple equally important sources, and the implementation of logic operations with relay circuits was only one of those many sources. Those multiple sources had separate histories that merged only around WW2, and some of those histories had also stretched over several centuries. Of equal importance for the genesis of the electronic computers were the mechanical arithmetic calculating machines and the electronic counters (invented in 1931 to count the pulses produced by the detectors of cosmic rays or of nuclear radiation).

bandrami 4y ago

IIRC Ada Lovelace said about the difference engine that "the remnant may be construed as arithmetical or logical, depending as the supply is construed" which always struck me as a pretty succinct statement of the fundamental theorem of computer science

bandrami 4y ago
And for that matter Jacquard in some cases used the punch-holes as control commands for later wefts, which though he never articulated it is the same principle.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  So Jacquard was a PHP programmer or hacker just doing what had to be done to make the thing work, and Lovelace was a computer scientist. :)

thenerdhead 4y ago

Most philosophers were foundational to the idea of "computing". They all build upon each other's ideas. Aristotle definitely started the work on logic, but Descartes made the modern "computer" definition. This term has roots for an old occupation even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) You took equations and processed them. The reasoning that Descartes later reduced to the idea of "computation". Also known as Cartesian grammar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_linguistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_linguistics The idea being that if we can make our minds into purely computational machines, then we will achieve certainty in our beliefs, thus relieving the anxiety we are suffering. Hobbes later would try to define a new model of "cognition is computation".