The Computation of Nature, Or: Does the Computer Drive Science and Technology?

Hashagen, Ulf

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39053-1_30

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“…The current historical (and philosophical) literature which deals with this question focuses for the most part on one particular aspect of that question, viz. the impact of computer simulation (Hashagen 2013). 3 One of the standard historical references in this context is Galison's work on Monte Carlo methods and how it required as a simulation method the constitution of a so-called trading zone where different practices (including technological and scientific practices) are locally coordinated by relying on a so-called pidgin language (Galison 1997;Galison 2011).…”

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“…This is to some extent explained by the fact that the main community of historians of computing identifies itself as historians of technology rather than of science and so not too much attention has been given to actual scientific practices in that community. See(Hashagen 2013) for an overview and further bibliographical details and (De Mol and Bullynck, forthcoming) for a critical reflection on the difficult relation between historians of computing and history of science (and, more particularly, mathematics). 4 I am indebted to Juan Duran for having shared with me an earlier draft of this paper.…”

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‘A Pretence of What is Not’? A Study of Simulation(s) from the ENIAC Perspective

Mol

2019

N.T.M.

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The past went that-away. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rearview mirror. We march backward into the future." (Marshall MacLuhan 1967) 1. INTRODUCTION. `ES GIBT KEINE SIMULATION' What, if anything, is the impact of technology x on science y? While instances of this kind of questions have long been neglected within more traditional history and philosophy of science, the steady reversal of the primacy in the science-technology relation since the 1980s (Forman 2007) has given these questions new relevance and put them into a methodological framework where the focus is much more on how certain technological advances affect and shape scientific practice and the knowledge it produces. This focus on technology is, in itself, a historical phenomenon and partially rooted in the growing dependencies between certain branches of science and increasingly complex, and often expensive, technologies where the latter require an expertise which is not necessarily that of the scientist or team of scientists using the technology. One important driving factor in this development was the possibility of high-speed computation. Indeed, today most, if not all, such technological complexes require intricate computational setups which are used in a way which was simply not possible before the development of the high-speed computer. It is from that context that one can understand the recent attention for so-called computational science and the changing role and identity of computer science in the disciplinary spectrum from a discipline struggling for independence from mathematics and engineering to one which has by some been identified as an entirely new scientific domain on a par with the life, physical and social sciences (Tedre 2015; Rosenbloom 2015). Thus, one important instance of the above question is: 1 Part of this work is based on a talk given at the conference The Plurality of Numerical Methods in Computer Simulations and their Philosophical Analysis, 3-4 November 2011, titled ENIAC, matrix of numerical simulation(s). The talk was prepared by M. Bullynck, M. Carlé and myself and dedicated to the memory of Friedrich Kittler. 2 This paper is to some extent determined by some of the ideas elaborated in the ANR project PROGRAMme (ANR-17-CE38-0003-01). I am indebted to Maarten Bullynck, Martin Carlé and Mark Priestley for discussing aspects of this paper. Special thanks go to Sibylle Anderl, Arianna Borrelli, Nathalie Bredella, Rudi Seising and Janina Wellmann for their extensive comments on an earlier version of this paper. 17 See for instance (Fritz 1994) to get an idea of the diversity of problems that were prepared for the machine. 18 See (Bullynck and De Mol) to understand in more detail how the ENIAC worked in its original setup .

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‘A Pretence of What is Not’? A Study of Simulation(s) from the ENIAC Perspective

Mol

2019

N.T.M.

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Calculating Devices and Computers

Jones¹

2016

A Companion to the History of Science

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Focusing upon computation, storage, and infrastructures for data from the early modern European period forward, this chapter stresses that the constraints of computing technologies, as well as their possibilities, are essential for the path of computational sciences. Mathematical tables and simple contrivances aided calculation well into the middle of the twentieth century. Digital machines replaced them slowly: adopting electronic digital computers for scientific work demanded creative responses to the limits of technologies of computation, storage, and communication. Transforming the evidence of existing scientific domains into data computable and storable in electronic form challenged ontology and practice alike. The ideational history of computing should pay close attention to its materiality and social forms, and the materialist history of computing must pay attention to its algorithmic ingenuity in the face of material constraints.

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The Computation of Nature, Or: Does the Computer Drive Science and Technology?

Cited by 2 publications

References 28 publications

‘A Pretence of What is Not’? A Study of Simulation(s) from the ENIAC Perspective

‘A Pretence of What is Not’? A Study of Simulation(s) from the ENIAC Perspective

Calculating Devices and Computers

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