Liesbeth De Mol

In this talk I will argue that we should care more for and be more careful with the history of computability making a plea for a more diverse and informed understanding. The starting point will be the much celebrated Turing machine model. Why is it that within the computability community, this model is often considered as the model? In the first part of this talk I review some of those reasons, showing how and why they are in need of a revision based, mostly, on historical arguments. On that basis I argue that, while surely, the Turing machine model is a basic one, part of its supposed superiority over other models is based on socio-historical forces. In part II then, I consider a number of historical, philosophical and technical arguments to support and elaborate the idea of a more diversified understanding of the history of computability. Central to those arguments will be the differentiation between, on the one hand, the logical equivalence between the different models with respect to the computable functions, and, on the other hand, some basic intensional differences between those very same models. To keep the argument clear, the main focus will be on the different models provided by Emil Leon Post but I will also include references to the work by Alonzo Church, Stephen C. Kleene and Haskell B. Curry.

Supported by the PROGRAMme project, ANR-17-CE38-0003-01.

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