Sunday, April 13, 2014

Alan Turing: Chapters 1 & 2

      In After Virtue, McIntyre describes how, in today's society, friendships are referred to as simply a particular affection between individuals.  Aristotle views this type of friendship as trivial, and places above it a type of friendship that involves a mutual pursuit of knowledge (a common good).  Turing's relationship with Christopher Morcom fits this Aristotelian version well.  Morcom was more so an educational/scientific counterpart to Alan, sharing discoveries and conclusions.  Friendships like these seem to be a necessary stimulation of Turing's passion for science as a young man.  Andrew Hodges even mentions that this relationship was deeper than a simple liking for one another, and that as a result of Morcom's early death, Turing had felt as if "he had surrendered half his mind, only to have it drop into a void" (Hodges p. 46).  Turing had an understanding of this Aristotelian friendship, and he was able to indulge in it at an early age.
      It is also important to note that although we have produced a somewhat specific definition of science, or at least the telos of a scientist, many things fit this definition.  Science, according to LB492, is the pursuit of new knowledge of the world through reproducible, verifiable methods.  While Turing's work may seem purely mathematical, Hodges makes certain to disband such a belief.  Hodges notes that Turing's Computable Numbers was not a product of scientific method, it did involve a process of "doubting the axioms rather than measuring effects" (Hodges p. 107).  Turing uses the skepticism that is a vital virtue to the scientist.  His doubt of the accepted concepts allowed him to seek out new truths about math, which could in turn be applied to the world.  In this sense, Turing bypasses scientific method, but he contributes his ideas in understandable, verifiable ways.  He is doing science.

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