Comment by PaulRobinson

20 days ago

I actually think this is just computer science. Why? Because the first "computer scientist" - Alan Turing - was interested in this exact same set of ideas.

The first programs he wrote for the Atlas and the Mark II ("the Baby"), seem to have been focused on a theory he had around how animals got their markings.

They look a little to me (as a non-expert in these areas, and reading them in a museum over about 15 minutes, not doing a deep analysis), like a primitive form of cellular automata algorithm. From the scrawls on the print outs, it's possible that he was playing with the space of algorithms not just the algorithms themselves.

It might be worth going back and looking at that early work he did and seeing it through this lens.

21 comments

PaulRobinson

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gnfargbl  20 days ago

By the same argument, it's mathematics because John Conway was a mathematician, and it's physics because Ulam and Von Neumann were physicists.

gilleain  20 days ago

I think this is 'Reaction-diffusion models'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction%E2%80%93diffusion_sys...

The idea iiuc, is that pattern formation in animals depends on molecules diffusing through the growing system (the body) and reacting where the waves of molecules overlap.

oulipo2  20 days ago

Alan Turing is FAR from the first computer scientist, though, if we want to be pedantic

SideburnsOfDoom  20 days ago

Right. is "the basic science of what simple rules do" not the same as Formal systems?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_system

  • lupire  20 days ago

    It's not Formal Systems.

    Formal Systems is the study of logical systems themselves.

    Ruliology is a study of what actual systems do.

    It's doing the arithmetic computations and looking at the results, not the abstract algebra.

    • lo_zamoyski  19 days ago

      Not quite. A formal system is a system of syntactic rules defined over an alphabet of symbols. They can be mechanized in principle. Peano arithmetic is one example.

      A „logical” semantics can be assigned to such a formal system, but it is not a necessary entailment of the syntax, even if such systems are typically motivated by particular semantic models. Model theory might examine how the same formal system affords different interpretations.

      Such syntactic systems have computational properties, and it is how computer science kicked off historically.

    • SideburnsOfDoom  19 days ago

      > Formal Systems is the study of logical systems themselves. Ruliology is a study of what actual systems do.

      Assuming that you mean the same thing by "logical systems" and "actual systems", then Ruliology must fall under Formal Systems as a sub-discipline? Since studying "what these things do" is a subset of studying "these things themselves". And grounded on it.

      If not, then what's the difference between "logical" and "actual" systems?