Enclosing the Field: from Mechanisation of Thought Processes to Autonomics

<h3 title"Un libro scritto non mi consolerà mai di ciò che ho distrutto scrivendolo: quell'esperienza che custodita per gli anni della vita mi sarebbe forse servita a scrivere l'ultimo libro, e non mi è bastata che a scrivere il primo. Italo Calvin">Thesis</h3> <ul> <li>D J Clark , <a href"http://djclark.co.uk/phd/EncField030223.pd" title"It is always difficult to perceive something new except upon the model of what is already known. The result is a partial and incomplete understanding that can only be improved by experience. Our present perception of computing remains strongly influenced by its origin as a mathematicians’ machine. A notion of mathematics as the arbiter of what constitutes a 'science'; has long been ascendant. As a result, even when viewed from a more empirical standpoint, computing has been influenced by the aspirations of engineering disciplines to acquire the status accorded to a science. Yet there always has been an interest in computing machinery from a different perspective: that of biology—autonomic mechanisms, understood through observation rather than the proving of theorems. But this runs counter to a prevailing trend in twentieth century biology toward a discrete and computational molecular model"><i>Enclosing the Field: from Mechanisation of Thought Processes to Autonomics</i></a> [PhD University of Warwick 2002].</li> </ul>