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Article: ITERATIONS OF IMMORTALITY.(influence of the algorithm)(Excerpt)
- Article from:
- Harper's Magazine
- Article date:
- January 1, 2000
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Harper's Magazine Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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From The Advent of the Algorithm, by David Berlinski, to be published in March by Harcourt Brace. Berlinski is the author, most recently, of A Tour of the Calculus.
The calculus and the rich body of mathematical analysis to which it gave rise made modern science possible, but it was the algorithm that made possible the modern world. They are utterly different, these ideas. The calculus serves the imperial vision of mathematical physics. It is a vision in which the real elements of the world are revealed to be its elementary constituents: particles, forces, fields, or even a strange fused combination of space and time. Written in the language of mathematics, a ...