The Mathematician’s Bias — and the Return to Embodied Computation

There are growing uncertainties surrounding the classical model of computation established by Gödel, Church, Kleene, Turing and others in the 1930s onwards. The mismatch between the Turing machine conception, and the experiences of those more practically engaged in computing, has parallels with the wider one between science and those working creatively or intuitively out in the ‘real’ world. The scientific outlook is more flexible and basic than some understand or want to admit. The science is subject to limitations which threaten careers. We look at embodiment and disembodiment of computation as the key to the mismatch, and find Turing had the right idea all along – amongst a productive confusion of ideas about computation in the real and the abstract worlds.