Want to be a computer scientist? Forget maths

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://www.itwire.com.au/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13339&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=53>

iTWire -

Want to be a computer scientist? Forget maths


By Stuart Corner   

Thursday, 05 July 2007


A new book seeks to demolish the concept that computer science is rooted in
mathematics and, in particular that the notion of the algorithm is
fundamental to computer science.

In particular, he says the notion of the algorithm, "has been largely
ineffective as a paradigm for computer science." Fant argues that, because
mathematicians, notably John Von Neumann and Alan Turing, were intimately
involved with the early development of digital electronic computers in the
1940s they transplanted a mathematical model of computation, including the
algorithm - commonly understood to be an exact prescription, defining a
computational process, leading from various initial data to the desired
result - into the fledgling science of computers.

He claims that "What is essentially a discipline of pure mathematics has
come to be called "the theory of computer science," and "the notion of the
algorithm has been decreed to be a fundamental paradigm of computer
science" However, he says this mathematical perspective "is the wrong point
of view" and is asking the wrong questions.

"Mathematicians and computer scientists are pursuing fundamentally
different aims, and the mathematician's tools are not as appropriate as was
once supposed to the questions of the computer scientist. The primary
questions of computer science are not of computational possibilities but of
expressional possibilities. Computer science does not need a theory of
computation; it needs a comprehensive theory of process expression."

This concept of 'process expression' is, he says, a common thread running
through the various disciplines of computer science. "A logic circuit is an
expression of a logical process; an architecture is an expression of a
continuously acting process to interpret symbolically expressed processes;
a program is a symbolic expression of a process; a programming language is
an environment within which to create symbolic process expression; a
compiler is an expression of a process that translates between symbolic
process expressions in different languages; an operating system is an
expression of a process that manages the interpretation of other process
expressions; any application is an expression of the application process."

And, he argues, important process expressions do not qualify as algorithms.
"A logic circuit is not a sequence of operations. An operating system is
not supposed to terminate, nor does it yield a singular solution. An
operating system cannot be deterministic because it must relate to
uncoordinated inputs from the outside world. Any program utilising random
input to carry out its process, such...is not an algorithm."

"The notion of the algorithm," he concludes "simply does not provide
conceptual enlightenment for the questions that most computer scientists
are concerned with."

Fant is the founder and CEO of Theseus Research, a consulting firm
specialising in the design and implementation of real-time image processing
systems as well as ongoing research into the theory of computers. "Computer
Science Reconsidered: The Invocation Model of Process Expression" is
published by John Wiley.


-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'