Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance. Marie -- Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS) T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be <mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846 Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique Lets respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary!
On Nov 5, 2014, at 4:13 AM, Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be> wrote:
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences.
Marie — a great place to start would be David Nofre, Mark Priestley, and Gerard Alberts, "When Technology Became Language: The Origins of the Linguistic Conception of Computer Programming, 1950–1960” Technology and Culture, Volume 55, Number 1, January 2014 pp. 40-75 -Nathan — Nathan Ensmenger Associate Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/
Dear Mary, In the Project Software for Europe (2007-2011) we kept returning to the issue of the language metaphor in computer science. Take out this metaphor and the whole fabric of this (non-)discipline collapses. I say non-discipline because to my impression computer science is not growing into a traditional discipline like sciences used to be in modern times. The expression of language was present in many realms, in particular also with respect to mathematics, logic, algebra, also among the computer pioneers in the late 1940s. Yet something new occurred in the work of John Carr, John Perlis and others in 1954-55 (for details see the article by Edgar Daylight and myself in the next issue of the Annals). These programmers started calling their automatic programming systems no longer translators but languages. Here a clearly technical device becomes a "language". I consider it one of the achievements of the Software for Europe project to have pinpointed the emergence of this novel conception of programming language. With many in the Software for Europe team and building upon much earlier work by colleagues on this Edgar Daylight, David Nofre and I have rephrased these findings on several occasions. One of these occasions was the workshop you staged in Namur, 2009, together with Sandra Mols. Thanks you again for the occasion. With a thank you to Nathan for pointing at out T&C article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/toc/tech.55.1.html Moreover the next issue of the Annals (36-4) offers a set of articles resulting from the Software for Europe project and detailing further history of the language metaphor. ________________________________________ Van: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] namens Nathan Ensmenger [nathan.ensmenger@gmail.com] Verzonden: woensdag 5 november 2014 15:51 Aan: sigcis Onderwerp: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
On Nov 5, 2014, at 4:13 AM, Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be> wrote:
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences.
Marie — a great place to start would be David Nofre, Mark Priestley, and Gerard Alberts, "When Technology Became Language: The Origins of the Linguistic Conception of Computer Programming, 1950–1960” Technology and Culture, Volume 55, Number 1, January 2014 pp. 40-75 -Nathan — Nathan Ensmenger Associate Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/ _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
This paper <http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/an/2011/01/man2011010088-abs.html> by Grier, and an earlier one cited in it, establishes an etymology for the verb 'to program' (in the computer programming sense) in the ENIAC era, via industrial process engineer. Davis' "The Universal Computer" and Priestly's "A Science of Operations" both discuss the influence of logicians' (e.g. Hilbert) notion of a "formal language" on the notion of subsequent computer users/theorists. You might also look into the related terms "instruction" or "command", which have similarly strong anthropomorphic connotations. Sent from my iPhone On Nov 5, 2014, at 4:13 AM, Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be> wrote: I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance. Marie -- <edifghaf.png> Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS) T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846 Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
t has two sources. first, the use of "formal language" in logic and philosophy of language in the work of Gottlob Frege in the late 19c/early 20c. Frege was clear that the "formal languages" he developed were not like human languages, but they have nevertheless sometimes been construed this way (although not usually by philosophers and logicians). second, from work in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Grace Hopper, others at the Navy, and some in academia (particularly Harvard and MIT) to make what were then called "computer codes" and basically required high-level knowledge of mathematics, easier to use, and also compilers to automatically turn these new forms (including well-known PLs like COBOL and FORTRAN) into machine code. They called these "programming languages" in part to distinguish them from "computer codes" and because they used elements of natural language in their construction. almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things. Have some work-in-progress on this topic as it's a particular pet peeve of mine, but at this point pretty far back on the backburner (if anyone wants to contribute please drop me a line, as I'm very interested in making it a group project). David 2014-11-05 4:13 GMT-05:00 Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be>:
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie --
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary!
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com
David: I’d like to better understand your argument here: " almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.” Why is this contentious in your opinion? Regarding language, The work of Pierce and de Saussure (semiology, semiotics) may also be relevant to the discussion on language. -paul Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick<http://utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick> Blog: creative-automata.com<http://creative-automata.com> On Nov 5, 2014, at 10:59 AM, David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com<mailto:dgolumbia@gmail.com>> wrote: t has two sources. first, the use of "formal language" in logic and philosophy of language in the work of Gottlob Frege in the late 19c/early 20c. Frege was clear that the "formal languages" he developed were not like human languages, but they have nevertheless sometimes been construed this way (although not usually by philosophers and logicians). second, from work in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Grace Hopper, others at the Navy, and some in academia (particularly Harvard and MIT) to make what were then called "computer codes" and basically required high-level knowledge of mathematics, easier to use, and also compilers to automatically turn these new forms (including well-known PLs like COBOL and FORTRAN) into machine code. They called these "programming languages" in part to distinguish them from "computer codes" and because they used elements of natural language in their construction. almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things. Have some work-in-progress on this topic as it's a particular pet peeve of mine, but at this point pretty far back on the backburner (if anyone wants to contribute please drop me a line, as I'm very interested in making it a group project). David 2014-11-05 4:13 GMT-05:00 Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be>>: I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance. Marie -- <edifghaf.png> Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS) T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846 Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members -- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com<mailto:dgolumbia@gmail.com> _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Sent from the wrong address Begin forwarded message:
From: "Fishwick, Paul" <pxf130430@utdallas.edu> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? Date: November 5, 2014 at 1:14:28 PM CST To: David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com> Cc: members <members@sigcis.org>
David: I’d like to better understand your argument here:
" almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.”
Why is this contentious in your opinion? Regarding language, The work of Pierce and de Saussure (semiology, semiotics) may also be relevant to the discussion on language. -paul
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com
On Nov 5, 2014, at 10:59 AM, David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com> wrote:
t has two sources.
first, the use of "formal language" in logic and philosophy of language in the work of Gottlob Frege in the late 19c/early 20c. Frege was clear that the "formal languages" he developed were not like human languages, but they have nevertheless sometimes been construed this way (although not usually by philosophers and logicians).
second, from work in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Grace Hopper, others at the Navy, and some in academia (particularly Harvard and MIT) to make what were then called "computer codes" and basically required high-level knowledge of mathematics, easier to use, and also compilers to automatically turn these new forms (including well-known PLs like COBOL and FORTRAN) into machine code. They called these "programming languages" in part to distinguish them from "computer codes" and because they used elements of natural language in their construction. almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.
Have some work-in-progress on this topic as it's a particular pet peeve of mine, but at this point pretty far back on the backburner (if anyone wants to contribute please drop me a line, as I'm very interested in making it a group project).
David
2014-11-05 4:13 GMT-05:00 Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be>: I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- <edifghaf.png> Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846 Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary!
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com
I could write a lot on the topic (and hopefully will some day), and have written a bit already (in particular my essay "Death of a Discipline" in the spring 2014 issue of *differences*, there regarding the Digital Humanities) but basically it's contentious because it suggests that there is some set of practices/systems called "languages" that includes "natural" languages, programming languages, and/or formal languages, and that this category called "language" is one about which generalizations can and should be made. Outside of some very abstract ones, however, that just isn't true, and those generalizations that are true tend to be characteristics of formal or programming languages that were designed to be like natural languages, and appear a fortiori in (some, or possibly all) natural languages. It is culturally contentious because it leads to the widespread and mistaken view that "programming languages" and "natural languages" are the same kinds of thing, which I believe is demonstrably and utterly wrong. One piece of social evidence for its being incorrect (which I hope any linguists on the list will feel free to weigh in on, but as I dabble in linguistics a bit it is a generalization I am fairly certain about) is that we have a field that studies what it generally calls "language," namely linguistics, and that field requires its scholars to become experts in a language, and that is always a human language. So specialists who use the naked term "language" *always *mean what we mean by "natural language." So far as I know, nobody has yet gotten a PhD in Linguistics where their specialty was Ruby on Rails, and I hope it remains that way and believe it will, though at this point one never knows. In part this is because linguists have some nice criteria for what qualifies as a "language," and programming & formal languages lack many of the most important characteristics. That's why in scholarly lists of languages, only "natural" languages appear (one of the most widely-cited and authoritative of these lists is the *Ethnologue*: http://www.ethnologue.com/browse). Yet we see everywhere a great deal of evidence that many, particularly those strongly identified with computers, believe in the existence of this super-category, often suggesting, for example, that students should learn programming languages instead of or as a reasonable substitute for learning natural languages. They are just different sorts of things entirely. The argument whether students should learn to program is a separate argument from whether they should learn foreign languages (at least in so far as any such pedagogical questions can be separated). And note that there is a political-cultural dimension here as well: it is always (at least in my experience) computer advocates wanting to claim that programming languages "are" languages, and never the other way around (ie, not linguists wanting to claim that programming languages are the same kind of thing they study: which is not to say they don't have linguistic features, as of course they are designed to do, but that "hey, those programming languages are languages too" is a claim that only emerges in one direction). as long as I'm writing, I greatly appreciate Pierre's citation of the recent D. Nofre, M. Priestley, & G. Alberts paper. I had not run across that yet and, on quick glance, it looks like both an excellent analysis and to be an invaluable source of information, and adds a great deal of context to what I mentioned metonymically as the work of Grace Hopper and "others." David On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Fishwick, Paul <Paul.Fishwick@utdallas.edu> wrote:
David: I’d like to better understand your argument here:
" almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.”
Why is this contentious in your opinion? Regarding language, The work of Pierce and de Saussure (semiology, semiotics) may also be relevant to the discussion on language. -paul
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick<http://utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick> Blog: creative-automata.com<http://creative-automata.com>
On Nov 5, 2014, at 10:59 AM, David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com<mailto: dgolumbia@gmail.com>> wrote:
t has two sources.
first, the use of "formal language" in logic and philosophy of language in the work of Gottlob Frege in the late 19c/early 20c. Frege was clear that the "formal languages" he developed were not like human languages, but they have nevertheless sometimes been construed this way (although not usually by philosophers and logicians).
second, from work in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Grace Hopper, others at the Navy, and some in academia (particularly Harvard and MIT) to make what were then called "computer codes" and basically required high-level knowledge of mathematics, easier to use, and also compilers to automatically turn these new forms (including well-known PLs like COBOL and FORTRAN) into machine code. They called these "programming languages" in part to distinguish them from "computer codes" and because they used elements of natural language in their construction. almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.
Have some work-in-progress on this topic as it's a particular pet peeve of mine, but at this point pretty far back on the backburner (if anyone wants to contribute please drop me a line, as I'm very interested in making it a group project).
David
2014-11-05 4:13 GMT-05:00 Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto: marie.gevers@unamur.be>>: I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- <edifghaf.png>
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary!
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com<mailto:dgolumbia@gmail.com> _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com
For what its worth, I believe that by the early 1980s, most computer hobbyists and journalists viewed their practices as an extension of Grace Hopper's work—although it may be worth checking out the discourses surrounding the IBM Card Programmed Calculator. If interested, 80 Micro had an article in early 1983: https://ia801705.us.archive.org/23/items/80_Micro_1983-07_1001001_US/80_Micr... As a result, although there are earlier examples—Ada Lovelace as Bill pointed out and philosophical language as David pointed out—I don't believe they had a significant impact on how computer programmers saw themselves. On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 3:35 PM, David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com> wrote:
I could write a lot on the topic (and hopefully will some day), and have written a bit already (in particular my essay "Death of a Discipline" in the spring 2014 issue of *differences*, there regarding the Digital Humanities) but basically it's contentious because it suggests that there is some set of practices/systems called "languages" that includes "natural" languages, programming languages, and/or formal languages, and that this category called "language" is one about which generalizations can and should be made. Outside of some very abstract ones, however, that just isn't true, and those generalizations that are true tend to be characteristics of formal or programming languages that were designed to be like natural languages, and appear a fortiori in (some, or possibly all) natural languages.
It is culturally contentious because it leads to the widespread and mistaken view that "programming languages" and "natural languages" are the same kinds of thing, which I believe is demonstrably and utterly wrong. One piece of social evidence for its being incorrect (which I hope any linguists on the list will feel free to weigh in on, but as I dabble in linguistics a bit it is a generalization I am fairly certain about) is that we have a field that studies what it generally calls "language," namely linguistics, and that field requires its scholars to become experts in a language, and that is always a human language. So specialists who use the naked term "language" *always *mean what we mean by "natural language." So far as I know, nobody has yet gotten a PhD in Linguistics where their specialty was Ruby on Rails, and I hope it remains that way and believe it will, though at this point one never knows. In part this is because linguists have some nice criteria for what qualifies as a "language," and programming & formal languages lack many of the most important characteristics. That's why in scholarly lists of languages, only "natural" languages appear (one of the most widely-cited and authoritative of these lists is the *Ethnologue*: http://www.ethnologue.com/browse).
Yet we see everywhere a great deal of evidence that many, particularly those strongly identified with computers, believe in the existence of this super-category, often suggesting, for example, that students should learn programming languages instead of or as a reasonable substitute for learning natural languages. They are just different sorts of things entirely. The argument whether students should learn to program is a separate argument from whether they should learn foreign languages (at least in so far as any such pedagogical questions can be separated). And note that there is a political-cultural dimension here as well: it is always (at least in my experience) computer advocates wanting to claim that programming languages "are" languages, and never the other way around (ie, not linguists wanting to claim that programming languages are the same kind of thing they study: which is not to say they don't have linguistic features, as of course they are designed to do, but that "hey, those programming languages are languages too" is a claim that only emerges in one direction).
as long as I'm writing, I greatly appreciate Pierre's citation of the recent D. Nofre, M. Priestley, & G. Alberts paper. I had not run across that yet and, on quick glance, it looks like both an excellent analysis and to be an invaluable source of information, and adds a great deal of context to what I mentioned metonymically as the work of Grace Hopper and "others."
David
On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Fishwick, Paul <Paul.Fishwick@utdallas.edu
wrote:
David: I’d like to better understand your argument here:
" almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.”
Why is this contentious in your opinion? Regarding language, The work of Pierce and de Saussure (semiology, semiotics) may also be relevant to the discussion on language. -paul
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick<http://utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick> Blog: creative-automata.com<http://creative-automata.com>
On Nov 5, 2014, at 10:59 AM, David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com<mailto: dgolumbia@gmail.com>> wrote:
t has two sources.
first, the use of "formal language" in logic and philosophy of language in the work of Gottlob Frege in the late 19c/early 20c. Frege was clear that the "formal languages" he developed were not like human languages, but they have nevertheless sometimes been construed this way (although not usually by philosophers and logicians).
second, from work in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Grace Hopper, others at the Navy, and some in academia (particularly Harvard and MIT) to make what were then called "computer codes" and basically required high-level knowledge of mathematics, easier to use, and also compilers to automatically turn these new forms (including well-known PLs like COBOL and FORTRAN) into machine code. They called these "programming languages" in part to distinguish them from "computer codes" and because they used elements of natural language in their construction. almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.
Have some work-in-progress on this topic as it's a particular pet peeve of mine, but at this point pretty far back on the backburner (if anyone wants to contribute please drop me a line, as I'm very interested in making it a group project).
David
2014-11-05 4:13 GMT-05:00 Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto: marie.gevers@unamur.be>>: I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- <edifghaf.png>
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
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I think David is spot-on about the dual source (that accords with what I've read in the sources above). second, from work in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Grace Hopper, others
at the Navy, and some in academia (particularly Harvard and MIT) to make what were then called "computer codes" and basically required high-level knowledge of mathematics, easier to use, and also compilers to automatically turn these new forms (including well-known PLs like COBOL and FORTRAN) into machine code.
It's interesting to consider the progression from the "plans" drawn up for human computers, to the work of translating plans into plugboard configurations (for ENIAC-era machines) or the human action of carrying cards between single-function IBM punchard machinery, to translation from algorithmic flowcharts (in the Von Neumann style) into machine code (which was done manually for a period, iirc), to the automation of that translation (by Hopper et al). Many of the participants in the Moore School Lectures (e.g. Stibitz) would have been familiar with the practice of giving natural language instructions to human computers to accomplish the computational ends later accomplished by giving "instructions" to machines (classically: calculating trajectory tables). On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 11:59 AM, David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com> wrote:
t has two sources.
first, the use of "formal language" in logic and philosophy of language in the work of Gottlob Frege in the late 19c/early 20c. Frege was clear that the "formal languages" he developed were not like human languages, but they have nevertheless sometimes been construed this way (although not usually by philosophers and logicians).
second, from work in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Grace Hopper, others at the Navy, and some in academia (particularly Harvard and MIT) to make what were then called "computer codes" and basically required high-level knowledge of mathematics, easier to use, and also compilers to automatically turn these new forms (including well-known PLs like COBOL and FORTRAN) into machine code. They called these "programming languages" in part to distinguish them from "computer codes" and because they used elements of natural language in their construction. almost immediately, people started construing these constructions as some artificial meta-category called "language," despite this being an incredibly contentious (and basically entirely inaccurate) way of construing things. Chomsky's 1950s papers on context-free grammars did not help things.
Have some work-in-progress on this topic as it's a particular pet peeve of mine, but at this point pretty far back on the backburner (if anyone wants to contribute please drop me a line, as I'm very interested in making it a group project).
David
2014-11-05 4:13 GMT-05:00 Marie Gevers <marie.gevers@unamur.be>:
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie --
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
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-- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com
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Bonjour Marie, According to D. Nofre, M. Priestley, & G. Alberts' recent paper *, George Stibitz addressed the problem of "translating from mathematics to machine language " as soon as 1948. Yet the term does not seem to have taken on, as the priority was rather to build the machines themselves. This, until it was used in May 1954 at a symposium on automatic coding techniques organized by the Office of Naval Research, by J. H. Brown and John W. Carr who proposed a “dual language system and a programmed translation between the two languages, using the computer to perform the translation”, after which the concept of a programming language was gradually adopted. Cordialement, Pierre Mounier-Kuhn * “When Technology Became Language: The Origins of the Linguistic Conception of Computer Programming, 1950–1960”, Technology and Culture , vol. 55, no. 1, January 2014, pp. 47. See also Brian Lennon, http://bitfragment.net/blog/universal-pseudocode/ ----- Mail original ----- De: "Marie Gevers" <marie.gevers@unamur.be> À: "members" <members@sigcis.org> Envoyé: Mercredi 5 Novembre 2014 10:13:09 Objet: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance. Marie -- Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS) T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846 Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count" 'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine' [emphasis added] https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning. - Bill ________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance. Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be] Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS) T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846 Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary!
If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it. David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society http://video.dagrier.net http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"
'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'
[emphasis added]
https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.
- Bill
________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be]
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Menabrea wrote, concerning the Analytical Engine: "the cards are merely a translation of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another fom of analytical notation" (quoted on p. 60 of my book "The Science of Operations"). which maybe counts as an early explicit connection between "programming notations" and "language" (scare quotes emphasized). Even the cards of the AE are being described here as language-like. Once you've got mechanical agency, real or envisaged, it seems to have been very natural for people - eg Babbage, Stibitz, Hopper - to think in terms of communication, and the language metaphor seems to enter as a way of categorizing to the kind of communication going on between humans and calculating machines. Cheers, Mark On 6 Nov 2014 01:04, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu> wrote:
If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it.
David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society
http://video.dagrier.net http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net
Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu
On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"
'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'
[emphasis added]
https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.
- Bill
________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be]
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion
list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
If I am allowed to speculate, I wonder if we shouldn't look at the developments of the early 19th-century, and specially the interest on mechanical agency and language, as Mark has put in, rather as part of the longer tradition of automata construction, and particularly late 18th- century fascination with speaking automata (see, most recently: Kang's* Sublime Dreams of Living Machines* and Adelheid Voskuhl's *Androids in the Enlightenment)*. Of course, a speaking machine is not the same than speaking to the machine, but the stress remains on linguistic communication. And, one last thing, does anybody know why did Von Neumann choose the term "automata"? Just a coincidence ? Best, David Nofre On 6 November 2014 09:17, Mark Priestley <m.priestley@gmail.com> wrote:
Menabrea wrote, concerning the Analytical Engine:
"the cards are merely a translation of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another fom of analytical notation" (quoted on p. 60 of my book "The Science of Operations").
which maybe counts as an early explicit connection between "programming notations" and "language" (scare quotes emphasized). Even the cards of the AE are being described here as language-like.
Once you've got mechanical agency, real or envisaged, it seems to have been very natural for people - eg Babbage, Stibitz, Hopper - to think in terms of communication, and the language metaphor seems to enter as a way of categorizing to the kind of communication going on between humans and calculating machines.
Cheers, Mark On 6 Nov 2014 01:04, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu> wrote:
If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it.
David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society
http://video.dagrier.net http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net
Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu
On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W < william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"
'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'
[emphasis added]
https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.
- Bill
________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be]
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion
list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
On Nov 6, 2014, at 6:24 AM, david nofre <d.nofre@gmail.com> wrote:
If I am allowed to speculate, I wonder if we shouldn't look at the developments of the early 19th-century, and specially the interest on mechanical agency and language, as Mark has put in, rather as part of the longer tradition of automata construction, and particularly late 18th- century fascination with speaking automata (see, most recently: Kang's Sublime Dreams of Living Machines and Adelheid Voskuhl's Androids in the Enlightenment).
Yes. This also brings in a discussion of analog computing which is reflected by these mechanical automata (e.g., principles of program, memory, iteration, and conditional branching in the form of a geometric discontinuity are intrinsic to these machines): http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2601391 . As to when 20th century computing theoreticians used the word “automata,” I wish I knew. Mechanical instruments “as languages of the artificial" could also be said to have flourished with the early mathematicians such as Achimedes, who employed the lever and the balance in his proofs. These instruments were models of mathematics (with models being artifacts of language). I am unsure whether Archimedes actually constructed these machines, but they were evident in his writing apparently.
Of course, a speaking machine is not the same than speaking to the machine, but the stress remains on linguistic communication.
As an added idea to the discussion on language, we should also recognize non-written languages used widely by engineers and modelers (e.g., block languages, or the diagrams of Bush’s analyzer). These are documented forms of communication, and so forms of language. -paul
And, one last thing, does anybody know why did Von Neumann choose the term "automata"? Just a coincidence ?
Best,
David Nofre
On 6 November 2014 09:17, Mark Priestley <m.priestley@gmail.com> wrote: Menabrea wrote, concerning the Analytical Engine:
"the cards are merely a translation of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another fom of analytical notation" (quoted on p. 60 of my book "The Science of Operations").
which maybe counts as an early explicit connection between "programming notations" and "language" (scare quotes emphasized). Even the cards of the AE are being described here as language-like.
Once you've got mechanical agency, real or envisaged, it seems to have been very natural for people - eg Babbage, Stibitz, Hopper - to think in terms of communication, and the language metaphor seems to enter as a way of categorizing to the kind of communication going on between humans and calculating machines.
Cheers, Mark
On 6 Nov 2014 01:04, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu> wrote: If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it.
David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society
http://video.dagrier.net http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net
Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu
On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"
'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'
[emphasis added]
https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.
- Bill
________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be]
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com
Dear SIGCISers, as long as the conversation is going wonderfully astray, I'd like to seize upon a momentarily less trodden path. Paul wrote: / //As an added idea to the discussion on language, we should also recognize non-written languages use widely by engineers and modelers (e.g., block languages, or the diagrams of Bush’s analyzer). These are documented forms of communication, and so forms of language./ I'm writing a little piece at the moment on the Shannon's diagram in consolidating certain notions of communication in broader scientific and popular fields. Can anyone recommend relevant literature on the origins of the block diagram /writ large/? And I've been surprised not to see any similar diagrams in the earlier papers by Nyquist or Hartley. Anyone have any good citations for key moments in the appearance of block diagrams in electrical engineering-type fields? Apart from Erhard Schuettpelz's "Eine Ikonographie der Stoerung: Shannons Flussdiagramm der Kommunikation," I haven't found a lot of super relevant material for zeroing in on this particular problem of the diagram. David Kaiser and Deleuze have some great tips for thinking about the work of diagrams and diagrammatic reason but I'd like to find some primary or secondary literature for thinking about its development of digital computing, information theory, electrical engineering, and so on. Tips? Thanks for any thoughts, Bernard
-paul
And, one last thing, does anybody know why did Von Neumann choose the term "automata"? Just a coincidence ?
Best,
David Nofre
On 6 November 2014 09:17, Mark Priestley <m.priestley@gmail.com <mailto:m.priestley@gmail.com>> wrote:
Menabrea wrote, concerning the Analytical Engine:
"the cards are merely a translation of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another fom of analytical notation" (quoted on p. 60 of my book "The Science of Operations").
which maybe counts as an early explicit connection between "programming notations" and "language" (scare quotes emphasized). Even the cards of the AE are being described here as language-like.
Once you've got mechanical agency, real or envisaged, it seems to have been very natural for people - eg Babbage, Stibitz, Hopper - to think in terms of communication, and the language metaphor seems to enter as a way of categorizing to the kind of communication going on between humans and calculating machines.
Cheers, Mark
On 6 Nov 2014 01:04, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu <mailto:grier@gwu.edu>> wrote:
If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it.
David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society
http://video.dagrier.net <http://video.dagrier.net/> http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net <http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net/>
Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu <mailto:grier@gwu.edu>
On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu <mailto:william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu>> wrote:
> Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count" > > 'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine' > > [emphasis added] > > https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html > > Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning. > > - Bill > > > ________________________________ > From: members-bounces@sigcis.org <mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org> [members-bounces@sigcis.org <mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org>] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be <mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be>] > Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM > To: members > Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? > > I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. > Can anybody enlighten me? > Thanks in advance. > > Marie > -- > [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be <mailto:cid%3Apart1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be>] > > Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS > Chargée de cours > Conseillère à la formation > Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique > > Faculté d'Informatique et > Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) > Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS) > > T. +32 (0)81 724 973 > F. +32 (0)81 724 967 > marie.gevers@unamur.be <mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be><mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be <mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be>> > http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ > http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846 > > Université de Namur ASBL > Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur > Belgique > > Let’s respect the environment together. > Only print this message if necessary! > _______________________________________________ > This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org <mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org <mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org <mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org <mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick <http://utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick> Blog: creative-automata.com <http://creative-automata.com>
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Dr. Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Institut für Kulturwissenschaft Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin www.bernardg.com
Dear Bernard, this might be obvious but the first person I thought of was "founder" of symbolic logic Charles Peirce and his work with diagrams (which I first learned about through the poet Susan Howe!). Essays like this one look intriguing: http://jeromevogel.com/en/genesis-2013 yours, Lori On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 7:06 AM, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan < bernard.geoghegan@hu-berlin.de> wrote:
Dear SIGCISers,
as long as the conversation is going wonderfully astray, I'd like to seize upon a momentarily less trodden path. Paul wrote:
*As an added idea to the discussion on language, we should also recognize non-written languages use widely by engineers and modelers (e.g., block languages, or the diagrams of Bush’s analyzer). These are documented forms of communication, and so forms of language.*
I'm writing a little piece at the moment on the Shannon's diagram in consolidating certain notions of communication in broader scientific and popular fields. Can anyone recommend relevant literature on the origins of the block diagram *writ large*? And I've been surprised not to see any similar diagrams in the earlier papers by Nyquist or Hartley. Anyone have any good citations for key moments in the appearance of block diagrams in electrical engineering-type fields?
Apart from Erhard Schuettpelz's "Eine Ikonographie der Stoerung: Shannons Flussdiagramm der Kommunikation," I haven't found a lot of super relevant material for zeroing in on this particular problem of the diagram. David Kaiser and Deleuze have some great tips for thinking about the work of diagrams and diagrammatic reason but I'd like to find some primary or secondary literature for thinking about its development of digital computing, information theory, electrical engineering, and so on. Tips?
Thanks for any thoughts, Bernard
-paul
And, one last thing, does anybody know why did Von Neumann choose the term "automata"? Just a coincidence ?
Best,
David Nofre
On 6 November 2014 09:17, Mark Priestley <m.priestley@gmail.com> wrote:
Menabrea wrote, concerning the Analytical Engine:
"the cards are merely a translation of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another fom of analytical notation" (quoted on p. 60 of my book "The Science of Operations").
which maybe counts as an early explicit connection between "programming notations" and "language" (scare quotes emphasized). Even the cards of the AE are being described here as language-like.
Once you've got mechanical agency, real or envisaged, it seems to have been very natural for people - eg Babbage, Stibitz, Hopper - to think in terms of communication, and the language metaphor seems to enter as a way of categorizing to the kind of communication going on between humans and calculating machines.
Cheers, Mark On 6 Nov 2014 01:04, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu> wrote:
If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it.
David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society
http://video.dagrier.net http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net
Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu
On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W < william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"
'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'
[emphasis added]
https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.
- Bill
________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be]
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion
list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Dr. Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Institut für Kulturwissenschaft Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin www.bernardg.com
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Lori Emerson Assistant Professor | Director, Media Archaeology Lab Department of English, University of Colorado at Boulder Hellems 101, 226 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0226 loriemerson.net | mediaarchaeologylab.com
dear bernard, … as you read german: gerhard dirmoser is working in the field of diagrammatik for a long time, and his website is a fascinating and comprehensive source: http://gerhard_dirmoser.public1.linz.at/ all the best, mariann On Nov 7, 2014, at 3:06 PM, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan <bernard.geoghegan@hu-berlin.de> wrote:
Dear SIGCISers,
as long as the conversation is going wonderfully astray, I'd like to seize upon a momentarily less trodden path. Paul wrote:
As an added idea to the discussion on language, we should also recognize non-written languages use widely by engineers and modelers (e.g., block languages, or the diagrams of Bush’s analyzer). These are documented forms of communication, and so forms of language.
I'm writing a little piece at the moment on the Shannon's diagram in consolidating certain notions of communication in broader scientific and popular fields. Can anyone recommend relevant literature on the origins of the block diagram writ large? And I've been surprised not to see any similar diagrams in the earlier papers by Nyquist or Hartley. Anyone have any good citations for key moments in the appearance of block diagrams in electrical engineering-type fields?
Apart from Erhard Schuettpelz's "Eine Ikonographie der Stoerung: Shannons Flussdiagramm der Kommunikation," I haven't found a lot of super relevant material for zeroing in on this particular problem of the diagram. David Kaiser and Deleuze have some great tips for thinking about the work of diagrams and diagrammatic reason but I'd like to find some primary or secondary literature for thinking about its development of digital computing, information theory, electrical engineering, and so on. Tips?
Thanks for any thoughts, Bernard
-paul
And, one last thing, does anybody know why did Von Neumann choose the term "automata"? Just a coincidence ?
Best,
David Nofre
On 6 November 2014 09:17, Mark Priestley <m.priestley@gmail.com> wrote: Menabrea wrote, concerning the Analytical Engine:
"the cards are merely a translation of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another fom of analytical notation" (quoted on p. 60 of my book "The Science of Operations").
which maybe counts as an early explicit connection between "programming notations" and "language" (scare quotes emphasized). Even the cards of the AE are being described here as language-like.
Once you've got mechanical agency, real or envisaged, it seems to have been very natural for people - eg Babbage, Stibitz, Hopper - to think in terms of communication, and the language metaphor seems to enter as a way of categorizing to the kind of communication going on between humans and calculating machines.
Cheers, Mark
On 6 Nov 2014 01:04, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu> wrote: If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it.
David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society
http://video.dagrier.net http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net
Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu
On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"
'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'
[emphasis added]
https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.
- Bill
________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be]
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Dr. Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Institut für Kulturwissenschaft Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
www.bernardg.com _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
On Nov 7, 2014, at 9:06 AM, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan <bernard.geoghegan@hu-berlin.de> wrote:
I'm writing a little piece at the moment on the Shannon's diagram in consolidating certain notions of communication in broader scientific and popular fields. Can anyone recommend relevant literature on the origins of the block diagram writ large? And I've been surprised not to see any similar diagrams in the earlier papers by Nyquist or Hartley. Anyone have any good citations for key moments in the appearance of block diagrams in electrical engineering-type fields?
Bernard —Lav Varshney will be giving a paper at Sunday’s SIGCIS workshop on block diagrams. It’s a great paper but not yet published — but you can probably email him to request a copy. Here is a brief description of his work: http://www.sigcis.org/node/386#making -Nathan — Nathan Ensmenger Associate Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/
From Inscription to Reproduction to Information," Social Text 102). But I don't know where this style of diagram originated. Scripture wasn't using
I've been researching the use of block diagrams and flow charts in linguistics and acoustics prior to information theory. In part, I want to make the argument that the notion of "the speech chain"--if not the exact phrase--preceded information theory. (It's usually seen as derivative.) I briefly discuss one of these diagrams, published by E.W. Scripture in 1936, in my article on the history of the sound spectrograph ("Deaf Jam: these diagrams earlier in his career... MM On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan < bernard.geoghegan@hu-berlin.de> wrote:
Dear SIGCISers,
as long as the conversation is going wonderfully astray, I'd like to seize upon a momentarily less trodden path. Paul wrote:
*As an added idea to the discussion on language, we should also recognize non-written languages use widely by engineers and modelers (e.g., block languages, or the diagrams of Bush’s analyzer). These are documented forms of communication, and so forms of language.*
I'm writing a little piece at the moment on the Shannon's diagram in consolidating certain notions of communication in broader scientific and popular fields. Can anyone recommend relevant literature on the origins of the block diagram *writ large*? And I've been surprised not to see any similar diagrams in the earlier papers by Nyquist or Hartley. Anyone have any good citations for key moments in the appearance of block diagrams in electrical engineering-type fields?
Apart from Erhard Schuettpelz's "Eine Ikonographie der Stoerung: Shannons Flussdiagramm der Kommunikation," I haven't found a lot of super relevant material for zeroing in on this particular problem of the diagram. David Kaiser and Deleuze have some great tips for thinking about the work of diagrams and diagrammatic reason but I'd like to find some primary or secondary literature for thinking about its development of digital computing, information theory, electrical engineering, and so on. Tips?
Thanks for any thoughts, Bernard
-paul
And, one last thing, does anybody know why did Von Neumann choose the term "automata"? Just a coincidence ?
Best,
David Nofre
On 6 November 2014 09:17, Mark Priestley <m.priestley@gmail.com> wrote:
Menabrea wrote, concerning the Analytical Engine:
"the cards are merely a translation of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another fom of analytical notation" (quoted on p. 60 of my book "The Science of Operations").
which maybe counts as an early explicit connection between "programming notations" and "language" (scare quotes emphasized). Even the cards of the AE are being described here as language-like.
Once you've got mechanical agency, real or envisaged, it seems to have been very natural for people - eg Babbage, Stibitz, Hopper - to think in terms of communication, and the language metaphor seems to enter as a way of categorizing to the kind of communication going on between humans and calculating machines.
Cheers, Mark On 6 Nov 2014 01:04, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu> wrote:
If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it.
David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society
http://video.dagrier.net http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net
Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu
On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W < william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"
'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'
[emphasis added]
https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.
- Bill
________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be]
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion
list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
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Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Dr. Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Institut für Kulturwissenschaft Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin www.bernardg.com
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_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
I'm very interested in diagrams used to describe labor processes (e.g. punched card "flows", algorithms meant for ) and software qua string of symbols. I'm very fuzzy on the history here (is there much of a literature?). If others are at SIGCIS and would like to chat informally about all things flow hart, I'd be very interested. Contact me off list. Cheers, Bjørn Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 7, 2014, at 3:46 PM, Mara Mills <mmills@nyu.edu> wrote:
I've been researching the use of block diagrams and flow charts in linguistics and acoustics prior to information theory. In part, I want to make the argument that the notion of "the speech chain"--if not the exact phrase--preceded information theory. (It's usually seen as derivative.)
I briefly discuss one of these diagrams, published by E.W. Scripture in 1936, in my article on the history of the sound spectrograph ("Deaf Jam: From Inscription to Reproduction to Information," Social Text 102). But I don't know where this style of diagram originated. Scripture wasn't using these diagrams earlier in his career...
MM
On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan <bernard.geoghegan@hu-berlin.de> wrote: Dear SIGCISers,
as long as the conversation is going wonderfully astray, I'd like to seize upon a momentarily less trodden path. Paul wrote:
As an added idea to the discussion on language, we should also recognize non-written languages use widely by engineers and modelers (e.g., block languages, or the diagrams of Bush’s analyzer). These are documented forms of communication, and so forms of language.
I'm writing a little piece at the moment on the Shannon's diagram in consolidating certain notions of communication in broader scientific and popular fields. Can anyone recommend relevant literature on the origins of the block diagram writ large? And I've been surprised not to see any similar diagrams in the earlier papers by Nyquist or Hartley. Anyone have any good citations for key moments in the appearance of block diagrams in electrical engineering-type fields?
Apart from Erhard Schuettpelz's "Eine Ikonographie der Stoerung: Shannons Flussdiagramm der Kommunikation," I haven't found a lot of super relevant material for zeroing in on this particular problem of the diagram. David Kaiser and Deleuze have some great tips for thinking about the work of diagrams and diagrammatic reason but I'd like to find some primary or secondary literature for thinking about its development of digital computing, information theory, electrical engineering, and so on. Tips?
Thanks for any thoughts, Bernard
-paul
And, one last thing, does anybody know why did Von Neumann choose the term "automata"? Just a coincidence ?
Best,
David Nofre
On 6 November 2014 09:17, Mark Priestley <m.priestley@gmail.com> wrote:
Menabrea wrote, concerning the Analytical Engine:
"the cards are merely a translation of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another fom of analytical notation" (quoted on p. 60 of my book "The Science of Operations").
which maybe counts as an early explicit connection between "programming notations" and "language" (scare quotes emphasized). Even the cards of the AE are being described here as language-like.
Once you've got mechanical agency, real or envisaged, it seems to have been very natural for people - eg Babbage, Stibitz, Hopper - to think in terms of communication, and the language metaphor seems to enter as a way of categorizing to the kind of communication going on between humans and calculating machines.
Cheers, Mark
On 6 Nov 2014 01:04, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu> wrote: If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it.
David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society
http://video.dagrier.net http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net
Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu
On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
> Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count" > > 'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine' > > [emphasis added] > > https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html > > Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning. > > - Bill > > > ________________________________ > From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] > Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM > To: members > Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? > > I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. > Can anybody enlighten me? > Thanks in advance. > > Marie > -- > [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be] > > Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS > Chargée de cours > Conseillère à la formation > Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique > > Faculté d'Informatique et > Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) > Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS) > > T. +32 (0)81 724 973 > F. +32 (0)81 724 967 > marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> > http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ > http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846 > > Université de Namur ASBL > Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur > Belgique > > Let’s respect the environment together. > Only print this message if necessary! > _______________________________________________ > This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
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Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Blog: creative-automata.com
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- Dr. Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Institut für Kulturwissenschaft Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
www.bernardg.com
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As Marx pointed out: when human labor-power and machinery become substitutable factors of production, there is a tendency for those employing them to try to subsume them under a common theory. And so we end up with a view of humans as machine-like (von Neumann's discussion of neurons carrying "signals") and machines as human-like ("the scanned symbol is the only one which the machine is, so to speak, directly aware" - Turing). Where humans had once been the only "instrumentum vocale" (Marx quoting Varro), computing and telecomm machinery held out the promise of substituting for brains, not just muscles. Hopper surely had in mind the people who translated program descriptions into machine code, just as Stibitz and Babbage would have had as their point of reference the work of human computing groups. Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 6, 2014, at 3:17 AM, Mark Priestley <m.priestley@gmail.com> wrote:
Menabrea wrote, concerning the Analytical Engine:
"the cards are merely a translation of algebraical formulae, or, to express it better, another fom of analytical notation" (quoted on p. 60 of my book "The Science of Operations").
which maybe counts as an early explicit connection between "programming notations" and "language" (scare quotes emphasized). Even the cards of the AE are being described here as language-like.
Once you've got mechanical agency, real or envisaged, it seems to have been very natural for people - eg Babbage, Stibitz, Hopper - to think in terms of communication, and the language metaphor seems to enter as a way of categorizing to the kind of communication going on between humans and calculating machines.
Cheers, Mark
On 6 Nov 2014 01:04, "David Alan Grier" <grier@gwu.edu> wrote: If we are going to Lovelace, then we need to go to the Memoirs of the Analytical Society. "It is the spirit of this symbolic language, by that mechanical fact, which carries the eye at one glance through the most intricate modifications of quantity, to condense pages into lines and volumes into pages; shortening the road to discovery, and preserving the mind unfatigued by the continued efforts of attention to the minor parts that it may exert its whole vigor on those which are important". Babbage and Herschel wrote it. Babbage referenced it in his later writings. Lovelace would have certainly known it.
David -------------------------------- David Alan Grier Past President, IEEE Computer Society
http://video.dagrier.net http://erranthashtag.dagrier.net
Associate Professor, International Science & Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University grier@gwu.edu
On Nov 5, 2014, at 2:07 PM, McMillan, William W <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"
'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'
[emphasis added]
https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.
- Bill
________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be]
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
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This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Fascinating. My own current work is on the "real character" movement of the early Royal Society (the immediate antecedent of Leibniz's idea of a characteristica universalis , and one source of inspiration [I think] for his codification of binary notation). One thing I have learned in the course of my research is that for the members of this movement--John Wilkins, George Dalgarno, Seth Ward, Francis Lodwick, and others--a "language" is more-or-less by definition effable, speakable. A symbolic and combinatorial notation of ideas, what they called a "character"--code, sort-of--is precisely *not* a language. This is why Wilkins's masterwork of 1668 is called An essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language (my emphasis). The "language," being a secondary and effable encoding of the character, is precisely by that token non-identical with the latter. Wilkins and his contemporaries would have been flummoxed by Ada Lovelace's use of "language," below. So I would recalibrate the initial question: when was the last time that "language" was not used, and couldn't be, in the context of the mathematization of communication that eventuates in computer science? And my answer would be: in the seventeenth century. JD Fleming ----- Original Message ----- From: "William W McMillan" <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> To: "members" <members@sigcis.org> Sent: Wednesday, 5 November, 2014 11:07:27 Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count" 'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine' [emphasis added] https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning. - Bill ________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance. Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be] Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS) T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm=368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846 Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary! _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members -- J ames Dougal Fleming Associate Professor Department of English Simon Fraser University 778-782-4713 Burnaby -- British Columbia -- Canada. He answered and said, I will not; but afterward he repented, and went. Matt.21:29.
And keep in mind that the English word is derived from the French word for "tongue." It implies an intimate connection with the human body. Paul Ceruzzi ________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of JD Fleming [jfleming@sfu.ca] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 8:00 PM To: William W McMillan Cc: members Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? Fascinating. My own current work is on the "real character" movement of the early Royal Society (the immediate antecedent of Leibniz's idea of a characteristica universalis, and one source of inspiration [I think] for his codification of binary notation). One thing I have learned in the course of my research is that for the members of this movement--John Wilkins, George Dalgarno, Seth Ward, Francis Lodwick, and others--a "language" is more-or-less by definition effable, speakable. A symbolic and combinatorial notation of ideas, what they called a "character"--code, sort-of--is precisely *not* a language. This is why Wilkins's masterwork of 1668 is called An essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language (my emphasis). The "language," being a secondary and effable encoding of the character, is precisely by that token non-identical with the latter. Wilkins and his contemporaries would have been flummoxed by Ada Lovelace's use of "language," below. So I would recalibrate the initial question: when was the last time that "language" was not used, and couldn't be, in the context of the mathematization of communication that eventuates in computer science? And my answer would be: in the seventeenth century. JD Fleming ________________________________ From: "William W McMillan" <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> To: "members" <members@sigcis.org> Sent: Wednesday, 5 November, 2014 11:07:27 Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count" 'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine' [emphasis added] https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning. - Bill ________________________________ F
To be sure! But--as we see--at least since Babbage's era, that etymological and perhaps phenomenological grounding has been largely forgotten or elided. The mentions earlier in this thread of Saussure, Peirce and Chomsky are apposite. But, from the humanities side of things, where "language" is the modern/postmodern category of signs, intensions, and everything, one could cite a further legion. Personally I am fond of the philosopher Donald Davidson's late dictum: "There is no such thing as a language... no boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around in the world generally." Though this also tends to invalidate exasperation at uses of the term, in computer science or elsewhere. JDF ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Ceruzzi" <CeruzziP@si.edu> To: "JD Fleming" <jfleming@sfu.ca>, "William W McMillan" <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> Cc: "members" <members@sigcis.org> Sent: Wednesday, 5 November, 2014 18:26:24 Subject: RE: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? And keep in mind that the English word is derived from the French word for "tongue." It implies an intimate connection with the human body. Paul Ceruzzi From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of JD Fleming [jfleming@sfu.ca] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 8:00 PM To: William W McMillan Cc: members Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? Fascinating. My own current work is on the "real character" movement of the early Royal Society (the immediate antecedent of Leibniz's idea of a characteristica universalis , and one source of inspiration [I think] for his codification of binary notation). One thing I have learned in the course of my research is that for the members of this movement--John Wilkins, George Dalgarno, Seth Ward, Francis Lodwick, and others--a "language" is more-or-less by definition effable, speakable. A symbolic and combinatorial notation of ideas, what they called a "character"--code, sort-of--is precisely *not* a language. This is why Wilkins's masterwork of 1668 is called An essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language (my emphasis). The "language," being a secondary and effable encoding of the character, is precisely by that token non-identical with the latter. Wilkins and his contemporaries would have been flummoxed by Ada Lovelace's use of "language," below. So I would recalibrate the initial question: when was the last time that "language" was not used, and couldn't be, in the context of the mathematization of communication that eventuates in computer science? And my answer would be: in the seventeenth century. JD Fleming ----- Original Message ----- From: "William W McMillan" <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> To: "members" <members@sigcis.org> Sent: Wednesday, 5 November, 2014 11:07:27 Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count" 'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine' [emphasis added] https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning. - Bill ________________________________ F -- J ames Dougal Fleming Associate Professor Department of English Simon Fraser University 778-782-4713 Burnaby -- British Columbia -- Canada. He answered and said, I will not; but afterward he repented, and went. Matt.21:29.
it seems important to note that Davidson in this essay (the response piece, "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs," to the 1985 Blackwell volume devoted to his work) is responding to the notion of "a language" that had become dominant in Chomskyan linguistics and in the many Chomsky-derived philosophies of language that were often used in opposition to Davidson, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, and as expressed in works like Chomsky's *Knowledge of Language* (which came out around the same time, based on lectures Chomsky had been delivering for several years). There are many philosophers (Wittgensteinians, as Davidson notes and in at least some ways was) and linguists who are not orthodox Chomskyans (such as James McCawley, whom Davidson approvingly quotes a page or two before) who do not believe in the notion of "a language" as such that Davidson is critiquing. (this is a technical point, as they certainly do believe that there is a thing called "French" in practical enough terms for it to be the the thing a linguist specializes in, but as for what the boundaries and character of that thing called "French" are, they are far hazier and less easily specified than, say, the boundaries and character of R or C++). and note the next sentence: "We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases." programming and formal languages are all about clearly defined structure, and this is one of the main things that proves so evanescent when one really starts to look at human language (and it is definitely the case that Chomsky for decades insisted that such structures were at least available for posit, and that in his latest version, the Minimalist Program, he has almost completely abandoned them). in fact, I believe it would be possible to show that what Davidson actually means here is something very close to the following: human languages are not systematic objects that one can learn and master in a discrete sense, in the way that one can and does learn and master programming and formal languages (and many other systematic and procedural skills). Though proving this would require some textual exegesis. On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 10:21 PM, JD Fleming <jfleming@sfu.ca> wrote:
Personally I am fond of the philosopher Donald Davidson's late dictum: "There is no such thing as a language... no boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around in the world generally." Though this also tends to invalidate exasperation at uses of the term, in computer science or elsewhere. JDF
------------------------------ --
David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com
@DavidNofre: "If I am allowed to speculate, I wonder if we shouldn't look at the developments of the early 19th-century, and specially the interest on mechanical agency and language, as Mark has put in, rather as part of the longer tradition of automata construction, and particularly late 18th- century fascination with speaking automata (see, most recently: Kang's Sublime Dreams of Living Machines and Adelheid Voskuhl's Androids in the Enlightenment)." Yes. This also brings in a discussion of analog computing which is reflected by these mechanical automata (e.g., principles of program, memory, iteration, and conditional branching in the form of a geometric discontinuity are intrinsic to these machines): http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2601391 . As to when 20th century computing theoreticians used the word “automata,” I wish I knew. -p Paul Fishwick, PhD Chair, ACM SIGSIM Distinguished University Chair of Arts & Technology and Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick<http://utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick> Blog: creative-automata.com<http://creative-automata.com> -p On Nov 6, 2014, at 8:49 AM, David Golumbia <dgolumbia@gmail.com<mailto:dgolumbia@gmail.com>> wrote: it seems important to note that Davidson in this essay (the response piece, "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs," to the 1985 Blackwell volume devoted to his work) is responding to the notion of "a language" that had become dominant in Chomskyan linguistics and in the many Chomsky-derived philosophies of language that were often used in opposition to Davidson, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, and as expressed in works like Chomsky's Knowledge of Language (which came out around the same time, based on lectures Chomsky had been delivering for several years). There are many philosophers (Wittgensteinians, as Davidson notes and in at least some ways was) and linguists who are not orthodox Chomskyans (such as James McCawley, whom Davidson approvingly quotes a page or two before) who do not believe in the notion of "a language" as such that Davidson is critiquing. (this is a technical point, as they certainly do believe that there is a thing called "French" in practical enough terms for it to be the the thing a linguist specializes in, but as for what the boundaries and character of that thing called "French" are, they are far hazier and less easily specified than, say, the boundaries and character of R or C++). and note the next sentence: "We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases." programming and formal languages are all about clearly defined structure, and this is one of the main things that proves so evanescent when one really starts to look at human language (and it is definitely the case that Chomsky for decades insisted that such structures were at least available for posit, and that in his latest version, the Minimalist Program, he has almost completely abandoned them). in fact, I believe it would be possible to show that what Davidson actually means here is something very close to the following: human languages are not systematic objects that one can learn and master in a discrete sense, in the way that one can and does learn and master programming and formal languages (and many other systematic and procedural skills). Though proving this would require some textual exegesis. On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 10:21 PM, JD Fleming <jfleming@sfu.ca<mailto:jfleming@sfu.ca>> wrote: Personally I am fond of the philosopher Donald Davidson's late dictum: "There is no such thing as a language... no boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around in the world generally." Though this also tends to invalidate exasperation at uses of the term, in computer science or elsewhere. JDF ________________________________ -- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com<mailto:dgolumbia@gmail.com> _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
My point, I guess, was a more trivial and facetious one about semantics and diminishing returns. Not much to be gained, in my opinion, by saying to programmers, a la Princess Bride, "I do not think this word means what you think it means." Indeed, this kind of move involves *playing* the "well-defining" game that one is trying to get away from! Nonetheless, and more seriously: I entirely agree with your paraphrase of Davidson's insight. "There is no such thing as a language" in the "Derangement" piece means precisely that there is no language with a sufficiently well-defined structure that one can say, in the end, where it starts and where it stops (even though one is, sometimes, speaking French, learning Chinese, unable to master German, or whatever). Insofar as the assumption of formal programming languages is that there are such languages--and here are some examples of them--then Davidson's insight and the formal assumption are, indeed, diametrically opposed. And I would go farther: Davidson does believe--and I think he's right--that there is such a thing as our "finding our way around in the world." (One of many interesting places, I think, where the later Davidson joins hands with Gadamer.) And it seems to follow from his dissolution of the boundary between this phenomenological activity and "language" that unboundedness is requisite to the phenomenological activity itself. What's "language," for Davidson, this thing that there's no such thing as? Well, if any usefulness remains in the category, it's as a front in the larger area of our finding our way around. If you do it ("language") right, you will always be finding yourself in that larger area. If not, not. That's the point; that's the insight that Davidson wants to hold to. But what's finding our way around, then? Can it be anything other than the very area of unboundedness? For it is to this recognition--the recognition that the work of understanding can always be surprised by its own acquisition of another sub-routine --that the discrete "language" category is supposed to yield. If so, then our openness to surprise, in the world we are supposed to be finding our way around in, is the very marker of whether in fact we are doing that. All of which is to say that I completely agree that formal/artificial languages of well-defined and discrete structure, in computing or elsewhere, point phenomenologically in a very wrong direction. JD Fleming ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Golumbia" <dgolumbia@gmail.com> To: "members" <members@sigcis.org> Sent: Thursday, 6 November, 2014 06:49:30 Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'? it seems important to note that Davidson in this essay (the response piece, "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs," to the 1985 Blackwell volume devoted to his work) is responding to the notion of "a language" that had become dominant in Chomskyan linguistics and in the many Chomsky-derived philosophies of language that were often used in opposition to Davidson, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, and as expressed in works like Chomsky's Knowledge of Language (which came out around the same time, based on lectures Chomsky had been delivering for several years). There are many philosophers (Wittgensteinians, as Davidson notes and in at least some ways was) and linguists who are not orthodox Chomskyans (such as James McCawley, whom Davidson approvingly quotes a page or two before) who do not believe in the notion of "a language" as such that Davidson is critiquing. (this is a technical point, as they certainly do believe that there is a thing called "French" in practical enough terms for it to be the the thing a linguist specializes in, but as for what the boundaries and character of that thing called "French" are, they are far hazier and less easily specified than, say, the boundaries and character of R or C++). and note the next sentence: "We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases." programming and formal languages are all about clearly defined structure, and this is one of the main things that proves so evanescent when one really starts to look at human language (and it is definitely the case that Chomsky for decades insisted that such structures were at least available for posit, and that in his latest version, the Minimalist Program, he has almost completely abandoned them). in fact, I believe it would be possible to show that what Davidson actually means here is something very close to the following: human languages are not systematic objects that one can learn and master in a discrete sense, in the way that one can and does learn and master programming and formal languages (and many other systematic and procedural skills). Though proving this would require some textual exegesis. On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 10:21 PM, JD Fleming < jfleming@sfu.ca > wrote: Personally I am fond of the philosopher Donald Davidson's late dictum: "There is no such thing as a language... no boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way around in the world generally." Though this also tends to invalidate exasperation at uses of the term, in computer science or elsewhere. JDF -- David Golumbia dgolumbia@gmail.com _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members -- J ames Dougal Fleming Associate Professor Department of English Simon Fraser University 778-782-4713 Burnaby -- British Columbia -- Canada. He answered and said, I will not; but afterward he repented, and went. Matt.21:29.
Hi, Note that (at least some) modern linguists also view/use "language" as referring to spoken communication and as being primary over the written (or at least the only book in modern linguistics, The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy by Jean DeFrancis makes a point of this). So I'm not sure much has changed since the 17th century on that front. -- Yours Truly, Allan Olley, PhD http://individual.utoronto.ca/fofound/ On Wed, 5 Nov 2014, JD Fleming wrote:
Fascinating. My own current work is on the "real character" movement of the early Royal Society (the immediate antecedent of Leibniz's idea of a characteristica universalis, and one source of inspiration [I think] for his codification of binary notation). One thing I have learned in the course of my research is that for the members of this movement--John Wilkins, George Dalgarno, Seth Ward, Francis Lodwick, and others--a "language" is more-or-less by definition effable, speakable. A symbolic and combinatorial notation of ideas, what they called a "character"--code, sort-of--is precisely *not* a language. This is why Wilkins's masterwork of 1668 is called An essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language (my emphasis). The "language," being a secondary and effable encoding of the character, is precisely by that token non-identical with the latter. Wilkins and his contemporaries would have been flummoxed by Ada Lovelace's use of "language," below. So I would recalibrate the initial question: when was the last time that "language" was not used, and couldn't be, in the context of the mathematization of communication that eventuates in computer science? And my answer would be: in the seventeenth century. JD Fleming
__________________________________________________________________________________ From: "William W McMillan" <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> To: "members" <members@sigcis.org> Sent: Wednesday, 5 November, 2014 11:07:27 Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
Do these notes by Ada Lovelace count"
'The bounds of arithmetic were however outstepped the moment the idea of applying the cards had occurred; and the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own; and the considerations it suggests are most interesting in their nature. In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science. A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other. We are not aware of its being on record that anything partaking in the nature of what is so well designated the Analytical Engine has been hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine'
[emphasis added]
https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html
Her use of "language" here seems to be specific to the expression of computation and reasoning.
- Bill
________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of Marie Gevers [marie.gevers@unamur.be] Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 4:13 AM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of 'language'?
I wonder by whom and when the word 'language' was used for the first time in the framework of computer sciences. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks in advance.
Marie -- [cid:part1.03020706.06070701@unamur.be]
Prof. Marie d'UDEKEM-GEVERS Chargée de cours Conseillère à la formation Professeure invitée au Collège Belgique
Faculté d'Informatique et Centre d'Etudes Sciences et PHIlosophie à Namur (ESPHIN) Centre de Recherche Information, Droit & Société (CRIDS)
T. +32 (0)81 724 973 F. +32 (0)81 724 967 marie.gevers@unamur.be<mailto:marie.gevers@unamur.be> http://www.unamur.be/universite/personnes/page_view/01001574/ http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=bb58g68qxq&lg=fr&pag=919&tab=111&rec=513&frm =368&par=secorig1018&id=5337&flux=83265846
Université de Namur ASBL Rue de Bruxelles 61 - 5000 Namur Belgique
Let’s respect the environment together. Only print this message if necessary!
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- James Dougal Fleming Associate Professor Department of English Simon Fraser University 778-782-4713
Burnaby -- British Columbia -- Canada.
He answered and said, I will not; but afterward he repented, and went. Matt.21:29.
participants (22)
-
Alberts, Gerard -
Allan Olley -
Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan -
Bjorn Westergard -
Ceruzzi, Paul -
David Alan Grier -
David Golumbia -
david nofre -
Ensmenger, Nathan -
Fishwick, Paul -
JD Fleming -
Lori Emerson -
Mara Mills -
mariann unterluggauer -
Marie Gevers -
Mark Priestley -
McMillan, William W -
Nabeel Siddiqui -
Nathan Ensmenger -
Paul Fishwick -
peter.koval＠hu-berlin.de -
Pierre MOUNIER-KUHN