1206.1706Jun 8, 2012Paper based on invited address at "Turing 2004: A celebration of his life and achievements", held at the University of Manchester, June 5th, 2004 and run jointly by the British Logic Colloquium and the British Society for the History of Mathematics; In the Proceedings of Turing 2004: A celebration of his life and achievements, electronically published by the British Computer Society

The Incomputable Alan Turing

S. Barry Cooper

Logic History and Overview

arXiv PDF

Abstract

The last century saw dramatic challenges to the Laplacian predictability which had underpinned scientific research for around 300 years. Basic to this was Alan Turing's 1936 discovery (along with Alonzo Church) of the existence of unsolvable problems. This paper focuses on incomputability as a powerful theme in Turing's work and personal life, and examines its role in his evolving concept of machine intelligence. It also traces some of the ways in which important new developments are anticipated by Turing's ideas in logic.