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COPELAND:ESSENTIAL TURING PAPER: Seminal Writings in Computing, Logic, Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and Artificial Life plus The Secrets of Enigma
Alan Turing was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. In 1935, aged 22, he developed the mathematical theory upon which all subsequent stored-program digital computers are modeled.
At the outbreak of hostilities with Germany in September 1939, he joined the Government Codebreaking team at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire and played a crucial role in deciphering Engima, the code used by the German armed forces to protect their radio communications. Turing's work on the version of Enigma used by the German navy was vital to the battle for supremacy in the North Atlantic. He also contributed to the attack on the cyphers known as "Fish," which were used by the German High Command for the encryption of signals during the latter part of the war. His contribution helped to shorten the war in Europe by an estimated two years.
After the war, his theoretical work led to the development of Britain's first computers at the National Physical Laboratory and the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University.
Turing was also a founding father of modern cognitive science, theorizing that the cortex at birth is an "unorganized machine" which through "training" becomes organized "into a universal machine or something like it." He went on to develop the use of computers to model biological growth, launching the discipline now referred to as Artificial Life.
The papers in this book are the key works for understanding Turing's phenomenal contribution across all these fields. The collection includes Turing's declassified wartime "Treatise on the Enigma"; letters from Turing to Churchill and to codebreakers; lectures, papers, and broadcasts which opened up the concept of AI and its implications; and the paper which formed the genesis of the investigation of Artifical Life.
At the outbreak of hostilities with Germany in September 1939, he joined the Government Codebreaking team at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire and played a crucial role in deciphering Engima, the code used by the German armed forces to protect their radio communications. Turing's work on the version of Enigma used by the German navy was vital to the battle for supremacy in the North Atlantic. He also contributed to the attack on the cyphers known as "Fish," which were used by the German High Command for the encryption of signals during the latter part of the war. His contribution helped to shorten the war in Europe by an estimated two years.
After the war, his theoretical work led to the development of Britain's first computers at the National Physical Laboratory and the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University.
Turing was also a founding father of modern cognitive science, theorizing that the cortex at birth is an "unorganized machine" which through "training" becomes organized "into a universal machine or something like it." He went on to develop the use of computers to model biological growth, launching the discipline now referred to as Artificial Life.
The papers in this book are the key works for understanding Turing's phenomenal contribution across all these fields. The collection includes Turing's declassified wartime "Treatise on the Enigma"; letters from Turing to Churchill and to codebreakers; lectures, papers, and broadcasts which opened up the concept of AI and its implications; and the paper which formed the genesis of the investigation of Artifical Life.
621 pages, Paperback
First published September 9, 2004
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About the author
Alan M. Turing
48 books287 followersWorks of British mathematician Alan Mathison Turing explored the possibility of computers and raised fundamental questions about artificial intelligence; during World War II, he helped to decipher the German enigma codes and thus contributed to the Allied victory.
This highly influential English logician, cryptanalyst, and scientist developed and provided a formalization of the concept of "algorithm" with the eponymous machine, which played a significant role in the modern creation. People widely considered this father.
Turing worked for the government code and cypher school at Bletchley park, code-breaking center of Britain. For a time, he headed hut 8, the responsible naval section. He devised a number of techniques, including the method of the "bombe," an electromechanical machine that ably found settings, for breaking ciphers. After the war, he worked at the national physical laboratory and created the ACE of the first designs for a stored program.
Biology interested Turing towards the end of his life.
He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis and predicted oscillating reactions, such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky, first observed in the 1960s.
Still illegal homosexual acts of Turing resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952 in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. From cyanide poisoning, he died several weeks before his forty-second birthday. An inquest determined suicide; his mother and some other persons thought of his accidental death.
Following an Internet campaign, Gordon Brown, prime minister of Britain, on 10 September 2009 made an official public apology on behalf of the government for the postwar treatment of Turing.
This highly influential English logician, cryptanalyst, and scientist developed and provided a formalization of the concept of "algorithm" with the eponymous machine, which played a significant role in the modern creation. People widely considered this father.
Turing worked for the government code and cypher school at Bletchley park, code-breaking center of Britain. For a time, he headed hut 8, the responsible naval section. He devised a number of techniques, including the method of the "bombe," an electromechanical machine that ably found settings, for breaking ciphers. After the war, he worked at the national physical laboratory and created the ACE of the first designs for a stored program.
Biology interested Turing towards the end of his life.
He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis and predicted oscillating reactions, such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky, first observed in the 1960s.
Still illegal homosexual acts of Turing resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952 in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. From cyanide poisoning, he died several weeks before his forty-second birthday. An inquest determined suicide; his mother and some other persons thought of his accidental death.
Following an Internet campaign, Gordon Brown, prime minister of Britain, on 10 September 2009 made an official public apology on behalf of the government for the postwar treatment of Turing.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 11, 2021
This is a collection of Turing's most important papers "on computable numbers" which developing out of the foundational crisis of Mathematics Turning took ideas on the calculations of proofs and wondered whether they could be reduced to a suite of simple steps and made to calculate anything calculable. This was Turing's first paper on the computer and the ones to follow define universal computations that Machines Turing invented could calculate anything any other Turing machine could calculate. He worked during World War II cracking the German enigma codes and the book contains extensive details of Turing's work at Bletchley Park during this time.
After the war Turing worked at the University of Manchester to build the ACE computer and invented a famous thought experiment to decide whether "machines can think" and he proposed a kind of imitation game where a person is interviewed via text and a computer is interviewed and if the interviewer cannot tell who is who then the computer has passed this test of thinking. It would be dubbed the Turing test. Has all the papers in this book some are more technical than others.
Nice little series on this by the Youtube channel "Philosophical Overdose"
https://youtu.be/WbCFYTg-fsE
https://youtu.be/3HhNWUIa3IA
The Halting problem.
https://youtu.be/ReGDLDDkkzc
After the war Turing worked at the University of Manchester to build the ACE computer and invented a famous thought experiment to decide whether "machines can think" and he proposed a kind of imitation game where a person is interviewed via text and a computer is interviewed and if the interviewer cannot tell who is who then the computer has passed this test of thinking. It would be dubbed the Turing test. Has all the papers in this book some are more technical than others.
Nice little series on this by the Youtube channel "Philosophical Overdose"
https://youtu.be/WbCFYTg-fsE
https://youtu.be/3HhNWUIa3IA
The Halting problem.
https://youtu.be/ReGDLDDkkzc
January 7, 2013
A collection of articles by Alan Turing on several topics, each with a lengthy preface and sometimes a few relevant articles by other people. The first topic is computability theory; Turing did not prove the existence of noncomputable functions by considering the Halting problem, but by using the Cantor diagonal argument; he also invented hypercomputation by considering Turing machines equipped with oracles. The second topic is Turing's cryptanalytic work on breaking the German naval Engima, which was one of the great engineering projects of the Second World War, alongside Manhattan project. The third topic is artificial intelligence, including the famous paper that introduces the Turing test; every student of computer science must read it. The last section has miscellanea, including a paper that suggests that a diffusion reaction is responsible for embryogenesis; developmental biology must have progressed in the last 50 years, and I don't know, how much of this paper is still considered true, but the point is that Stephen Wolfram did not invent the idea of simple rules giving rise to complicated patterns.
Jenny18 is a sex chat bot that passes the Turing test. Turing did not consider the situation where the judge uses his penis rather than his brain when making the judgment.
Jenny18 is a sex chat bot that passes the Turing test. Turing did not consider the situation where the judge uses his penis rather than his brain when making the judgment.
November 6, 2012
The editor provides some details of Turing's biography and relevant international events. The material includes published (and informally distributed) papers such as On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936) and professional correspondence.
There are four parts,
Computable Numbers - Turing's papers on an approach to dealing with the Entscheidungsproblem.
Enigma - How the cryptography of the Enigma machines employed by the German military was attacked, and eventually defeated.
Artificial Intelligence - Turing's insightful foresight of the potential of computing machines. The editor surveys reactions.
Artificial Life - How abstract simulations of catalysis reactions could give potential models which offer insights into natural phenomena.
There are four parts,
Computable Numbers - Turing's papers on an approach to dealing with the Entscheidungsproblem.
Enigma - How the cryptography of the Enigma machines employed by the German military was attacked, and eventually defeated.
Artificial Intelligence - Turing's insightful foresight of the potential of computing machines. The editor surveys reactions.
Artificial Life - How abstract simulations of catalysis reactions could give potential models which offer insights into natural phenomena.
August 6, 2013
Worth it for "On Computable Numbers…" alone. Turing was bewilderingly prescient.
June 12, 2022
Hard to rate. Turing was an influential thinker and there's a lot of good stuff in this book. However I felt the book was a bit all over the place - perhaps that was the point but its "strength seemed to be its weakness".
In trying to cover so much of Turing it lost focus and it seemed hard to figure out what audience it was actually pitched at. Maybe a Turing geek? (Which isn't exactly me.)
I can admit the sections with just too much maths lost me as I was more into the ideas and explanations rather than the details of the maths.
The first two sections are highly repetitive. One is an explanation of On Computable Numbers and the other is the corrections ands critiques. I felt like I was reading the same chapter over again except one had more detailed maths and then it tempted me to skim it a lot.
Some of the letters seemed to be a bit random - amusing but randomly selected. There was a huge amount of disparity in levels of understanding especially in terms of maths needed, between chapters, in order to understand the different sections so it wasn't clear how the book was pitched.
Turing had some great ideas and of course it was great to read more about the Turing Test. I had lots of ideas bouncing around in my head as I read his papers. It was certainly thought-provoking. However I thought the collection was a bit all over the place, as a collection, maybe it was essential to the aim of the volume but it took away from the appeal of reading it from beginning to end for me.
Possibly it would be better as a reference book where those who are interested just dip in and read the bits that are relevant to their interest.
In trying to cover so much of Turing it lost focus and it seemed hard to figure out what audience it was actually pitched at. Maybe a Turing geek? (Which isn't exactly me.)
I can admit the sections with just too much maths lost me as I was more into the ideas and explanations rather than the details of the maths.
The first two sections are highly repetitive. One is an explanation of On Computable Numbers and the other is the corrections ands critiques. I felt like I was reading the same chapter over again except one had more detailed maths and then it tempted me to skim it a lot.
Some of the letters seemed to be a bit random - amusing but randomly selected. There was a huge amount of disparity in levels of understanding especially in terms of maths needed, between chapters, in order to understand the different sections so it wasn't clear how the book was pitched.
Turing had some great ideas and of course it was great to read more about the Turing Test. I had lots of ideas bouncing around in my head as I read his papers. It was certainly thought-provoking. However I thought the collection was a bit all over the place, as a collection, maybe it was essential to the aim of the volume but it took away from the appeal of reading it from beginning to end for me.
Possibly it would be better as a reference book where those who are interested just dip in and read the bits that are relevant to their interest.
April 10, 2023
A selection of seminal papers by Turing spanning the 30s through the end of his life.
Each actual paper has an introductory chapter by Jack Copeland, giving an overview of the content, and context about the paper.
I have to admit I just skimmed the book, spending about 4 hours, as I didn't feel I had the time to actually dig into the details of papers from the 30s thru the 50s at this time.
But I did get a flavor for his writings, and it was interesting to see neural-computing diagrams from the 50's and compare with what is being done today (2023!).
Each actual paper has an introductory chapter by Jack Copeland, giving an overview of the content, and context about the paper.
I have to admit I just skimmed the book, spending about 4 hours, as I didn't feel I had the time to actually dig into the details of papers from the 30s thru the 50s at this time.
But I did get a flavor for his writings, and it was interesting to see neural-computing diagrams from the 50's and compare with what is being done today (2023!).
November 14, 2023
I had a difficult time deciding on a rating for this book. It's well put together with great introductions to Turing's writings that do an excellent job of providing context.
For a general audience, such as myself, the book has more detail than can be appreciated. For someone with a strong interest in Alan Turing, the origins and philosophy of programming and WW2 codebreaking, this is a full of the detail you want.
For a general audience, such as myself, the book has more detail than can be appreciated. For someone with a strong interest in Alan Turing, the origins and philosophy of programming and WW2 codebreaking, this is a full of the detail you want.
May 5, 2013
The explanations of the papers presented are great. The papers are hard to get through but entertaining. I didn't realize how much of CS that Turing envisioned right at the beginning. Neural Nets, Genetic Algorithms, etc. He immediately made the leap from universal machine to A.I.
May 9, 2018
A fascinating and essential book for delving into the work/mind of Alan Turing: Father of A.I., the Turing Test, mathematics, logic, and work on gases/liquids/patterns (biological meets structural anomalism code...) etc...
July 24, 2015
Recommended reading in careful comparison with the movie, "The Imitation Game."
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews