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Sybille Krämer: Roots and Media of Computational Power
Roots and Media of Computational Power
(p. 48 – 56)

Sybille Krämer

Roots and Media of Computational Power
Some Remarks on the Genesis and Genius of Quantification in Early European Modernity

PDF, 10 pages

  • programming / coding
  • computer simulation
  • computer science
  • computer
  • history of science
  • history of technology

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Sybille Krämer

is Professor for Philosophy at the Institute for Philosophy of the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research is focused on 17th-century mathematics and rationalism, the philosophy of culture, the theory of cultural techniques: writing, diagrams and cartography. Since 2008 she has held the chair of the Graduate School »Notational Iconicity. On materiality, perceptibility and operativity of notations« at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Other texts by Sybille Krämer for DIAPHANES
Gabriele Gramelsberger (ed.): From Science to Computational Sciences

In 1946 John von Neumann stated that science is stagnant along the entire front of complex problems, proposing the use of largescale computing machines to overcome this stagnation. In other words, Neumann advocated replacing analytical methods with numerical ones. The invention of the computer in the 1940s allowed scientists to realise numerical simulations of increasingly complex problems like weather forecasting, and climate and molecular modelling. Today, computers are widely used as computational laboratories, shifting science toward the computational sciences. By replacing analytical methods with numerical ones, they have expanded theory and experimentation by simulation.

During the last decades hundreds of computational departments have been established all over the world and countless computer-based simulations have been conducted. This volume explores the epoch-making influence of automatic computing machines on science, in particular as simulation tools.

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