Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Computability of Physical Systems and Physical Systems as Computers
- 1 Ontic Pancomputationalism
- 2 Zuse’s Thesis, Gandy’s Thesis, and Penrose’s Thesis
- 3 Church’s Thesis, Turing’s Limits, and Deutsch’s Principle
- Part II The Implementation of Computation in Physical Systems
- 4 How to Make Orthogonal Positions Parallel: Revisiting the Quantum Parallelism Thesis
- 5 How is There a Physics of Information? On Characterizing Physical Evolution as Information Processing
- 6 Abstraction/Representation Theory and the Natural Science of Computation
- Part III Physical Perspectives on Computer Science
- 7 Physics-like Models of Computation
- 8 Feasible Computation: Methodological Contributions from Computational Science
- 9 Relativistic Computation
- Part IV Computational Perspectives on Physical Theory
- 10 Intension in the Physics of Computation: Lessons from the Debate about Landauer’s Principle
- 11 Maxwell’s Demon Does not Compute
- 12 Quantum Theory as a Principle Theory: Insights from an Information-Theoretic Reconstruction
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Ontic Pancomputationalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2018
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Computability of Physical Systems and Physical Systems as Computers
- 1 Ontic Pancomputationalism
- 2 Zuse’s Thesis, Gandy’s Thesis, and Penrose’s Thesis
- 3 Church’s Thesis, Turing’s Limits, and Deutsch’s Principle
- Part II The Implementation of Computation in Physical Systems
- 4 How to Make Orthogonal Positions Parallel: Revisiting the Quantum Parallelism Thesis
- 5 How is There a Physics of Information? On Characterizing Physical Evolution as Information Processing
- 6 Abstraction/Representation Theory and the Natural Science of Computation
- Part III Physical Perspectives on Computer Science
- 7 Physics-like Models of Computation
- 8 Feasible Computation: Methodological Contributions from Computational Science
- 9 Relativistic Computation
- Part IV Computational Perspectives on Physical Theory
- 10 Intension in the Physics of Computation: Lessons from the Debate about Landauer’s Principle
- 11 Maxwell’s Demon Does not Compute
- 12 Quantum Theory as a Principle Theory: Insights from an Information-Theoretic Reconstruction
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Pancomputationalism (PC) is the sensational view that every physical system—including the universe as a whole—is a computing system. Ontic PC is the increasingly popular version of PC according to which the physical universe is fundamentally computational. According to ontic PC, there is a fundamental level of physical reality at which the one and only fundamental computation performed by each physical system can be identified. In addition, that fundamental computation is all there is to the nature of a physical system. Proponents of this view are compelled by the remarkable capacities of computers to simulate physical processes either approximately or exactly, and by the unifying descriptive power of mathematics in both computer science and physics. In this chapter, we analyze arguments for ontic PC and find them far less clear, complete, and plausible than do their proponents.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018
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