Gödel, Turing and the Iconic/Performative Axis

1936 was a watershed year for computability. Debates among Gödel, Church and others over the correct analysis of the intuitive concept “human effectively computable”, an analysis at the heart of the Incompleteness Theorems, the Entscheidungsproblem, the question of what a finite computation is, and most urgently—for Gödel—the generality of the Incompleteness Theorems, were definitively set to rest with the appearance, in that year, of the Turing Machine. The question I explore here is, do the mathematical facts exhaust what is to be said about the thinking behind the “confluence of ideas in 1936”? I will argue for a cultural role in Gödel’s, and, by extension, the larger logical community’s absorption of Turing’s 1936 model. As scaffolding I employ a conceptual framework due to the critic Leo Marx of the technological sublime; I also make use of the distinction within the technological sublime due to Caroline Jones, between its iconic and performative modes—a distinction operating within the conceptual art of the 1960s, but serving the history of computability equally well

Applying computational complexity to the emergence of classicality

Can the computational complexity theory of computer science and mathematics say something new about unresolved problems in quantum physics? Particularly, can the P versus NP question in the computational complexity theory be a factor in the elucidation of the emergency of classicality in quantum mechanics? The paper compares two different ways of deriving classicality from the quantum formalism resulted from two differing hypotheses regarding the P versus NP question -- the approach of the quantum decoherence theory implying that P = NP and the computational complexity approach which assumes that P is not equal to NP.Comment: 14 pages, Latex; typos correcte

Spartan Daily, May 18, 1962

Volume 49, Issue 122https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/4309/thumbnail.jp

Express-O February 7, 1975

Express-O was a short-lived student newspaper published in early 1975. The issue of February 7, 1975 included an interview with Ruth Kligman, author of Love Affair: Memoirs of Jackson Pollock, and Jackie Curtis, actor. They spoke at a lecture called Against Nature that Seavor Leslie organized on January 29, 1975. An article about hair salons in Providence is also included. Events of interest to RISD students that took place at RISD and in the Providence area were also listed.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/studentnewspapers/1115/thumbnail.jp