CHAPTER 9

Beyond Leibniz’s Dream

In his address before the London Mathematical Society, Turing said:

I expect that digital computing machines will eventually stimulate a considerable interest in symbolic logic … The language in which one communicates with these machines … forms a sort of symbolic logic.1

The connection between logic and computation to which Turing alludes has been a principal theme of this book. Nevertheless, readers may still ask: how is it that logic and computation are related? What does arithmetic have to do with reasoning? A clue is provided by a colloquial use of the verb “to reckon,” in which it does not have its usual meaning: “to calculate.”

I reckon he’s sweet talking her in the moonlight right now.

We are listening ...

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