Beyond the algorithmization of the sciences
Thomas Easton promotes algorithms as a higher form of science in his paper Beyond the algorithmization of the sciences:
Algorithms have thus made biology as useful a science as physics, chemistry, and computer science. But are algorithms enough to move biology closer to the throne? Are they math?
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Five decades ago, most mathematicians would have said no. Then in the 1970s, they discovered the value of computers for “proving” theorems (…)
Myself, I haven’t had time to spend much time thinking about it, but it is quite clear that I value algorithms at least as highly as I value theorems.
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Some people view the importance of Crick and Watson’s discovery as revealing the mechanism behind heredity, however, at the end of day I think it is more important because it made biology computable - they revealed the instruction set. The algorithmization of biology is old news. The algorithmization of consiousness is a more interesting modern problem. Kristof Koch, who was one of Crick’s main collaborators in the past decade, is moving in that direction but calling it the neuronal correlates of consiousness NCC. Will we find a similiar instruction set for consiousness that will make it computable?
Comment by Paul Meagher — 20/5/2006 @ 20:38