Bruno, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by vitalism.... but if its what I have in mind..... then it "died" erroneously..... I don't think notions of qi and prana are without foundation.... far from it. There is a sense in which, if vitalism died, that was a mistake.... but I am not exactly sure of the specificity in which you refer to vitalism.
On Jul 9, 5:26 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > On 09 Jul 2011, at 09:10, Russell Standish wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > On Fri, Jul 08, 2011 at 11:04:56PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > >> On 08 Jul 2011, at 03:39, B Soroud wrote: > > >>> I mean if you went back to classical greece... or classical > >>> india.... could it have been predicted or shown to deduced? > > >> Excellent question. China was close. Reading the treatise "number" > >> by Plotinus, and having a bit study Diophantus, I am not sure that > >> in the world were Plato academia lasted longer they could have find > >> it. Nature found it before (quantum vaccum, DNA, Brain, humans, > >> Human thought, computers, ...). > >> It is the little God. The one you can named (Like FORTRAN, Java, > >> c++, LISP, game of life, etc.) but when you name it, its names > >> multiplies. > > > David Deutsch has an interesting discussion about this in his > > "Beginning of Infinity". He actually introduces several notions of > > universality, one of which is universality of the numbering > > system. Our numbering system is universal, > > Well, carefull. It is unidversal in some sense, but is not Turing > universal. > > > since the discovery of the > > zero, but ancient Greek & Roman systems were not. > > But they are universal in some other sense. > > > Archimedes came > > close to a universal numbering system in the "Sand Reckoner", but > > mysteriously shied away from true universality (his system included > > some rather arbitrary restrictions preventing it from true > > universality). > > But they were way far from Turing universality. > > > Similarly, Babbage and Lovelace came very close to the Turing > > universality concept, but again mysteriously shied away from > > it. > > Here I disagree. I have made research, and I am convinced that babbage > has been aware of the Turing universality, of, its notation system to > describe its machine. He said that this was his real big discovery, > but none understand it. > > Then Emil Post is the second one, but nobody will listen (nor will > Post really insist). Only with Church and Turing will the notion be > admitted by the many. But still very badly understood, despite the > concrete computers, which when programmed, hides their universality. > > > Deutsch remarks that we as a species seem to have a reluctance to > > making systems universal, which is quite curious. > > > So in answer to this question, even if Plato's academy had continued, > > it probably still would not have discovered Turing universality. > > I think it would have taken some more centuries. They might have > discovered it in the 12 or 13th century. They would not have been able > to miss it, especially with the development of math and calculus, > which they would have developed much faster than Newton and Leibniz. > OK, that is just my current opinion. We can't change history. > > Bruno > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
