scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1004209
Church's thesiscognitive sciencescomputabilityhistory and philosophy of the concept of recursionlinguisticsphilosophy of science
Philosophy of mathematics (00A30) History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to mathematical logic and foundations (03-02) History of mathematical logic and foundations (03-03) Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations (03A05) Logic of natural languages (03B65) Computability and recursion theory (03D99)
This book gives a comprehensive overview on the history and the philosophy of the concept of recursion. The book is centered around Church's thesis that all effectively calculable functions are recursive. Part I, organized in four chapters, sets the scene by sketching the genesis of modern logic and its relations to the foundations of mathematics. The second part introduces the basic concepts ``iteration, ``recursion, and ``induction (ch. 5), gives an overview on recursive systems (recursive functions, transformation systems, \(\lambda\)-calculus, Turing machines -- ch. 6), and gives hints on further developments in computer science, in the theory of cellular automata and in Robinson arithmetic. Part III forms the center of the book. It is devoted to Church's thesis which is in the beginning placed within the history of computability starting with Raymundus Lullus' \textit{ars magna} and ending with Robin Gandy's results on Turing computability. Chapter 9 presents interpretations of Church's thesis and chapter 10 a discussion of criticism, further developments and alternative constructions. The last part gives applications of the concept of recursion in ontology and in the philosophy of science (ch. 11), physics, chemistry and biology (ch. 12), computer science and linguistics (ch. 13), in constructivism and in cognitive sciences. The bibliography containing 242 items gives a good selection of primary and secondary sources. This book gives an unusually rich example for an interdisciplinary study. It shows in a very impressive manner the interdependencies between logical concepts and other fields of human culture.
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