Did you know that without philosophy, modern computer programming would not exist? Computer programming language is based on rules created by philosophers dating as far back as the late 1800s (even further than that if you count 17th century’s Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, only his influence in mathematical logic did not arrive until 1903). But philosophy’s role in concepts that led to computer technology goes back even further than that. The rules have its origins dating back to ancient Greece, to the philosopher Pythagoras (circa 570–490 BCE). Pythagoras believed that all things are numbers. Here’s how philosophy, math, and computer science is intimately connected, with the latter two subjects evolving from philosophy. Let’s follow an abbreviated timeline…
170 years after Pythagoras, Aristotle used what he would call syllogisms, which was logic-based sentence structures used to determine whether a statement was true or false. In philosophy, logic (formal logic) focuses on structure rather than the substance of an argument.
In the late 1800s however, philosophy shifted from the use of syllogisms to mathematical algebra-based language driven by philosophers like George Boole. In other words, sentence logic shifted to mathematical logic and equations. Boole believed that formal logic in philosophy was a branch of mathematics and could be used to solve logical arguments and problems. Boolean logic uses two values: True = 1 or False = 0 (think data in bits of 1s and 0s). This is Boolean math. Boolean expressions were later used in computer programming language. There are other expressions and operations used in modern Boolean logic, but I won’t list them all. Boolean operations would also include AND, OR, or NOT in the list expressions. This is an example of how the origins of philosophy led to computer programming. Other philosophers like Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Lewis Carroll, Alfred North Whitehead, and Giuseppe Peano, among others, were significant contributors who led the logicism and mathematic logic movement that led to its use in computer programming. This group would later include Alan Turing, the father of computer science who would eventually study mathematical logic under Max Newman at Cambridge in the 1930s (studying lectures from Gödel’s incompleteness theorems). Newman introduced Turing to mathematical logic which of course, is an offshoot or descendent of philosophy (formal logic). After Newman’s lectures, Turing developed the “Turing Machine,” which eventually led to modern computers. This is the shorthand version of these events, the edge of the rabbit hole for you to follow and learn more. Keep your 3rd eye open…👁
– E. Hughes is the author of Reality Unbound: The Digital Mind and the Nature of Reality