Machines of Truth, Logic and Reason

I read an article in Nautilus magazine that combines several topics that interest me and that I have written about elsewhere. 

We start back in the 13th century with a young patrician named Ramon Llull in Majorca  His story is a bit like Augustine's (who would later become a saint) in that though married, he has many affairs with women and writes songs and poems that no one wants to read - and he doesn't care. Augustine, though he led a lazy, faithless life, reformed through prayer, fasting and alms giving and converts to Christianity.

Ramon found another path from his life of privilege to unexpected divine revelations. In these visions, he was told to write a book that could answer any question about faith. That was quite a task he was assigned.

Ramon Llull conceived a technology that would provide unerring truth about the universe. He most likely took inspiration from a spinning device used by Muslim astrologers before him. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

His collected work is known as Ars Magna and it is considered to be more than a book and a kind of logic machine. He was likely partially inspired by the zairja, a device that Muslim astrologers used to help generate new ideas. On a paper wheel, letters and words were distributed around the circumference in a series of concentric circles that could be turned in combinations to "answer" questions

On Llull's paper machine, the wheels were divided into fundamental religious concepts, including goodness, eternity, understanding, and love. You were supposed to rotate the paper discs to combine different divine attributes into logically true statements. It sounds more like a fortune-telling toy than a truth machine, but the article I read says that "his hope to derive truth through the reduction—and mechanical recombination—of knowledge into basic principles and terms prefigured contemporary computing by nearly 800 years."

Although Llull was certain his logic machine would demonstrate the truth of the Bible and gain new Christian converts, he was ultimately unsuccessful. One report has it that he was stoned to death while on a missionary trip to Tunisia.

Ibn Khaldun described zairja as: "a branch of the science of letter magic, practiced among the authorities on letter magic, is the technique of finding out answers from questions by means of connections existing between the letters of the expressions used in the question. They imagine that these connections can form the basis for knowing the future happenings they want to know." (Here is a kind of user's guide to the zairja.)

I like his suggestion that rather than being supernatural it works "from an agreement in the wording of question and answer ... with the help of the technique called the technique of 'breaking down'" (i.e. algebra). By combining number values associated with the letters and categories, new paths of insight and thought are created.

Let's jump to the 17th century and consider the mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who created a mechanical—but descriptive—logic machine. In Dissertatio de Arte Combinatoria, published in 1666 when he was 19, Leibniz proposed that all concepts could be described as combinations of simpler concepts, in the same way words are composed of letters. 

Leibniz knew of Llull’s work but found it incomplete and rather arbitrary. Llull (and by the way, that's a lot of L's in a short name) included goodness, eternity, and love, etc., but why not include others? So, Leibniz suggested the need for a full alphabet of human thought: 

Again, God comes into this machine since he hoped this would lead to the language in which God wrote the universe. That would be a universe where no untruth could be spoken. 

His thought was also that his “mother of all inventions” would usher in utopia, accelerate science, and perfect theology. 

Others preceded him, such as René Descartes, in believing that truth could be discovered through reason alone. And despite critics who questioned all of this, others continued the work of trying to build a truth-generating machine. 

English mathematician George Boole had a visionary idea at 17 of how he believed the mind “accumulates knowledge.” Boole was obsessed with the idea of creating a system of language that could put disagreements to rest and calculate truth by mathematical certainty. This led Boole to his 1854 book, Laws of Thought, in which he pioneered a novel form of logic predicated on a new measure of truth: yes or no.

Boole didn't create a physical logic machine, but he developed Boolean algebra, a fundamental concept in binary logic that laid the groundwork for modern computer science. Boolean algebra uses binary values (0 and 1 - kind of yes or no) to represent logical statements and operations, which are essential for designing digital circuits and computer algorithms1.

When I recall algebra - which I never fully understood - the variable I think of is x which stood in for numbers. Boole thought, what if these variables stood for other things, like ideas? He demonstrated that he could turn Aristotle’s logical propositions into mathematical equations. 

Do I understand this? No. For example, the proposition “all men are mortal” could be expressed as y=vx. Okay, George, if you say so.

Boole was disappointed that his own work had only captured the interest of mathematicians because he wanted it "to throw light on the nature of the human mind.” 

The first logic machine was invented by William Stanley Jevons in 1869. He called it the "logical piano" or "logic piano". This device was designed to solve logical problems using Boolean algebra and was demonstrated at a meeting of the Royal Society of London in 1870.

Y2K and Y2K38

Do you remember the Y2K scare? It is also known as the Millennium Bug. On this Eve of a new year, I am recalling this scare that stemmed from a widespread concern in the late 1990s that many computer systems would fail when the year changed from 1999 to 2000.

Why? Many older computer systems and software programs represented years using only the last two digits (e.g., "1999" was stored as "99"). It was feared that when 2000 arrived, these systems might interpret "00" as 1900 instead of 2000, leading to several problems.

Systems that relied on accurate date calculations could produce errors or fail entirely. For example, financial systems calculating interest rates or loan payments might miscalculate. Concerns arose about critical systems in utilities, transportation, healthcare, and government shutting down. Files or databases might become corrupted due to incorrect data processing.

Probably the greatest concern was in banking and finance where it was feared that miscalculated transactions, stock market crashes, or ATM malfunctions might occur.

Some people predicted power grid failures or water system disruptions, and aviation navigation systems and air traffic control collapsing.

What if there were malfunctioning military systems, including nuclear launch systems?

And so, billions of dollars were spent worldwide to identify, update, and test potentially vulnerable systems. IT professionals worked tirelessly to ensure compliance before the deadline.

What Happened? The transition to the year 2000 was largely uneventful. A few minor issues were reported, but there were no catastrophic failures. It wasn't that there was no reason to be concerned, but the successful outcome is often credited to the massive preventive effort rather than the fears being overblown.

The Y2K scare highlighted the importance of forward-thinking in software development and helped establish rigorous practices for handling date and time in computing.

If you want to start preparing or worrying now for the next similar scare, the Y2K38 Problem (Year 2038 Issue) arises from how older computer systems store time as a 32-bit integer, counting seconds since January 1, 1970 (Unix time). On January 19, 2038, this count will exceed the maximum value for a 32-bit integer, causing a rollover that could result in misinterpreted dates or system crashes.
Impact: This potentially affects embedded systems, infrastructure, and older software. Modern systems are increasingly being updated to 64-bit time representations, which kicks the problem far into the future.

Mycelium Networks

Mycelium networks are truly remarkable, acting as the unseen connectors and communicators of the natural world. They demonstrate how interconnected and interdependent ecosystems can be.

This incredible underground web of fungal threads acts like nature's very own support system for plants, connecting them much like the Internet does for people. When mycelium forms a partnership with plant roots, it's called mycorrhiza, and it facilitates the exchange of nutrients, water, and even vital information among various plant species. Thanks to mycelium, trees and plants can actually communicate, share resources, and even warn each other about threats, such as drought and fires.

Here are some key benefits and interesting aspects of mycelium communication:

Nutrient Exchange  Mycelium helps plants absorb nutrients and water from the soil. In return, plants provide the fungi with sugars and other organic compounds produced through photosynthesis. This mutualistic relationship enhances the health and growth of both organisms.

Resource Sharing  Different plants connected by mycelium networks can share resources, such as water and nutrients, especially in times of scarcity. For example, a well-established tree might supply water to a nearby sapling during a drought through the mycelial network.

Chemical Signaling  Mycelium can detect and respond to environmental changes. It can send chemical signals to plants, alerting them to potential threats like pests or pathogens. This allows plants to activate their defense mechanisms, making the ecosystem more resilient.

Soil Health  Mycelium decomposes organic matter, breaking it down into nutrients that plants can use. This process enriches the soil and promotes a healthy ecosystem. Mycelium also helps bind soil particles together, preventing erosion and improving soil structure.

Biodiversity  By facilitating nutrient and resource exchange, mycelium networks support a diverse range of plant species, promoting biodiversity in ecosystems. This diversity, in turn, creates a more stable and resilient environment.

Remediation  Some fungi in mycelium networks can break down pollutants, including heavy metals and hydrocarbons, helping to clean up contaminated environments. This process, known as mycoremediation, has potential applications in environmental restoration efforts.

 

Photons: From Planck to Einstein

 A photon (from the Ancient Greek word phōtós meaning "light") is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. 

Photons were unknown and unnamed in 1900 when physicist Max Planck published his theory of quantum mechanics, which is often considered one of the most radical scientific discoveries of the 20th century. 

At that time, physicists accepted the work of Isaac Newton without any criticism. They believed that the interactions between all physical objects, from atoms to planets, would be predictable and logical. But one thing that physicists couldn't quite understand was the way light worked. 

Planck was working in a laboratory in 1900, heating up various substances and examining the color of light they emitted when they reached certain temperatures. He wanted to describe his results in mathematical terms, but no matter how hard he tried, his mathematical calculations didn't make sense. The only way he could fix the problem was to assume that light travels in little packets, like bullets, even though this seemed impossible. He published his calculations but called his theory about light "an act of desperation." He assumed that some future physicist would figure out what he had done wrong. 

It was only five years later when Albert Einstein took Planck's theory of light seriously and wrote his first major paper exploring the idea of light traveling in packets. He called those packets photons. Even though he became better known for his theory of relativity, it was Einstein's work expanding on Planck's original ideas about light that won him a Nobel Prize. Einstein later said, "I use up more brain grease on quantum theory than on relativity."