Poems and Programs

Post       : Poems and Programs
URL        : http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/02/27/poems-and-programs/
Posted     : February 27, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Author     : Jon Awbrey
Categories : Computability, Effective Description, Poetry, Programming

Words that do ...

There seems to be a trendy misunderstanding of what the
discipline of computing, and indeed the logic of science,
are all about.  I blame Penrose, of course, but he is only
the most recent promulgator of the recurring misunderstanding.

There are only a countable number of computable functions,
so it's no surprise that a natural system picked at random
will have non-computable function+al aspects.  Saying that
not all natural systems are computable is like saying that
not all poems are sonnets.  Writing a program that models
a significant aspect of a natural system is like writing
a sonnet to express a significant aspect of human experience.
It's a voluntary limitation that a programmer or poet accepts
for the sake of that effective elective art.  And both have
their uses.

-- 

academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache