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## 2007/03/31

### Leibniz

Leibniz 也夢想著要建立一套普遍的數學，他稱之為「Characteristica Universalis」，使得思想也可以化約成計算。他解釋說：

Leibniz 對於發明術一直深感興趣，他說：

There were computers in the 19th century, the 17th century... I imagine there are computer scientists in the pygmy forest. I haven’t really carried this out as an experiment, but I imagine that people may not have machines but one in fifty of them, wherever you go, has this profile, this ability. I’m not a sociologist, nor an anthropologist, but reading publications, reading literature, I can sense how much people think like I do, even if they were writing from a different century.

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I graduated from CalTech in June 1969 with a B.S. in mathematics, determined to pursue a Ph.D., but undecided about whether it should be in mathematics or computer science. I finally decided in favor of computer science and enrolled as a graduate student at Stanford in the fall. I thought that as a computer scientist I could use my mathematical skills to solve problems of more immediate practical interest than the problems posed in pure mathematics. I hoped to do research in artificial intelligence, since I wished to understand the way reasoning, or at least mathematical reasoning, works. But my course adviser at Stanford was Don Knnth, and I think he had other plans for my future: His first advice to me was to read Volume 1 of his book, The Art of Computer Programming.

Labels:

yen33/31/2007 5:25 pm 說：

Fall4/01/2007 3:33 am 說：

Josh Ko4/01/2007 4:03 am 說：

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean --- neither more nor less." XD