Computability and recursion

We consider the informal concept of “computability” or “effective calculability” and two of the formalisms commonly used to define it, “(Turing) computability” and “(general) recursiveness.” We consider their origin, exact technical definition, concepts, history, general English meanings, how they became fixed in their present roles, how they were first and are now used, their impact on nonspecialists, how their use will affect the future content of the subject of computability theory, and its connection to other related areas. After a careful historical and conceptual analysis of computability and recursion we make several recommendations in section §7 about preserving the intensional differences between the concepts of “computability” and “recursion.” Specifically we recommend that: the term “recursive ” should no longer carry the additional meaning of “computable” or “decidable;” functions defined using Turing machines, register machines, or their variants should be called “computable” rather than “recursive;” we should distinguish the intensional difference between Church’s Thesis and Turing’s Thesis, and use the latter particularly in dealing with mechanistic questions; the name of the subject should be “Computability Theory” or simply Computability rather tha

Computability and Incomputability

The conventional wisdom presented in most computability books and historical papers is that there were several researchers in the early 1930’s working on various precise definitions and demonstrations of a function specified by a finite procedure and that they should all share approximately equal credit. This is incorrect. It was Turing alone who achieved the characterization, in the opinion of Gödel. We also explore Turing’s oracle machine and its analogous properties in analysis. Keywords: Turing a-machine, computability, Church-Turing Thesis, Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, Turing o-machine, computable approximations