{"id":142,"date":"2004-09-02T07:08:28","date_gmt":"2004-09-02T11:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cherrycoated.com\/wordpress\/?p=142"},"modified":"2004-09-02T07:08:28","modified_gmt":"2004-09-02T11:08:28","slug":"the-universal-computer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/books\/the-universal-computer","title":{"rendered":"The Universal Computer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his book  <strong>&#8220;The Universal Computer  The Road From Leibniz To Turing,&#8221;<\/strong>  <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/associates\/link-types\/marketplace.html?t=webliminalbooksi&amp;asin=0393047857\"><img SRC=\"http:\/\/images.amazon.com\/images\/P\/0393047857.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"cover\" hspace=\"3\" vspace=\"3\" align=\"right\"><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.nyu.edu\/cs\/faculty\/davism\/\">Martin Davis<\/a> presents a history of the development of logic that focus on creating a system in which computation is purely symbolic .<\/p>\n<p>Starting with Leibniz&#8217;s &#8216;wonderful idea&#8217; &#8211; a language based on an alphabet whose &#8220;elements represented not sounds, but concepts. A language based on such an alphabet should make it possible to determine by symbolic calculation which sentences written in the language were true and what logical relationships existed among them.&#8221;  In his exposition he takes a clear path from Leibniz to Boole to Frege to Cantor to Hilbert to Godel and then to Turing. As a former student of mathematics (in the 60&#8217;s and 70&#8217;s, and current teacher of computer science (since the 80&#8217;s) my appreciation of his exposition was enhanced by my own recollections of the names and events he describes. Furthermore, he gives you the feeling that you&#8217;re reading something written by an insider &#8211; telling us stories and tidbits that we on the outside can enjoy and appreciate.  The book is nicely done with extensive notes. Give it a read when you get the chance.<\/p>\n<p>A more detailed review is available at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maa.org\/reviews\/univcmptr.html\">&#8220;Read This! The MAA Online book review column&#8221; <\/a>, by Mark Johnson.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his book &#8220;The Universal Computer The Road From Leibniz To Turing,&#8221; Martin Davis presents a history of the development of logic that focus on creating a system in which computation is purely symbolic . Starting with Leibniz&#8217;s &#8216;wonderful idea&#8217; &#8211; a language based on an alphabet whose &#8220;elements represented not sounds, but concepts. A [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.webliminal.com\/webliminalblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}