Appendix A: The history of the computational turn

The prehistory of the computational turn

Computational X

We provide a whirlwind tour of computational X and a brief depiction of what it means for each of them.

Computational Physics

The computational turn in Physics was barely noticeable. For physicists, it was about using computers to do computation, thus computational physics. It was more about the pitfalls of numerical methods, and how to write efficient code, than promoting F/OSS. That said, in some parts of physics, early on there was also the realization tha computers were more than computations; it was about sharing code, data, analysis, reproducibility, etc.

Computational linguistics

As we saw, the computational turn in linguistics was perhaps one of the most acrimonious divorce (the first of the digital humanities).

Computational Journalism

Computational Ecology

Computational Finance

Computational Statistics

Very related to computational thinking, simulating and bootstrapping is easier than understanding the mathematics behind the p-values.

Computational Social Science, digital humanities, and Cultural Analytics

Manifestos

The debate

Computational Theories

Sometimes, what we mean by computational is not that we use computers. It is that a process is computational. For instance, the 'computational theory of the mind' (CCTM) says that the mind is something akin to a computer. It is tied to the computational turn in science, but you do not need a computer to do research on CCTM. If anything, it a topic of predilections for armchair philosophers.

Another edge case for our purpose is the philosophy of computational thinking. With the rise of computational works, researchers started to realize that using computers as cognitive aids can benefit more than computer scientists. Computational thinking is learning known mathematical skills---sequences, differential calculus, all kinds of mathematical abstractions---but with computer programs. The original proponents, people like Seymour Papers, Alan Kay, and Jeannette Wing, sit at the intersection of computer science and education. They use programming language, such as the LOGO programming language, or SCRATCH, as medium to teach people of all age a compuatational way of thinking about problems.

Some works on computational thinking definitely are definitely computational works, some others are conceptual. This is a hard one to disambiguate.