A COMPUTABLE UNIVERSE
Understanding Computation & Exploring Nature As Computation
Hector Zenil (editor)
(member of the Turing Centenary Advisory Committee)

Dedicated to the memory of Alan M. Turing on the 100th. anniversary of his birth.

 



A Computable Universe is a collection of papers discussing computation in nature and the nature of computation, a compilation of the views of the pioneers in the contemporary area of intellectual inquiry focused on computational and informational theories of the world.


Overview: The book discusses the foundations of computation in relation to nature. It focuses on two main questions: What is computation? How does nature compute? The contributors are world-renowned experts who have helped shape a cutting-edge computational understanding of the universe. They discuss computation in the world from a variety of perspectives, ranging from foundational concepts to pragmatic models to ontological conceptions and their philosophical implications. The volume provides a state-of-the-art collection of technical papers and non-technical essays representing a field that takes information and computation to be key to understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. It also includes a new edition of Konrad Zuse's "Calculating Space", and a panel discussion transcription on the topic, featuring worldwide experts (including a Nobel prize) in quantum mechanics, physics, cognition, computation and algorithmic complexity.


Foreword by Sir Roger Penrose


Foundations, Universality & Models of Computation

Origins of Digital Computing: Babbage, Lovelace, Turing (Doron Swade)
Specification and Computation (Raymond Turner)
Effectiveness (Nachum Dershowitz)
Church without Dogma: Axioms for Computability with Postscriptum (Wilfried Sieg)
Universality, Turing Incompleteness and Observers (Klaus Sutner)
The Many Forms of Amorphous Computational Systems (Jiri Wiedermann)
What is Computation: Actor Model versus Turing's Model (Carl Hewitt)
The Subjective Computable Universe (Marcus Hutter)
Generating, Solving and the Human Mind: Emil Post's Views on Computation (Liesbeth De Mol)

Physics, Computation & the Computation of Physics

Computational Realizability in the Real World (Andrej Bauer)
Discrete Theoretical Processes (Ed Fredkin)
Algorithmic Theories of Everything (Juergen Schmidhuber)
What Is Ultimately Possible in Physics? (Stephen Wolfram)
Emergence in Causal Sets (Tommaso Bolognesi)
The Unlawful Universe (Cristian S. Calude, F. Walter Meyerstein & Arto Salomaa)
Can We Compute Beyond the Turing Model? (Francisco Doria)
Is Feasibility in Physics Limited by Fantasy Alone? (Cris Calude and Karl Svozil)
The Computable Universe Hypothesis (Matthew Szudzik)

Computation in Nature & the World

Information-Theoretic Teleodynamics in Natural and Artificial Systems (Anthony Beavers)
Bacteria, Turing Machines and Hyperbolic Cellular Automata (Maurice Margenstern)
Life As Evolving Software (Greg Chaitin)
'The Mathematician's Bias', and the Return to Embodied Computation (Barry Cooper)
Computing on Rings (Genaro Martinez & Andy Adamatzky)
Formal Framework for Processes Inspired by Biochemistry of the Living Cell (Grzegorz Rozenberg)
Computation in Unorganized Systems (Christof Teuscher)
Computability and Algorithmic Complexity in Economics (Kumaraswamy (Vela) Velupillai & Stefano Zambelli)

The Quantum & Computation

What is Computation? (How) Does Nature Compute? (David Deutsch)
Simulation, Computation, and Physics: What Can We Learn About Nature? (Hans Briegel)
Computational Aspects of Quantum Reality (Adan Cabello)
The Universe as a Quantum Computer (Seth Lloyd)
When Humans Do Compute Quantum (Paola Zizzi)
Quantum Speedup in Communication and Computation and Its Limits (Marek Zukowski)
Self-reference, Computability, and Quantum Mechanics (Thomas Breuer & Thomas Schulte-Herbrueggen)


Followed by:

What is Computation? (How) Does Nature Compute? Panel discussion featuring: Cristian S. Calude, Gregory Chaitin, Edward Fredkin, Anthony J. Leggett, Robert de Ruyter, Tommaso Toffoli & Stephen Wolfram. Transcription by Adrian German from the NKS Midwest Conference 2008. Organized by A. German, G. Ortiz and H. Zenil. Held at the University of Indiana Bloomington.

and

 Calculating Space by Konrad Zuse, new edition by Adrian German & Hector Zenil (the MIT translation, with kind permission of MIT and Dr. Konrad Zuse's son Dr. Horst Zuse).

 

Readership: Researchers and students in the broader fields of computer science, mathematics and physics; general public interested in modern models of physics and nature, and in the philosophy of science.



Important Dates

Submission Deadline: August 30, 2011 (already extended)
Expected Publication: early 2012



Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company

 

Guidelines

  • Papers should be about 8 to 14 pages long (12 pt, single spaced letter size).
  • Bear in mind a broader, not necessarily specialized audience (think of a Scientific American article).
  • Documents should be written in LaTeX classic article style with no customized preamble commands and the bibliography should be embedded in the same file (i.e. no bibtex files or include commands).
  • Bibliography should be in Vancouver style (numbers) automatically inserted by LaTeX during compilation using the command \cite{biblio}.
  • Important concepts should be indexed with the command \index{concept} next to the concept.
  • Authors mentioned and people cited should be indexed with the command \indexa{Smith, John}.
  • Should you have any other questions, please contact the editor H. Zenil.