Computability in Context: Computation and Logic in the Real World

by S. Barry Cooper (Editor)

Computability has played a crucial role in mathematics and computer science, leading to the discovery, understanding and classification of decidable/undecidable problems, paving the way for the modern computer era, and affecting deeply our view of the world. Recent new paradigms of computation, based on biological and physical models, address in a radically new way questions of efficiency and challenge assumptions about the so-called Turing barrier. This volume addresses various aspects of the ways computability and theoretical computer science enable scientists and philosophers to deal with mathematical and real-world issues, covering problems related to logic, mathematics, physical processes, real computation and learning theory. At the same time it will focus on different ways in which computability emerges from the real world, and how this affects our way of thinking about everyday computational issues.

420 pages, ebook

First published February 25, 2011