Library and Information Science

Library and Information Science ISSN: 2435-8495
三田図書館・情報学会 Mita Society for Library and Information Science
〒108‒8345 東京都港区三田2‒15‒45 慶應義塾大学文学部図書館・情報学専攻内 c/o Keio University, 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan
http://www.mslis.jp/ E-mail:mita-slis@ml.keio.jp
Library and Information Science 25: 1-9 (1987)
doi:10.46895/lis.25.1

原著論文Original Article

思想史のなかの情報科学Pioneers of computer science in the history of ideas

発行日:1988年3月25日Published: March 25, 1988
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Usually seven thinkers are mentioned as pioneers of computer science. They are Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Charles Babbage, Norbert Wiener, Johann von Neumann, Alan Mathison Turing and Claude E. Shannon. The author intends to reconsider their thoughts on calculating machine from the point of view of the history of ideas. Curiously enough most of them have in common some ambience of heterodoxy.

Pascal, first fabricator of existent calculator, came near to being condemned with his friends of Port Royal, though he saw the greatness of God in the infinity of His Will which any machine cannot imitate. Leibniz confessed his debt to Kabbalah mysticism in which originated his mathesis universalis. He was in need to have God as clock maker who adjusts the mutually independent worlds of monads. Babbage influenced his contemporary naturalist Robert Chambers through his concept of calculating machine. Thus according to Chambers God is a kind of software engineer.

In this century Wiener insisted in his book “God and Golem Inc.” that scientist must try even religiously prohibited ideas. Von Neumann, converted catholic, compared machine with human brain through his late years and proposed a new concept of machine more akin to brain, of so-called non-von Neumann type. Turing was more modest in his intention and made clear the notion of computability by his ‘Turing machine’. Shannon, starting his career by his famous paper on switching circuit, succeeded to break the fresh ground of information science with his probabilistic notion of information amount. Traditionally the probability is on a diverted line of thought from the orthodox science directed to certainty.

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