Alan Turing's legacy

info-computational philosophy of nature

Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic

pp. 115-123

in: Gordana Dodig Crnkovic, Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Raffaela Giovagnoli (eds), Computing nature, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

Alan Turing's pioneering work on computability, and his ideas on morphological computing support Andrew Hodges' view of Turing as a natural philosopher. Turing's natural philosophy differs importantly from Galileo's view that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics (The Assayer, 1623). Computing is more than a language used to describe nature as computation produces real time physical behaviors. This article presents the framework of Natural info-computationalism as a contemporary natural philosophy that builds on the legacy of Turing's computationalism. The use of info-computational conceptualizations, models and tools makes possible for the first time in history modeling of complex self-organizing adaptive systems, including basic characteristics and functions of living systems, intelligence, and cognition.

Cited authors

Turing Alan