10 ideas by Alan Turing which have transcended generations

 

1. Separation of Hardware from Computation

Paper Tapes used in old times as memory

 

In the 17th century there was a dramatic change in the computational and the conceptual sway of in science.  The computational gives surety, gives ease of comparison between prediction and observation.

"The Turing machine did for computational mathematics what Newton's computational mathematics did for his particle dynamics."

The mathematics separated the science. It turned computation into computer science. Gone was the classification of calculating machines built differently for different computational tasks. The hardware was of little importance and did not need to be changed. Even the basic actions of the machine were as simple as could be. But the "machine" could calculate anything a standard calculating machine could. While all the computing power lay in the program.

Even Newton encouraged the familiar expectations of science -- the so-called Laplacian model -- within a precise mathematical model. Also known as the Newtonian model but it was until Albert Einstein quoted:

"When we say that we understand a group of natural phenomena, we mean that we have found a constructive theory which embraces them."

2. The Principle of Universality

EDVAC Computer

 

The 1936 Turing model were anticipated by others, the key extra ingredient was univerality, based on the coding machines as data. This essential feature of today's computer was recognized by John von Neumann, and implemented in his 1945 EDVAC report, which was so influential in the later development of the stored program computer.

It encouraged the development of the functionalist perspective on human cognition and artificial intelligence.
Turing himself is said by Andrew Hodges to have spoken to Donald Bayley in 1994 of "building a brain".  A more limited expression of the paradigm, in computing, is that of the virtual machine originally associated with IBM around 1965. The overriding concept is of varied computational environments being recreated independently of the particular hardware.

3. A Revolution in Programming

Manchester "Baby" : World's first stored program computer that worked

 

As we can certainly visualize a huge amount of work and intellect went into actually building universal machines, and Turing was an important part of this. The early programming machines were not universal. The "program as data" handling facility of today's computers involves hard on embodies elements of Turing's abstraction.

The first stored-program computer that worked was the Manchester "Baby" from 1948. Turing was fascinated by the actual building of computing machines, and always willing to engage with the physicality and sheer messiness of computational processes.

4. Solving the Enigma

A four-rotor German Enigma cipher machine made during WW2

 

I would never doubt the important role of mathematicians in decoding the world we live in. To Winston Churchill, all these mathematicians even Alan Turing who gave up their lives to secret activity at Bletchley Park were:

"The geese that laid the golden eggs but never cackled."

Bletchley Park was the central to Turing's career, and must have been an intense and personally formative part of his life, and many others. Even Alan Turing cracked Enigma from the same place.

5. The Concept of Unsolvability

Around six years before Turing's "computable numbers" paper, David Hilbert had famously proclaimed in Konigsberg, during an opening address to the Society of German Scientists and Physicians, that:

 For the mathematician there is no Ignorabimus, and, in my opinion, not at all for natural science either. . .  The true reason why [no one] has succeeded in finding an unsolvable problem is, in my opinion, that there is no unsolvable problem. In contrast to the foolish Ignorabimus, our credo avers: We must know, We shall know."

Turing's unsolvable problem was that of deciding whether his universal machine would successfully compute or not. And the corollary, known for many years as "Church's Theorem", was the counter-intuitive fact that there is no computer program which can decide if a given sentence of first-order logic whether it is logically valid or not.

6. Solving the Unsolvable

There was an underlying idea that we might be able to explore the incomputable via iterated approximation, maybe even to find a way to compute beyond the Turing (machine) barrier. 

"Turing's mathematics gives us an explanation of why written proofs often do not tell us how the proof was discovered." 

 Turing's mathematics gives us an explanation of why written proofs often often do not tell us how the proof was discovered. A question arose -- does the brain somehow support non-algorithmic thought processes.

7. Interactive Computation

Our computers are no longer just Turing machines. They are part of a hugely complex computational world which collectively creates and exchanges new information. And our material universe is inhabited by computable causality within an embodied environment of great informational complexity, a computational context demanding proper analysis.

Strangely, despite Turing's later interest in interactive computation, he never seems to have returned to his oracle Turing machine model. The mathematical development was left to Emil Post and Stephen Kleene and their successors, and has since become a rich field of research which promises real-world returns Turing would find fascinating.

8. Modeling of the Human Brain

Human Brain

 

Some of Turing's most interesting work — sadly cut off in 1954 — was done in his last few years. For Turing, the human brain had ever been both inspiration and challenge to his work on computing machines. And he attempted to bring a characteristically basic approach to both the physical and the mental.

How can mentality have a causal role in a world that is fundamentally physical? And what about "over determination" — the problem of phenomena having both mental and physical causes?

Turing in 1948 came up with his "unorganized machines" which provided a neural net model alternative to the better known predecessor of Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts.

9. The Turing Test

Turing's famous 1950 paper in Mind astutely narrowing down what one can sensibly say about human intelligence, and discussing in some detail his observer-based test for a thinking machine. The resulting "Turing Test" still dominates people' thinking on the issue. The paper joins the other two most cited papers of Turing.

10. Works on Morphogenesis

Computational Model of Morphogenesis

 

To the surprise of those outside of biology and medicine, the most cited of Turing's papers is the final 1952 The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis. And in many ways this is one of his most original and maybe visionary foray into the world of computation. 

He was not to know that the mathematics of sunflowers and patterns on animal coats would connect up with today's recognition of the importance of emergence, and throw light on a whole range of intractable foundational questions across a wide range of research areas in science and the humanities.

Computationally simple rules, connectivity, emergent forms at the edge of computability, and definable in terms of the rules, just like Turing's patterns. Turing's coherence of vision, at the end of his short life, giving us morphogenesis — inhabiting the same fractal world as the Mandelbrot set; the same computational world as the halting problem for the universal Turing machine; the same large scale structure as found in the observable universe; and perhaps the key to Kim's world of supervenience.

Turing's work on the nature of computation has defined the computer revolution that has changed our world. And his groundbreaking explorations of processes beyond what a computer can handle look likely to provide key elements of the next trans-computer developments.  What do you guys think of this great man? Leave your replies in the comment section