FOM: Godel, f.o.m.

[Vladimir Sazonov]

Matt Insall wrote:

> I tend to agree with this type of reasoning about the history of computers
> and their programming.  Even if one does not strictly consider Gödel to have
> invented Computer Science, one must concede that it was Gödel and his
> contemporary Mathematicians who invented that discipline, a fairly long time
> before the first digital computer was built.  I have had disagreements with
> Computer Scientists and Engineers about this:  Some claim that Computer
> Science began as an Engineering discipline.  These people, I contend, are
> not looking far enough back in the history of their subject, and are
> neglecting the significance of foundational studies (to use Professor
> Friedman's term).

Here is not so much of contradiction because mathematics is just
a kind of formal engineering. In a sense, computers as some
(physically realized) formal systems belong to mathematics.


Vladimir Sazonov