Alan Turing’s Legacy: Info-Computational Philosophy of Nature
Gordana Dodig-Crnković · 2012
Andrew Hodges describes Turing as a natural philosopher: “He thought and lived a generation ahead of his time, and yet the features of his thought that burst the boundaries of the 1940s are better described by the antique words: natural philosophy. ” (Hodges, 1997) Turing’s natural philosophy differs from Galileo’s view that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics (The Assayer, 1623). Computation was not just a language of nature; it was the way nature behaved. Computers not only calculate numbers, but more importantly, can produce real time behaviors in physical world (control systems, robots, simulations).