Re: the abacus and the slide rule...

[John M <***>]

Hi, Judith,
(this will be another of my "not too serious" replies)

1. personal: you are not an "analog", not even a
simulacron, you are a Ding an sich (shall I say:
"different'?) As for your preference for the full face
of a clock vs an LC display: that is partly due to
long term childhood habits partly some 'nonchalance'
vs. exact rigid data. 
A writer, Eh? You are verbatim, not quanti
formalistic.
There may be another atavistical point, but I don't
want to go into the etymology of 'hochme'. I have it,
too. This is why I feel "superior" (=different) to the
engineering ways even to their applied mathematics. 

2. Analog computing. I researched the question some
time ago (last year?) when a list-colleague (who left)
drew my attention to the so called 'qualitative
physix' and all I got was yearning for analog
computing which is a good dream. Closest I found was
the protein etc. based "hardware" (experimental stage)
where more than just 0 and 1 (millions of them) could
serve as carriers. It comes close to the analog
(mental image based) science - if I may call it that
way, since it has no quanti (formalistic) rules.
2A. - The abacus IMO is digital, does one express the
intermediate details in numbers or not. You don't draw
conclusions on "this line SEEMS longer than that, so
it is greater" rather COUNT the bullets. It may be a
late successor to earlier counting systems - like
whatever Hamurappi's IRS used to calculate taxes. I
don't know how it went, but those 'Mid Eastern'
ancienities used (and some still use) alphabetical
letters for numbers. 

3. Slide rule was my calculating tool for at least 30
years and a 'more analog kind' for that matter: the
'chemical', where the atomic/mol weights were marked,
represented by name at logarithmic 'distances' as
compared to numbers.Really calculating the analog
length, not their digital values which is not true: 
the length were calculated in the numerical values
they analogized. I still have two, one chemical, one
'only' digital. Some other (engineering etc.)
professions had sliderules with factor-analog points
as marked by length to facilitate the calculaations.
(Personal story
As R&D Mgr at a pollution-control Co. I had to compete
at meetings in calculating cases for a proposal and I
was always ahead of the US mech., el. and environm.
engs with my slide rule, not by force of the 'analog',
rather by my metric upbringing for which the sliderule
is unsurpassed, adding to the 'metrificated' data only
the order of magnitudes and voila the result, while my
colleagues tortured themselves with the stupid
American units, factoring them together in endless
decimals (lb/gal,oz/cbft,sq-in/sq-mile, etc. etc.
relations).

4. To call '0' off and '1' on is the reductionistic
view of our scientific minds, starting from the basis
of models with content. 
We wholistically thinking few (and there are some
more, I contemplate RR as such, even if he never
mentioned the following mental route of his
speculations to you)
start from "nothingness" and even untold, there lurks
the ontological bug: how could all this BEGIN? so the
reality (1 = well defined) is the original 'nothing'
state evolving into natural models, RR-complexity, in
its relational (reductionist) view into  a world of 
unidentifiable (yet topically modelable?, switched-on)
mess, the impredicative 'zero' sense of the world,
(because we cannot even compute (Turing) the unlimited
natural beyond the limited models (systems, machines).

Alas, we (wholists) are 3000 years late in the
evolution of human thinking and just as you like
better a full face clock with hands, conservative
science calls '0' the nothingness (the unswitched
original). 
I can live with that and you may disregard the last
par

Regards

John M



--- Judith Rosen <***> wrote:

> Recently I was researching the history of digital
> computers, which led 
> me to look into analog computers as well. I've
> always considered myself 
> "an analog girl" (preferring a complete clock-face
> over a digital 
> readout and various dial controls on machines to
> programmable digital 
> pushpads, etc.) so I was curious about how the
> notion for using a 
> binary system came to be the accepted approach. One
> person I asked said 
> it was because of the nature of electricity, which
> can be either on or 
> off, so the zero represented "off" and the one
> represented "on". That 
> made a bit of sense to me, but it doesn't explain
> the ancient use of 
> the abacus as one of the first (known) digital
> computational devices. 
> Among the nifty things I inherited from my father
> were his Japanese 
> Soroban abacus and his (almost as ancient) slide
> rule. During my 
> research I discovered that the slide rule is
> designated as an example 
> of an analog computational device. Does anyone on
> the list have 
> experience with analog computers or with hybrid
> computers? I hadn't 
> realized that there are hybrid systems, but it seems
> to me that this 
> would be a very good idea. Can anyone elaborate,
> please?
> 
> Judith
> Web address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com
> BioTheory: An electronic journal of general science
> based on the 
> Relational (Rosennean) Complexity Paradigm