Five big questions with pretty simple answers

IBM Journal of Research and Development

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 31-45

  Fredkin, Edward ^a  

^a CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AUTOMATA THEORY; COMPUTATIONAL METHODS; DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS; DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING; ELECTRODYNAMICS; NAND CIRCUITS; PROBABILITY; THERMODYNAMICS;

DIGITAL INFORMATIONAL PROCESSES; DIGITAL MECHANICS (DM);

QUANTUM THEORY;

EID: 1342282228     PISSN: 00188646     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1147/rd.481.0031     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (16)

1. The author was motivated by reading Frank Wilczek's "Four Big Questions with Pretty Good Answers" (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0201222/). Various sentences, sentence fragments, and styles of exposition in this paper were copied from that paper. We have tried to identify most paragraphs where such instances occur. The content of this paper has little to do with the content of Wilczek's paper. However, the author has found following the framework of Wilczek's exposition to be useful in overcoming some of the obstacles the author encountered in trying to express his ideas. We thank Wilczek for granting an indulgence; allowing our use herein of paraphrased and copied fragments of his good work.
2. E. Fredkin, "Finite Nature," Proceedings of the XXVIIth Rencontre de Moriond, 1992.
3. M. Minsky, Computation, Finite and Infinite Machines, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967.
4. In 1969, the author conceived the approach of proving CA universality with wires and gates as opposed to modeling a Turing machine. This was followed by his student's MIT Ph.D. thesis. See E. R. Banks, "Universality in Cellular Automata," Proceedings of the 11th IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 1970, pp. 194-215.
5. E. Fredkin and T. Toffoli, "Conservative Logic," Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 219-253 (1982).
6. R. Landauer, "Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process," IBM J. Res. & Dev. 5, 183-191 (1961).
7. C. H. Bennett, "Logical Reversibility of Computation," IBM J. Res. & Dev. 17, 525-532 (1973).
8. T. Toffoli, "Computation and Construction Universality of Reversible Cellular Automata," J. Computer Syst. Sci. 15, 213-231 (1977).
9. E. Fredkin, "Digital Mechanics," Physica D 45, 254-270 (1990).
10. (a) S. Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, Inc., Champaign, IL, 2002;
11. (b) A. Ilachinski, Cellular Automata: A Discrete Universe, World Scientific Press, New York (2001).
12. S. Ulam, "Random Processes and Transformations," Proceedings of the International Congress on Mathematics, 1950, Vol. 2, 1952, pp. 264-275.
13. J. von Neumann, Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, edited and completed by A. Burks, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL, 1966.
14. T. Toffoli and N. Margolus, "Invertible Cellular Automata: A Review," Physica D 45, 229-253 (1990).
15. E. Fredkin, "An Introduction to Digital Philosophy," Int. J. Theor. Phys. 42, No. 2, 189-247 (2003).
16. E. Fredkin, A New Cosmogony; www.digitalphilosophy.org/.