Troy Astarte, Newcaste University
I am a PhD student in my final year, studying at Newcastle University under the supervision of Cliff Jones. My research area is the history of formal semantics of programming languages. I have both a historical and technical interest in the area, and believe both aspects will be useful in this particular project.
Selmer Bringsjord, Director, Rensselaer AI & Reasoning (RAIR) Lab
Selmer Bringsjord specializes in building (with indispensable help from others, and via computational logics) AI systems and robots with human-level powers, and in the philosophical and logico-mathematical foundations of AI, where such questions as whether a machine with super-human intelligence could ever be engineered, are addressed. In the present project,his efforts include advocating a novel logicist paradigm for computer programs and computer programming he has called ‘Pure General Logic Programming,’ or just ‘PGLP’ for short. Bringsjord is the author of numerous publications, many of which are offered at www.rpi.edu/~brings, where his reasonably up-to-date full cv is available.
Maarten Bullynck, Département de mathématiques & histoire des sciences / EA 1571 “Recherches historiques: Pouvoirs, Savoirs et Sociétés” Université Paris 8
Maarten Bullynck studies mathematics, linguistics and media studies in Ghent and Berlin. He is currently maître de conférences at the Department for mathematics and the history of science at Université Paris 8. His research interests are mathematics and its applications in the 18th century and the history of computing from the interbellum to now.
Felice Cardone, Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Torino
Felice Cardone was born in Torino in 1960. He has got a degree in Philosophy in 1983, and a PhD in Computer Science in 1990. He has been an Assistant Professor (Ricercatore) first at Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Informazione, Università degli Studi di Milano, and then at Dipartimento di Informatica, Sistemistica e Comunicazione, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca. He is currently Associate Professor (Professore Associato) at the Università di Torino, Dipartimento di Informatica.
His research interests have focussed on mathematical structures for the semantics of programming languages, and on semantical aspects of type systems, especially those that include recursive types. He has also studied the conceptual aspects and the historical development of type theories, lambda-calculus, and more recently of the foundations of Petri nets and concurrency.
Edgar Daylight, Siegen Univeristy and KU Leuven
Edgar G. Daylight is trained in software engineering (PhD, 2006), mathematical logic (MS, 2009), and the history of computer science (primarily under the mentorship of Gerard Alberts, 2009–2013). He likes combining his programming knowledge with historical research and computability theory. Much inspired by the writings of Donald MacKenzie and Timothy Colburn, Daylight views the history of computer science as both a history of progress and one of conflations (not to mention intellectual pleasantries). One incentive for Daylight to study the past is to become better informed about present-day, societal issues. Notwithstanding the recent progress made in safety engineering (e.g. by Nancy Leveson et al.), Daylight’s current understanding of the matter is that bug-free software remains a necessary, yet insufficient, condition for having a secure — and, hence, a humanly safe — Internet of drones, self-driving cars and other Moving Things. To reuse the words of Edsger Dijkstra in an interview with Eloina Pelaez Valdez in the late 1980s: “some things are simply not makeable.” Increasing our understanding of the limits of software, then, is yet another motivation for Daylight to study computing’s rich past.
Liesbeth De Mol, CNRS/UMR 8163 Savoirs, Textes, Langage, Université de Lille
Liesbeth De Mol is a researcher of the French Centre for scientific research (CNRS) and is the PI of the current project. Her work is in the history and philosophy of computing and is driven by the idea that computing is not one thing but many different things. Her current main focus is on the history of logic and its historical and epistemological connections to computer science. She is the founding president of the DHST/DLMPST commission for the History and Philosophy of Computing and has been involved with a large number of research initiatives to bring together a diversity of researchers and perspectives.
Gerardo Con Diaz, Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis; Affiliated Fellow, Yale Law School Information Society Project. Gerardo Con Diaz is an assistant professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis. He is currently writing a history of software patenting in the United States for Yale University Press, and he serves on the editorial boards of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing and Technology’s Stories.
His courses at UC Davis analyze the historical relationships among information technology, business, and law in the United States. He holds a PhD in History of Science and Medicine (Yale University), a master’s degree in history and philosophy of science (University of Cambridge, Trinity College), and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics (Harvard University).
Gilles Dowek, Inria et École normale supérieure de Paris-Saclay
Gilles Dowek is researcher in computer science at INRIA and the École normale Supérieure de Paris-Saclay. He is interested in the formalization of mathematics, automated theorem-proving systems, the physics of computation and security of aeronautic and spatial systems.
Marie-José Durand-Richard, MCF Honoraire, Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis; Chercheuse associée Laboratoire SPHERE, UMR 7219, CNRX – université Paris Diderot
Marie-José Durand-Richard (born in 1944) was maître de conférences in history of mathematics at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (1994-2009). She is an associated researcher of the laboratory SPHERE (UMR 7219 CNRS – Université Paris Diderot) since 1993. Her initial work focused on processes of the logification of algebra in the United Kingdom in the first half of the 19th century, essentially around the work of Charles Babbage (1791-1871), George Peacock (1791-1858), George Boole (1815-1864), Augustus de Morgan (1806-1871). The status of mathematics was in between de sciences of nature and mind. From an epistemological viewpoint a major issue thus becomes the cut-off between calculation and meaning and from a material viewpoint, the conditions for the mechanisation of calculation. As a result, she started to study in more detail the conditions for the mechanisation of computation and the relation between mathematicians and engineers in the 19th and 20th century. After Babbage’s plan for the analytical engine, this mechanisation process proceeded by the production of a large number of different calculating instruments and analog machines — planimeters,harmonic analyzers and differential analysers — which were for a long time ignored in the history of mathematics which focused more on academic production. Douglas R. Hartree (1891-1958) plays an important role in the transition from differential analyzers to computers after the second world war. A fundamental problem which developed throughout this whole process of mechanization process, is the problem of ow to make explicit the steps of a computational procedure in order to make the computation more and more automatic. This explicitation passes through the production of diagrams, both in the context of the analytical engine as well as in the context of the differential analyzers and the first computers (ENIAC,EDVAC). Her contribution to this project will offer an analysis of the evolution of such diagrams in order to retain those elements which were later to be used in the writing of computer programs.
Wendy Hammache, PhD Student, Institut de Recherches Philosophiques de Lyon (IRPhiL), Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3. Wendy Hammache is a PhD Student in Philosophy of logic and computing. She studies, with a historical and philosophical interest, the metamorphoses of the notions of “function” and “type” in logic and computation through the 20th century, especially focusing on lambda-calculus.
Jean-Baptiste Joinet, Professeur des universités Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3; Membre statutaire de l’Institut de Recherches Philosophiques de Lyon (IRPhiL, EA 4187, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3); Membre associé du Centre Cavaillès (La République des savoirs : Lettres, Sciences, Philosophie USR 3608 CNRS-Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris-Collège de France); Responsable du projet franco-brésilien Capes-Cofecub « Philosophie & Informatique : interactions contemporaines Action Capes-Cofecub Sh-873 17 ».
Jean-Baptiste Joinet studied mathematical logic, philosophy and sociology at Paris 7, Paris 1 and Paris 5. He wrote a PhD in Proof Theory centered on Sequent Calculus and Linear Logic. His research is mainly in relation with the Curry-Howard isomorphism as an interface between proof theory and computing theory. He defended his habilitation in 2007 on Logic and Interaction. He was associate professor at Paris 1 Sorbonne and since 2012 full professor in the department of philosophy of Lyon 3. He was invited professor in Peking, Rome and Rio de Janeiro. He has published extensively on linear logic and logic, temporality and interaction. He has also supervised a number of PhDs. He was (co)organiser of many conferences and workshops in Logic and Philosophy of computing and was also the founder of the Séminaire “Philosophie de l’informatique, de la logique et de leurs interfaces” (2012, ENS Paris). His main research interests are mathematical logic, philosophy of logic and foundations of logic, especially the interfaces between logic (proof theory) and computing theory.
Cliff Jones, School of Computing, Newcastle University, UK
Cliff Jones has worked in the area now known as “formal methods” since the 1960s. His research covers both the formal semantics of programming languages and methods for the formal development of programs. During two multi-year spells at the IBM Vienna Lab he contributed to ways of using formal semantic descriptions in compiler design and to the creation of VDM. Recently he has focussed his research on ways of developing concurrent programs (notably “Ref-Guarantee Thinking”). Cliff has long had an interest in capturing the history of formal methods. See also: http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/cliff.jones/bio/
Jean-Lassègue
, CNRS, Lias, Institut Marcel Mauss.
Research Fellowship in Philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) since 1994. Currently attached to Institut Marcel Mauss, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Area of Research: Epistemology of Cognitive Science from computational to cultural paradigms. Theory of Symbolic Forms. Emergence and Evolution of Language and Symbolic Activities. Anthropology of writing.
Simone Martini, Dipartimento di Informatica – Università di Bologna and Focus, INRIA Sophia Antipolis
Simone Martini is Professor of Computer Science and Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna. He received the Laurea degree in Scienze dell’Informazione and the Dottorato di Ricerca in Informatica (Ph.D. in Computer Science) from Università di Pisa. Before joining Università di Bologna in 2002, he has been a professor at Università di Pisa, and at Università di Udine. He has been a visiting scientist at the Systems Research Center of Digital Equipment Corporation, Palo Alto; at Stanford University; at École normale supérieure, Paris; at Université Paris 13; and at University of California at Santa Cruz. His research interests are in the logical foundations of programming languages, and in the history and philosophy of computing.
Baptiste Mélès, CNRS, Archives Henri-Poincaré, Université de Lorraine
Baptiste Mélès is a research fellow at CNRS (Archives Henri-Poincaré, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France). His work in philosophy of formal sciences (logic, mathematics, informatics) contains the philosophical analysis of the fundamental concepts of practical programming science (programming languages, operating systems). Since 2015, he co-organizes the “Codes sources” seminar in Paris, in which source codes are read as genuine texts.
Dale Miller, Inria Saclay & LIX, Ecole Polytechnique
Dale Miller received his PhD in Mathematics in 1983 from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University, and Ecole Polytechnique. He is currently Director of Research at Inria-Saclay where he is the Scientific Leader of the Parsifal team. Miller works on various topics in computational logic including proof theory, automated reasoning, logic programming, unification theory, operational semantics, and proof certificates.
Elisabetta Mori, Department of Computer Science, Middlesex University, London
I am a PhD candidate at Middlesex University in the field of History and Philosophy of Computing. I attended courses on Architecture in Eindhoven and in Florence, where I graduated with honours with a dissertation about the history and the design of the first Italian commercial computer. In my early academic research I focused on computers and design, with papers and lectures about Olivetti and the design of Italian early computing machines, as well as Programmed Arts in Italy in the Sixties. The current focus of my academic research is the European history of computing of the 1950s and 1960s, with a special interest on the British firm LEO Computers. I am collaborating with the Museum of Computing Machinery of Pisa University.
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn, CNRS, Centre Roland Mousnier/ Centre Koyré
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn studies the history of computing and IT in France, particularly the emergence of computing as an academic discipline and the emergence of software as a distinct professional activity.
Amirouche Moktefi, Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology. Estonia
Amirouche Moktefi is Lecturer in Philosophy at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. He is member of the Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance. He holds a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Strasbourg (2007). His research interests include the history of mathematics and logic, the philosophy of mathematical practice, and the public understanding of technology.
Alberto Naibo, IHPST (UMR 8590), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, CNRS, ENS
Alberto Naibo is associate professor in Logic at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He defended a thesis in 2013 under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Joinet on The dynamical status of axioms: from proofs to models. His researches are oriented towards the formal analysis of the notion of proof from a logical point of view, and the use of this formal notion of proof as a foundation for semantical notions, such as the notions of truth and meaning (proof-theoretic semantics). He is interested, in particular, in the possibility of considering proofs as programs, thanks to the Curry-Howard correspondance. He thus studies the notion of program and its relationships with the notions of algorithm and computable function, with a particular attention for the epistemic aspects of this question.
Maël Pégny, IHPST, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. Projet ANR/DFG HYPO 3 “Beyond Logic”
I am currently a postdoc fellow at IHPST, Paris I, as a member of the ANR-DFG Project HYPO 3, Beyond Logic. I was trained in philosophy (Phd), logic (Master level) and physics (Bachelor level). I tried to bring together those various experiences in a dissertation on the empirical foundations of the Church-Turing thesis. My first research interest remains computation theory (computability and computational complexity theory). Over the years, I have developed a parallel and growing interest in the history of computing as a source of inspiration to conceptualize computation as a cognitive technic, from both theoretical and practical perspectives.
Après mon intégration à l’École Normale Supérieure, j’ai étudié la philosophie des sciences (master LOPHISC), de logique (niveau master), et de physique (niveau licence). J’ai tâché de rassembler tous ces centres d’intérêts dans mon travail doctoral sur les fondements physiques de la thèse de Church-Turing. Durant mes années de travail postdoctoral, tout en conservant mon intérêt pour les fondements de la calculabilité et de la complexité, j’ai ajouté un volet historique à mes recherches, en cherchant dans l’émergence de la discipline informatique une source d’inspiration pour la conceptualisation du calcul comme objet théorique et pratique.
Camille Paloque-Berges, HT2S, Cnam
Camille Paloque-Berges researches the history of computer networks, users’ participation to developing, maintaining and working on computer networks, and more generally, cultures of computing and their heritage within communities and institutions. She works as a research engineer in the History of Techno-sciences lab at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Paris, France).
Tomas Petricek, The Alan Turing Institute (London, UK)
Tomas Petricek’s research interests span a range of areas including theory of programming languages, history and philosophy of programming, as well as open data and data journalism. He is a Visiting Researcher at the Alan Turing Institute working on tools making data science more accessible and transparent (http://thegamma.net). Previously, he contributed to functional programming and the development of the F# language and type providers at Microsoft Research and obtained PhD from University of Cambridge for his work on coeffects (http://tomasp.net/coeffects), a theory of context-aware programming languages. Along the way, he became interested in understanding programming through the perspective of history and philosophy of science and wrote papers about the evolution of programming concepts such as types and errors.
Mark Priestley, Independent researcher, London, UK
2017-18: Research Fellow of the National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park, UK.
After an undergraduate degree in Maths and Philosophy, I worked as a programmer and then university lecturer in Software Engineering before turning to the history and philosophy of computing. My primary focus is on the development of programming, and I completed a PhD studying the influence of logic on the early development of programming languages. From 2012 to 2016 I was engaged in an extended project studying the ENIAC, in which my major role was to analyse and reconstruct archival programming material related to ENIAC. I therefore combine a practical knowledge of modern programming practices with substantial experience of working with and analysing older material. A key part of this work has been to reflect on the changing meanings of “program” and related concepts, and therefore both the historical and philosophical aspects of my work align very closely with the aims of the “What is a program?” project. My research is currently focused on computing and programming practices in the 1940s.
Giuseppe Primiero, Department of Philosophy, University of Milan
Giuseppe Primiero is Associate Professor of Logic at the Department of Philosophy, University of Milan (Italy) and Visiting Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, Middlesex University London. His research interests are in several areas, primarily Logic and Computation, Philosophy of Computing and Information, Agent-based modelling and Computer Simulations, History of Computing.
Shahid Rahman is Full professor for logic and epistemology at the University of Lille. His more recent work delves into Per Martin Löf’s Constructive Type Theory and its philosophy. More precisely his work develops and studies the links between the normativism the the CTT approach to the Curry-Howard isomorphism between types, propositions, programs and sets. These are links that where stressed by Martin-Löf in recent talks while discussing the normative aspects of CTT. The work so far, with the exception of some incipient researches, have been focused on the logical aspects, and he hopes now to delve into the contentual aspects of the dialogical concepton of CTT. This, he believes, should give new insights in the dynamic constitution of meaning that identifies a given type.
Julian Rohrhuber, Institute for Music and Media, Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf. Affiliated with Universität Siegen.
Julian Rohrhuber, professor in the Robert-Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf, teaches music informatics and epistemic media. In collaboration with his students, he is concerned with art as a form of theory, as well as teaching as a mode of research. He has been working on a wide range of topics, usually concerning the philosophy of science and art, media theory, and algorithmic acoustics.
Programs have played an important role here: for example in the relation between time and algorithms, and the historical link between programming, pedagogics, and the foundational crisis in mathematics. The ontology of algorithms also are central in his investigation of patent law. As developer and composer in various collaborations, he takes up sound programming as a form of public thought.
Henri Stephanou is working on the epistemology of programming, His inquiry on programming covers all of its dimensions – formal, technical and socio-economic – and aims at understanding how the process of designing and implementing programs and systems achieves to generate and capture knowledge about reality. One core hypothesis is that this activity is only the specialization and radicalization of a broader and older human skill, i.e. planning and designing courses of action. Programming is exceptional in that it blends seamlessly formal and practical reasoning – and is therefore at the interesection between theoretical and practical knowledge.
Henri is PhD candidate at IHPST (Paris-I Sorbonne/CNRS). Priorly, he was consultant and manager for large companies, especially in the technology and operational field. Henri graduated from Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Normale Supérieure.
Matti Tedre, University of Eastern Finland (professor), Stockholm University (associate professor)
Tedre is working on computational thinking, computer science education research, social studies of computing, and the philosophy and history of computing.
Ray Turner, School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex
Ray Turner is Professor Emeritus of Logic and Computation in the School of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Essex, where he has served since 1985. Holding doctorates in Mathematical Logic and Theoretical Computer Science (Queen Mary College, London, 1973) and Philosophy (Bedford College, London, 1981). Professor Turner has also been a Sloan Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (1982) and CSLI, Stanford University (1984). He was Visiting Professor and Research Fellow at the University of Texas-Austin (1984 and 1987) and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (1984 and 1986). Ray Turner did pioneering work in the philsophy of computer science and has defined the field to a large extent through the Stanford entry on the Philosophy of Computer Science. Recently, his book on the Philosophy of Computer Science appeared in the Springer Series Computability.
Franck Varenne, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Rouen (France) – Research associate at the GEMASS Lab (CNRS / UMR 8598). Affiliated with IHPST (CNRS/UMR 8590).
Franck Varenne graduated as an engineer in physics, electrical engineering and computer science from the Grande Ecole Supélec. After a MA in philosophy, a MA and a Ph.D. in epistemology, he became Associate Professor at the University of Rouen and research associate at the CNRS-Lab GEMASS (Paris Sorbonne) in 2005. In 2016, he passed his habilitation doctorate. Since 2018 he is also affilated with the CNRS-lab IHPST (Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne). His research focuses on the history and epistemology of applied computer science, formal models and computer simulations in contemporary science, especially in biology and geography. He has published around 55 articles and chapters. He has also published 8 books and co-edited 3 collective books.
Nick Wiggershaus is a PhD student at Lille University. He is originally trained in Physics (B.Sc. 2015) in Dortmund and then transitioned to History and Philosophy of Science in Utrecht. Mainly engaging in foundations of physics, he completed his research on the ontological status information measures used in contemporary physics (M.Sc. 2018). Having investigated foundational issues in information theory, physics and computer science, his main focus now in the project is a historico-philosophical analysis of the ontology of computer programs. More specifically, he tries to explore how the seemingly abstract aspects of computer programs are related to concrete machines.