Alan Turing s Legacy: Info-Computational Philosophy of Nature

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1 TURING CENTENARY CONFERENCECiE How the World Computes University of Cambridge 18 June - 23 June, Alan Turing s Legacy: Info-Computational Philosophy of Nature Gordana Dodig Crnkovic School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Mälardalen University, Sweden

2 Hd Hodges: Turing as NaturalPhilosopherh 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). Self Organization of Life - Pattern Formation In Nature.- Alan Turing

3 Turing as Natural Philosopher: Mechanical Intelligence Turing studied a variety of natural phenomena and proposed their computational modeling. He made a pioneering contribution in the elucidation of connections between computation and intelligence. He was convinced that intelligent machines can be constructed and that machines can be made able to think.

4 Turing as Natural Philosopher Chemistry and Biology Sara Turing s biography of her son witness his interest for chemistry, biology and physics. Turing s work on morphogenesis provides evidence for natural philosophers h approach. His 1952 paper on morphogenesis proposed a chemical model as the basis of the development of biological patterns such as the spots and stripes that appear on animal skin.

5 Turing's Reaction-Diffusion Model of Morphogenesis Patterns resulting from the sole interplay between reaction and diffusion are probably involved in certain stages of morphogenesis in biological systems, as initially proposed by Alan Turing. Selforganization phenomena of this type can only develop in nonlinear systems (i.e. involving positive and negative feedback loops) maintained far from equilibrium. Dulos, E., Boissonade, J., Perraud, J. J.Rudovics, B., Kepper, P. (1996) Chemical morphogenesis: Turing patterns in an experimental chemical system, Acta Biotheoretica, Volume: 44, Issue: 3, pp

6 Computing Nature Nature as a Network of Computational Processes In contemporary reconstruction of Turing's world view we can find that Turing was one of the first natural computationalists, who believed in computational nature, even in case of phenomena of human mind. Naturalist computationalism (Pancomputationalism) is a view that the universe is a huge computational machine or rather a network of computational processes which following fundamental physical laws compute (dynamically develop) its own next state from the current one. Natural computationalists: Konrad Zuse, Edward Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram, Gregory Chaitin, Seth Lloyd, Gerard 't Hooft, Charles Seife, David Deutsch, John Archibald Wheeler's ("It from bit ) and many others.

7 Computing Nature and Nature Inspired Computation ti Natural computation includes: Computation Inspired by nature: Evolutionary computation Neural networks Artificial immune systems Swarm intelligence In 1623, Galileo in his book The Assayer - Il Saggiatore, claimed that the language of nature's book is mathematics and that the way to understand nature is through mathematics. Generalizing mathematics to computation we may agree with Galileo the great book of nature is an e-book! Simulation and emulation of nature: Fractal geometry Artificial life Computing with natural materials: DNA computing Quantum computing Journals: Natural Computing and IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.

8 Computation The Computing Universe: Pancomputationalism Computation is generally defined as information processing. (See Burgin, M., Super-Recursive Algorithms, Springer Monographs in Computer Science, 2005) For different views see e.g. Computation and Cognitive Science 7 8 July 2008, King's College Cambridge

9 What Is Computation? How Does Nature Compute? Learning from Nature * It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time So I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer er board with all its apparent complexities. Richard Feynman The Character of Physical Law * 2008 Midwest NKS Conference, Indiana University Bloomington, IN

10 Information as a Fabric of Reality INFORMATIONAL STRUCTURAL REALISM (Floridi, Sayre) argues that information is the fabric of reality: Reality consists of informational i structures organized on different levels l of abstraction/resolution. The same view is defended in the book: Ladyman J. and Ross D., with Spurrett D. and Collier J. (2007) Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, Oxford UP This proto-information that is the fabric of reality gets complexly structured in living organisms able to make sense out of information in the world.

11 Structure and Process According to Informational structural Realism (Floridi, Sayre) information is the fabric of reality As we can observe, structures in the world constantly change. The knowledge of structures is half a story. The other half is the knowledge of processes information dynamics. (information processing-computation) Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Dynamics of Information as Natural Computation, Information 2011, 2(3), ; Selected Papers from FIS 2010 Beijing, 2011.

12 Computing Nature: Dual-Aspect Info-computational ti Metaphysics ONTOLOGY/ AGENCY/ INFORMATION COMPUTATION Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Investigations into Information Semantics and Ethics of Computing,, Mälardalen University Press, 2006

13 If Info-computational lmorphogenesis In an info-computational framework, information is a structure and computation is a process. Process of computation implements (represents) physical laws. It governs self-structuring of data (information). Through process of computation, structures change their forms. All of computation on some level of abstraction is morphological computation a form-changing/ formgenerating process. Butterfly morphogenesis Drawing Gabriel Kelemen

14 Info-computational Character of Morphological Computing INFORMATION + COMPUTATION MORPHOLOGY CONNECTIONS TO ROBOTICS (AI) AND MORPHOLOGICAL COMPUTING (Rolf Pfeifer)

15 Morphological Computing in Robotics In recent years, morphological computing emerged as a new idea in robotics, (Pfeifer 2011), (Pfeifer and Iida 2005), (Pfeifer and Gomez 2009) (Paul 2004). From the beginning, based on the Cartesian traditions, robotics treated separately the body as a machine and its control as a program. However, successively it became evident that embodiment itself is essential for cognition, intelligence and generation of behavior. In a most profound sense, embodiment is vital because cognition results from the interaction ti of brain, body, and environment. (Pfeifer 2011)

16 Morphological Computation: Connecting Body, Brain, and Environment soft robotics / self-assembly systems and molecular robotics/ self-assembly systems at all scales / embodied robotics / reservoir computing / physical reservoir computing/ real neural systems systems medicine /f functional architecture / organization / process management / computation based on spatio-temporal dynamics/ information theoretical approach to embodiment mechatronics / amorphous computing / molecular computing Tutorial on Embodiment: R Pfeifer

17 MESSAGE Morphological computing is information (re)structuring through computational processes which follow (implement) physical laws. Morphological computing is physical computing or natural computing in which physical objects perform computation. Symbol manipulation in this case is physical object manipulation.

18 References Dodig Crnkovic G, Info-computationalism and Morphological Computing of Informational Structure, Proceeding s of INBIOSA conference, University it of Stirling 2011, forthcoming by Springer Dodig Crnkovic, G. and Müller, V., A Dialogue Concerning Two World Systems: Info-Computational vs. Mechanistic; in Dodig Crnkovic G and Burgin, M., Eds.; World Scientific Publishing Co., Inc.: Singapore, 2010