Opinion 161: A quick rebuttal to Clifford Truesdell's 1982 Machino-Phobic Tirade: "The Computer: Ruin of Science and Threat to Mankind"

By Doron Zeilberger

Written: Sept. 9, 2017

A long time ago, before I started using computers seriously in my own research, I read, and got a little annoyed, by Clifford Truesdell's idiotic diatribe against computers, entitled "The Computer: Ruin of Science and Threat to Mankind". If you think that it is not nice of me to call his essay "idiotic", don't blame me. This essay is contained in his book (Springer, 1984) entitled "An Idiot's Fugitive Essays On Science". Of course Truesdell used it "tongue in cheek", or in its original Greek meaning that probably meant "non-conformist", but, at least this one essay- about the computer being the ruin of science- was already idiotic back then, and is so much more so today.

In fact, I agree with half of the title, the computer being a "threat to mankind" (and, may I add, womankind, and more generally, humankind). As computers get smarter and smarter (and smaller and smaller), we humans get dumber and dumber, and more sadly, lazier and lazier. That terrible gadget, the smartphone, is indeed the ruin of humankind, and because it is so distracting and addictive, prevents us from focusing on any one thing for more than a few minutes at a time. I often see people in talks, and classes, glancing at their smartphones, and texting, and, very rudely, hardly paying attention to the talk.

But computers are the opposite of the ruin of science. If, dear Cliff, by "science" you mean "human-generated science", then you are perfectly correct, but already traditional, human-generated science is fastly becoming pre science. Computers are the birth of true science, and its significance is orders-of-magnitude more than the invention of writing, the alphabet, the telescope and the microscope combined.

In particular, it is the birth of true, non-trivial, mathematics. In fifty years, all human-generated mathematics, including Wiles' and Perelman's theorems, will be considered utter trivialities, the same way that Euclid, Fibonacci, and Cardano are considered trivial today.

I don't have the patience, dear Professor Truesdell, to do a blow by blow rebuttal to your idiotic harangue, so let me pick a random sample.

• You say (p. 596): "Calculations should not be taken for mathematics. Calculation is a thoughtless routine."
  I say: Everything is calculation! Thinking is calculation. We all- humans and computers- follow algorithms whether we are aware of it or not. Mathematics is calculations and calculations is mathematics. Of course, calculations do not have to be all numerical, they can be algebraic (and computer algebra systems do it very well), and they can be logical (and we already have so-called proof assistants, that are getting better and better).

• You say (p. 603): "Mathematics is the science of infinities. Computation is essentially finite."
  I say: Wrong! There is no such thing as infinity, only "infinity" exists, as a finite symbol and as a way of speech. Mathematics, like everything else, including our physical universe, is finite, hence computers are ideal for doing mathematics.

• You say (p. 603): "The computer cannot think."
  I say: Says who?, it is already thinking better than you did (when you were alive), and it is getting better and better. Humans only think that they think, but all they do is compute, using algorithms programmed into them by biological evolution, and learned by social evolution. But just like machines surpassed humans in physical activity, like running and jumping, they are already starting to surpass humans in so-called intellectual activities.

• You say (p. 626): "Unrigorous mathematics, which is failed mathematics, is fraudulent mathematics."
  I say: This is the stupidest statement in the whole diatribe! Unrigorous mathematics is the only hope to transcend the fanatical Euclidean straitjacket of rigorous proof. Rigorous mathematics is trivial mathematics, since any rigorously proved statement, even one proved by computers, is, tautologically, not very deep. The only hope in getting exciting new mathematical knowledge, broadly defined, is to renounce this hang-up, and accept semi-rigorous and non-rigorous mathematics, that has been found experimentally, using computers. Of course, we need to be very careful, and develop reliable criteria of what we can trust, and learn to estimate the probability of correctness, (1-10^-20 is good enough for me!). That is the way to go!

  Opinions of Doron Zeilberger