Books

Short works

Books : reviews

S. Barry Cooper, Andrew Hodges, eds.
The Once and Future Turing: computing the world.
CUP. 2016

Alan Turing (l9l2–l954) made seminal contributions to mathematical logic, computation, computer science, artificial intelligence, cryptography and theoretical biology.

In this volume, outstanding scientific thinkers take a fresh look at the great range of Turing’s contributions, on how the subjects have developed since his time, and how they might develop still further.

These specially commissioned essays will provoke and engross the reader who wishes to understand better the lasting-significance of one of the twentieth century’s deepest thinkers.

Contents

Martin Davis. Algorithms, equations, and logic. 2016
J. M. E. Hyland. The forgotten Turing. 2016
Andrew R. Booker. Turing and the primes. 2016
Ueli Maurer. Cryptography and computation after Turing. 2016
Kanti V. Mardia, S. Barry Cooper. Alan Turing and enigmatic statistics. 2016
Stephen Wolfram. What Alan Turing might have discovered. 2016
Christof Teuscher. Designed versus intrinsic computation. 2016
Douglas R. Hofstadter. Dull Rigid Human meets Ace Mechanical Translator. 2016
Philip K. Maini, Thomas E. Woolley, Eamonn A. Gaffney, Ruth E. Baker. Turing's theory of developmental pattern formation. 2016
Richard Gordon. Walking the tightrope: the dilemma of hierarchical instabilities in Turing's morphogenesis. 2016
Stuart A. Kauffman. Answering Descartes: beyond Turing. 2016
Scott Aaronson. The ghost in the quantum Turing machine. 2016
Solomon Feferman. Turing's 'oracle': from absolute to relative computability and back. 2016
P. D. Welch. Turing transcendent: beyond the event horizon. 2016
Roger Penrose. On attempting to model the mathematical mind. 2016

S. Barry Cooper, Mariya I. Soskova.
The Incomputable: journeys beyond the Turing barrier.
Springer. 2017

This book questions the relevance of computation to the physical universe. Our theories deliver computational descriptions, but the gaps and discontinuities in our grasp suggest a need for continued discourse between researchers from different disciplines, and this book is unique in its focus on the mathematical theory of incomputability and its relevance for the real world. The core of the book consists of thirteen chapters in five parts on extended models of computation; the search for natural examples of incomputable objects; mind, matter, and computation; the nature of information, complexity, and randomness; and the mathematics of emergence and morphogenesis.

This book will be of interest to researchers in the areas of theoretical computer science, mathematical logic, and philosophy.