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
2 - Zuse’s Thesis, Gandy’s Thesis, and Penrose’s Thesis
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
Konrad Zuse said that the entire universe is a computer. Robin Gandy said that the whole universe, if not a computer, is computable. Roger Penrose said that the universe is in part uncomputable. We survey the territory. Zuse’s thesis we believe to be plain false: the universe might have consisted of nothing but a giant computer, but in fact does not. Gandy viewed his thesis as a relatively a priori one, provable on the basis of a set-theoretic argument making only very general physical assumptions about decomposability into parts and the nature of causation. We maintain that Gandy’s proof does not work, and that his thesis is best viewed, like Penrose’s, as an open empirical hypothesis. But what kind of evidence is relevant to discovering the truth of the matter? We investigate.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018
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