Alan Turing’s Legacy: Info-Computational Philosophy of Nature

Gordana Dodig Crnkovic

School of Innovation, Design and Engineering,

Mälardalen University,

Sweden

http://www.mrtc.mdh.se/~gdc

AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012 - Alan Turing 2012 University of Birmingham 2-6 July 2012 http://events.cs.bham.ac.uk/turing12/

Turing as Natural Philosopher

Andrew Hodges describes Turing as a natural philosopher:

“He thought and lived a generation ahead of his time, and yet the features of his thought that burst the boundaries of the 1940s are better described by the antique words: natural philosophy.” (Hodges, 1997)

Turing’s natural philosophy differs from Galileo’s view that the book of nature

is written in the language of mathematics (The Assayer, 1623).

Computation was not just a language of nature; it was the way nature behaved. Computers not only calculate numbers, but more importantly, can produce real time behaviors in physical world (control systems, robots, simulations).

Intelligent Machinery – ”Electronic Brains”

Turing studied a variety of natural phenomena and proposed their computational modeling.

He made a pioneering contribution in the elucidation of connections between computation and intelligence.

He was convinced that intelligent machines can be constructedand that machines can be madeable to think.

Sara Turing’s biography of her son witness his interest for chemistry, biology and physics. Turing’s work on morphogenesis provides evidence for natural philosophers’ approach.

His 1952 paper on morphogenesis proposed a chemical model as the basis of the development of biological patterns such as the spots and stripes that appear on animal skin.

“This model will be a simplification and anidealization, and consequently a falsification. It is to be hoped that the features retained for discussion are those of greatest importance in the present state of knowledge.“ Turing, The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis, Aug, 1952

Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Mathematics - Morphogenesis

Turing's Reaction-Diffusion Model of Morphogenesis

http://cgjennings.ca/toybox/turingmorph http://docmadhattan.fieldofscience.com/2012/06/turing-patterns-in-coats-and-sounds.html

“Patterns resulting from the sole interplay between reaction and diffusion are probably involved in certain stages of morphogenesis in biological systems, as initially proposed by Alan Turing. Self-organization phenomena of this type can only develop in nonlinear systems (i.e. involving positive and negative feedback loops) maintained far from equilibrium.” Dulos, E., Boissonade, J., Perraud, J. J.Rudovics, B., Kepper, P. (1996) Chemical morphogenesis: Turing patterns in an experimental chemical system, Acta Biotheoretica, Volume: 44, Issue: 3, pp. 249 -261

Present Status of Turing's Reaction-Diffusion Model

“ALL MODELS ARE WRONG BUT SOME ARE USEFUL “

George E. P. Box, section heading, page 2 of Box's paper, "Robustness in the Strategy of Scientific Model Building" (May 1979) in Robustness in Statistics: Proceedings of a Workshop (1979) edited by RL Launer and GN Wilkinson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN8tVldm6QY&feature=relmfu Philip Maini: Turing's theory of developmental pattern formation

Computing Nature – Nature as a Network of Computational Processes

In contemporary reconstruction of Turing's world view we can find that Turing was one of the first natural computationalists, who believed in computational nature, even in case of phenomena of human mind.

Naturalist computationalism (Pancomputationalism) is a view that the universe is a huge computational machine or rather a network of computational processes which following fundamental physical laws compute (dynamically develop) its own next state from the current one.

Natural computationalists: Konrad Zuse, Edward Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram, Gregory Chaitin, Seth Lloyd, Gerard 't Hooft, Charles Seife, David Deutsch, John Wheeler ("It from bit“) and many others.

Computing Nature and Nature Inspired ComputationComputing Nature and Nature Inspired Computation

In 1623, Galileo in his book The Assayer - Il Saggiatore, claimed that the language of nature's book is mathematics and that the way to understand nature is through mathematics. Generalizing ”mathematics” to ”computation” we may agree with Galileo – the great book of nature is an e-book!

Natural computation includes:

Computation Inspired by nature: Evolutionary computation Neural networks Artificial immune systems Swarm intelligence

Simulation and emulation of nature:Fractal geometry Artificial life

Computing with natural materials: DNA computing Quantum computing

Journals: Natural Computing and IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.

http://www.morphographic.com/Gallery/GalleryRadiolarian.htm

A photomicrograph of an oceanic diatom, which turns dissolved phosphorous into an inorganic mineral shell. Photo courtesy Argonne National Laboratory.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/

Diatom Morphology

What is Computation? How does Nature Compute? Learning from Nature *

“It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time …

So I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities.” Richard Feynman “The Character of Physical Law”

* 2008 Midwest NKS Conference, Indiana University — Bloomington, IN

ComputationThe Computing Universe: Pancomputationalism

Computation is generally defined as information processing.

(See Burgin, M., Super-Recursive Algorithms, Springer Monographs in Computer Science, 2005)

For different views see e.g.

http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/mds26/cogsci/program.html Computation and Cognitive Science 7–8 July 2008, King's College Cambridge

Information as a Fabric of Reality

Informational Structural Realism (Floridi, Sayre)

argues that information is the fabric of reality:

Reality consists of informational structures organized on

different levels of abstraction.

The same view is defended in the book:

Ladyman J. and Ross D., Spurrett D. and Collier J. (2007)

Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, Oxford UP

This proto-information that is the fabric of reality gets complexly structured in

living organisms able to “make sense” out of information in the world.

Structure and Process

Information is the structure, the fabric of reality, according to Informational structural Realism (Floridi, Sayre)

As we can observe, structures in the world constantly change.

The knowledge of structures is half a story, providing snapshots of ever changing reality. The other half is the knowledge of processes that is information dynamics (=information processing=computation) .

Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Dynamics of Information as Natural Computation, Information 2011, 2(3), 460-477; Selected Papers from FIS 2010 Beijing, 2011.

Computing Nature.

Dual-Aspect Info-computational Metaphysics

AGENCY/ COMPUTATION

ONTOLOGY/ INFORMATION

Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic, Investigations into Information Semantics and Ethics of Computing,, Mälardalen University Press, 2006

Info-computational Morphogenesis

Butterfly morphogenesis Drawing

- Gabriel Kelemen

In an info-computational framework, information is a structure and computation is a process.

Process of computation follows/implements/ realizes/represents physical laws. Computation governs self-structuring of data (information)

Through process of computation, structures change their forms.

All of computation on some level of abstraction is morphological computation – a form-changing/ form-generating process.

Info-computational Character of Morphological Computing

INFORMATION + COMPUTATION MORPHOLOGY

CONNECTIONS TO ROBOTICS (AI) AND MORPHOLOGICAL COMPUTING (Rolf Pfeifer)

Morphological Computing in Robotics

In recent years, morphological computing emerged as a new idea in robotics, (Pfeifer 2011), (Pfeifer and Iida 2005), (Pfeifer and Gomez 2009) (Paul 2004).

From the beginning, based on the Cartesian traditions, robotics treated separately the body as a machine and its control as a program. However, successively it became evident that embodiment itself is essential for cognition, intelligence and generation of behavior. In a most profound sense, embodiment is vital because cognition results from the interaction of brain, body, and environment. (Pfeifer 2011)

Morphological Computation: Connecting Body, Brain, and Environment

http://morphcomp.org

soft robotics / self-assembly systems and molecular robotics/

self-assembly systems at all scales / embodied robotics /

reservoir computing / physical reservoir computing/ real neural systems

systems medicine / functional architecture / organization /

process management / computation based on spatio-temporal dynamics/

information theoretical approach to embodiment mechatronics /

amorphous computing / molecular computing

http://www.eucognition.org/index.php?page=theoretical-scheme Tutorial on Embodiment: R Pfeifer

Turing Machine Limits. Self-Generating Systems

Complex biological systems must be modeled as self-referential, self-organizing "component-systems" (George Kampis) which are self-generating and whose behavior, though computational in a general sense, goes far beyond Turing machine model.

“a component system is a computer which, when executing its operations (software) builds a new hardware.... [W]e have a computer that re-wires itself in a hardware-software interplay: the hardware defines the software and the software defines new hardware. Then the circle starts again.” (Kampis, p. 223 Self-Modifying Systems in Biology and Cognitive Science)

Dodig Crnkovic, G. (2011). Significance of Models of Computation from Turing Model to Natural Computation. Minds and Machines, (R. Turner and A. Eden guest eds.) Volume 21, Issue 2, p.301.

Morphological Computing, in Sum

Morphological computing is information (re)structuring through computational processes which follow (implement) physical laws.

Morphological computing is physical computing or natural computing in which physical objects perform computation. Symbol manipulation in this case is physical object manipulation.

Unconventional computing – physical computing of natural systems (Susan Stepney)

Agent-centered informtion self-dtructuring (Bill Phillips) http://www.mdpi.com/journal/information/special_issues/

matter A special issue of journal Information "Information and Energy/Matter“

Andrée C. Ehresmann: Info-computational model for (neuro-)cognitive systems up to creativity

Connections to the work presented in this Symposium

Future Work

Studying the development of structures as they appear in physics, chemistry and biology through the lens of info-computationalism, search for computational laws governing dynamics of physical structures.

In analogy with virtual machines running on a lower level macines, we can imagine a hierarchy of computational laws running on basic level laws in cases of complex systems.

Reformulation of physics in terms of information such as done in the work of Goyal, Chiribella, Ariano and Perinotti are steps in that direction.

Let me finish with Turing’s words …

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” (Turing 1950)

Turing, A. M. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence, Mind LIX, 433-60. http://cogprints.org/499/0/turing.html

Dodig-Crnkovic G., Info-computationalism and Morphological Computing of Informational Structure, in Integral Biomathics, Simeonov, P., Smith, L. and Ehresmann, A. (Eds.). Springer Serie on Computational Intelligence and Complexity, 2012.

Dodig Crnkovic, G. and Müller, V. , A Dialogue Concerning Two World Systems: Info-Computational vs. Mechanistic; in Dodig Crnkovic G and Burgin, M., Eds.; World Scientific Publishing Co., Inc.: Singapore, 2010

References